The US military may be investing in these ‘Jetpacks’

A inventor that started out of his garage is reportedly in talks to manufacture his “Jetpacks” for the military. That’s right, if you’ve ever wanted to learn to fly a jetpack – now would be the time to enlist. The rest of you need to hold out until they give us Hoverboards…

Martin invented his “Jetpack” in his garage, and has been working on it for decades. Weighing well over 250lb, it is in fact much too heavy to realistically be described as a “pack” – rather it is a small aircraft which you strap into, as opposed to strapping on.

Apples and flying apples; seriously, the specifics of the term “pack” are
unimportant to most of us excited by this news. Sure, it weighs 300lb, but it makes me fly through the air like Superman, right?


Not quite yet. Martin’s design doesn’t really rocket you into the air, it’s more about hovering a few feet above the ground and spinning in circles. Reports show that there are much better options than this particular jetpack, so it seems that this story may just be an attempt for Martin Aircraft to garner a little bit of publicity for the “Jetpack” which they’ve been struggling to market and sell over the past few years.

The credence of the supposed defence-department talks was also rather undermined by apparent differences of opinion between Martin and Lauder on the desirability of military sales, with Martin saying he would be “pretty pissed off” if his invention wound up being used to carry weapons.

The military always uses the fun stuff before giving it to the people. That’s why we all don’t have hovercrafts yet. Also kind of naive for someone to make a product with an assortment of militarily capabilities and not feel like it would ever be used in combat. Even if the US doesn’t buy the jetpack contract from Martin, we have to figure that these things will catch on somewhere at some point, right? Just give us the damn jetpacks!