254 Pounds of Awesome

If you’ve ever lived in a major city – not just Los Angeles, but anywhere traffic is a problem – you’ve probably had wistful dreams about personal aircraft at least once while sitting in a massive traffic jam, but unless you’re a complete geek you’ve probably never really considered what it would mean to own one. Most people will just point out that even with electronic beacons, full-time ground control, radar, ex-military pilots in charge, and the threat of being blasted out of the sky by trigger-happy F-16 pilots, we still can’t get people to stop flying airplanes into places they’re not supposed to be; and despite billions of dollars and thousands of deaths every year, we can’t seem to get people to stop driving drunk, either. Putting the two together has just never seemed like that good an idea to most people in the United States. But apparently, the New Zealanders have a different take on this issue…

According to a story on the Daily Telegraph website, a company based in Christchurch, New Zealand is planning to start selling about 500 personal aircraft per year at about $76,000 each; these “jetpack” units (which actually use ducted propellers, not jets) will have about 30 minutes endurance and a top speed of about 60 miles per hour. If the company can work out the fuel efficiency and payload issues, there’s reason to believe that the range could be increased to about 60 minutes in the air; certainly long enough for most commutes. With a ceiling of only about 8,000 feet there’d be no need to worry about life support, and with built-in landing gear, there’s no real issue about not being to land this craft without breaking your legs, detonating the gas tank, or destroying your $76,000 new toy. There’s even a parachute attachment, which means that it you are actually stupid enough to ignore the gas gage and plummet out of the sky when your engine fails, you still shouldn’t die. Flying while drunk is another story, however…

Now, in point of fact this isn’t really a new idea; people have been experimenting with ducted-fan and rotary-wing ultra-light aircraft (which is all this thing actually is) for decades now; there was a very similar design that was actually considered for use in the Second World War before they realized that the control systems of the day made the thing a deathtrap. Most places in the United States already have ordinances against flying ultra-light aircraft within city limits, and those that don’t would probably enact them as soon as these aircraft become available on the open market, which means you still couldn’t use one to commute from (for example) our place in Redondo Beach, California to UCLA in 16 minutes of flight time instead of the 60 to 110 minutes of ground travel we used to endure. You might be able to use one in a place like East Lansing, where most of the surrounding area is pastoral rather than urban, but my current commute is only about 8 minutes as it stands…

Which does nothing to change the fact that, assuming I’ve got the money (and can get clearance to fly one) I’m going to buy one of these things as soon as they become available in North America – and so will thousands (if not millions) of tech geeks just like me. Because while these things are probably rubbish for reducing commute times, they’re still 254 pounds of awesome by any other standard…