Gliding around the Statue of Liberty with the JB-9 personal jet engine

A man with a jetpack (private jet engine) caught the attention of many locals as they flew past the Hudson River in New York City last week. This person wandered around the Statue of Liberty, before landing safely on the deck of a boat arranged.

Using a personal jet engine flying around the Statue of Liberty

The character mentioned above is Australian businessman David Mayman who has been working on the design and prototype of this special flying equipment for the past 10 years. During the course of his career, he received the help of Nelson Tyler, who is known for developing helicopter camera systems and other filmmaking technologies. It is known that three of them brought him the Oscars.

Image prototype JB-9.

The collaboration between Mayman and Nelson resulted in a lightweight jetpack named JB-9 . Despite its modest size (enough to fit in the trunk), however, it is strong enough to lift users up to 3,050 meters above the ground and can reach speeds of up to 102 kilometers per hour. JB-9's uptime for a full fuel refill is around 10 minutes. After a test flight last week, Mayman said the engine provided a "great thrust, good speed, acceleration with nothing to slow down and operate very stable."

With the success of the early stages, Mayman and Nelson (along with other members of their company Jetpack Aviation) have been developing a new jetpack model, the JB-10 . The new personal jet engine will work similarly to the JB-9, but the speed is accelerated, with a maximum of 160 km / h. Certainly speed improvements will also come with added safety features, Mayman asserted.

Jetpack Aviation is currently working on adding a balloon system or automatic spider if the pilot is out of control. According to the manufacturer, the small size is an advantage of the JB, making it easy to use anywhere. Mayman said that their products would be used in many areas, including military and cinema. The company has no plans to sell jetpack to the market yet, but the company said it would consider this issue in the future, as the device is more stable and accessible by most people.