In terms of air-breathing turbines, there really wasn’t anything available in the thrust class needed. The military’s demand for high-speed target drones drove advances in metal alloys for building lightweight turbines. Improved nickel alloys made turbine wheels stronger and allowed them to withstand higher temperatures without distorting
Functioning rocket packs were featured in 1960s-era TV shows such as “Gilligan’s Island” and “Lost in Space,” and James Bond donned a Bell Rocket Belt in 1965 to escape villains in “Thunderball.” But the flight duration for such compact machines — a class of aircraft called individual lift devices, or ILDs — was measured in seconds, and their fuel source was exotic. Breakthroughs in the past decade in miniaturization of electronics and the casting of advanced nickel alloys, however, have radically altered key technologies needed for developing practical, useful ILDs. JetPack Aviation in California expects to have a full-scale ILD prototype ready for initial flight testing by Continue reading