Paramedics with jetpacks...the future of mountain rescue?

[Nick]

Can I just point out that these jetpacks are in development? That this is most likely not the finished product?
And other firms have different ideas for the same concepts...  https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29207/jetpack-inventor-goes-zipping-between-royal-navy-boats-in-open-water-tests

The inventors team at Gravity Industries are going to be working on this for a long time to come and making them better and stronger. It's a bit like laughing at the Sikorsky R-4 for being a two seater with no cargo load when just 15 years later they brought out the SH-3 Sea King which is still in useful service over 50 years later.

[Weaver]

Can I just point out that these jetpacks are in development? That this is most likely not the finished product?
And other firms have different ideas for the same concepts...  https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29207/jetpack-inventor-goes-zipping-between-royal-navy-boats-in-open-water-tests

That's the same firm and the same jetpack.

The inventors team at Gravity Industries are going to be working on this for a long time to come and making them better and stronger. It's a bit like laughing at the Sikorsky R-4 for being a two seater with no cargo load when just 15 years later they brought out the SH-3 Sea King which is still in useful service over 50 years later.

The point is though, that the SH-3 is able to be more capable than the R-4 because it's bigger and heavier. The fundamental limit with any true 'jetpack' is what weight the human body can carry and what forces it can withstand. Once you go beyond that, it rapidly stops being a 'jetpack' in any meaningful sense and becomes a small VTOL aircraft instead.

Exhibit A:

(Martin Jetpack: piston-engined ducted-fans)

Now there's nothing wrong with that: something like the Martin Jetpack above may well be very useful (in fact more useful due to better payload/range), in some emergency situations, but a) it's not really a 'jetpack' any more, and b) it's light weight and low power will still put limitations on the wind conditions in which it can fly, because while the vehicle scales, the weather doesn't. This always happens: the history of aviation is littered with not-really-a-jetpack-any-more 'jetpacks' with any amount of ingenious design and effort sunk in them, the only thing they have in common being that none of them ever entered production.

If we're ever going to see a radical VTOL vehicle used for emergency response, my guess is that it'll be something more like the multi-ducted-fan 'flying cars' that are cropping up all the time these days. All they have to do is demonstrate better safety AND cost-effectiveness AND weather-tolerance AND capability than a Robinson R22 and they'll be good to go. I'm not being sarcastic there by the way: I think that's potentially doable. Whether they'll ever get into production without a 'flying car' mass market (which I don't think they'll ever get) is another matter.