Your Personal Jetpack Is Almost Ready For Purchase

Martin Aircraft Company’s “Segway for the sky” is about to go into production. Can anyone lend me $100,000?

The long wait will soon be over, and in no time we’ll be able to add ‘rich jetpack owners plummeting from the sky’ to our list of pet peeves. And don’t think I’m calling it the Segway of the sky as an insult.

“We’re trying to make the world’s easiest-to-fly aircraft,” Richard Lauder, chief executive of New Zealand-based Martin Aircraft Company tells Discovery News. “Our goal is to create a Segway for the sky, where the principles of flying would be very simple.”

I dunno, it seems like an awful lot of money to make mall cops airborne, but I’ve always been a strong supporter of national mall security, so I’ll leave worrying about finances to the suits.

This lovely little number is capable of flying for 30 minutes on five miles per hour, with a max speed of 63 miles per hour. That’s more than enough to get me from the bedroom to my home office every morning for a week, and I doubt my neighbors will be able to hear the loud rumbling takeoff noise above the gunshots.

Martin only plans on producing 800 of these a year at first, so I’d start saving up my money now if I were you. And in the odd chance you do plummet from the sky, try not to land on the silver Pathfinder.

Buy Your Own Jetpack [Discovery]