Daniel H. Wilson - Wheres My Jetpack?

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

HOW TO SURVIVE A ROBOT UPRISING

Bloomsbury USA

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This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published 2007

Daniel H. Wilson, 2007

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ISBN: 978-1-5969-1136-9 (PB)
ISBN: 978-1-6355-7267-4 (eBook)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Wilson, Daniel H. (Daniel Howard), 1978 Wheres my jetpack?: a guide to the amazing science fiction future that never arrived / Daniel H. Wilson. 1st U.S. ed. p. cm. ISBN: 978-1-59691-136-0 (PB) 978-1-59691-136-9(ePub) 1. InventionsMiscellanea 2. InventionsHistory 3. InventionsHumor 4. ForecastingMiscellanea. I. Title II. Title: Wheres my jetpack?: a guide to the amazing science fiction future that never arrived. III: Title: Amazing science fiction future that never arrived. T49.5.W546 2007 600dc22 2006021683

24681097531

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FOR

PAMELA KAYE & DENNIS JAY

WHERES MY JETPACK?

The future is now, and we are not impressed. The future was supposed to be a fully automated, atomic-powered, germ-free Utopia a place where a grown man could wear a velvet spandex unitard and not be laughed at. Our beloved scientists may be building the future, but some key pieces are missing. Where are the ray guns, the flying cars, and the hoverboards that we expected? We cant wait another minute for the future to arrive. The time has come to hold the golden age of science fiction accountable for its fantastic promises.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, visionaries like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells spun wild tales of spaceflight and underwater adventure. In 1926, Hugo Gernsback introduced the first magazine devoted entirely to science fiction, Amazing Stories, with the motto Extravagant Fiction Today: Cold Fact Tomorrow. By midcentury, the Apollo moon missions were gasoline on the flames. As science conquered nature, an optimistic populace yearned to live in the perfect tomorrow. Yet today zeppelins the size of ocean liners do not hover over fully enclosed skyscraper cities. Shiny robot servants do not cook breakfast for colonists on the moon. Worst of all, sleek titanium jetpacks are not ready and waiting on showroom floors.

Every vivid drawing on the cover of a pulp sci-fi magazine was a promise of a better tomorrow, and the purpose of this book is to deliver on those promises. This book ruthlessly exposes technology, spotlighting existing prototypes and revealing drawing-board plans. You will learn which technologies are already available, who made them, and where to find them. If the technology is not public, you will learn how to build, buy, or steal it. When the technology of yesterdays tomorrow does not yet exist, you will learn what barriers stand in the way of making it real. Be careful, you are holding a hand-sized powder keg of information.

Lets face it, there are myriad ways in which futuristic technology could cause personal injury, societal instability, or explosive decompression. A person would have to be crazier than a trainload of monkeys to want to unleash all this technology at once. Nevertheless, this book solemnly pledges to completely ignore any potentially catastrophic consequences of worldwide technology adoption. If the technology is possible even remotely so this book will lay it out for all to see.

Despite every Worlds Fair prediction, every futuristic ride at Disneyland, and the advertisements on the last page of every comic book ever written, we are not living in a techno-Utopia. Not yet. Now is the time to stop wishing, to stand up, and to shout, Where the hell is my jetpack!?

JETPACK

It is the last thing you think about before going to sleep. It is the first thing you think of when you wake up. It is a streamlined, curiously heavy bundle of technology with two shoulder straps and one gift to humankind the gift of flight. The personal jetpack is the holy grail of classic science fiction technology, the ultimate birthday present on steroids, and best of all, the personal jetpack exists.

It all began in 1928, when Buck Rogers ostensibly appeared in an issue of Amazing Stories powering through the sky with help from a hot new jetpack. In 1939 a movie came out with Buck flying by virtue of a degravity belt. The atomic rocket pack made a comeback in the 1949 movie King of the Rocket Men. No matter what you call it, old Buck was sporting the coolest toy the world has ever seen; his appearances aroused techno-lust in thousands of people and inspired generations of intrepid inventors to attempt to build their very own jetpacks.

The jetpack is just that a backpack with jet thrusters ready to launch a human skyward at the jiggle of a finger. It is a deceptively simple idea, but it took a team of rocket scientists to create the first working jetpack (technically a rocket pack). Wendell Moore of Bell Aerosystems Company finished the Bell Rocket Belt in 1961. The momentous invention was straightforward: Moore mounted a rocket onto a backpack and tested the device all by himself (with a strong tether to prevent any unwanted trips into the atmosphere). The rocket, called a small rocket lift device, was similar to one used on the tail and wingtips of an experimental plane to help the pilot maintain control at high altitudes (where thin air hampers normal aerodynamic flight characteristics). Moores foray into science fiction produced a fully functional rocket-powered backpack and it never even underwent any monkey test trials.