FLYING BIKES have been the dream for engineers for years now. From the Jetsons of the 70s cartoon to Star Wars and their Imperial Speeders – the ability to hop on a bike and flying to your destination is a pretty cool image.
Californian company, JetPack Aviation are claiming to have the machine to make it happen, in the form of the futuristically styled Speeder.
Powered by four turbo jet engines and running on diesel of kerosene, the Speeder produces a claimed 705lb/f of thrust, has a top speed of 150mph, 20 minutes of run time and can reach 15,000ft (4500m) altitude. The machine weighs 231lbs (104kg) and can carry a pilot/rider of 240lbs (108kg).
Now, all of this is very interesting and fancy looking, but their website gives us nothing more than computer generated images and video, which could make the sceptics among us wonder why we should send a pre-order of $10,000 for one. But JetPack aviation have done this kind of thing before – back in 2015 they flew their JB-9 pack around the Statue of Liberty in New York!
Still, $10k for a vehicle that doesn’t exist is a lot of money to shell out, and it doesn’t even have anywhere to clip a disk-lock!!
