Published in the summer 2010 issue of MyLIFE magazine
At the age of five, Glenn Martin first envisioned a flying machine while waiting to cross a busy intersection. His imagination was already hard at work.
It was the ‘60s, and Martin’s spirit of innovation was surfacing. Even as a young child, Martin enjoyed tinkering with home appliances, taking them apart and putting them back together. One time, he set out to fix his mother’s broken vacuum cleaner. After spending hours disassembling it and putting it back together, he plugged it in and ended up taking down the entire electrical grid in his small town.
While other kids were busy thinking about building tree houses and watching television shows like Dennis the Menace, Martin, at seven years old, built his first invention. It was a hang glider constructed from a bed sheet and planks of wood. Fortunately, as Martin prepared to take his first flight from the roof of the house, his father arrived home in time to stop him from jumping. Otherwise, he’d have landed on the ground below—on a solid slab of concrete.
In the ‘80s, Martin began developing a concept for a jet pack and spent the next 27 years managing a research and development program to bring his dream to reality. Eventually, he formed the Martin Aircraft Company, and in July 2008 the world’s first personal flight with the Martin Jetpack took place. His childhood dream had become a reality. For Martin, it was a moment when a lifetime of research, development and, as he says, “the sheer bloody-minded persistence of a group of people who refused to believe it couldn’t be done,” came together. With an impressive group of avionic, technical and production designers, Martin Aircraft’s Jetpack could fly 100 times longer than the famous Bell Rocket Belt device. The Bell Rocket Belt was the most successful jet pack developed for the U.S. Army during the Cold War. The device made it possible for an individual to travel safely over short distances—for about 30 seconds. It was powered using hydrogen peroxide as fuel. Even though development of the Bell Rocket Belt continued, a flying time beyond 30 seconds could not be accomplished. Still, the Bell Rocket Belt was used commercially at Disneyland events and in the 1984 and 1996 Summer Olympic Games, and it even made an appearance in the 1965 James Bond film, Thunderball.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has been developing “highways in the sky,” and the new technologies involved in this process will revolutionize the way aircraft navigate our skies by creating three-dimensional highways based on automated GPS tracks.
The Martin Jetpack has a patented fan jet technology, which uses regular gasoline, just like an automobile. You may be thinking, what happens if the engine were to stop in midair? No problem! The Martin Jetpack is equipped with a ballistic parachute. All the pilot has to do is pull a toggle and a small propellant is fired, similar to the one used in an automobile airbag, rapidly deploying a parachute. The pilot, Jetpack and parachute descend as one.
Martin Aircraft Company recently signed a $12 million joint venture deal to initiate production of the Martin Jetpack, which is expected to go on sale late in 2010. According to Martin, the new Jetpack is capable of reaching heights of about 2,400 meters and can travel as fast as 100 kilometers per hour.
Martin envisions a world, sometime in the next 10 years, in which the average person can use his invention to get to work. When Martin was a child, The Jetsons was a popular TV cartoon series. On the show, George Jetson and his family traveled by air as part of their daily routine. Now, thanks in large part to the imagination, dedication and determination of Glenn Martin and others like him, the concept of commuting to and from work with a jet pack could become a reality in the not-too-distant future.
