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Last Updated: Jul 31, 2008 - 1:32:06 PM |
We saw it on the New York Times website this morning, where science
reporter John Schwartz fairly drools over it. A headline with "jetpack"
in it makes for a no-brainer breakfast-table click, but it was the New
Zealand accent on the accompanying video that had all of us -- most
especially the almost-seven-year-old -- sitting up straight and
listening with rapt attention while our paterfamilias read the story
out loud.
Glenn Martin's machine is noisy, unwieldy, and driven by a four-stroke
engine. It's basically an airborne lawnmower -- the flying version,
perhaps, of that other dorky mower-inspired futuristic travel device,
the Segway. Certainly the Martin jetpack doesn't look nearly as 21st C
as this Buzz Lightyear outfit, dreamed up by a Swiss Icarus and
test-flown only a few months ago.
But who cares - it flies! That's news! TVNZ was quick off the mark,
with the lucky Ian Sinclair looking pretty chuffed about being the
first journalist to get a ride on the thing. Meanwhile, a teaser video
has been up on YouTube for a few days, long enough to get 35,000 hits
so far and presumably many more to come.
Expect the inevitable deluge of terrible puns about flying kiwis, and
the usual palaver about kiwi ingenuity (viz Simon Dallow intoning the
immortal words "After more than 25 years toiling away in his garden
shed..." Mate, that's some garden shed). Expect it to turn up in the
next series of Flight of the Conchords, maybe.
But the most appealing and, to my mind, authentically NZ thing about
the whole story? The whole family helped out. Not just Martin's teenage
son, who gave it a whirl last year, but, back in the early days of the
project, an even gutsier test pilot:
In June 1997, seven weeks after the birth of his second child, Mr.
Martin figured his prototype was now powerful enough to lift its first
flier, so long as that person weighed less than 130 pounds. So he
turned to his wife. "I said, 'Hey, Vanessa, what are you doing
tonight?' "
Now that's what I'm talking about. That's what you expect from the
first country to give women the vote. No way the Wright Bros or les
frères Montgolfier were ballsy enough to give a post-partum mother of
two first go on their balsa-wood and tissue paper contraptions. Vanessa
Martin, fearless aviation pioneer and kiwi heroine, we salute you!
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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