Jetpack Dreams: One Man's Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention That Never Was (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: rocket belt, pretty bird, jet ski, Wendell Moore, Bill Suitor, Niagara Falls (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Generations of boys, inspired by characters from Buck Rogers to Boba Fett, have dreamed of flying with jetpacks strapped to their backs. Freelance writer Montandon, editor of Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader, documents his search for the ultimate jetpack; along the way he encounters an offbeat bunch of middle-aged men with the same obsession. Montandon explains, for readers who don't attend the venues where jetpack jockeys rake in thousands of dollars from viewers who want to see a few seconds of flight, that the sticking point with jetpack technology is that you can't pack enough concentrated hydrogen peroxide on your back to fly for very long. Most jetpacks today are built from the original 1950s plans for the first working model, although many men have spent countless hours in the garage trying to improve on it. Along the way, there has been one unsolved murder and a gruesome torture and extortion case associated with a fabled lost jetpack that has taken on Holy Grail status. This snappily written, often funny book should attract dreamers of both sexes and all ages. Photos. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

In far-flung garages from California to Northern Ireland, do-it-yourself futurists hold the torch for the vision of Wendell Moore, inventor of the backpack-mounted human rocket. Introducing himself to this community and catching some of its fever, Montandon merrily chronicles its activities and its existential dilemma. Rocket-pack technology has not advanced beyond the 20-second flights Moore’s test pilots attained at his demise in 1969. That limitation ended the military’s interest, but, Montandon recounts, show biz filled the applications void by casting rocket packs in action movies and as the opening act in the 1984 Olympics. At a convention, Montandon discusses the finer obsessions of enthusiasts, finesses their semi-developed social skills to snag invitations to their workshops, and embarks on road trips in a spirit of satirical commiseration with what people do after becoming obsessed with rocket packs. Most tinker with the flight-duration problem; another group, seeking to tap the public-performance market for rocket packs, went to jail after a violent disagreement about their business plan. Montandon’s entertaining adventures highlight a strange footnote of the space age. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press Ed edition (October 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306815281
• ISBN-13: 978-0306815287
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #104,528 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One of the few books on the subject, March 3, 2009

By	James D. Crabtree "Doc Crabtree" (Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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An interesting book, but it would probably be better as a pop-culture book on jetpacks than a technical study. There are some great pics but little in the way of illustrations as to how this technology works. Plus, many of the descriptions of the oddball people and oddball places get to be kind of annoying as you try to sort out the core of the subject: the jetpack. Still, if this is a subject you're interested in you'll have to get this book. It's the most thorough one I've see thus far and it is certainly up to date.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Envisioning the Future--When Can I Fly to Work?, February 16, 2009

By	Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

What assumptions have we made about the future? It is a good question, and one that will be answered differently by each person, but there seems to be a similarity to those assumptions when talking to American males born in the 1950s and 1960s. I am one of them, and we all seem to want to be able to vacation on the Moon and fly to work. For a lot of us, that flying to work would be on a personal jetpack that would free us from the doldrums of terrestrial life. "Where's my jetpack?" seems to be the rallying cry of these individuals, and author Mac Montandon tries to answer it in this enjoyable tour of the inventors trying to make the dream a reality.

Of course, Montandon relates the history of the jetpack; how brilliant engineers at Bell Aerospace led by Wendell Moore in the 1950s came up the concept and made it work, but only for about 30 second before it ran out of fuel. The jetpack, initially thought to be a boon to American G.I.s crossing rivers and the like and therefore receiving Defense Department funding, never proved out and eventually became a stunt valued for all manner of entertainment events. It found its way into Hollywood in such films as James Bond's "Thunderball," the television series "Lost in Space," and by Boba Fett in the original "Star Wars" trilogy. It was also viewed by millions worldwide at the dramatic opening of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

While abandoned as an official project by the military, or anyone else such as NASA, the jetpack lives on in the dreams of hundreds of garage inventors who seek to build their own versions. It is those inventors that Montandon seeks out, literally worldwide, to ascertain the status of "Jetpack Dreams." The answer is that the dream is still a dream, although advocates believe success is attainable with enough investment of time, money, and brainpower. Others are not so sure, commenting that it would require repealing some of the laws of physics to create the necessary lift from such as small energy source. Montandon is an advocate himself and closes the book with a hopeful riff on how some great breakthrough might make the jetpack more than just a dream (or a short term stunt) enabling all of us to change the trajectory of the future. Don't hold your breath, but "Jetpack Dreams" represents an interesting exercise in technological exuberance. It is something we all engage in to some degree. Virtually everyone Montandon interviewed, whether an advocate or not, responded that having a jetpack would be "pretty cool." I agree. I want one as well.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A genre without a name, December 1, 2008

By	H. Montandon (Walnut Creek, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

To my ear, it sounds better in French: Un genre sans nom. This may be because I have read too much literary theory. The French are big on the play of thought - le jeu de la pensée - and if it is anything, this book is full of playful thought.

The book tells the story of a young man, Maccabee Montandon, who leaves his charming wife and two winsome daughters, in quest of a treasure never dug up, a prophecy never fulfilled. "Where's my (and our) damn jetpack?" he wonders. So off he goes, hoping to find a working jetpack (he does) and fly it (no luck).

If this not-too-precious quasi-précis seems to have mythological overtones, well, it does. Almost anyone can point to a few mythic quest heroes - Ulysses, Batman, Leopold Bloom, Barack Obama and my personal favorite, Don Quixote. The modern age of un genre sans nom can also be referred to as "the age of colonated sub-titles." When did that conceit arise? Sometime after Mark Twain, since there is no colon in Life on the Mississippi, itself seminal in the invention of un genre sans nom. Check some contemporary examples - Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values; Rebuilding the Indian: A Memoir. Luca Seriani calls this usage the "syntactical-descriptive": the colon stands as sentinel between the fanciful and the mundane.

So, what is it that un genre sans nom has that others haven't got? It's got a guy (so far, most of the writers have been guys) who is looking for something. It's not a hobby kind of thing, but neither is it a Nijinskian burning madness. The guy expects to come back to the wife and kids, a little singed, maybe, but not as a box of ashes. The object of his quest has a degree of strangeness, it is quixotic. But the strangeness itself cannot be too strange. For Montandon, his quest took him out of Brooklyn, certainly, but not beyond the pale. What these guys are after is what anyone might go in search of, given the right motivation, the right wife, and/or the right literary agent. It's got the facticity of its object, as history, and the agenbite of inwit of the teller of the tale, the personal narrative. It's like a long letter home from camp. Most of all it is ex post facto, a comic ending to a tragic tease, the Quest for everyman.

They charm us in another way, as well, these lovely amateurs. They enfold us in their wiles not by telling us their adventure, but by writing it. Not even Bill Suitor, the original and archetypal rocket-belteer joins so fully in Montandon's endeavor as one who has read his book. Having reassured us by giving us the book, they now inoculate us against mediocrity by making us members of their cult. The book, not the deed, is the essence of what they return us to. I think that Odysseus, having dealt with those other kind of suitors, would have enjoyed this well written book.