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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS13) ― It was the vision of the future, subject of movies and television, a sight that would become everyday transportation in the minds of science fiction writers of the time: flying the skies solo riding your own jet pack! If you've been waiting for it, you might be disappointed, but there are people who decided to stop waiting and make it possible for you to have your own personal jet pack!

These company's have taken the vision of the future and made it come to life.

"I had no idea things like this even existed in my lifetime," says a pilot for Jet Pack International.

"We embarked on a mission to make it fly longer," says a representative from Thunderbolt Aerosystems.

CBS-13 attended an event at the Hiller Aviation Museum in the San Francisco Bay area that showcased what was once only the product of Saturday morning cartoons and Hollywood spy movies: the Bell Aviation Jet Pack.

It was those movies: James Bond's "Thunderball"; and cartoons like "The Jetsons" that inspired those same companies, with wistful, powerful high-tech names like "Thunderbolt" and "Jet P.I." to take the 1950s Bell Aerospace design to the next level.

"I used to watch cartoons," says Nino Amarena, an engineer for Thunderbolt Aerosystems, "Atamo and XL5 and Super Car. In all those they all had a jet pack or a rocket pack and that's kind of where I got the inspiration."

That inspiration led people like Amarena to make packs that can travel anywhere from thirty seconds to nine minutes using hydrogen peroxide as fuel for smaller packs and jet fuel for the bigger ones. Amarena is a mechanical engineer but also knew electronics. "I decided to build something that is available for the masses," he says.

While the jet pack has been the "high-tech" gadget of choice for years, the process of making it work is surprisingly simple. Pressurized nitrogen pushes simply hydrogen peroxide into a big storage tank that is filled with silver screens. Peroxide actually reacts to silver, so the liquid starts to expand at a tremendous rate until the liquid expands to almost five thousand times its normal volume. For something to expand that big that fast requires a tremendous amount of energy, which creates a lot of heat . . . creating, you guessed it, steam! That steam gets funneled into pipes on either side of the pack, aimed downward, and propelling the jet pilot into the sky!

"It's an actual rocket," says Eric Scott, Jet Pack International's pilot. "It's a hydrogen peroxide rocket that's basically decomposing hydrogen peroxide over silver plated screens in a motor canister."

Eric is an ex-special forces guy who travels around the world with Jet Pack International promoting an energy drink called, appropriately enough, "Go Fast".

"The thing's generating 800 horsepower," says Eric, "and it basically is flying like a helicopter."

That amount of power is basically the same horsepower you'd find in any NASCAR. With that amount of thrust, timing is crucial for every launch. Eric has precisely thirty-three seconds of flight time.

"I just start off by counting from negative two . . . no, I'm just kidding," says Eric, making light of the complexity of his job. "There's a stopwatch at the throttle handle and I also have someone over there giving me hand signals towards the end of the flight," he says.

Go Fast is also doing a pilot search. At every show the company brings a simulator to give spectators a chance to try their hand at flying the contraption.

"Is the red button for eject," we ask Eric. "No, I'm not even sure what that is, actually," he replied. Great.

"What you want to do is pick out a place to go land. If you just go up without any point of termination you're just going to keep going flying around," Eric tells us. "What you want to do is pick out a place to go land. If you just go up without any point of termination you're just going to keep going flying around."

We land the simulator, but as we watch the screen, the point-of-view camera bounced upward and hits the ground again. "You just landed," says Eric. "You kinda bounced it but you landed. That's the beauty of simulators. You can do things without getting your bones all busted up.
We asked if a helmet would help. Eric grabbed us one of the coolest pieces off a display at Hiller. The helmet worn by the Rocketeer! "You don't even have to fly now," he smiles, "you just walk around with that thing on and be cool."

As we start our second flight, Eric starts to give us more direction. "Pull up on the control arms, you're going forward too much," Eric frantically chimes in, "pull up, pull up, pull up, PULL UP! DOH!" We struck the ground again, this time harder than before in what would obviously been a catastrophic landing. "That's alright," says Eric with a large grin on his face. "See, it didn't even hurt."

Playing aside, the simulator helps Jet P.I. look for those new pilots but the and Thunderbolt Aerosystems will sell you packs. You can have them for a mere ninety-thousand dollars and up. You do, however, have to be able to show them that you can safely operate the machine. If not, all bets are off. On top of that ninety-grand, the peroxide fuel can cost about eighty bucks a gallon! But both companies say that they hope someday the prices will come down and Bell Aerospace's 1950s futuristic vision will come true.

"We hope to develop the technology to where the price points are low enough that it could be bought for fun," says Amarena.
Eric has a more wistful view of the flying gear. "It's capable of quite a bit and it's a perfect example of what dreams are made of for sure."

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