It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…It’s ‘Jet Man’
How could science fiction get it all so wrong?
Big Think posed this question to Jim Kakalios, Professor of Physics at the University of Minnesota in a previous post. In other words, why doesn’t our world look like the future envisioned in the science fiction of the 1950s and 60s, in which we ride around with jet packs and flying cars?
According to Kakalios, who wrote a book on the physics of comic book superheroes, instead of a revolution in energy we got instead “a revolution in information which led to cell phones and laptop computers.”
Just don’t tell that to inventor, aerial acrobat and dare devil Yves Rossy, the first human to make a “sustained flight” using wings powered by jet fuel. In this amazing video, Rossy jumps from a helicopter and flies over the Swiss Alps using a jet pack. Rossy, a former pilot in the Swiss Air Force, then joins two jets in a synchronized flight.
Watch the video here:
