PBR Jetpack Ad (1976)

In 1976 Pabst Blue Ribbon ran this TV ad of a man flying effortlessly with a jetpack.* Though the man we see at the end who takes off his helmet is just an actor, the man who actually flew in the ad was none other than William P. Suitor.

You know how we'll know when we're living in the future? When we finally see public service announcements warning us of the dangers of drunk jetpacking. Until then, just keep chugging hipster juice until your bed feels like a giant spinning hoverboard. Drink your way to the future!

*Technically, it's a rocket belt, but I'll let you nerds fight over that in the comments. Nerds.

Previously on Paleofuture:

• Jetpack Dreams
• Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack (1964)
• Disneyland Jetpack (1966)
• Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (1968)
• Jetpack at the 1982 World's Fair

Jetpack at the 1982 World's Fair

Here at the Paleo-Future blog we look at the work of many visionary people; John Elfreth Watkins Jr, Arthur Radebaugh, Harry Grant Dart, Victor Cohn... but few deserve the title of professional badass of the retrofuture. William P. Suitor no doubt deserves that distinction, risking life and limb to bring us that much closer to a jetpack-filled future.

That's Suitor in this 1966 footage from Disneyland, this photo from the 1964 New York World's Fair, and above in a photo from the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. My generation, (I was just a twinkle in my father's eye in 1982), probably best knows about the 1982 World's Fair through the 1996 Simpsons episode, Bart on the Road. 

You can find many more great pictures in Suitor's book, Rocketbelt Pilot's Manual: A Guide by the Bell Test Pilot.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Disneyland Jetpack (1966)
• Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack (1964)
• Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
• Jet Pack Video (1966)

Jetpack Dreams

I haven't yet read Mac Montandon's book Jetpack Dreams, but thanks to this video it's made its way to the top of my book heap.

Jetpack Dreams Trailer from Mac Montandon on Vimeo.

Read more:
Disneyland Jetpack (1966)
10,000 Years From Now (1922)
Jet Pack Video (1966)
Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack (1964)
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
Where's My Jetpack? (2007)
How Do You Like Them Apples?

10,000 Years From Now (1922)

The February 12, 1922 Ogden Standard-Examiner (Ogden, UT) published this page, speculating on the world 10,000 years hence. The piece is a shortened article by Hugo Gernsback with illustrations by Louis Biedermann. Excerpts appear below.

The up-to-date scientist has little difficulty in predicting certain things that will happen in ten or fifty years, but a hundred centuries hence is a larger order, even for the most intrepid imagination. That practically nothing of our present civilization will be left after 10,000 years may be safely predicted. We may also prophesy that human beings, a hundred centuries hence, will live in entirely altered circumstances from those in which we now exist.

Our illustration depicts one of the future cities floating high in the air, several miles above the earth. The question of sustaining such a large body in a rareified atmosphere will prove to be of little difficulty to our future electrical engineers. Just as we construct leviathans of the sea to-day, some of them weighing as much as 50,000 tons we shall construct entire cities weighing billions of tons, which will be held in space not by gas balloons, propellers, or the like antiquated machinery, but by means of gravity-annulling devices. Already experiments have been made whereby it has become possible to reduce the weight of substances by electrical forces.

See also:
Closer Than We Think

Disneyland Jetpack (1966)

The Disneyland TV program aired Disneyland Around the Seasons on December 18, 1966. The episode contained this great clip of a man wearing a jetpack (or rocketbelt), flying around Disneyland. The entire program can be found on the DVD Disneyland: Secrets, Stories & Magic.

Rocketman
Uploaded by donaldtheduckie. - Videos of the latest science discoveries and tech.

See also:
Jet Pack Video (1966)
Rebuilding Tomorrowland (1966)
Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack (1964)
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
Where's My Jetpack? (2007)
Tomorrowland, Disneyland Opening Day (1955)
How Do You Like Them Apples?
The Tomorrowland That Never Was (1965)
Rocket to the Moon (1967)

Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack (1964)

This awesome photo of Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack, demonstrated at the 1964 New York World's Fair, is featured in the book Exit to Tomorrow: World's Fair Architecture, Design, Fashion 1933-2005.

See also:
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
Jet Pack Video (1966)
Where's My Jetpack? (2007)
How Do You Like Them Apples?

How Do You Like Them Apples?

I guess "Where's my Jetpack?" can no longer be the battle cry of the paleo-futurism movement.

Mexican start-up Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana (TAM) offers its custom-built TAM Rocket Belt for $250,000, which includes flight and maintenance training. On a full tank of hydrogen peroxide the belt weighs 124 to 139 pounds (the bigger the pilot, the bigger the belt), and provides 30 seconds of flight. TAM's sole competitor is Jetpack Inter national, a Colorado-based company that sells what it calls "the world's longest-flying jet pack." Technically speaking, it's true — the hydrogen-peroxide-burning Jet Pack H202 can stay in the air for 33 seconds, 3 seconds longer than TAM's model. The H202 weighs 139 pounds, and is competitively priced at $155,000, flight classes and all.

See also:
Where's My Jetpack? (2007)
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
Jet Pack Video (1966)
A Wonderful Day to Fly (1980)