Just a few weeks ago (11/23/08), Eric Scott of Jet Pack International flew over a 1,500-foot gorge in Canon City, Colorado at over 75 miles an hour...with a freaking jetpack baby!

Jetpacks, remember them? Long ago, in the American past (pre-Obama, post WWII) when we had last had hope, jetpacks were on their way. The Pentagon was interested, as was NASA. Then we had other problems: the Vietnam war, Watergate, a couple of different gas crises, the rise of consumerism, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton's penis, the Internet bubble, and of course, the competent stewardship of various Republican administrations . . . not.

And now, with the economy cratered, Wall Street geniuses exposed as the incompetent craven idiots they've always been, the American Automobile industry about to end, Chinese bill collectors at the door, and the usual American stupidity, we might never get our freaking jetpacks!

However, I digress. Author Mac Montandon puts it like this:

I came of age in the Star Wars era, and am part of the post-moon-landing, post-World's Fairs generation. Like many people, I was once very certain that by no later than the year 2000 we would most definitely be living the futuristic dream. .... And in that glorious, imagined future we would have long ago traded our dirt-streaked Hyundais, our battered Gia Sportages, and especially our rinky-dink Segways for shiny metal backpacks with exhaust-spewing jet engines welded to them, the better to launch ourselves like urban angels over bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic.

In Jetpack Dreams, I went to find out when we can reasonably expect to soar. ... I was going jetpack hunting---who could say what I might find?

From jetpackdreams.com, 12/3/08 entry (also see the book's video trailer)

So here we are with Jetpack Dreams: One Man's Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention That Never Was [2008, Da Capo Press, 274 pages], Montandon's book about jetpack entrepreneurs, visionaries, successes, possibilities, failures, and more likely, disappointments.

As Montandon details, man's search for a means to fly has taken him to extremes. There is DaVinci, Icarus, and the Wright Brothers on one side.  And, on the other there is someone like Wendell Moore, a hard headed engineer at Bell Aircraft Corporation in Niagara New York, who would take that dream into the future farther than just about anybody with his rocketbelt of the 1950s.

If anyone gets the credit in the book and in history for single purpose man-made flight (the jetpack dream), it is Wendell Moore. Now deceased, Moore is the undisputed father of modern jetpack dreams; Jetpack's George Washington. He thought it was possible and he made it possible for others to follow him.

Every jetpack enthusiast should have a beer in Mr. Moore's honor. After all, the jetpack dream like many crazy ideas, is partially fueled by alcohol intake.

For today's tinkerers, Boba Fett, George Jetson, Buck Rogers, and the Rocketeer have a lot to with their introduction to the jetpack dream, whether it be through reruns on the TV or a Saturday afternoon at the matinee.

Montandon's own jetpack obsession has been nurtured in pop culture, conversations with friends through the years, and plenty of time with his children just gazing up at the sky, flying a kite or having that dream. . . . the one where Peter Pan is kicked to the curb and you have a jetpack, baby!

Just don't let yourself meet Boba Fett's end.

Danger is a constant with the jetpack adventure, its allure, and its calling card. The author talks with a few of the early flyers of Wendell Moore's rocketbelt, and the later flyers of the jetpack. Not only did they fly (at times), but they had more than a few experience where a little change this way or that way could have been disastrous.

Montandon traces one murder to a jetpack scheme that failed, one where business partners turned on each other with fraud, kidnapping, and violence; the end result being a homicide, prison time, and a missing jetpack somewhere in the Southwest of the U.S. A number of other jetpack tinkerers have escaped death with broken bones, bruises, and ego-deflating failure in their own pursuits for if something goes wrong with a jetpack, it can go really wrong.

And, that's a big part of the reason why we don't have our personal George Jetsons parked in the garage. It is expensive, dangerous, and in the age of homeland security, just fueling the thing requires some finesse, connections, or stealth.  You do not just gas and go with a jetpack. It needs a perfect mix of hydrogen peroxide with some other igniter such as liquid oxygen, jet fuel, or something that goes boom.

Montandon's adventures take him to a jetpack convention, and visits to Mexico, Ireland, England, even New Jersey, and other places for the jetpack dream is not just an American obsession, it's a global phenomenon with jetpack enthusiasts working in garages, basements, barns, and backyard sheds in many places. (Like many obsessions, it has a web community built around it.) He finds out that it is an expensive dream or hobby with some inventors spending upwards of half-a-million dollars in pursuit of a few seconds of liftoff and possible immortality.

He talks with many of the inventors about their experiences and they all come across as decent likeable people, a little eccentric perhaps (you have to be to strap a rocket on your back), but their enthusiasm is catching. You want to believe they are close to breakthroughs. The dream lives. I want my freaking jetpack!

Jetpack Dreams is an often highly amusing tale of one man's quest for flight and also a bit of a time capsule of the American dream, a time when possibilities seemed reachable, when dreams were just over the horizon from reality.

Montandon has captured all that very well, along with side trips into fatherhood, marriage, and tales of his own father's dreams, some of which intersect with his own. (four stars)


Sources
Author site: www.jetpackdreams.com;
Time  magazine: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1853867,00.html;
Jetpack International: http://www.jetpackinternational.com/video.html;
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/11/24/vo.jet.pack.gorge.koaa

Recommended: Yes