“Well, there he is, Jetman, flying into the stadium, no wires, no tricks, just as you see it. … What a beginning!”

With the Olympics set to return to Los Angeles in 2028, organizers will be hard-pressed to top one of the most memorable moments from the opening of the 1984 Summer Games, when a man flew a jetpack into Los Angeles Coliseum. The pilot was Bill Suitor, a rocketeer at Bell Aircraft, which had developed the hydrogen peroxide-powered “rocket belt” for the Army. His flight fueled imaginations of a future when we would all be flying around. But gravity, it turns out, makes it extremely hard to lift a person more than a few seconds at a time. Still, dreamers in Silicon Valley and beyond haven’t stopped trying. Washington Post

See Suitor’s flight. 👉 YouTube

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