Tony Stark may have destroyed his Iron Man suits in Iron Man 3 (just to launch a whole new line in Avengers: Age of Ultron), but Jetman Dubai's Iron Man-like dreams of autonomous human escape are more real than ever.
A new video released by the company shows pilot Vince Reffet taking off from the ground in a carbon fiber jet engine suit and flying 6000 feet in the air. According to the company, the video shown above was recorded in Dubai heading south towards Jumeirah Beach Residence. The YouTube video from Jetman Dubai states that in eight seconds (reffet) a height of 100 meters was reached, in 12 seconds 200 m, 19 seconds 500 m and in 30 seconds 1000 m at an average speed of 130 knots. "
This is not the first time that Reffet and his team have been flying over Dubai. A May 2015 video shows Reffet and his pilot Yves Rossy flying through the sky while a chase plane records their flight – a chase plane and a pair of GoPro cameras attached to their helmets. The pilots too could reach a speed of more than 120 miles per hour! The main difference is that we see a man go from standing on the ground to floating above the earth before shooting into the air like a rocket.
"It is the first time that a Jetman Dubai pilot has been able to combine safe hovering at a limited height and aerobatics at high altitude in the same flight," the company said under the video. "The equipment, controlled by the human body from the ground, enables Jetman Dubai to reach speeds of 400 km / h, as well as to hover, change direction and perform grinding."
A bit like this scene in the first Iron Man, when Tony Stark first learned how to fly in the air, but he stumbled on the way to finally take off and fly to the sky! Only this is real life and my colleagues often remind me that Iron Man is not real. And to be honest, the winged suit has more to do with vultures (famous from Michael Keaton in Spider-Man: Homecoming) than with Iron Man, but I'm digressing.
Jetman Dubai is also not the first company to build super-fast personal pilot suits. Richard Browning built the world's fastest personal jet suit and was profiled by Wired in 2018 about his work. Like Jetman Dubai, it's an incredible piece of aerospace and engineering that is fun to watch on video.
What does all this mean for you and me? Now that the band is coming back together. And by tape I mean Iron Man. Iron Man is back, baby.
