WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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- I got an email that said,
"Hi, Tom, we've got a jet pack.

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"Do you want to try and fly it?"

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Yeah, okay.

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- Kill switch in.
- Kill switch is in.

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- Now pull that trigger in all the way
and hold it.

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Now let go.

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Now lean forward a tiny bit,
just helps the rear engine.

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- Oh boy.

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[laughs]

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[jet engine spools up]

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Wow.

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[laughs] Okay.

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- Tom is here today to do our
light touch flight training.

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It's not a full day, but actually even
within three or four goes,

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you'll see the amazing amount of progress
that people can make.

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- [laughs]

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Oh, wow!

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- The very first go is more
about getting familiar

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with the very unusual experience
of feeling this thrust.

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It's dialled right down, though.

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So you just feel this
very spongy, gentle force.

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And then what we'll do
over the successive goes

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is just dial the power up.

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And actually Tom can do this himself

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with a little nudge switch
he's got control of,

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and actually then using
the tether and everything,

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you can actually, in your own time,
start to feel the balance and control

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and actually begin the first
stages of properly flying.

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- About 2016, I hatched this idea that

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surely couldn't you leverage
the human mind and the body?

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The mind as the flight control computer

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and the body as the flight structure

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and just kind of fly in
a really unusual way.

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And that's what I set about doing,

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using the help of little
micro jet engines.

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- So the suit consists
of five little jet engines.

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There's two on each arm
and one round the back

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and together they produce
about 144 kilos of thrust.

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If you crudely equate that to
horsepower, it's around 1050

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because it takes that amount
of energy to get a human being

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with the equipment to just
literally sit there and hover.

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The only failure mode we have now
is something fails and you drop,

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so therefore we don't fly massively high.

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We always keep it fairly safe.

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Woo!

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This gets warm.

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There's a couple of times I just kind of
buzzed my feet with the jets.

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- Yeah, better not to do that.

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- Yeah, that's hot air!
Don't do that.

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Okay.

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I know what I need to do.

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I need to turn off the bit of my brain

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that's going, you can control
this by thinking it through.

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- All right.
- Refuel.

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- The burn rate is around
four litres a minute,

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for most of the time.
The fuel burn is pretty intense.

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With the suits that we're using today,

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you can probably sit there
for about four minutes or so,

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if you really want to.

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Most of the events we do,
mostly we're flying

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for a couple of minutes, 'cos
you're so fast and direct.

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- You're good to go.
- I'm good to go.

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- There was a jet pack that featured
in James Bond.

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There was another one that
actually flew into the Olympics.

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They were the traditional,
almost rocket packs.

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You turn it on, hope for the best.

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It was a wild ride.
They were proper rockets.

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In the intervening years,

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people have then built
similar ones using jet engines,

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but there's still a big pack on your back

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and it's still kind of armrest and joysticks
and things like that.

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We tried to take a very different approach
of minimising it all.

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So you really are just standing there

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as a human being with a
minimalist amount of equipment.

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And you're using your arms
as the vector control,

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which sounds burdensome,

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but it really is not a
difficult thing to do.

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- I genuinely didn't have
any business plans at all

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when I set down this journey,
but now we're standing here.

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We've delivered over 108 events
in 31 countries.

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We've built this huge kind
of passion and excitement

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around the world for what we do.

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And we've trained over 50 clients
to fly this as well.

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It turns out a lot of people can learn
within a day to do this.

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So why not scale that up in
the form of a race series?

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And if you think of the Red Bull Air Race,

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imagine guys and girls from
previous sporting backgrounds

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hammering around in
real-life Iron Man suits.

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That's our core focus,

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but there's lots of other
things going on as well.

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- These are about to burst
into flame, aren't they?

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Let's be honest.

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This is not a practical method of transit.

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It lasts four minutes in flight
before you have to refuel.

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It takes four litres of fuel per minute,

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and it is devastatingly loud,

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but I don't think anyone needs to ask why.

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I think the answer's pretty obvious.

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Let's do this one more time.

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I think more power will
kill me, but let's try it.

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Yes!

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- A lot of people do ask us

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whether we could build, for
instance, a gyro into it

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and then it'll actuators and
actually have the engines

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maybe, on your shoulders,
little actuated arms.

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You could do.

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I mean, there are plenty
of systems out there now

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that could be adapted to do that.

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You know, a Mavic drone, for instance,

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has got all the brain power
to be able to do that.

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The only thing is, if you
start going down that route,

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you start drifting away
from the original ethos.

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You eventually become a passenger
in another flying vehicle

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that becomes increasingly
sophisticated, complicated, heavy,

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and frankly not really the original ethos

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of just allowing humans to fly.

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- Stable flight in three attempts
was a bit much to ask for.

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But there was a second in there,

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there was one second before I span out,

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where it felt like I was flying.

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If I'd have been untethered,
I'd have killed myself. But...!

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- No, you'd just be in the grass.

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That's pretty impressive,

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because I mean, each goes it
what, at most, two minutes,

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that's six minutes of training.

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Could you learn to
skateboard, roller blade, ski,

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anything else, right?

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- No.

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- That's not bad progress, right?

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- I'll take six minutes of jet pack

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for one second of genuinely
feeling like I was flying.

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That was incredible.

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- Good stuff.

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- Thank you so much.

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- No problem.

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Let's get you out of here.

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- Let's get me out of here.