Whatever happened to the Thunderball jetpack?

At Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 38 years ago, two phenomena took off: the Super Bowl and the rocket belt - reports the Toronto Star.

The Super Bowl is here to stay. But the rocket belt and its descendant, the jetpack, have faded into oblivion.

"Yes, it has, sadly to say," says Bill Suitor, the man who flew one of two rocket belts at Super Bowl I.

"It's unlike anything else. It's almost like riding a motorcycle, but you aren't limited to the ground. If you want to go forward, you just do it. Open the throttle a little more? You just do it. Or go between two buildings, or around this or around that.

"It's complete and utter freedom."

With at least 1,000 flights under his rocket belt, Suitor is the world's most experienced rocket-propelled flying man.

He started in 1964 when he was recruited by the device's inventor, Wendell Moore, to join Bell Aerosystems in Buffalo as an engineer's aide. Moore needed a man with no flight experience who was also of draft age to prove to the U.S. Army the fanciful device would work. Suitor, one of seven recruits, was 19 at the time, and also Moore's next-door neighbour.

Now Suitor has a lifetime of memories of travelling around the world rubbing shoulders with astronauts, movie stars and tycoons.

He appeared at the 1965 Canadian National Exhibition, various world fairs and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and was a personal guest of Walt Disney.

He flew his rocket belt in the James Bond movie Thunderball (that was him and partner Gordon Yaeger, not Sean Connery, flying) and the TV shows Lost In Space and The Fall Guy. He's flown in Australia, South Africa and England, where his rocket belt beat Formula One racing legend Jackie Stewart in a showdown. Bhutan even issued a stamp in his honour.

Suitor flew for the last time in 1995 at the Houston Rockets' NBA championship party.

Now his rocket belt is stored in the attic of the Niagara Aerospace Museum in Niagara Falls, N.Y., more relic than reality, with only a replica on display in the museum's exhibition area.

There was a time, though, that the idea of a rocket- or jet-powered personal flying device caught the popular imagination. It offered a freedom many of us may have expected to be standard by now, given the hype that surrounded space-age transportation projects in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

Picture the promises of the past:

Instead of being caught in gridlock, we could fly to work in our personal jetpack.

Going to the cottage would be a breeze by driving the car to the airport, connecting wings to the roof and taking off for the weekend.

For those who had to drive, we'd be going about 200 km/h in luxurious, quiet cars on super highways.

For pedestrians, rocket belts would boost your stride by 10 metres.

For those on public transit, there would be bus-type helicopters, and monorails everywhere.

The future ain't what it used to be.

Transit systems are underfunded and underused, especially in North America. Cars and highways haven't progressed, other than becoming bigger and more numerous. The world's first flying car — the ConvAIRCAR — circled San Diego for one hour and 18 minutes in 1947 but crash-landed a few days later. The high cost of production and bad publicity killed the project.

The jetpack as a military weapon was a doomed prospect. `It's very loud, has a short flying time and you're a perfect target if you're a soldier'

And Bell Aerosystems got out of the rocket belt and jetpack business when U.S. military funding dried up in 1970, selling its research to Detroit-based Williams Research. Suitor, who continues to live in Youngstown, N.Y., was out of a job and went to work as an operator for a New York electric utility, flying his rocket belt on the side.

In retrospect, the jetpack as a military weapon was a doomed prospect, says Ray O'Keefe, curator of the Niagara Aerospace Museum. "With this particular one (the rocket belt), it's very loud, has a short flying time and you're a perfect target if you're a soldier," says O'Keefe. "If the military could have used it, they'd have used it. But it would have put some people in harm's way."

The rocket belt was the first phase of Bell's research, conducted to prove a soldier without piloting experience could fly. Fuelled by the reaction created by combining nitrogen and hydrogen peroxide, its rocket was good for short spurts.

The second phase — flight powered by a jet engine strapped to man's back — would have provided about two hours of flying time. But the specialized engines required to fly a single person into combat and back cost about $250,000 U.S. each and lasted about 30 hours before needing replacement.

Plus, they're the same engines that propel cruise missiles. "You've got to be careful who owns these things," says Suitor.

He can envision some jetpack uses for police or emergency workers — firemen could use them to rescue people from burning buildings, for instance — but thinks keeping jetpacks out of the public's hands is for the best in the long run.

"If you've been out on the waterfront in summertime when all these morons were out there on their Jet Skis, just zooming and screaming all over the place, can you imagine a sky full of those people? A man and machine, you're going to have at least 300 pounds falling out of the air right on your backyard picnic table when you're having dinner, or taking out the power lines to your house."

The rocket-belt testers had their own bumps, bruises and burns along the way, says Suitor. Nothing serious. Taking off was easy. Landing was the tricky part.

"We had a slogan: `The grass in your ass,'" says Suitor. "Nobody was worth anything if you didn't have some grass stains there. When you land, you have 70 pounds on your back that you aren't really aware of when you're flying because it's carrying you. Every single one that ever flew it, his first, second or third landing did what they call a `sit down.'

"No harm done, other than (to) your dignity."

Not everybody has given up. There are websites willing to sell personal flying devices, one called SoloTrek. It is actually an open-air, vertical take-off and landing aircraft that transports a person in a standing position for up to two hours, according to http://www.solotrek.com.

Last year, an American stuntman named Eric Scott flew a jetpack to a record altitude of 46.3 metres in London, England.

And there are said to be 30 patents filed at the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office for flying cars, one of the most promising from a California company, Moller International. The company hopes to have Federal Aviation Administration approval by the end of 2006 for its four-seater SkyCar, which takes off and lands vertically.

"Eventually we foresee introducing it to the general public as a means of quickly making trips very conveniently," said Jack Allison, who just retired as Moller vice president.

It's taken at least $200 million and 30 years' research to get this far, Allison added. A manned prototype is scheduled to fly this year.

"The plan is for it to be fully automated," says Allison. "You'll be able to put your grandma in the cockpit in the fog, punch in the numbers to her `vertaport' in the yard out in the country, push the `go' button and send her home, and she'll land in her backyard, safely, without hitting the clothesline. It will have that kind of accuracy."

Suitor figures as long as there are dreamers, especially dreamers with money, the promise of gridlock-busting flying vehicles may one day be fulfilled.

He figures it would cost at least $200,000 to build a rocket belt like the one he used at Super Bowl I. The components don't come cheap considering they have to withstand the 743 degrees Celsius and 1,000 cubic feet of steam produced when the nitrogen and peroxide combine and expand to 5,000 times their volume in two-tenths of a millisecond.

And it would cost "millions" to build the more powerful, longer-flying jet belt, plus "hundreds of millions" to get insurance when you start dealing with jet engines.

Suitor says it might be worth it for somebody, recalling the time he filmed a rocket-belt flight for the U.S. Army.

"I was flying over old Fort Niagara late in the day and my shadow was just slightly ahead of me, going ahead of the tops of the buildings, and I remember being really distracted by it. It was awesome. I had a camera, and in the film you see my shadow racing beneath me.

"When you see your shadow going across the ground underneath you, that's when you get the feeling of what you're really doing. It's pretty awesome."

Thanks to `Peter` for the alert.

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