Franky Zapata: Flyboarding Frenchman crosses English Channel
Mentioned in the article how the French military has shown a fiscal backed interest for using this as an observation or assault platform.<p>Whilst platform is viable with gyro's or computer aided flying if you wish.  How much kickback can it handle - could you actually fire a gun from this?  But certainly does negate many of the aspect people have against armed drones as this is in effect a human drone.<p>But it is pretty neat, as many recall the facination with jetpacks and the dreams that we would all have them in the 60's/70's (along with flying cars), so this kinda ticks many box's of past dreams.<p>As for distance/flight time - kerosene is pretty dense energy wise, and I can't think of anything else that would be as flexible and offer greater energy density.  But still, if you compare this to jetpacks - very impressive.<p>For me one use case for something like this may well be firefighting or certainly a way to escape a tall building that is on fire from your flat balcony.