Boeing Asked for Quiet Jetpacks and Got a Bunch of Air Motorcycles
GoFly contest designs from left: FlyKart 2, Harmony, and Era Aviabike.
The flying car has never been more real. Kitty Hawk, the company backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, showed off its battery-powered recreational vehicle last week. Uber Technologies Inc. held a recent conference on flying cars. Boeing Co. is making working prototypes of flying taxis. There are more than a dozen serious efforts to realize the dream of the flying car.
Another vision of flying futurism—the jetpack—is falling behind. Boeing just revealed the results of GoFly, its contest for inventors of personal aircraft that seemed to reinvigorate the decades-old hope of a contraption that could propel its wearer through the air. But none of the 10 winning designs announced Thursday strap onto someone’s back. These are simply not the jetpacks we’ve been waiting for.