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(electronic music)
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(bright music)
(dramatic music)
- [Woman] Starting safety checks.
- [Man] All safety inspects standing by.
- [Man] Divers standing by.
- [Man] All clear for take off.
(dramatic music)
(engines whining)
(ocean splashes)
- I remember when I was a kid.
I had this recurring dream
and it was all about me
walking up to the edge of a cliff,
and I knew that I was absolutely terrified
of heights and what was down there,
which was just a void.
I could see the waves and the rocks
and for me it was sort of the essence of freedom
and just being able to lift into the air,
the ground disappear beneath my feet,
and just to fly.
(dramatic music)
And then I'd wake up.
You know, I think I am the type of person
that wants just that thing that's there,
just that little bit that's out of reach.
(film flicking)
You know I had this passion for flying and aviation,
and I got my pilot's license when I was 16.
But that never fulfilled the childhood dream
that I had of flying free.
(wind howling)
(dirt crunching)
But back then I didn't realize
that dreams really can have a price.
(car engines roaring)
(tires squealing)
(car crashing)
At the age of 22,
I'd wanted to become a Formula One driver,
and I ended up having this horrible go-carting accident
as I was practicing and that put an end to that.
I was lying in my hospital bed
and I remember looking back up
at sort of all the plaster and the,
and the wires and everything.
Through that there was a little TV screen.
- [Announcer] And to the viewing audience
of 2 and 1/2 billion that stretches around the world,
a warm welcome from the citizens of California!
(audience cheering)
Well, there he his, Jet Man,
flying into the stadium, no wires, no tricks.
- And I looked at that and I thought,
what I dreamt, all of that time ago,
about being able just to lift and fly and be free,
it's possible, it can be done.
(crowd roaring)
It has to be done better, though,
and make it practical so we can fly.
Not for 20 seconds, but for however long we want.
(gentle music) (subway announcements echoing)
I worked really hard,
tried a whole bunch of business ventures.
I had everything,
I had a very comfortable lifestyle.
I was caught up in the day to day humdrum of business
but the dream was always there.
(gravel crunching)
The one thing that eluded me
was to build the personal flying machine, a jet pack.
You know, at last, for the first time in my life
I actually had the resources to do it.
The only problem of course,
is I had to find somebody with a similar,
you know, sorta passion and dream,
that could help me build that.
(engines whining)
(rocket roaring)
- [Announcer] Buck Rogers in the 25th Century!
Here we go, 500 years into the future.
- I remember when I was kid,
I was in my dad's car listening to the radio.
I thought this is great! Buck Rogers!
And he came out of a spaceship
above this evil planet and they had jetpacks
and they flew down and landed in a big field.
- [Announcer] Well, Buck and Wilma
will certainly have to watch their step.
- [Nelson] The whole thing started to open up to eat 'em,
as they took off and escaped and saved the day,
and I thought, well, that would be neat.
I've gotta have one of those.
'Course when you're a kid, everything is pretty simple.
(jet pack roaring)
Way back to about 1969,
the Army had given a big aerospace company
a contract to Bell for a rocket belt.
And they were flying at Disneyland,
so I dipped down there and started taking pictures of it.
And I thought, I can build one of these!
It doesn't take a giant aerospace company!
- [David] I found the guy that built the world's
only civilian rocket belt,
the one that flew in the 1994 Olympic Games,
you know Nelson Tyler, genius engineer.
Over the years, Nelson has built incredible machines.
He's even built camera mount systems for helicopters
which won him three Academy awards.
(jets hissing)
- Ever since I was a kid,
I wanted to build the very best of everything.
The whole problem with the rocket belt
was it would only run for 20 seconds
because the fuel was just too heavy,
too exotic, and way too expensive.
Because soon as you take off,
you've got 15 seconds to land.
15 seconds! Spoils the whole thing!
And it's like a firecracker or a little rocket
you stick in the ground, and you light it,
it goes pshh pppt.
You know it's history, it's obsolete.
So I started working on jet engines
because the fuel is cheap,
it's much lighter,
I could carry a lot more,
therefore I could fly a lot longer.
(jets roaring)
If only I could find the right engine.
(engine rumbling)
- [David] So the first jet pack
that Nelson and I worked on together,
we had a turbine engine,
but it was very, very basic in its design.
This thing was a beast.
- I built the whole thing off my drawings,
built a foam model and, you know,
used chunks of foam carved into the engine shapes,
a fuel tank shape,
and David's walking around with it
and he's telling people it'll be ready in seven months,
you know the real deal.
- Hopefully by the end of this year, 2007,
we'll actually have the,
have the whole thing up and running.
- I'm going, no, no, no, no, no on that,
not seven months, you know.
(engine roaring)
- The first time we really pushed that engine,
I mean it basically became a bunch
of very expensive scrap metal.
- And it was all like melted inside
and the bearings were rolling around and stuff
and I thought this is not good (laughs).
(engines whining)
- We turned to the only jet engines that we could buy
and they were these really, really small turbo jets
that'd been built specifically for jet-powered
radio controlled aircraft.
The next jet pack version along
used 12 of these.
Count them, 12.
That's not bad as it is now.
- Okay.
I got power to all 12.
- Yup, yup. - All 12.
- Yup, you ready?
- [Nelson] Yeah, it's all you.
- Going for a start.
Three, two, one, start.
(engines roar)
(laughs) Yeah, everybody's fine, don't worry,
nothing to look at here (laughs).
- It fried your hair.
- [Man] Robert's all, what
a dud! - Well, I was sitting there,
I'm like (laughs).
- Frankly, for most people,
it would've been enough to say this is lunacy.
Obviously the technology doesn't exist to do this,
so best to drop the project now.
I didn't do that (laughs)
we kept going to the next version.
- Well, when I first met David,
I was actually working in the prison system
as a psychologist.
(prisoners shouting)
So it was pretty tough, but I've met some serial killers,
all the the famous ones that Australia has.
(prisoners shouting)
Anyway, my mum wasn't quite happy
with my previous boyfriend,
so she set me up with David.
- And I have a secret.
- 'Course as a psychologist,
you always interested and find out
what the human psyche is all about.
Didn't know that I was gonna marry somebody
that I still am doing my thesis on (laughs).
- Did she see in me the ultimate client?
You know the, like the lifelong,
the lifelong project or something?
I don't know, you know (laughs).
- What would you do if you work in a prison
and suddenly the front gate calls you
and says, "There's a box that just arrived,
"come down, we are not allowed to send it in, open it up."
I had to.
230 roses.
- (laughs) In retrospect, probably not the smartest thing,
but yeah.
- So, it's very sweet, but I don't know,
we ended up marrying, so there you go.
- We are ready for another test.
I don't think we've ever had all 12 running at once.
(engines roaring)
- I believe in the project because I believe in him.
And I know that it's not gonna be an easy road,
but it's also his dream,
and if I had a dream and a passion,
I know that he would also stand behind me 100%.
- Nelson? - Yes?
- You'll get me out if I need to get out?
- Absolutely.
Well yeah, you just reach down and twist those two things.
And then you're out.
Don't throttle up too much. - Okay.
- You know, because with, if one goes out,
you'll go sliding like mad.
- Ready.
Thank you.
(water splashing)
(engines whining)
(square dancing music)
The problem was that the hot air
was basically 800 degrees C
and goes shooting down past your legs,
hits the ground then, melts the bitumen.
Your boots just become super heated
and start, I mean literally, like the rubber starts melting.
(square dancing music)
You know you try and start all 12 engines at one time,
let alone equalizing the thrust of 12 engines at one time.
- Yahoo!
Ride 'em, Cowboy! (laughs)
Looked like a rodeo (laughs).
- [David] I'm wondering if we could fit it in there somehow.
- [Nelson] But then we have to run hoses
all the way in here.
- [David] So there's no clear engineering way
to sort this out but I knew I had to find a solution.
(peaceful piano music)
- [Saschi] Given where we live in France,
it's a tiny little village
and we seem to have a strange lifestyle
where the father's never there.
- He doesn't have a lot of time for us,
but I do understand because the jet pack is a big,
big, amazing project.
- This obsession to create something unique,
that's what it takes.
But something like this does not happen overnight.
And often you do feel like you're a bit in a shadow.
(gentle music)
- The jet pack project turned out to be
much longer than we thought.
Nobody had done it. Nobody'd done it yet.
So we got buckets of water, we got the hose.
And if you catch on fire.
- Jump out.
- [Nelson] Just jump right out,
we'll pour water all over you.
That'd be the best thing.
(engines whining)
- [David] We'd come down from 12 engines
to eight engines, four on each side,
and it was just still seriously unworkable.
We really had to get to a point
where there was just one engine on each side.
It's the goldilocks principle,
not too small, not too big,
that's what we were searching for.
That's what we needed.
But I had literally scoured the earth,
we couldn't find that perfect engine anywhere.
(dramatic music)
(birds chirping)
- And it was beginning to look like it,
well number one, it might not happen at all.
And number two, it will happen,
but I'll be too old to even strap it on.
I'll be in a Walker, and I'll be going along like this.
David, let's hook it to my walker.
In fact, that's a good idea, isn't it?
You wouldn't have to hold the weight.
Maybe we'll do that.
(dramatic music)
- And then there was this lingering doubt about
even if we built it,
could I even freaking fly this thing
because I'm so bloody scared of heights in the first place?
You know the kid that was looking down at his feet
over the cliff, you know 40 years ago,
what I was seeing off the edge of that cliff,
to me, was just death.
Maybe that's why the dream about moving away from it
is so powerful to me, escaping.
- If you are David, and you are afraid of heights,
you have to fix something.
You have to do something about it.
(dramatic music)
(airplane engines whirring)
- [David] It's a really strong physical fear,
you know where I will turn white,
and I will get trembling hands
and I will feel nauseous.
(suspenseful music)
I'm sure it's psychological but,
and it's related to sort of zero to 500 feet,
which is unfortunately exactly the area
that you're gonna be flying in a jet pack.
- Oh as David was progressing with his jet pack project,
which wasn't eventuating into anything,
number one, number two, number three,
nothing would even work, he couldn't fly.
I think he was so desperate to go and fly something else,
he went backwards in technology.
- [David] I was working one day with Nelson
and he mentioned that there was this guy called Eric Scott
and he was gonna fly
one of the last remaining rocket belt.
And he was gonna fly it over some damn gorge,
or do something absolutely crazy.
And I thought, well you know, I've gotta see that.
I was working so hard on our project
and we'd achieved nothing,
at least I'd get to see what it would be like.
I mean you've done this distance before,
it's just you haven't done it over something so
dangerous. - No I haven't done it,
no I haven't done this distance.
I haven't. - You haven't
done this distance. - No.
even on an oval?
- No.
(dramatic music)
- [David] It is the most insane concept to me
and anybody that has any fear of heights.
The rocket belt, it's got a maximum flight time
of like 25 seconds.
- This whole thing, this is just,
this whole thing weighs 3.2 pounds, whole bag full.
- [Man] That's amazing!
- Plans are already out there.
Everybody can get the plans on these things.
- [David] I've been trying. (laughs)
- Okay, guys, we're suiting up over here.
Give him a five minute,
give your boy a five minute right now.
- Okay, we got- - Let's get everybody
back now! - We're shooting
for noon. - I need everybody
back to the ridge. - So we got about
a five minute right now.
- [Eric] If I have to bail out,
I'm bailing out before,
I'm bailing out before the thing.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Eric] Come on, let's go.
(jet spraying)
(crowd cheering)
- And I think even he must've just gone,
now I need to lie down (laughs) and drink a case of beers.
It was the most insane thing I ever saw,
but at the same time, seeing Eric Scott take off,
and seeing the dream, you know,
right on the edge of the gorge.
So I thought the jet pack project, that's floundering.
I'm gonna experience this.
I'm gonna fly and maybe the shortest route to doing that
is a rocket belt.
- As a psychologist,
I understand there are antisocial behaviors
and they are ruthless,
because they produce adrenalin rush.
Those activities like flying over a canyon
without a parachute system in a rocket belt,
which is already completely unsafe.
Who would do that?
Is David like that?
Could I live with somebody that would
step beyond that?
And I don't think I can.
(dramatic music)
- [David] I had in my mind that I really wanted
to fly over Sydney Harbor with the rocket belt.
You know, that's where I grew up,
it was my hometown.
And that's where, you know the whole dream began.
- [Nelson] In my head I said, are you crazy?
Is that next summer sometime?
No, that's in about a month!
- The idea is to fly quite a good way,
you know sort of three or 400 meters
or something or onto the barge,
or possibly from the barge back onto the land.
- You're kidding.
- That's the plan. - There's sharks
in that water, aren't there?
(laughs)
- That's the plan. - Better think about that.
That looks like a long way! - Yeah, it's a 20 second
machine, and it's from the '60s,
and it's never gonna achieve any practical purpose,
but it just kept me going.
- So he obviously said, "Build me a rocket belt."
And I just said, "No way, I've done that and it's obsolete."
He said, "Well, there's a guy in Mexico
that's building 'em, Juan."
(dramatic music)
(native drumming)
- You will get to see Juan's a bit of a,
he's a bit of a crazy guy.
- For me, it's my passion to make rockets,
any kind of rockets.
I love making rockets.
I can make rockets even in my spare time.
- He had an accident on a push bike
that had something like a 1,000 horse power rocket engine,
so this is the kinda guy that you come to Mexico to meet.
(guitar music)
- Well, the first time I rode a rocket bicycle,
I test it without any safety equipment.
I just wear a helmet.
And it saved my life.
(tires screeching)
I got in one second 128 kilometers an hour
and I crashed just outside my house.
- Oh, Juan, hello. (laughs)
- Buenas.
- Aha!
Everything's finished, all of the?
- Hmhm, everything. - Insulation?
- [Juan] Everything.
- It's very pretty, Juan.
- Yeah, uh huh.
- So it's 300 PSI here?
Step one was to build the rocket belt with Juan,
but step two was to actually have the fuel
to run the rocket belt,
and in those days, it just didn't exit.
You couldn't go to Degussa or one of the chemical companies
and say, hey, could I have
rocket grade hydrogen peroxide please?
'Cause they wouldn't,
so Juan set up a distillation system
in his back yard in Mexico.
It's really, really dangerous
because you're distilling an incredibly powerful oxidizer.
If you drop it on anything organic,
it'll just self-combust.
- Okay, this is a piece of leather,
I will soak it in the peroxide.
- Whoa! That was fast.
(hands clapping)
(speaking in a foreign language)
We ready, Juan?
- [Juan] Yes.
Are you?
- I'm ready!
Juan had set up this training system
in the middle of suburbia in his back yard.
- Stand up a little bit.
- I can't, that's it.
And it was on this sort of teetering safety system
that would go around in a circle.
- A small burst. - Yeah.
- To check that everything is working.
You will do a full power, and you will take off, okay?
- Okay!
- Full power!
(jets hissing)
(dogs barking)
- All of the grass was on fire
because of the 90% hydrogen peroxide
was dripping out of the thrust tubes onto the ground
and it would set everything on fire.
And I would walk to the next clear space,
but of course it was still dripping out
and in the end I did a full circle
around this tiltering safety system
and now the whole thing was on fire,
so that's when he brought the garden hose out.
- David, you will not be able to fly again.
- Bugger.
Unfortunately it takes about a day
to produce one flight-worth
and that's at the concentration that he has been making,
it doesn't look like that's strong enough.
Alright, so that's that.
It's a bit frustrating.
- I can't stop thinking about the reckless side.
I'm completely the opposite.
I'm not a risk taker.
- The worst is that-
- I worry so much, I sometimes sit on my bed
and I can't sleep and I worry
and I think, gosh, where's all this gonna go?
(gentle piano music)
- [Nelson] I really wanted him back here
so we could continue work on the jet pack.
Yeah, yeah, I'll teach ya up here, come back,
come back, David.
- We're gonna get Bill Suitor, the man.
- So they didn't know if it was gonna fly or not.
(laughs) That's why I got suckered into coming down there.
(laughs)
And I said yeah, it'd be nice to see you again
and we'll relive the Olympics.
- What was awesome
is Nelson managed to convince Bill Suitor,
who's definitely the greatest rocket man ever alive,
to come down and help me learn to fly the rocket belt.
- I got bitten by the bug as a child.
A friend and neighbor of the family,
he was a rocket engineer for a Bell aircraft,
and he was working on some kind of fantastic flying machine.
(mower motor running)
And I would mow his lawn.
Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore, I wanna fly that!
When are you gonna get me a job flying that?
And by age 19, I was flying it.
You know in 1964, I was getting hired at Bell.
Two years later in '66, I'm in Houston,
working with the astronauts.
You know, and the astronauts,
oh my God, they were blown away by the rocket belt.
You know and they all said, "Aw, I wished I could do that."
And it became a hit over night.
You know Hollywood discovered it.
And the next thing you know,
we're doing a James Bond movie.
You know, how good is that? (laughs)
(dramatic music)
- [David] Bell Aerospace realized
that there wasn't really any practical use
for a rocket belt that only flew for 20 seconds.
And they just scuttled the program in 1969.
And Bill Suitor who was literally the most famous,
most experienced rocket belt pilot in the world
was out of a job.
- And he called me on the phone and said, "I'm Bill Suitor,
"and I fly the rocket belt, or did.
"They've put it away, I don't get to fly it anymore."
And then I said, "Were you the guy at Disneyland?"
He said, "Yeah."
So I said, "Well, why don't you just come out here?"
You gotta remember everything at this point
is still for fun.
- That was the beginning of my wonderful,
wonderful years with Nelson Tyler.
Well, I worked with Nelson from 1970 to 1984,
another whole series of adventures,
flying shows with Nelson Tyler's rocket belt.
(gentle music)
My last flight with Nelson was the '84 Olympics
and in front of 2 and 1/2 billion people around the world.
You know that was the highlight.
That was quite a thrill.
But by '84, I had seven children,
so I said, "Let's make this our last."
And he agreed.
- I'll show ya all parts. - Area 51, eh?
- Yeah.
- Is there a tank guard goes on here
or not? - No.
I know that's the first thing I gotta do
is build a tank guard which I've,
the first thing I saw,
and Eric doesn't have a tank guard.
- I know, I know.
- [Nelson] You know I've seen a lot of these projects.
- You know this phrase, it's not rocket science?
Well this is rocket science.
Here you have a bomb strapped to your body, you really do.
You could get killed doing this,
I mean very easily.
- [Nelson] But it looks okay now.
- Yeah, so I've bent them in,
it woulda turned the handles.
- Where's neutral, Nelson?
- [Nelson] Up a little.
Up a little more. Right there.
- Oh this feels good.
- And you have to come forward and if those go.
- Just, if you can get just high enough
to get out of the ground wash,
that's all that's necessary.
- And should I tuck my legs up or?
- No, no, no, no.
That's changing your CG,
and you'll be wondering why.
- [David] So just keep my feet together?
- Rigid.
Like a Prussian general.
(laughs)
(rockets hissing)
Part of your mind has to become part of the machine,
that will take the workload
off of the other part of the mind
that's keeping you alive
because there's this innate fear that's in your body,
and then there's this other part of your brain,
that does the risk taking and all the stupid things.
(rocket hissing)
It's as much mental as it is physical.
- Trying to- - Need help?
(rockets hissing)
(gentle music)
- You hear that it's like balancing on a beach ball
in the middle of the surf, or middle of the ocean,
and you think, well, that's not possible,
nothing can be that tricky,
but actually it is.
- (laughs) Any flight you can walk away from is a good one.
- [David] Here, here!
- There, there!
(rockets hissing)
I love the smell of peroxide in the morning.
In 1968, '69, Bell made the decision at that time,
we're going to stop all research down the rocket path,
and we're going with the jet engine.
And I had all these high hopes,
you know, that I was gonna get to fly the jet belt.
I was gonna fly for more than 22 seconds at a crack.
Try 20 minutes.
They built a full-scale mock up of the jet pack,
and they put in maybe two gallons of,
it was weak tea.
It looked a bit like jet fuel.
And then the jet belt program was just scuttled.
(laughs) I got to fly the mock up.
To have worked so long toward the end,
that we were gonna, you know, finally have a jet belt,
and then be completely left out of it.
It was, it was terrible.
And that was, you know, the end of my dream,
so that's the way it was.
What the Christ is that?
Was that your? Oh. (laughs)
Where's my helmet?
Holy shit!
- [Nelson] It's a surprise.
- What's it powered with?
Oh, each one of those is their own little?
- Yeah, they're all drone engines.
- So have you run it?
- Just on a stand, sort of.
- I'm gonna go get my suit on.
- No, no, I'm doing it, get out.
(laughs)
- [David] We knew that we'd never get it to fly,
but we wanted to show him what we'd been
beavering away doing all of this time.
- I'm trying not to be overwhelmed,
because you know, been disappointed too many times
on these things,
and I'm doing a lot of this.
(engines whining)
(dramatic music)
- I wasn't even fully aware that he's gonna go
and do a big deal about the rocket belt
and fly over the harbor.
But when I did find out about it,
I was furious.
I was so angry, and I said,
"Why are we spending all this money,
"and all the time away?
"The family's on a back burn seater there
"in the middle of nowhere.
"You're traipsing around the world, for what?"
- We're about to get David fledged,
first free flight,
and he's going to do it.
And he's going to do it well.
- I'm crapping myself, but I'm gonna do it.
Thank you, man.
- [Man] Okay.
(rockets hissing)
- The first free flight in that rocket belt was amazing.
But it was, I mean it was only 10 seconds.
Did I go over it? - Yes!
- Yeah?
- [Man] Up and over.
- And it's like I had this taste,
did I go over it?
But I wanted more. - You went over it.
(rockets hissing)
- You know it hasn't flown very well.
He had it full throttle but he's not climbing.
- Basically, I'm not getting any power at all.
This is frustrating as shit.
There's obviously something wrong with the fuel.
I don't know what it is,
and I don't friggin' care at the moment.
- It wasn't going as well as I think
he felt it should be,
and I wanna do this flight over the harbor.
And he started stretching the boundaries
that I'm comfortable with.
- So we're bolting it together now as we speak,
and it should be very powerful.
- [Both] Rocket man.
- [Bill] It's the wrong way to go about it,
and I was getting annoyed.
- Exciting? - Yup.
(rockets whining)
(sparks snapping)
- Hold it! No, look!
Travis, don't go near there.
Get the pressure off.
- All that had need to happen
was that catalyst to have melted down into those tanks,
and if it had done that,
it would've just been a massive explosion.
And everybody in that whole area would've probably,
would've probably died.
- Well, probably
it transferred out a ton a heat to the valve.
- You know that was the closest call
I personally ever had being around a rocket belt.
And that was the final straw for me.
You know, this is nuts!
What am I involved in here?
I don't know what caused this.
I don't care what caused it.
I wanna go home.
I don't wanna be a part of this anymore.
Somebody's gonna get killed here.
- I think it's just starting to take its toll
on not just me, but the whole team.
I'm not getting much sleep,
and every time we think we've got something right,
something else fails, so, firstly,
I'm getting pretty disheartened about the whole thing,
but then I come down and look at this,
you know this is where we're meant to fly.
Gotta put it together this weekend and just,
you know, just really push it
until we've got it operating.
- David seems to have unlimited energy
and enthusiasm, "Oh, we'll take it apart and fix it."
I think the thing will be melted solid inside there.
- Another centimeter or two.
I wanna set that at 800.
And so I'm about to fly,
and you know, fingers crossed, toes crossed,
that that's made the difference.
I just don't know whether it's gonna make
too much difference and shoot me to the stars.
I was like Icarus flying towards the sun.
I just had to bloody fly higher and higher,
and sure enough, my wings melt.
All right?
- What?
- To the max?
- [Man] Blowing out the valves.
- Okay.
(rockets hissing)
(suspenseful music)
Hold on, hold on.
(siren wailing)
And they asked me what happened.
So, I say, "Well, I was flying a rocket belt
"and I crashed and I've burnt my leg."
And they're, "What? You were doing what?"
I mean lovely doctor,
she was really, really helpful.
She said, "Look, the most important thing is
"that we don't get this infected
"before you go into the skin graft."
- I didn't even know about it.
I just get a phone call, David's in hospital but he's okay.
And I said, "Well, why is he, A, not calling me
"and telling me himself?
"Second, why is he in hospital to start with?"
- Most of the belt is in decent shape,
he didn't hurt it too much,
so we should be able to have it back together
in a couple hours.
- I'm back.
Rocket Man is back, and ready to fly.
Look at that.
- At least you're still alive, huh?
- That's right, you stopped me from dying at least.
There was nothing in the contract about burning.
- It's a complete obsession.
And it's not just a person,
everybody in the family has to become obsessed,
'cause otherwise, you'll go crazy.
You're like swimming against a tidal wave.
You actually have to go turn around and swim with it.
And it can be scary.
- Well, I am a bit scared sometimes
that she's a bit too angry or frustrated
with my dad and the whole situation.
So sometimes I just want my dad to come back home,
and just be with my mom and help her
and just tell her that everything's gonna be alright,
and everything's gonna work out.
- I'd basically lost my center.
And my center was Saschi and the kids,
and I think I'd been away for so long,
things got out of control.
I pushed on and should've just stopped.
(horn beeping)
- I think if we have to use an ambulance pickup,
we use the Monumental Steps over at the opera house.
- There were some paramedics there,
they wanted to check me out,
and they saw the burn down the side of my leg,
and they said, "If you end up going into the water,
"if you get a serious infection and it becomes,
"and you can't treat it fast enough,
"then you lose that leg."
- The only thing I worry about is not David,
I think he's ready, it's the belt.
It's been a little soggy, this belt, you know?
We got the pressure up as high as you dare,
and the fuel full and hope that it has the power.
- [David] Mom came to the Sydney Harbor flight,
and yeah, she could see how nervous I was.
- Good luck, David, (laughs)
you looks great. - It looks good. (laughs)
- We won't let you fall over,
just make sure you go forward, not back, right?
(rockets hissing)
(suspenseful music)
(water splashing)
- [David] The first thing I remember
was thinking about what the paramedics said,
"Don't go into the water!"
So it was actually my mother
that rushed me off to the hospital.
(heart monitor beeping)
- [Bill] Rocket belts have gone as far
as they're going to go,
and I can't understand for the life of me,
why these people, they're all well-intended,
they're addicted by it.
It is, it's an addiction.
It's ancient history.
You've gotta go to an air breathing jet engine.
Get away from the rockets.
- The lowest point I've ever seen David
was when we had our, I guess relationship crisis,
which coincided with his crash.
We started sleeping in separate rooms
because we just couldn't deal with each other.
It was awful.
- They do fight a bit,
but I just speak to her and I say,
"Don't worry, it's gonna be okay.
"It is, it's tough on you but it's gonna work out."
- [David] I nearly killed myself.
I put my whole family at risk by putting myself at risk.
- He's changed as a person after that.
He used to be quite bombastic and arrogant,
and I can do anything.
well, obviously he couldn't.
And I think that reflected on him crashing the machine,
failing maybe at the marriage.
(gentle piano music)
It was very difficult to go
and allow him sort of back into our lives after that.
But when he came back,
that was not the David that left.
That was a different man,
and a better man, actually.
I think a man who realizes his limitations,
and a real person,
not a show off and I can do whatever I want,
he does have a dream,
but he also has a very, very, very intense feeling
of responsibility for me and for the kids.
- I knew that I had to make a change.
I hadn't lost the quest, but you know,
it just had to be something that we were all
equally excited about and if we weren't,
then it wasn't something that I could continue with,
and didn't want to continue with.
- [Saschi] After his crash in Sydney Harbor,
he never flew another rocket belt.
That was the end of that.
- I said to David,
the biggest thing that we're missing out on
are rescue vehicles.
- Hurry up.
- [Woman] Oh God! Oh God!
- In how many cities in the world every day,
do people die needlessly when if the local fire department
had a small rescue vehicle,
they could get up there and get them.
- [Woman] They need to move that truck up.
Oh my God,
oh no, oh no, oh no.
Oh! Oh my God!
- [Bill] Why in the world, in this day and age,
don't we have these?
(dramatic music)
- Time to focus on the jet, David, jet, jet, jet, jet.
- The more I thought about it,
the more the potential uses sorta became clear to me.
You can get from A to B faster using a jet pack,
than just about anything else.
And I kept thinking about what Bill said.
We can save lives.
What's the value of a life?
(helicopter roaring)
- We discovered a factory in Czechoslovakia
that made jet engines for MIGs and things like that.
So we decided we'd go there.
(helicopter engine rumbling)
David said, "Now don't tell them I have any money."
and I said, "Oh, well, that's great,
"you fly a helicopter here of your own, you know, so."
(laughs)
- [David] We made it!
- Oh, yeah, great!
That's our house, okay.
(speaker drowned out by wind)
(women laugh)
- [Nelson] It was like being in the '50s,
literally being in the '50s.
- [Man] You two, you only atmosphere pressure.
- Yes. - No problem
because when you have a temperature after freezing-
- [Nelson] And they had taken their jet engine,
the small one that turned a generator
to run electricity on a MIG
and made it into a pure jet.
I kept looking around
to make sure there wasn't a KGB guy behind me, you know?
(engines whining)
(engines roaring)
- Our option is to have it vertically
and contra-rotating.
We have tried 20 engines for our project,
and the problem has always been reliability.
- No problem. - Yeah, no trouble.
- Okay.
- [Both] Thank you.
- So again, we had these two amazing engines now,
beautiful quality, not even like nothing we'd seen before.
And now we could just have two of them.
You know, one on each side.
And for me, that meant, I just felt really, really close,
that we were cracking the code now.
(engines whining)
So how many years has it been, Nelson?
- In building these things, you mean?
- [David] Yup.
- I don't know, I've lost track.
- [David] And we tested it for about a year,
and then decided, nope, it's also not gonna work.
But the problem was the engines,
each one was very heavy,
and you probably couldn't really carry around.
- It's like a joke.
There's Nelson Tyler,
he's the 80-year-old jet belt pilot, you know?
And at the rate we're going,
I'll be the 86-year-old pilot (laughs)
so, how about that 90-year-old pilot?
Let's go set a record.
- Everything around us also kept crashing down.
Our businesses weren't working.
It was a financial crisis, bad investments,
and I said to him, "Hey, there's a family,
"we still have to pay the bills, we have to,
"we have to move forward."
- [David] We'd been working on this for 10 years.
And we'd burnt through millions of dollars,
and a big chunk of our lives.
- He's never let us down.
You know he's always looked after the family.
And we're dealing with something that's completely new,
it hasn't been done yet.
So if it fails, you have to try again.
And if it fails, you have to try again.
(dramatic music)
- [David] But then I got a call, actually,
from a guy in the Netherlands
that I've known for quite a long time,
and he told me about a new engine
that he was working on.
He was actually really, really excited.
- Engine technology was getting better and better and better
because of military applications for drones.
Manufacturers were saying,
"Well, I can sell to people that are making bombs that fly,"
you know cruise missiles and all that.
So it finally became the right size engine for us, you know,
because they wanted to use them to go kill people.
(laughs) You know, not us hopefully.
(engines whining)
- [David] So the new engines were much more powerful,
like twice as powerful, and still really, really light.
- [Nelson] This is the right time and the right thing
we'd been trying, so we really know what not to do now,
and we know what to do and we finally have the engines.
- [David] Voila! One new beast.
- [Nelson] We were running short of money,
but it's very close now.
- [David] How do we keep it straight?
- Straight out that way, you mean?
- [David] Yeah.
- We're just gonna have to look at it.
(speaker drowned out by music)
(drill whirring)
(ratchets clicking)
(fuel gurgling)
(nozzle buzzing)
(engines whining)
- [David] There was a lot of turbulence
that was being bounced off the walls
on the other side of the alley,
that would then kick the jet pack from side to side.
And I felt that that was hampering my skills
in terms of learning.
- As we were testing more and more and more,
it got crazy, and we're sort of like going like this,
and he just kept coming up with excuses
why he couldn't fly it properly.
- [David] I just said to Nelson, look we really,
we have to move away from here
to do testing and training.
- For me, it was kind of like, why are you doing that?
And he said, "Oh, I'll have more space.
"I'm smashing against the walls."
And I'm thinking, not, this is not the entire truth.
(laughs)
Of course, as it comes out later,
there was a complete clash between Nelson and with David.
- I was a little miffed about the whole thing.
I didn't like seeing it going so far away.
But what are ya gonna do?
(suspenseful music)
(engines whining)
- [David] The jet pack just lifted off perfectly straight,
and I was like, it flies!
It really flies without swaying or bucking,
I mean it was, it was incredible.
- We have these two personalities with this amazing project,
and just everybody is a little bit
too narcissistic to give in?
And I said to David,
"Well, if he wants to even take you back,
"what are you gonna do?"
I said, "Well, maybe you both eat a bit of the humble pie
"and then we can actually have a project
"that's worth talking about instead of two egos
"that are clashing and (speaking in foreign language)"
My German translation, but incredible dynamic there.
- So I went back to Nelson and said,
"You know, here's an idea, Nelson, what do you think?
"You know the thing's flying perfectly."
What better way to show the world what we've achieved
than to fly around the Statue of Liberty in New York?
- And I said, "Well, what happens if you fall in the water
"in front of all these people?"
"I won't! I won't!" You know.
- [David] And he said, "First of all,
"we do something in a controlled environment.
"Let's just be sensible here."
I really wanted Bill Suitor to be there
for first ever free flight.
I was there because of what he had taught me.
But I didn't want to put him through
the same emotional stress that he went through
when the Sydney rocket belt melted down.
So, it was a horrible decision to make,
but I just decided to not tell Bill anything
before I tested the hell out of this thing.
- [Bill] The day comes when you have the power of flight,
like a bird.
You don't think about it, you just do it.
And when that day comes,
you can start to relax and you can enjoy the ride,
and start to look at the scenery even a little bit.
- Maybe I was tempting fate,
but I said to Georgina, my older daughter,
come to California and see Daddy do the first ever
jet pack flight.
- You'll be okay, right?
- Yeah, I'll be okay.
2010, December, Sydney.
That one hurt.
Look at that, right down into the muscle.
- Ready?
- Yup. - Okay.
And we fuel it up and we walk out there,
and this is gonna be great and all that,
no, all you're thinking about
is he's gonna turn and fall in the water.
Yeah, right, free flight, splash.
And I've seen David go in the water before.
He's good at it.
(engines whining)
And even in the Rocketeer,
the mechanic for the rocket,
then takes his gum, sticks it on there, for luck, you know?
David didn't even know.
- [David] It's actually very soft and very gentle
and very intuitive,
and you know, it's like riding a bicycle
but you're in the sky.
You're flying.
- When you're watching it, it's like,
is this really happening, or is that just a daydream?
It's been so long coming,
you sorta can't believe it, you know?
But it actually worked.
Super exciting.
First real live jet pack that can zip around and fly
on the planet!
(gentle triumphant music)
He did perfect!
He got so into it, right away,
it was just like, okay, I can fly, I'm superman! (laughs)
So, there's a guy that flies better,
he's got a big S on his chest and a red cape,
but we don't talk about him.
- You got it. (laughs)
Were you a little bit scared in here?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, me too. (laughs)
- Well, it was my, it was my first time, so.
- Yeah, yeah, maybe do you wanna fly it one day?
- Yes!
- Really? - Yes!
- High five! (laughs)
What would Mummy say?
- No.
(David laughing)
(peaceful piano music)
- To create something like a jet pack
creates an obsession within a whole family,
not just one person.
Without the kids to support me,
I couldn't do it.
Without me, David couldn't do it.
And so we are a team.
And this obsession that we all have about the jet pack
has created something that doesn't exist.
Now, that's pretty cool, isn't it?
(peaceful piano music)
- The lake was, I think it was freaking awesome.
It just opened my mind to the real possibility
of what the jet pack can do.
And I said, "Nelson, remember New York,
"that's the dream now."
You multiply the stakes
with potentially millions of people watching it.
To put so much soul, time, passion,
and heart into something and then for me not to achieve it,
I don't, I didn't wanna think about that.
So I started the planning for the New York flight
with the FAA, because I'm flying, right?
I tried to sound reasonable and rational,
I'd like to fly a jet pack around the Statue of Liberty,
and I got a, "Where? You want to do what?"
And then there was this cascading list of departments
and authorities that I needed to talk to.
What made sense was to take off from the water,
from a barge.
- We're in the tugboat place.
There was a picture on the wall of Barbra Streisand
and the Statue of Liberty,
and I said, "Hey, I shot that!"
And the guy looks at me, "That's the iconic thing
"of the harbor and tugboats!"
'cause it was from Funny Girl.
So he was shaking my hand and all that stuff.
Anyway, I'm looking out the window,
I see a real tugboat with a nice back end,
I say, "Why can't we get that one?"
So we did.
- Oh perfect! - This is-
- Oh yeah. - We talked about right here.
- And this is the- - That's the starting point.
Right.
- Are these feet, by the way, or?
- Yes. - Wow!
- Feet of depth, yeah. - And this is
the exclusion zone? - Yes.
- 50 yards.
- So what I had,
The Statue of Liberty is a terrorist target.
If we did not have the right approval for this,
and I encroached closer to the island than I should,
we will be shot down.
(engines whining)
(cannon blasting)
So this focuses your mind.
(dramatic music)
I was so shot psychologically.
I think because of the fear of the failure.
I was sleeping two or three hours a night,
and then once you wake up at two o'clock in the morning,
and then you've got all this stuff in your head,
what if, what if, what if, what if?
Well, this department hasn't called us back,
or you know, do we get the fuel?
And do we get the oil?
And blah!
- Oh, great!
You're here! You made it!
- Here, I've been selling apples out on the corner.
Have an apple.
- Thank you.
- That's a Youngstown McGowan.
How are ya, sir? - Good, how are you?
- Good! - You're alright?
- Yeah, yeah. - Long trip?
- Look at you, you've lost a lot of weight!
- The fact that Bill actually came down
was just fantastic because he was like this solid rock
that'd been there, done that, it's gonna be okay,
you know, psychologically, don't worry about things.
Don't get stressed out.
Steadied the horse.
- (drowned out by airport noise) don't do this anymore.
- Good mock up, huh?
It looks almost real.
- So, what do you think, Bill?
- You can't improve on perfection.
- Spent a lot of test flying over a few years, Bill,
so we've had pretty much everything, I guess.
- Years? Did you say years? - Yeah!
- You son of a bitch,
you've been keeping me from this for years?
- Fantastic, yeah. - No, I mean, we had no idea
whether it was gonna work
at all. - Yeah, yeah.
- I mean, we weren't test flying
like we used to. - That other contraption
with the eight engines on it,
I almost had an asthma attack standing out there (chokes).
- It just, you know, it blew my shoes off.
It was.
Oh my God.
- [Nelson] 'Cause he really wanted to do that
more than anything.
He flew the rocket belt hundreds of times
and then he got aced out of the jet version.
- This is just amazing!
- And after 10 years.
- I'm proud of you.
Wow!
(suspenseful music)
- Cut the cord by clipping.
- Hey, no problem, no problem.
- So now we're at a point
where we're actually going to do a New York flight.
I won't be there, the kids won't be there,
so that makes it that little bit more difficult.
And it's also a little bit surreal.
I'm trying to actually get my head around that
he's gonna be flying off a tether somewhere,
like Superman flying around the Statue of Liberty.
- There were genuinely very real risks,
and did I want my family there
out on the boat to see that?
I didn't know what was gonna happen.
- What can I say?
Go, David! Go, go go! (laughs)
- [David] My wife set their watches
so that when they were in school,
Georgie and Charlie knew what time I'd be flying,
and so that they could just spend a moment
thinking about Daddy doing this crazy thing.
- I was in my class, having a test,
and I would just be like eating my nails,
looking at the clock and being like, okay, he's flying now.
- I worked together with the engineers
just on what height and what speed would be safe.
You know, the benefit of flying over water
is that if you, if you stay low enough,
and you stay slow enough,
it's going to cushion your landing.
Of course the downside of flying over water
is that it's water and you drown or you die from cold
in the Hudson River.
(dramatic music)
(water lapping)
(motor roaring)
Being down in the bowels of boat that we were on,
sort of zoning out and putting my gear on,
finally got it all ready,
and went up on deck,
probably only 10 minutes away from the flight at this stage,
you know, so adrenalin buzzing,
and then I asked Bill if he could just help me
zip up the last, the last zip.
And he said, "That's on back to front."
The whole suit was on back to front.
It's a big thing!
Psychologically, just something go, I'm not ready.
I thought I was ready, but I'm not ready,
I now have to go downstairs and actually
freaking do everything from scratch.
- Look at that lady.
She is so beautiful.
(slow dramatic music)
- Are those buttons done?
- Can I go over that?
- Yeah. - Not over that.
I wouldn't go over that.
- Go over it like an angle.
- That's right.
I could go with a nervous pee about now.
- Yeah.
- [David] It was weird.
It was sort of like time stood still
and I'm just gonna do what I always do.
(slow dramatic music)
The fact that we're gonna capture this for the world
and it's the first real jet pack,
that has ever flown,
and particularly around the Statue of Liberty,
you know, an icon!
Try to push that off to one side.
I needed to have divers,
and I had to trust them, and the boat drivers,
that they would be able to get to me
if something happened, very, very quickly.
(suspenseful music)
- So the fateful morning on the Hudson River,
and finally, after years and years of hardship,
agony, and just the pressure,
and the hard work, the stress,
and everything came together.
- [Man] I'll stand here, okay?
(suspenseful music)
- Nelson and I just had that moment
when we looked at each other and we said,
"This is it! This is 10 years together!"
But decades and decades for him,
and several decades for me.
This is it, right now!
Ready to go!
See you guys soon!
(suspenseful music)
It's just now me, the jet pack,
and you know, I was that, I was that kid again.
And I was, I was that boy in the, in the dream.
And then, and then I lifted.
(dramatic music)
(jets roaring)
And when I went way away from the boat,
right down past the island to turn around,
I did a very sharp turn, and it was too sharp.
And when I started to sink towards the water,
I thought, whoa! That doesn't look good!
And of course, you know what's in my mind,
Sydney Harbor!
I've seen this before.
This did not end well last time,
and this, the same thing is not gonna happen this time,
I promise you.
And I just nailed the throttle to the stops,
so that I could climb.
(engines whining)
- Worked so long and so hard for it,
you can hardly believe it's happening.
So it's amazing.
You have to sorta go, it's happening,
it really is happening.
You have to get yourself in the moment.
- You know that blew me away.
You could just see the joy.
It's in his face.
He's got the power of flight.
He owns the sky!
And he's flittin' about like a flea in heat, you know?
Back and forth across the water there,
oh my God, it's gorgeous!
(slow dramatic music)
(jets whining)
- [Nelson] We proved that we could build a jet pack.
You know, it was my dream.
And we made it happen.
It took a long time, but we made it happen.
You were good! - It's so exciting!
You know, I said to myself,
he just flew away with my dream.
But it was okay.
You know, it was in good hands.
- I mean, it's just unbelievable!
Unbelievable!
And where to next?
Now I think, I think the journey's only now beginning.
(dramatic music)
(engines whining)
(gentle music)