Did you know about the existence of jetpacks that can safely reach 3,000 feet?
Commercial pilots are accustomed to sharing the sky with birds or, more recently, drones, but on Sunday two pilots reported a novel sighting at 3,000 feet approaching Los Angeles International Airport: a man flying a jetpack.
“Tower, American 1997 — we just passed a guy in a jetpack,” the pilot of American Airlines Flight 1997 from Philadelphia told air traffic control, about 6:35 p.m. Sunday. The exchange was captured and posted by LiveATC.net, which shares live and archived recordings of air-traffic-control radio transmissions.
“Were they off to your left side or right side?” the controller asked. The pilot said the person was 300 yards to the plane’s left, and about 30 seconds later, another pilot said he had also seen the man pass by. The controller, after asking the pilot of JetBlue Flight 23 to keep a lookout, added, “Only in L.A.”
Now both the F.B.I. and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating.
American Airlines declined to identify the pilot, referring inquiries to the F.A.A. A JetBlue official would not comment.
Seth Young, a pilot and a professor of aviation at Ohio State University, said it was “very dangerous” to fly so close to an airplane, especially in the busy airspace near Los Angeles International Airport.
“The risk is obviously having a collision with that airplane or getting a drone, or the person getting ingested into an engine,” Dr. Young said. “We have these issues with birds flying within congested airspace, as well.”
Because there has been an increase in the past few years in the numbers of aerial vehicles, primarily drones, around airports, the F.A.A. has enacted rules and restrictions regarding flying close to airports, he added. Authorization from the F.A.A. would be required to fly in such controlled airspace.
Probably, a lot of technologies that we still think of as being science fiction already exist now, and it’s just that no one is really paying attention to them because they’re thinking about more immediate problems.
Elon Musk is saying that in ten years everyone will have a computer chip in their brains that makes them smarter.
Would you get a computer chip in your brain?
Seems like a pretty serious security risk.