Every Movie Jetpack Gets This Wrong (Except Thunderball)

In 2020 two airline crews reported a man in a jetpack at 3,000 feet over LAX, and nobody has ever found him. A jetpack has no wings and no rotor, so every kilo of you hangs on the exhaust, every second you're up there. We put the most famous jetpacks in movie history through the three tests a real one can't escape (the fuel, the heat and the balance), and only one passes all three: the one that was real. Another day in the yard! The Rocketeer, Return of the Jedi, Attack of the Clones, Minority Report, Iron Man and Thunderball, plus a speed round: Tomorrowland, The Incredibles, Kick-Ass and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The real-world side: Bell's 1961 rocket belt and its 21 seconds of fuel, Bill Suitor (hired off the lawn next door), Gravity Industries' jet suit, JetPack Aviation round the Statue of Liberty, Franky Zapata over the Bastille Day parade and the Channel, Yves Rossy beside an A380, and the LA 1984 Olympics. Spoilers for all ten films. CHAPTERS 00:00 A guy in a jetpack over LAX 01:57 The fuel, the heat and the balance 04:43 The Rocketeer (1991) 07:19 Return of the Jedi and Attack of the Clones 08:38 Minority Report (2002) 09:41 Iron Man (2008) 11:39 Speed round: Tomorrowland, The Incredibles, Kick-Ass, Falcon 14:28 Thunderball (1965) 16:26 Which jetpack did we miss? Narrated by: Me :) SOURCES Bell Rocket Belt (fuel, 21 s, 740 °C steam, 280 lbf, helmet buzzer): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Rocket_Belt Thunderball's jetpack and Bill Suitor (Atlas Obscura): https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/james-bond-thunderball-jetpack The James Bond Dossier: https://www.thejamesbonddossier.com/features/no-well-dressed-man-should-be-without-one-the-thunderball-jetpack.htm Bill Suitor at LA 1984 (California Sun): https://www.californiasun.co/back-to-the-future-jetmans-1984-olympic-flight/ Gravity Industries jet suit specs: https://gravity.co/media/gravity-resource-pack.pdf Engines that burned his feet (The Spectator): https://spectator.com/article/what-does-it-feel-like-to-fly/ 310 test flights (IMechE): https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/feature-meet-the-man-who-defies-gravity Jet suit fuel burn (ASME): https://asme.org/topics-resources/content/iron-man-lives Statue of Liberty flight, 2015 (Live Science): https://livescience.com/52712-nyc-jetpack-flight-hudson-river.html Jetpack flight times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_pack Franky Zapata (Bastille Day, the Channel): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franky_Zapata Google X drops its jetpack (9to5Google): https://9to5google.com/2014/05/06/google-x-says-no-to-jetpacks-just-not-practical/ LAX "guy in a jetpack", 30 Aug 2020 (NBC News): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/airline-pilots-reported-seeing-guy-jetpack-flying-3-000-feet-n1239027 FBI balloon theory, Jack Skellington photo (ABC7): https://abc7.com/post/jetpack-los-angeles-fbi-investigation-lax/11190808/ FBI case files (The Black Vault): https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/fbi-releases-lax-jetpack-case-files-pilot-interview-contradicts-jetpack-description/ Bell at the 1964 World's Fair (Paleofuture): https://paleofuture.com/blog/2008/1/23/bell-aviations-rocket-pack-1964.html M134 minigun recoil (Modern Firearms): https://modernfirearms.net/en/machineguns/u-s-a-machineguns/m134-minigun-eng/ Yves Rossy's jet wing (AOPA): https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2010/november/09/a-man-and-his-wing-loop-the-loop FOOTAGE Thunderball (1965) · The Rocketeer (1991) · Return of the Jedi (1983) · Attack of the Clones (2002) · Minority Report (2002) · Iron Man (2008) · Tomorrowland (2015) · The Incredibles (2004) · Kick-Ass (2010) · Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) · The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) · Spy Kids (2001) · RoboCop 3 (1993). Every film line quoted is from the film itself. Real footage: the LAX air-traffic recording of 30 Aug 2020 (World of Aviation), Inside Edition, Gravity Industries, JetPack Aviation, Al Jazeera English, CGTN and Voice of America (Zapata), Emirates / XDubai (Jetman), The Rocketbelt Society, Archive Rewind / University of North Texas Special Collections (Bell Helicopter Records), From the Vault, British Movietone (AP Archive), British Pathé, Olympic Games / Olympic LA Spirit (LA 1984), ITV News, US National Archives via Destockd (A-4 / V-2), scientificpages (peroxide catalysis). The anime test pilot and the science diagrams were made for this video (the pilot's drawings with AI image generation, everything else drawn in code). PHOTOS (Wikimedia Commons) Richard Browning: JB0397 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Franky Zapata: Alan Wilson (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Yves Rossy: Rama (CC BY-SA 2.0 FR) · Astro Teller: Cmichel67 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · V-2: AElfwine (CC BY-SA 3.0) · John F. Kennedy: Cecil W. Stoughton (public domain)