Jetpack

A jetpack is a device worn on the back that uses jets to propel its wearer through the air, strapped on like a backpack and generating enough thrust to lift the combined weight of the wearer, the pack and its fuel. Because all of its fuel must be carried on the wearer's back, a jetpack's thrust is tightly limited, and most untethered flights last only minutes rather than the extended flights shown in fiction. The Russian inventor Alexander Fedorovich Andreev sketched an early oxygen-and-methane concept in 1919 that was apparently never built, and it was not until 1960 that the Bell Rocket Belt demonstrated genuine hydrogen-peroxide-powered flight; later designs have tried turbojet and electric propulsion, but jetpacks remain mostly limited to demonstrations and stunts rather than everyday transportation.