French inventor Franky Zapata has this morning successfully crossed the English Channel on his Flyboard Air, a jet-powered hoverboard. The English Channel, is the body of water that separates Southern England from northern France and links the southern part of the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
Zapata departed from France and arrived in England 22 minutes later, reaching speeds of up to 171 Km per hour during the 35km trip. “We made a machine three years ago,” he said after landing, “and now, we’ve crossed the Channel, it’s crazy.”
It should be noted that the trip wasn’t continuous: because he only carried a 10-minute supply of fuel on his back, he had to make a pit stop at the halfway mark to refuel.
Zapata was on his second attempt to cross the Channel after he failed on his first attempt at the end of July when he fell into the water while trying to land on the refueling platform. He and his team chalked up the crash to the size of the waves during the landing attempt, forcing him to miss the edge of the platform by centimeters. He never gave up and this time he used a slightly different route and a larger refueling platform.
In 2011, Zapata invented, a device that uses a water jet to propel the rider through the air behind a boat and its currently being used for recreational purposes. He later invented the Flyboard Air, a board powered by four turbo jet engines that allows a rider to fly through the air untethered, using a computer to keep it stabilized. Zapata has since set a world record for the farthest hoverboard flight after he flew the Flyboard Air along the south coast of France for 2.252 km.
Zapata isn’t the only person working on this sort of jet-powered personal transportation: English inventor Richard Browning developed a jet suit that allows the wearer to fly with six turbo-engines strapped to their arms.
