Juan Lozano has a simple dream — to pilot himself through the sky. Littering his rural estate in Mexico is an arsenal of jetpack prototypes and assorted protective gear, as well as the complex machinery the middle-aged jeweler has invented to convert hydrogen peroxide into homemade rocket fuel. Lozano’s obsession has cost him broken bones and more than half-million dollars, but through decades of trial and error, he’s managed to launch 30 feet in the air for a little over 20 seconds.
That — and his rotund figure — has earned him the nickname, “The Rocket-Belt Buddha.” It also earned him a place in Windsor Terrace writer Mac Montandon’s debut book, “Jetpack Dreams: One Man’s Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention That Never Was” (Da Capo Press), Montandon’s uniquely pop-cultural take on an engineering obsession.
Other high-flying pioneers profiled in the book include Wendell Moore, the Bell Laboratories scientist who built the first personal propulsion systems back in the 1960s, and Bill Suitor, a pilot who tested rocketpacks for NASA’s Apollo astronauts and jetted into the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
But it was a fictional bounty hunter that sparked the author’s interest in vehicular-free flight nearly three decades ago.
“I came of age in the ‘Star Wars’ era, and like most of the boys I knew, I was totally obsessed with Boba Fett,” said Montandon. “He was inherently cool; this bad-ass killer who’d just slip away on his jetpack. It stuck with me.”
Montandon, whose byline has appeared in Spin, Details and the New York Times, grew up in suburban Baltimore, the son of a psychiatrist and an early education specialist. After spending his 20s on the West Coast — graduating from UC-Santa Cruz and trying his hand at acting and rock superstardom — he moved to Brooklyn eight years ago with his girlfriend, Catherine. The couple, now married, has a 2- and a 4-year-old daughter.
Through it all, he never lost his obsession for back-pack flight.
“Jetpacks were always the promise of the future — look at Buck Rogers and ‘the Jetsons,” he told GO Brooklyn. “After the year 2000, a lot of us wondered where the hell our jetpacks were.”
Instead of just cursing the jetpack-free heavens, Montandon decided to find out, starting his journey at the first International Rocketbelt Convention at Niagara Falls in 2006. After, he met some of the brave men (and they’re almost all men) dedicated to making unassisted flight a reality and got a crash course in thrust and drag, experienced freefall aboard a Cessna Skyhawk, and learned of a grizzly jetpack-related murder in Texas, a tale he recounts in a chapter titled “Houston, We Have Another Problem.”
“Basically, these three guys thought they could make a fortune exhibiting a jetpack at public events,” he explains. “But as often happens when money and big egos are involved, things went south and one of the partners turned up dead.” The case is still classified as an unsolved homicide, and the jetpack they built has never been seen since.
By and large, though, Montandon says the jetpack community is made up of a handful of quirky individuals who just happen to have the time, money and passion to pursue their boyhood dreams.
Some of those dreams are more recent than others: Will Breaden-Madden, a delicate 19-year-old physics student from Ireland, regaled Montandon with his plan to extend flight time using jet technology.
“He convinced me he was close to a major breakthrough. He even had a catchy name — the ShamRocket,” recalled Montandon. “Unfortunately, when I went to Belfast to check it out, he told me all his stuff was in another part of the country in his parent’s basement.”
In fact, Montandon never got to test any of the gravity-defying inventions he investigated. There was always one complication or another — Lozano was recovering from a serious accident on his rocket cycle; another inventor’s wife had just given birth.
“In some ways, I think maybe destiny was conspiring against me,” Montandon said.
As the father of two young children, he was also a little wary of risking life and limb.
“There was a lot of negotiation with my wife,” Montandon said with a laugh. “In the end, I told her I’d wait until I got life insurance to try one out.”
He still holds out hope of going for a jetpack joyride someday.
Whether he’ll get his chance soon is debatable: This summer at the EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, inventor Glenn Martin test-flew his Martin Jetpack and boasted he’d be selling models as early as next year for $100,000 each. Montandon said he is impressed with Martin’s invention but doubts it’ll replace the family sedan.
“I think it’s a likelier bet that his jetpack might some day be used as a recreational vehicle, rather than for transportation or other utilitarian applications,” he said. “Also, while what [Martin] has come up with is undoubtedly remarkable — bad-ass even — purists will note that it’s not, strictly speaking, a jetpack.”
It’s true; Martin’s device is powered by a gasoline-fueled piston engine, making it more akin to a helicopter than a jet. (It’s also never been flown higher than six feet off the ground.)
So the idea of a jetpack in every garage may stay safely in the realm of sci-fi for the foreseeable future. And for all the fervor of his youth, an older and wiser Montandon said that might not be such a bad thing. “As tremendous an idea as it is … if jetpacks ever become a viable means of transportation, there’d be utter chaos in the air.”
Forget about road rage — is America really ready for sky rage?
Mac Montandon will be reading from “Jetpack Dreams” (Da Capo Press) on Dec. 19 at Matchless [557 Manhattan Ave., at Driggs Avenue in Greenpoint, (718) 383-5333].
