Last Tuesday at the AirVenture Oshkosh 2008, a new jet pack was demonstrated. If you were expecting a person donning a sleek and sexy jet pack to be zooming around mid-air though, you'd be sorely disappointed. Even so, the Martin Jet Pack was enough to delight the audience at the said aviation convention. The 250-pound contraption was developed by erstwhile biochemist Glenn Martin over the course of 11 years in his garage.

The Martin Jet Pack has an ideal flying height of 500 to 1,000 feet and a theoretical flight distance of 30 miles within 30 minutes on 5 gallons of fuel. At the event, however, it hovered for 45 seconds with a couple of spotters holding it down before touching ground back again. Glenn Martin was pleased with the result of the demonstration nevertheless, saying it "went better than expected." Now that the project has found backing, Mr. Martin remains positive about its development and believes that it's ideal for use by military and fire crews, and even by ordinary commuters.