To be honest, it has been quite some time since any technology has got us as the Flyboard Air. Not even Windhorse Aerospace’s edible drones or even the Airbus Self-Flying Cars. The good news is we are not the only ones surprised by this technology, as some people are even trying to debunk it as a hoax.
The thing, however, is that it is no hoax.
Although the Flyboard air has been around for a couple of years, it is yet to be approved and hit the market. What the technology does, is that you step on it, and you can simply fly off. Yes, I mean like Ironman.
Created by a man named Franky Zapata, the hoverboard does not need to be attached to anything before you can get going. Kapata is as well the creator of the Flyboards used at holiday resorts and other places using jets of water shooting down to allow their wearer to hover in the air.
According to him, he started work on it in July 2011, to be able to allow him to fly around the world and feel like a superhuman.
While his own which is produced by his company, Zapata Racing, it has been awarded the Guinness World Record title for the Farthest hoverboard flight during a spectacular attempt off the coast of Sausset-Les-Pins in the south of France.
He made the record after covering a distance of 2,252 meters (7,388 feet), to break an earlier record of 275.9 meters (905 feet, 2 inches), set last year by Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru.
According to Guinness Records, the aircraft can reach a claimed maximum height of 10,000 feet, with a maximum speed of 150 kilometers per hour (93 miles per hour). More so, it can stay airborne for up to ten minutes.
The Flyboard Air is designed to make use of “Independent Propulsion Unit” to fly hose-free.
Attempts have been made by others to create a workable hoverboard, however, Franky Zapata’s hoverboard is by far the most workable, convincing, and authentic.
The problem he may have to grapple with, nevertheless, is as regards legislation in different countries including his home country, France. This is after he has been having troubles with the aviation authority in the country who do not want him to keep testing the hoverboard. In fact, he has been threatened with arrest and imprisonment should he fly it again in the country.
As a result of that, he has taken to his Facebook to announce that he may have to leave the country to pursue the dream somewhere else.
“I’m going to be obliged with the greatest of regrets to definitely leave France. I am really sad. I love my country. I am French in my heart, in my culture, and in my soul,” he wrote.
In a swift reaction, people in the country showed their support to the inventor as they took to the internet to register their grievance through a petition on Change.org. They are asking the French government to intervene behalf of Zapata and allow him to fly and stay in the country.
“We protest against such an infringement of our freedom to create, invent, innovate and develop,” says the petition. While the target of the petition is to have 25,000 signatures, it has already recorded over 16,000 signatures.
