Two engineers have made an Iron Man-inspired underwater jet pack capable of speeds faster than Olympic legend Michael Phelps.
Ryan Kung and David Shulman spent three months building the device on weekends, and it’s more than your average piece of DIY.
“We could beat Michael Phelps if such hardware were permitted in a race,” the pair, from San Francisco in California, told the Press Association. “We’d probably lose to a motivated shark (and also be eaten, assuming that’s the shark’s motivation).”
“Longer distances are more difficult to keep it at top speed because the engines are so powerful they tend to jump out of the water and lose thrust,” they said. “It’s easy to use when cruising at a comfortable half-throttle, but full throttle really put a strain on our limbs.
“There were a few occasions when we felt our shoulders warning of imminent dislocation.”
“This was tough in that it was our first foray into propulsion and motors, but it definitely wasn’t our most difficult project to date,” they said. “The hardest one was definitely our Nerf Gun, which took eight weekends and probably 100 hours in total.
“The difficulty in that project came from using a high-pressure paintball tank in a way it was never intended, so it took a lot of careful development to avoid blowing our limbs off.”
“It was also the first project we put on the internet, so we have a pretty rosy recollection of it.”
“Keep pushing yourself through to the end,” they said. “Without fail every single one of our projects has seen us working through the night to fix an unexpected problem that would have ruined the entire build.
“Being able to admire the beauty and grace of engineering and appreciate how few people in the world were doing something so unique helped motivate us until we were finally done.”
