Flying Frenchman Franky Zapata zips across Channel on flyboard

RFI ^ | August 4, 2019 | RFI

[red flanker]

French inventor Franky Zapata has zoomed across the English Channel on his jet-powered flyboard, making the 35k crossing between Sangatte on the northern coast of France and St. Margaret's Bay in Dover in twenty minutes.

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Charles and Anne Lindbergh would have been astonished and amazed, because it seems like what a mix of sci-fi and some of our dreams of what the future looks like.

There are some videos on YouTube that cover the accomplishment from start to finish. This following link has liftoff at 27m mark and landing over cliffs of Dover about 47m later.

Zapata Flys Across the Channel

[gdzla]

Shut up an play yer guitar.

[Vermont Lt]

Now they can run away over water.

[sevlex]

Shut up an play yer guitar.

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I see what you did there;)

[Eleutheria5]

Next ISIS will try doing the same trick on a flyboard of their own, but weighed down with an AK47, a bandolier full of ammo, and a dozen frags. Back to the future.

[Vendome]

Heathcliff!!! Heathcliff!!!

[RandallFlagg]

Don’t forget.
Dolph Lundgren did it in Masters of the Universe, too.
And he had a friggin’ sword!

[Buttons12]

https://www.zapata.com/en

Watched a video of flyboard performance here.

Gonna need some bigger flyswatters.

[C210N]

It would be a bad day to forget to tie your shoelaces.

How do we know he didn’t pull a Rozie Ruiz?

Kidding aside, cool accomplishment... hat-tip to Franky Zapata.

[laplata]

“Gonna need some bigger flyswatters”.

That flyboard has the potential to be a fly swatter. Something goes wrong and “splat”.

[freebilly]

They’ll be flying across the Rio Grande on hoverboards in the near future....

[Da Coyote]

Risky, even foolish, but he pulled it off.

Very good!

[Eleutheria5]

Life can imitate art PDQ.

[Eleutheria5]

Poor little migrants./s

[Raymann]

A bit of warning before you link to a monitized commie video. I don’t like giving them my money that easy.

[Revolutionary]

Coming to halftime at a football game near you:-)

[butlerweave]

I don’t see the point of this thing when most people can’t walk and chew gum at the same time

[ClearCase_guy]

I wonder if it might have military applications.

[adorno]

I don’t see the point of this thing when most people can’t walk and chew gum at the same time

Eventually, it will be a 'self-flying' flyboard. Human intervention not needed. Then the green crowd will insist on electric flyboards, and that's the end of that.

[sevlex]

Back to the future: