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Ever been waterskiing, lost your balance, forgotten to let go of the rope handle, then been dragged face-forward through the wake? Imagine doing that, only you mean to, and instead of being dragged through the water by a powerful motor, you’ve got one attached to your feet that lets you arrow in and out of the water like a superhero bit by a radioactive dolphin.
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Meet the FlyBoard, a £15,000 (about $23,600 USD) water-powered jetpack you strap to your feet that lets you leap up to 30 feet out of the water — a little like Aquaman were he secretly Tony Stark. The whole thing works in tandem with a jet ski, which pipes water up a hose and out of the jets attached beneath special boots, propelling the wearer dozens of feet into the air.
Thank AquaticJetpacks, based in Poole, Dorset (located on the south-central coast of the U.K.), a company hoping to make what it’s dubbed “flyboarding” as popular as jetskiing, parasailing or windsurfing.
“It’s absolutely fantastic,” company honcho Ross Ceaton told The Telegraph. “[Flying] around above the waves makes you feel like Ironman, but when you plunge in and out of the surf, you feel more like a dolphin.”
If you don’t have $23,600 burning a hole in your wetsuit and you happen to live in or be passing through the U.K., you can alternatively drop by Dorset for lessons, which start at the comparably bargain price of £100 (about $157 USD) for a single 25 minute flight. You can also buy a scaled-down version of the FlyBoard for considerably less scratch: as low as £4,450 (about $7,000 USD) for the FlyBoard Kit, with the option to add pro throttling for £1,250 (about $1,965 USD) or a Jetski Turbine Adapter for £250 to £500 ($393 to $786 USD).