Because I’ve got to beta test a Twine story this evening… I leave you with some deep thinking on the topic of whether dogs can – and should – pilot their own jetpacks.
Here is a video of a jetpack/wingsuit being piloted over Dubai.
I found this video while researching a scene in a short story. The whole scene eventually ended up on the cutting room floor, but the original had soldiers flying down a narrow gorge. They were accompanied by a military working dog. And I wondered, ‘Would the dog have its own jetpack/wingsuit’? I knew that paradoggers existed in the Second World War and, indeed, had their own parachutes.
Belatedly, I discovered the Dubai wingsuits weigh 55kg; five times that of your typical springer spaniel. A dog piloting a wingsuit wasn’t feasible in hard SF without a major improvement in material science. With a sign of disappointment, I strapped the paradog to its handler and my characters breathed a (fictive) sigh of relief. They know dogs as well as I do. Almost every year, one American is shot by their dog.
A dog with a jetpack would only make trouble with the damn thing…