[NoOneNew]

Hey, serious question related to this since you have a search/rescue background. How would you find the survivor in a mountainous area? Don't you have to use a helicopter anyways or if it's a ground party... wouldn't the whole jetpack thing be redundant 90% of the time since someone is already there?

I don't know the economics to search/rescue problems all that well, but I've always understood that the budget is essentially never enough. With such strained budgets, does it make sense to have something so niche and expensive? It's not like these things are going to be maintenance, license and cert free if implemented to a life saving capacity.

[treetoppin]

My experience is focused on finding people over water, but a lot of the tools will be the same. Using NVGs if we're at night to pick up any sort of light, our electro optical sensor that has thermal imaging capability, and good old fashioned headwork for guessing where a survivor might be located over terrain. A helicopter isn't always going to be the only airborne search asset, so it's possible to imagine a fixed wing search asset locating a survivor, and then a jetpack medic getting to them to provide triage care. The economics of search and rescue are really tricky, and it's expensive to maintain such a specialized capability with a profit motive in mind. I don't know the specifics of the UKs SAR system, but I am pretty sure they have a civilian organization running their maratime search and rescue, but I don't know if the bill is footed entirely by the government. Was your economics question about the jet pack or helicopter based search and rescue?