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The biggest utility I can see would be some already proposed with prototypes. I.e. military boarding a boat, and high angle search and rescue. We've seen tech demos for both. I have no expertise in mountain climbing or EMS, so I can't speak for how far off we are from that being practical or useful. For things like boat boardings, it seems like it could (eventually) be the best solution to an awful situation. If bad guys with guns are on a boat and you need to get on said boat (whether to repossess the boat, or save people on the boat) boarding it is a tactical nightmare. Your options are basically: 1. Ride a small boat up to it, hope they don't see you, and climb into bad guy boat. If the bad guys did see you and start shooting you, hopefully your friends from another boat or helicopter can shoot them first. 2. Fly a noisy helicopter above said bad guy boat and fast rope down, hoping they don't shoot you or the helicopter before you get into a fighting position 3. I dont know, maybe parachute onto it? Options 1 and 2 are outside of, but adjacent to, my expertise. This is a whole other level. The military has proposed, tried, and done crazier things though. Option 4, Jetpacks, would be nice. To be able to go from good guy boat to bad guy boat within like, 30 seconds, is still a rough approach but probably the least awful. Fortunately, for society (unfortunately for the Jetpack industry) maritime hostage rescue is a pretty small market surface |