[telaelit]

Honestly, it's a lot easier to believe that it's aliens and not "illegal miners with jetpacks". Seems like an even more ridiculous explanation.

[theptip]

You know jetpacks are a thing now right?

https://youtu.be/DkZPI5m9SIE

“Illegal miners get their hands on some surprisingly niche tech” seems many many orders of magnitude more likely than anything related to aliens.

[idontwantthis]

Illegal miners in the Peruvian jungle would not be illegally mining in the Peruvian jungle if they had enough money and training to use one of those.

[ozim]

Illegal gold mining gangs from Colombia and Brazil.

It is not some bootleg mining to scrape by.

[idontwantthis]

That’s going to take about 4% less evidence to convince me than aliens would. I’d much sooner believe illegal miners and drones.

[theptip]

Still seems more likely than aliens.

[NBJack]

To be frank, as cool as that is, it is easy to overlook the same problem with drones: they are distinctively LOUD unless at a distance (and even then).

Would be interesting to corroborate whether unusual noises are associated with their arrival.

[dogma1138]

The sound signature is relatively localized and for ship to ship boarding it wouldn’t be difficult to mask it through an approach.

Sound doesn’t reflects well of water so if you can easily mask it by flying close to the water and quickly jumping over.

[nhinck2]

That thing has to be so bloody tiring to use, it'd have to be like constantly holding a dip right?

[theptip]

Good Q, hadn't thought of that. I think the back is providing most of the thrust and the hands are just to steer you, so you don't need to support the full bodyweight.

[nhinck2]

Didn't see the thruster on the back! However, their marketing claims you still have to support a little less than 50% of your body weight in forward flight.

I probably couldn't do that for the full 10 minute flight time though.

[yellowapple]

Illegal miners getting their hands on military prototypes seems pretty damn far-fetched, though.

Not to say that "aliens" is necessarily less far-fetched... but it's up there for sure.

[tennisflyi]

I would have believed it was aliens until I saw what you posted.

[euroderf]

> many orders of magnitude more likely

Money motivates+enables narco-traffickers to acquire some pretty amaze-level tech. So why not miners too ?

[sterlind]

seriously! it's literally a Scooby Doo plot. what's next, Shaggy and Velma manage to tie them up, and Fred unmasks them to discover it's an evil developer who wants to scare the locals away?

[kcplate]

I was thinking the same thing. Back in the 70s we were promised jet packs by now…so far, bupkis. I am starting to think the bastards lied to us.