The Mexican Rocketeer

Excerpted from the March issue of Popular Science: Juan Manuel Lozano’s dream began when he was seven years old. “I don’t remember what I did last week,” Lozano tells me in his workshop, as he distills the hydrogen peroxide fuel that powers his homebuilt machine. “But I will never forget the first time I saw that rocket belt.”

It was February 1963, and NASA had brought its American space expo to the Campo Marte polo grounds in Mexico City. The star feature was the Bell Rocket Belt, also known as a jetpack (because the devices are rocket-powered, people who work on them prefer the term “rocket belt”). Strapped to the backs of two fearless fliers, the belt made the impossible possible for 21 dynamite seconds, four times a day, fueling the fantasies of sci-fi fans young and old. Juan sure had never seen anything like it. And he wanted to see it again and again and again.

Few, if any, of the 620,000 observers at the NASA expo would ever again see the likes of what they saw that February. Despite the great optimism of the early ’60s, in the rocket belt’s brief history, only 12 souls have flown one. More people have walked on the moon. But Juan Manuel Lozano didn’t want to go to the moon.

Read this amazing and inspiring story in its entirety in the March issue of Popular Science or at PopSci.com - and visit Lozano's website here.