PHOTO: RYAN PIERSE/GETTY IMAGES

According to his handlers, stuntman Dan Schlund [shown] is one of only 11 people ever to fly a rocket belt. In other words, more people have walked on the moon than have strapped on this 75-kilogram mass of tanks, pipes, and nozzles—and taken off. A perpetual personal-transportation fantasy, rocket belts never became more than a novelty act, though they are a lucrative one. A single appearance by Schlund or one of his colleagues from Powerhouse Productions Inc. can fetch thousands of dollars.

Invented for the U.S. Army by Wendell Moore at Bell Aerosystems Co., Buffalo, N.Y., back in the 1950s, the rocket belt was clearly a military defeat. The roar of the belt's hydrogen peroxide—fueled engine and the low altitude limit made any soldier wearing it an easy target. Of course, the fact that a pilot could fly it for only about 20 seconds didn't help either. Still, the dream lives on in the form of personal flight gizmos like the rotor-propelled Springtail, developed by Trek Aerospace Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., and in patent applications such as Toyota Corp.'s personal "vertical takeoff and landing apparatus."