National Hispanic Heritage Month: Celebrating Juan Lozano #HispanicHeritageMonth
A human almost singularly obsessed with jetpacks and making them a real reality, we celebrate Juan Lozano for today’s installment of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Mexican-born and raised, Lozano is a self-taught engineer who has been the feature of NPR clips and Motherboard episodes for his specialty mix of hydrogen peroxide-fueled jetpacks.
The jet pack conjures up images of the Jetsons, or James Bond blasting off in the film Thunderball. But in Mexico, there is a man who believes he can bring back this obsolete technology and make it useful for everyday life.
Juan Manuel Lozano Gallegos is one of only two men in the world keeping the dream of the jet pack alive. While his version of the Rocket Belt doesn’t blast him very high, it does work. Less successful are his rocket bike and other gadgets.
Lozano is a self-taught engineer, scientist and pilot — and the designer of what was, for years, the only commercially available jet pack, or “Rocket Belt,” as he calls it.
Read more here at NPR; and if you want to see his tech in action watch this episode of Motherboard with Juan Lozano.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!