Hal Graham, the charming original Bell rocketman who in 1961 flew the first free flight of the company’s precursor to a jetpack, the Rocket Belt, died on October 22. To remember and honor Hal, known in the greater rocketing community as “His Eminence,” I am dedicating this space this week to his memory and his incredible life. Below please find the section of my book in which Hal is the star. I didn’t know Hal terribly well but I knew him well enough to be very fond of him and to greatly admire him. I am far from alone.

Harold Graham was an energetic twenty-six-year old with the build of the ice hockey player he was. He’d been hired by Bell a couple of years earlier, taking on the undesirable graveyard shift in the rocket-testing department of the Mercury project. For a year and a half he punched the clock and worked for twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Quickly burned out, he soon resigned and was casting about for something better when the phone rang one…

As is often the case with such matters, I was rather late to the Balloon Boy party. It’s not that I am living under an enormous, mossy rock or, worse, without a high-speed Internet connection. I must’ve just been away from my computer for a few hours on October 15 when it all went down. So I didn’t hear about the Balloon Boy until about 4:07 P.M. Eastern Time that day, a good three or four hours after the story broke. That, of course, is a news and gossip lifetime in the age of … well, pick whichever of the countless online harbingers of our speeded-up age you’d like to.

I first heard about the Balloon Boy —naturally named Falcon — when my wife emailed me with the subject: “For your next Faster Times post.” (Sorry to have to get all meta on your virtual arses but there you go.) And my first reaction to her note was: Yes! Perfect! But then two days went by, and then three and even though I was only barely skimming the updates of the story, I’d already grown…

A few readers have emailed me recently to ask if I am aware that there is a Scottish indie rock band called We Were Promised Jetpacks. I am, but only a little bit. Some friends were over for dinner last month and one guy had the band on his iPhone so he played them and put the phone in the middle of the table where Lazy Susans once went.

I liked what I heard — reved-up, loudquietloud, springy-guitar  rock that reminded me a little of Icicle Works, who you might remember from this song — so I sought out the band’s music on MySpace.

Then a couple of days ago I had this idea: maybe I can get the band to write a Jetpack Theme Song exclusively for The Faster Times. Ambitious? Yes. Insane? I don’t think so, but let me look into it. As far as I can tell the four Scottsmen have never recorded a song explicitly about jetpacks, per se. But they are obviously fans of the things and understand the mad longing many of us have for what could have been. So … let’s see what we can…