WITHOUT APPROVAL, YOU CAN’T BUY ‘ IRON MAN’ THRUSTERS

If you combined the SkyMall catalogue with the Christmas list of some spoiled rich kid you’d end up with Hammacher Schlemmer: an impossible menagerie of everything from shoe polishers, to talking scales, to this amazing set of underwater thrusters that you wear like a pair of Iron Man’s pants, reports Gizmodo. If there’s a better way to spend $ 31,000 we haven’t seen it.

A pair of six- inch electric thrusters silently propel a swimmer to speeds of up to three- and- a- half knots, and on a full charge the propulsion pants have a range of about two miles. But, you can extend that by bringing along an extra battery that can actually be swapped in while underwater.

But if that isn’t hardcore enough for you, check out the limitations on who can buy a pair, and where they can use it:

Only available from Hammacher Schlemmer for recreational use by US citizens within US territorial waters, its advanced design requires purchase approval from the US department of state.

It seems like it’s easier to buy a gun, high- end explosives, or even a small army than it is to order one of these for a fun weekend on the lake.