What happens when the thing that made you feel most alive nearly kills you?

“Rocketman” Dan Schlund is one of the last professionally trained Rocketbelt pilots in the world. For a decade, he flew jet packs at events across 25 countries and six continents, performing hundreds of flights without a parachute and with only seconds of fuel strapped to his back.

But Dan’s most extraordinary story began after the spectacle ended.

Following devastating burns, extensive skin-graft surgeries, and a crash that left him with a broken neck, Dan lost far more than his ability to fly. He lost his income, his marriage, and the identity he had built around being the Rocketman. He also became dependent on pain medication and had to rebuild his life from the ground up.

Dan eventually founded National Set Medics, growing it into a multimillion-dollar company that provides medical professionals for film and television productions nationwide. Ten years after his final flight, he purchased the Rocketbelt and training hangar and returned to the air one more time for his memoir and documentary, The Last Rocketman.

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy and Dan explore:

• What happens when your identity disappears overnight
• The difference between courage and fearlessness
• How the nervous system responds after catastrophic injury
• Addiction, recovery, and the invisible work behind a comeback
• Calculated risk and decision-making under pressure
• Why Dan believes fear is information, not instruction
• What it took to strap the Rocketbelt on one final time

Dan’s message is not that we should become fearless. It is that courage can be practiced, preparation can change our relationship with fear, and our worst experience does not have to become our final one.

Learn more about Dan, his book, and the documentary:
https://rocketman.tv/

Learn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:
https://www.lisalacy.com/

Welcome to the Edge.