These images come from the NASA History website for work done at the Langley Research Center. The images, the work, everything is f’ing awesome. The amazing repository of tens of thousands of photos can be found here at the Langley History Section of NASA CGRIS website. Above and beyond the sheer awesomeness of the photos is the direct lineage back to Charley Zimmerman’s first tethered experiments and the convention that fluid thrust flight had become by eleven years later in 1962.
This personal propulsion unit has a central jet in the middle of the platform and a plurality of nozzles that direct the motion and control. But cutting out the patent language bullshit, this unit flies on pressurized fluid using the main nozzle for thrust and balances not using the motion of the body, (this was a model for a larger lunar lander that would eventually use jet to land on the moon) but using valved compressed air for directional and stabilizing controls. The four main verticals look like jets but are not, no flexible pressure hose tubing connecting. The extension tubing, looking to be about 17 mm diameter controls the yaw and roll.
