this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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HistoryPhotos

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Photos of the Williams X-Jet in flight, US, 1982 (infosec.pub)
submitted 3 months ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historyphotos@piefed.social
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[–] NaibofTabr 7 points 3 months ago (8 children)

what exactly keeps this thing from flipping over?

[–] habitualTartare@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Found the patent which has diagrams of the inside https://patents.google.com/patent/US4447024

[–] NaibofTabr 3 points 2 months ago

Oh, yes, I see, it's just a box with a jet turbine between your legs. No crash safety, and not much room for heat shielding so that must be fun after about 5 minutes.

The operator 44 achieves pitch control of the vehicle 10 for forward and rearward flight and roll control for sideways translation by leaning in the desired direction of flight.

Directional control of forward flight of the vehicle 10 is achieved by vanes 50 in the jet nozzle region of the engine 14. The vanes 50 are split so as to be actuated in opposite directions to swirl the exhaust of the engine 14 either in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction to cause the vehicle 10 to rotate in a counterclockwise or clockwise direction, respectively. The angle of the yaw vanes is controlled by the twist grip control handle 26 actuated directly by the operator's hand through a conventional flexible cable or push rod control linkage, not shown.

So... the only real control is rotation (yaw). If a stiff breeze starts to tilt you over, there's no way to recover.

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