Flying Chair: “Bell Aerosystems Flying Seat” 1965 NASA Langley; Bell Rocket Belt Derivative

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The Bell Flying Seat is flown in several tests in this compilation of 1965 footage.. “The seat itself was a modified fiberglas office chair. The hydogen peroxide powerplant was a modified rocket belt system. The control system was essentially the same as the Bell rocket belts. A total of 16 free flights were accomplished fter a series of tethered flights (February 19 – June 30, 1965), during which four different operators flew the flying seat (Bill Suitor, Gordon Yeager, Robert Courter, Wendell Moore).”

Public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The Bell Rocket Belt is a low-power rocket propulsion device that allows an individual to safely travel or leap over small distances. It is a type of rocket pack…

Overview

In the early 1960s, Bell Aerosystems built a rocket pack which it called the “Bell Rocket Belt” or “man-rocket” for the US Army, using hydrogen peroxide as fuel. This concept was revived in the 1990s and today these packs can provide powerful, manageable thrust. This rocket belt’s propulsion works with superheated water vapour. A gas cylinder contains nitrogen gas, and two cylinders containing highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide. The nitrogen presses the hydrogen peroxide onto a catalyst, which decomposes the hydrogen peroxide into a mixture of superheated steam and oxygen with a temperature of about 740 °C. This was led by two insulated curved tubes to two nozzles where it blasted out, supplying the propulsion. The pilot can vector the thrust by altering the direction of the nozzles through hand-operated controls. To protect from resulting burns the pilot had to wear insulating clothes.

The Bell Rocket Belt was successful and popular but was limited in its potential uses to the Army due to limited fuel storage…

One Bell Rocket Belt is on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s, National Air and Space Museum annex, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, located near Dulles Airport. Another resides at the State University of New York at Buffalo’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. It has been used in presentations at Disneyland and at the 1984 Summer Olympics and 1996 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies. It has also been seen in movies and on television. This type of rocket belt was used in the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball…

Wendell F. Moore began working on a rocket pack as early as 1953 (possibly, after learning about Thomas Moore’s work) while working as an engineer at Bell Aerosystems. Experiments began in the mid-1950s… The main problem was achieving stable and steady flight…

In 1959 the U.S. Army contracted Aerojet General to conduct feasibility studies on a Rocket Belt and contracted Bell Aerosystems to develop a Small Rocket Lift Device (SRLD)…

On 17 February 1961, the pack veered sharply, reaching the end of the safety tether, which then broke, causing Moore to fall approximately 2.5 meters, breaking his kneecap. He could no longer fly. Engineer Harold Graham took over as test pilot…

On 20 April 1961 (the week after Yuri Gagarin’s flight), on a vacant spot near the Niagara Falls airport, the first free flight of a rocket pack was performed…

In subsequent flights Graham learned how to control the pack and perform more complex maneuvers: flying in a circle and turning on a spot. He flew over streams and cars, ten-meter hills, and between trees. From April through May 1961 Graham carried out 28 additional flights… In the course of testing maximums of duration and distance were achieved: duration 21 seconds; range 120 m; height 10 m; speed, 55 km/h.

Demonstrations

On 8 June 1961, the pack was publicly demonstrated for the first time before several hundred officers at the Fort Eustis military base. Other public demonstrations then followed, including the famous flight in the Pentagon courtyard…

On 11 October 1961… the pack was demonstrated personally to President John F. Kennedy…

…A large contingent of service personnel needed to accompany the rocket pack… In the opinion of the military, the “Bell Rocket Belt” was more a spectacular toy than an effective means of transport. The army spent $150,000 on the Bell Aerosystems contract. Bell spent an additional $50,000. The army refused any further expenditure on the SRLD program, and the contract was cancelled…