A closer look
The US Office of Naval Research looked at the Segway decades before it was invented and thought, "Let's make it fly and arm the rider." The Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee was an experimental 1950s transport platform featuring a massive ducted fan that blasted downward. To steer this floating deathtrap, the pilot literally just leaned their body weight in the direction they wanted to go. While the physics actually worked perfectly, the military scrapped the project after realizing an exposed soldier floating at 15 mph makes for an incredibly slow, obvious target.
