Twin-engined Jet Luge

A guy in Australia called Daz Fellows, or Daz the Cowboy as he’s better known, is in the stages of putting the finishing touches to a jet powered street luge he hopes will propel him into the record books.

His creation, which has been several years in the making and relied upon help and sponsorship from numerous specialist companies is pretty amazing. It’s based around a carbon fiber chassis with two jet turbine engines with afterburners fitted. The Jet Luge measures just a fraction under 10 ft (3 metres) in length and just 2 ft (0.6 metres) wide. In total the vehicle weighs just 72 lbs (33 kg).

Daz reckons the Jet Luge is theoretically capable of over 300 mph, although the main aim is just to top the 115.83 mph record set in 2011 by Jason Bradbury during the 200th episode of The Gadget Show.

To get up to speed, the luge uses a pair of jet turbines which each produce 190 lbs of thrust. However with the afterburners ignited power output is temporarily increased by 44 percent, providing just under 537 lbs of total thrust. That thrust is located about 2 cm from Mr. Cowboy’s head.

Control of the Jet Luge is just like any other gravity powered luge, just lean your body in the direction you want to go. To control the jets, there is a thumb roller wheel. Control of the afterburners, which are either on or off – there’s no gentle feeding in the power with these things – is done via a thumb button on the other side of the board. A kill switch connecting the driver and the board means that should Daz fall off the luge will shut down. A remote control kill switch is also built-in allowing one of Daz’s team to turn off the jets in the event he cannot, or if they see a problem he doesn’t.