Engineer Builds Jet Engine With a Floating Fan in His Workshop

A mechanical engineer created an innovative jet engine featuring a fan that hovers inside its housing, suspended by gas pressure from its own operation, with small rim nozzles spinning the fan while hot gases from a combustion chamber provide lift and rotation. After testing a compressed-air prototype, the combustion version faced heat expansion problems that trapped components together, but adding water spray to create steam and anodizing the aluminum fan solved the thermal issues, ultimately producing 2.7 kg of thrust.