How the F-35B Hovers on One Engine

This fighter jet is standing still in the air. It is an F-35B, the Marine Corps version, and one engine is holding it up — an engine that sits at the very back of the jet. To hover, the F-35B sends power forward down a spinning shaft to a fan hidden behind the cockpit, bends its tailpipe until it points at the ground, and balances on four columns of air. This video walks through how one engine holds a jet still: why a normal jet can't hover, how the Harrier did it by blasting its own exhaust down, how a driveshaft and clutch bring a cold fan to life in about fifteen seconds, how a three-ring tailpipe swings ninety-five degrees in two and a half seconds, how two small wing nozzles and a flight computer trim all four columns — and what it costs, from the heat on a ship's deck to the fuel the jet gives up. 0:00 Standing Still 0:58 One Push, Wrong Place 1:48 The Harrier's Trick 2:46 A Shaft to a Fan 3:49 Cold Air 4:39 The Bending Tailpipe 5:37 Four Columns 6:51 The Price 8:01 Touchdown 29,000 shaft horsepower is Rolls-Royce's "up to" rating for the LiftSystem driveshaft; an older article by a Rolls-Royce author says 28,000. The fan, tailpipe and roll-post thrust figures are nominal ratings, so "about 40,000 pounds" of total downward push is rounded. The fifteen-second conversion time comes from a test-era article. The comparison with a destroyer's 100,000 horsepower is our own arithmetic on two published figures. The Navy does not publish deck-temperature numbers, so this video doesn't give any. Full sources are in the pinned comment.