hello everybody. Lets say you had jet boots that were unstable. They provided upward thrust but you could not control the thrust. You might suddenly jet off to the right. So now, you have this idea. To a gauntlet, that works simialair to an Ion thruster. Now, you you turn you boots on. Your flying up. You suddenly jerk to the right. You power up your right hand trhruster
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Ion thrusters provide microscopic amounts of thrust, they're efficient not powerful. If you can create an engine that could stabilize the boots, then use the same engine for the boots and you gain that much more control.

Has someone read too much into watching Iron Man recently? =)

If you were using something similar to an Ion thruster, the amount of power you would have to eject in the direction would be enough to vaporize anything within multiple meters, and the internal voltages and current would be nearly impossible to manage.

 

You most likely would not have the reflexes to stabilize the system.

You wouldnt even have the sense to know what was wrong. Your inner ear would be affected by the G's during the thrusting, so you wouldn't know which way is up, or if you were leaning left or right.

Aircraft pilots use instrumentation to show these things.

As for instability, the "flying wing" aircraft is unstable in flight. VERY fast computers are required to change flight surfaces to keep the aircraft stable in flight.

So, instead of trying to build a manual system of stabilization, an automatic system would be the way to go. If you had a gauntlet thruster, what good would it do?

Ok, what does a human do when their body is off balance?
Swing the arms to regain balance! So who know which direction the thruster would be pointing when you activate it?

And sceadwian is right...turn off the Iron Man dvd.