[omegaman]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/the-airforce/

[Akula2ssn]

Back during the Golden Age of aerospace R&D. Back when scientists and engineers could do their work and follow it to its conclusion. If the conclusion was that it wasn't going to pan out, then try something else. We're much more risk averse. Not necessarily a bad thing but I think we take it to the point of stifling innovation.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

Declassified testing photos

[starbase63]

Originally Posted by omegaman

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/the-airforce/

I'll vouch for that...my dad had a copy of Popular Mechanics from the late 50's that had an article about that very saucer being tested by the USAF.

I might have it, I'm not sure. If I ever come across it, I'll scan it.

[starbase63]

I tried to Google the cover, I found it. It's not Popular Mechanics, it was Mechanix Illustrated...



Volume 52 Number 3, March 1956

[LCARS 24]

Actually, they farmed it out to a Canadian firm. Here are the results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmPiZv4q4Ms

Main problem with this design, as I see it, is that if you’re working with a fan the rim of the fan has to be its main structure but the main structural member of the body has to have a rim with minimal clearance from the fan rim, for a true ducted-fan effect with gyroscopic stability. That was covered in your previous thread about a Star Wars speeder bike designed around the rim requirements of ducted fans.

But in 1912 Nikola Telsa wrote a letter to George Westinghouse claiming to be close to emulating the flight characteristics of what were later called flying saucers. In the meantime, Marconi was infringing on Tesla’s radio patent, a situation the Supreme Court didn’t rectify until a few months after Telsa’s death. But AC electric power distribution has to be the greatest technical contribution of the 20th century. And that innovation came from Tesla, who died penniless (even though the success of Westinghouse Corp. was based on Tesla’s inventions), with that Supreme Court case against Marconi pending.