Declassified: America's Secret Flying Saucer
popularmechanics.com
popularmechanics.com
This fake novelty is just click bait.
That is interesting, and I haven't run into anyone pointing out this distinction or doing any analysis on it. I don't know what limits the aerodynamics but potentially you could get really high amounts of thrust, something more comparable to a helicopter than a Harrier. You could run into big problems with gyroscopic effects as well, maybe you would need two "spools" that counter rotate.
As for the design they actually constructed, it seems like it would be a lot more feasible with modern technology. It's not clear to me that there's any actual advantage to building a flying saucer though, other than novelty.
That said, it also sounded like it was capable of 'flight'-proper for the same reason that just about any-shaped craft is capable of flight when strapped to engines of such outsize mass and power.
If you're talking about a planetary boundary layer, then ground effect occurs within that because the PBL extends to the ground.
[1] http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id...
The article explains that the project was declassified in 2001 but it has taken 11 years for the 2 billion record backlog to get to it. Which implies that the US Government has found an almost perfect means of classifying anything top secret for ever - produce paperwork faster than it can be sifted :-)
So for things the government wants to declassify, there's over an eleven-year waiting period. Wow.
The YF-22 development/demo contract was awarded in 1986. F-22s were deployed in war games in 2005 (19 years later), and saw combat in 2007 (21 years later). [1] So, there's about a 20 year lead between when we come up with a concept and finally work enough of the bugs out to have it deployed.
The F-35 is newer, and seems to be making progress. Its first planned deployment is 2017, and the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) development contract was awarded in 1996. Lockheed Martin's X-35 beat Boeing in 2001, as the X-35 had less risk [2]. So, the F-35 is likely to have a similar two decade span between prototype and initial concepts and deployment.
In that time, of course, there will be advancements in electronics, stealth technology, and weapons -- and the new craft will be testing them. (That's why we have Edwards AFB.) So not all of the tech on these planes is 20 years old -- but I still don't think we can call that "ahead of its time".
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_...
(Or am I missing something obvious?)
It seemed the project failed due to engineering problems unrelated to the design: it had oil leaks, and at one point an engine broke free from the aircraft and launched off on its own, endangering the test engineers.
Had these unrelated problems not occurred, it's possible that they could have succeeded where the later Avrocar failed, since the control principles in the earlier project were sound and eventually successfully used in modern VTOL aircraft.
Regardless, the incident at Roswell has long since been declassified. It was a crash of flight number 4 of Project Mogul, a use of high-altitude weather balloons to detect Soviet nuclear tests.
If you read the original written reports of what was found, it describes very clearly a prototype Project Mogul payload: a circular array of microphones and radar transponders attached using sticks, rubber strands, and scotch tape, and wrapped up in aluminium foil (for EFI shielding and radar reflectance).
Ugh, I've made a huge number of mistakes in my comment. Should have looked it up first.
Angel is the U-2, not the A-12 like I thought, U-2 flew from 1955, already too late, A-12 even later obviously.
Thanks for the info on project mogul!
It's actually a very interesting history linked to the U-2, A-12/SR-71, etc. Seismography and atmospheric radioisotopes ended up being an easier and more precise way to detect Soviet nuclear testing. But the balloons developed were then used to spy on and map Soviet installations in Siberia, dropping their camera payloads in the sea of Japan. Of course the same sort of overflights would later be done by the U-2 and then SR-71 until the early Keyhole satellites made the very concept of atmospheric overflight obsolete.