They show two versions in the diagram. One has conventional jet engines inside the saucer, but the other one has parts of the whole saucer spinning so the fuselage works like an engine. They have compressor blades, burners and turbine blades inside.
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.
That second one, from a basic analysis... it isn't really much different to a helicopter in its principle, given the size and spacing of the outer turbine blades. An obvious concern given the similarities to a helicopter is how well can something with a rotor the same size and an even larger jet engine stay in the air if it has a smaller fuel tank?
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.
I find the US Air Force's Nuclear Flying Saucer much more interesting.
It was originally published in November of 2000 by Popular Mechanics, but I am unable to locate the article on their site, so here's google's scan of the magazine in which it appeared:
I believe it got a maximum of about three feet off the ground before aerodynamic instability made it impossible to control. I'm not sure even with fly-by-wire the problem could be fixed. Just varying the engine throttle and thrust redirection machinery wouldn't be sufficient.
As I recall, the control problems were in the boundary layer, when the ground effect benefits waned, but before the engines pushed it into 'flight'-proper.
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.
Sorry about that. I didn't mean boundary layer as a technical term. I just meant the problem was in the transition from the ground-effect-dominated regime to the regime of traditional flight.
>> and the first prototype Avrocar came to the National Museum ... in 2007.
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 :-)
You know, I get it that we shouldn't declassify our secret military tech and cede any unnecessary advantage to the Red-Commies (nevermind the fact that they had KGB agent working at Avro), but I'd bet that a lot of research conducted at the behest of the military has commercial value. I'd also bet that we spend a lot of effort inventing some of these things over again. It seems like a huge waste to keep these types of projects classified so long past their relevance.
"...In 2001, U.S. Air Force personnel cleared the document cache for public release...But it took 11 years to crack open the boxes in College Park and glimpse the saucer secrets within..."
So for things the government wants to declassify, there's over an eleven-year waiting period. Wow.
Considering this is for a vehicle that never came close to working in its prototype form and was based on an ill-conceived fascination with a saucer design that required it to be nothing but an ensemble of jet engines with thrust redirection required in every direction it makes one wonder how anything ever gets released to the public.
This project is mentioned in the Wikipedia page ("Project 1794")--it actually predates the Avrocar. The attitude/flight control design was slightly different: where the Avrocar had an asymmetrical rotating ring around the edge to provide attitude control, the earlier design used thrust vector nozzles like those used in the Harrier and F-35.
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.
I think one might instead say that the military is trying to develop technology about two decades before it will actually see any use -- which means that stuff which is actually being used is nearly always using 10-20 years old technology.
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".
They declassified a lot of it a couple of years ago, I saw a good documentary on what was going on there. They had pictures of the crash site clean-up and everything (it was an Angel or Blackbird that crashed iirc, which does agree with the reports of a strange, not seen before material)
The Roswell incident predates Angel/Blackbird by decades.
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).
IIRC I think George Dyson wrote a book or article on Project Mogul at some point... or at least he researched it in depth enough to talk in detail about it for 30 minutes at a lecture of his I went to. My google-fu can't seem to find a citation to him though.
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.
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if the city of Roswell itself, if not the state of New Mexico, had an interest in keeping the mythology alive and the documents classified. When the Roswell incident struck a chord with the public, it probably put the city on the map to some degree. I'm sure it has driven a fair amount of tourism over the years, if not strong pop-cultural iconology.
New Mexican here. The fascination is pretty much confined to Roswell. Yes, it definitely put the city on the map, and yes, it drives some tourism. But Roswell is not large and it's hard to imagine how a city would petition for classified stuff to stay classified. Besides, cranks are cranks and no quantity of facts will serve to dissuade them. Roswell's UFO crap is already extremely hokey. It's part of the culture now, so it doesn't matter if there's a reason for it or not. Just like Zozobra up in Santa Fe, it's just this thing.
Sorry I've looked it up and it appears I was mistaken about the source of the infamous 1947 crash. The OXCART project did operate out of Area 51 though, and there were a number of crashes and cover ups - they were working on spy planes after all!
This fake novelty is just click bait.