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Flying Saucers Through the Ages

Inventors have long been intrigued with the shape and potential of round aircraft. Most of the ideas, however, barely got off the ground.

Posted 11.4.08 at 11:27 am 2 Comments

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2002
U.S. Army/ Bill Rose
Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in Connecticut developed an unmanned aerial vehicle in the 1980s capable of taking off and landing vertically. The doughnut-shaped, rotor-powered Sikorsky Cypher [left] was designed for surveillance and reconnaissance flights. It could fly autonomously using its onboard computer or be controlled remotely by a pilot on the ground.
Until the end of the 1990s, the U.S. Marine Corps continued to develop the technology for the Cypher, including GPS navigation, visible- and infrared-light video cameras and a laser range finder. A derivative model, the Cypher II, later renamed Dragon Warrior by the Marine Corps, featured several upgrades and included wings, but the project was short-lived—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a technology-focused government group, withdrew funding in 2002.
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Technology
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1990s
Mikkel Juul Jensen
Russia’s Saratov Aviation designed an elliptical craft [left] with wings called the EKIP (which stands for Ecology and Progress) for civilian air travel and military use. Saratov tested a proof-of-concept, remote-control, model-size craft in 1994 and an unmanned prototype weighing 26,455 pounds in 1996, with the hope that a larger version would have a range of 3,278 miles and carry up to 396 tons of cargo. As a bonus, it would be able to take off and land on either a runway or water. The plane, dubbed the “Russian UFO” by the American media, was unstable during wind-tunnel testing. Several remedies were proposed, including new tail-fin arrangements, and the designs looked promising.
By the end of the decade, though, the Russians dropped their support for the project due to financial concerns, and Saratov turned to the American military. NAVAIR, a division of the U.S. Navy, took interest in the project. But in 2005, it also abandoned the technology for unknown reasons, and for now, the EKIP idea is grounded.
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Technology
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2 Comments

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midnking11co

11/08/08 at 10:23 am

some of the pics don't show

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sonofanel

11/08/08 at 11:10 pm

It has occurred to me that if we ever manage to develop a small efficient fusion reactor and combine it with some kind of ion propulsion system, the low thrust density of the ion system might require lots of surface area for VTOL. A saucer shape might be perfect! Now if only we could figure out how to use nanotechnology to build arrays of efficient single ion cannons on a chip...