Flying Disks: Humanity's Attempts to Make Flying Saucers

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[KarlBunker]

Avro Car: "I'll have a ceiling of 100, 000 feet!!"
Also Avro Car: "Uuuuhhh, would you believe 2 feet?"

[Nerevar]

Kenneth Arnold didn’t actually describe the objects he claimed to have seen as being disk-shaped. He used the term “saucer” to describe their movement (“like saucers skipping across the water”), but the illustrations he used always displayed a rounded flying-wing shape.

[skyden]

The novel extent of the Roswell incident: During my time working for Toys R Us, during the latter half of the 1990's, I came across a unique toy made by an obscure company called "Street Players Holding Corp." The toy is a six-inch (15.24cm) figure of a greyish-blue humanoid with a slightly oversized head which features large black eyes in contrast to minimal nose and mouth. The body is proportionally equivalent to human, however sporting only three digits per hand and foot. The figure is equipped with three points of articulation, those being at the neck and both shoulders. The packaging announces the toy as "the Roswell Aliens" and includes the date and location of the infamous incident as well as a brief backstory of the incident (the incident story located on the back of the packaging.) However, the included incident story is based on the conspiracy story of four aliens being found with the wreckage. The packaging also states that the toy was created/released in 1996.
Being that the toy was a far cry from the usual G.I. Joe/Star Wars/Barbie etc. type figures which usually covered the shelves/aisles of Toys R Us, I had to have it. Needless to say, the figure still hangs on my wall, in its original packaging, to this day.

[robertslater]

A Simon video at 10 pm Eastern, someone forgot something. Also the NASA low boom experimental airplane would be a good side project. My dad has been working on the project for longer than I've been alive and it should start testing this year or the next

[FluffyEmmy]

1:10 Excuse me, but the meteor that killed the dinosaurs was, in fact, alien. Granted, it was a big rock, but it was still a big-ass extra-terrestrial rock.

[kylesanders]

In high school and college I built small ionocraft, similar in concept to the WEMAVs, and powered them with the necessary 30-50kV using the flyback transformer from CRT monitors or televisions.
Constructed in a triangular shape, taking advantage of Faraday's principle of charge accumulation, a high voltage corona wire would ionize the air molecules around it giving them a positive charge and attracting them to a grounded aluminum skirting. In the dark the wire would glow orange and blue, and there would be a "metallic" smell in the air due to the ozone gas produced by the process.

[manofharlech]

Well, there are households, where flying saucers are pretty common thing. However, those are rather products of rage than science... 😁

[jimheald]

I worked in Bell aerospace and I talked with the old men that built the averocar. It was built to the government's specification.

[Happymali]

"UFO" just means "unidentified flying object".
If you're bad at identifying stuff a 747 can be a UFO.

[michaelpipkin]

At AREA 51-, we got my dad arrested / detained for 9 hours.

We were taking pictures of the signs that say "don't take pictures" and then my brother and I ran up the hill. We didn't make it all the way

I still have the pictures.

[demonicusa.k.a.theblindguy]

The Flash of light you saw was swamp gas from a weather balloon trapped in a thermal pocket and refracting the light from Venus.

[jakeaurod]

Perfect timing. I've been thinking of how to build an ultralight vehicle to look like a flying saucer. I figured the best cheap design that might work would be a ducted fan with the pilot sitting below the top rotor motor, inside the duct's hub (for pendulum dihedral effect for stability), an aerodynamic shell of clear plastic. The main saucer section would be pipe and aluminized mylar with ducts bleeding off the main fan duct for horizontal propulsion as well as 3-axis control. The empty volume of the saucer could be filled with lifting gas for buoyancy.

Visibility might seem difficult, but it might be achieved by simply looking through the gas bags and mylar, which might be doable if there isn't too much light on the inside coming through the fan. Alternately, visibility might be achieved by using cameras mounted outside and shown on small LCD screens or projected around the pilot, if the hub is darkened. Or maybe the pilot could wear augmented-reality goggles...perhaps integrated into the helmet... but then the pilot might look like this: 👽

[missheadbanger]

I knew about the Avrocar and I'm happy it's on this list, Canada also have a UFO landing pad in St Paul and a town called Vulcan which are both in Alberta

[jmanj]

"This video was released at an unusual time due to a riot and a subsequent escape attempt from the basement. We apologize for any confusion." Lol

[ignitionfrn]

2:30 - Chapter 1 - Background
6:20 - Chapter 2 - The avrocar
10:55 - Chapter 3 - Astro V dynafan
13:30 - Chapter 4 - Wingless electromagnetic air vehicle
15:15 - Chapter 5 - Honorable mentions
15:45 - Chapter 5.1 - Low density supersonic decelerator
16:40 - Chapter 5.2 - Round wing planes

[sampilcher]

I love hearing Simon say Mississauga 😂

[lauriepenner]

Building a working UFO is like genetically engineering a unicorn: It's rad as hell as long as you don't think about it for more than 5 minutes. It would cost billions of dollars in R&D, and you won't get anything we don't have already (VTOL jets, ponies).

[SpeedbirdNine]

Miss-a-saw-ga, Ontario is the place.

[geoffk]

The Flying Wing Bombers of the 1950's failed because computer stability systems weren't available then. The availability of these led to the successful B-2 stealth bomber much later. I often wonder if the AvroCar were revived, whether modern stability systems would overcome the issues that they experienced and make them a practical prospect. Admittedly, the Coanda effect didn't seem to work as well as expected in flight, but that's another area where modern computer modellng might fix it. Sometimes failed concepts are not worthless, just ahead of their time.

[pirobotbeta]

Tesla had a design for a flying 'fire escape elevator'.
Rows of his famed turbines were mounted to the top of an elevator car to provide lift.
When spinning, the turbines were said to create a 'vacuum cell' above the car powerful enough to lift 12 men safely.
The elevators would escape the building through sky-lights at the top of elevator shafts and fly to safety.
No mention was made as to how one might control such a 'Willy Wonka' elevator while in flight, or how to power it.
Would it work?
Who knows, he came up with it during his 'shouting at cracks in the sidewalk' phase.