This ought to be fun! From the National Archives NDC blog I spy this little goodie!- Recently declassified records from the Aeronautical Systems Division, USAF
- reveal some ... perhaps never-before-seen images.
Those words and the above illustration, are contained in a document called "Project 1794, Final Development Summary Report” (d.1956)
The pages describe a project bye the USAF and a Canadian company Avro Aircraft Limited in Ontario. Avro was contracted to construct a disk-shaped craft.
The design specs. were amazing even for today and in the 50s practically unheard of. The craft would be designed to:
- a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) plane designed to reach a top speed of Mach 4, with a ceiling of over 100,000 feet, and a range of over 1,000 nautical miles.
The NDC article says that the other design graphics show a craft that was very similar to those in the UFO movies of the time.
The balance of the article can be found here 
2 comments:
Anything like this has to have a spin to it to make it anything airworthy.
Outside of that though, air systems and jet systems have never operated properly on these types of crafts.
There have been numerous experiments done, and they all failed miserably.
But it the same as throwing a plate or a star. If it is spinning, it moves on an even and set course more or less. Same as a Frisbee, (I always forget about those things). Try to throw one and not let it spin, and see what happens. Epic failure.
Gyroscopic synchronization between two opposing spins on the outer and inner hulls is the only way to make this happen right. Plus a few other aspects of this that need to be changed, and it also gives you other benefits as well from opposing spins, even in atmosphere which is all I am considering here actually, for the most part.
you realize that the only reason a frizbee spin is for stabilzation... you would be amazed how many don't. But the spin doesn't make it fly, but the Lamina flow and I think its' called the Conand Effect which effects a liquid's flow over a curved surface (that is why water climbs up the glass around the inside rim at the air,water boundry.) But it has been demonstrated that partial disks can fly as long as it is done by fly by wire. (B2 bomber for instance) so with today's computing power, I am guessing that the instability of an unspun disk would in fact aide flight dynamics.
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