

Declassified: America's Secret Flying Saucer - morisy
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/military/declassified-americas-secret-flying-saucer-15075926

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Gravityloss
This is about the third time this is on hacker news and it's been on multiple
web pages before that for years.

This fake novelty is just click bait.

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Gravityloss
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.

~~~
ZoFreX
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.

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glabifrons
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:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=MxXlKb9wIe0C&lpg=PA68&#...</a>

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jgrahamc
Video of it 'in flight': <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQK3UcsD-JY>

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cpleppert
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.

~~~
roc
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.

~~~
starpilot
_Cringe_. That's not a boundary layer:
<http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/boundlay.html>

If you're talking about a planetary boundary layer, then ground effect occurs
within that because the PBL extends to the ground.

~~~
roc
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.

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biot
Interestingly, the work for engineering and manufacturing was billed out at a
whopping $6 an hour:
[http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/V...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/Vf/saucer-
secrets-12-1012-lgn.jpg)

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michael_h
What exactly has been declassified? One has been on display at the Air Force
Museum in Dayton, OH for ages[1].

[1]
[http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id...](http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=10856)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
>> 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
:-)

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fnordfnordfnord
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.

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DanielBMarkham
"...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.

~~~
elorant
If you read it the other way around this means that top-secret technology the
military is using is at least a decade ahead of its time.

~~~
gknoy
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".

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor> 2:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II)

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btipling
Wikipedia article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avrocar>

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js2
Previous discussion from when it was covered by extremetech.com:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4627177>

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stefantalpalaru
I wonder if they used Coandă's designs:
<http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/Coanda.htm>

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vegasbrianc
So when are they going to declassify Roswell since they have now revealed the
"Flying Saucers"?

~~~
ZoFreX
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)

~~~
maaku
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).

~~~
ZoFreX
> The Roswell incident predates Angel/Blackbird by decades.

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!

~~~
maaku
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.

