
The first flying car (1959) [video] - Animats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMF99kJGLQc
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Animats
Here's an awesome, well funded idea that didn't work - the AvroCar. A true
flying saucer powered by three jet engines, it was built for the U.S. Army in
1959. (Reposted, per request in HN email.)

But it didn't quite fly. It could hover, and move around like a hovercraft,
but didn't have enough lift to get out of ground effect. It was also unstable.
One of the prototypes was brought to NASA Ames in Silicon Valley (it wasn't
called that yet) and spent a lot of time in the big wind tunnel. It turned out
that, although there are some theoretical advantages to disk-shaped aircraft,
the negatives outweigh the positives as the disk gets bigger.

Around the same time, the U.S. Army was testing the UH-1 Huey helicopter,
which worked, carried more payload, and was far more useful. So they canned
the AvroCar program and bought many thousands of Hueys. That was the end of
military flying saucers.

(The National Archives has posted good, full-length high-resolution copies of
the original films.[1][2][3] Short AvroCar clips have been around for years,
but they'd usually been through broadcast TV or VHS, with heavy loss of
detail. Amusingly, the earliest film was classified SECRET, the second one was
marked OFFICIAL USE ONLY, and by the third one, there's no classification.)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMF99kJGLQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMF99kJGLQc)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdSo31A9j_I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdSo31A9j_I)
[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opD86VZSWpo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opD86VZSWpo)

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Aelinsaar
I wonder if flying discs are like flying wings, and that their downsides
become upsides with a sufficiently advanced control mechanism, like fly by
wire?

~~~
Animats
It seems to work at model scale.[1] Geobat got a working saucer-like model
flying. It's not VTOL; it's an an airplane with a circular wing. Their "disc"
is a swept back curved wing that continues around until it meets the tail. It
has conventional rudders and elevators, unlike the AvroCar, which was entirely
thrust-controlled. GeoBat tried to get IndieGoGo funding for a full size
aircraft, but bombed out at 2% funded.[2]

Wind tunnel testing indicated good stall characteristics but less lift than
conventional designs.

Here's a modern analysis of a circular wing, as a PhD thesis.[3] This uses the
"blown wing" concept, an idea which has great theoretical potential and has
been tried a few times, but has been only marginally successful in practice.

[1] [https://vimeo.com/65578829](https://vimeo.com/65578829) [2]
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/geobat-saucer-
aircraft#/](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/geobat-saucer-aircraft#/) [3]
[https://core.ac.uk/download/files/14/337571.pdf](https://core.ac.uk/download/files/14/337571.pdf)

~~~
Aelinsaar
Interesting things to consider, and I appreciate all of the informative links.

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tim333
It was proceeded by the 1947 Convair Model 118, a real car that flew unlike
this flying saucer stuff.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_Model_118](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_Model_118)

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karmakaze
They demonstrated (at 6:50) high stability in quad-copter form, albeit without
yaw control.

