Avrocar: A real flying saucer

[Urwumpe]

Here is a very interesting scientific article about the Avrocar project and its legacy. Especially the section about the various control problems could be interesting reading. Most of the project data has been unclassified since the 1960s, but this is a pretty good summary.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.06916

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Truly an oddball design. Worked quite well in hover, but if it went faster than a walking pace, or above a few feet, it lost stability.

 

[Andy44]

With modern fly-by-wire like they use in unstable jet fighters it would be interesting to see this revisited, just for curiosity's sake.

 

[Col_Klonk]

There's is new concept car/plane/helicopter video on youtube somewhere.. it looks nice-n-neat, but I don't see it going anywhere fast.

The simple problem being that there are too many lunatics in cars already, and to have all these morons floating around in the sky is a disaster waiting to happen.
That besides you'll still need a pilots license to operate one of these.. and this is beyond most peoples pockets.. thank goodness :thumbup: