US Air Force's 1950s Supersonic Flying Saucer Declassified 300
MrSeb writes "Tighten the strap on your tinfoil hat: Recently declassified documents show that the US Air Force was working on, and perhaps had already built, a supersonic flying saucer in 1956. The aircraft, which had the code name Project 1794, was developed by the USAF and Avro Canada in the 1950s. One declassified memo, which seems to be the conclusion of initial research and prototyping, says that Project 1794 is a flying saucer capable of 'between Mach 3 and Mach 4,' (2,300-3,000 mph) a service ceiling of over 100,000 feet (30,500m), and a range of around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150mi, 1850km). According to declassified cutaway diagrams, the supersonic flying saucer would propel itself by rotating an outer disk at very high speed, taking advantage of the Coand effect. Maneuvering would be accomplished by using small shutters on the edge of the disc (similar to ailerons on a winged aircraft). Power would be provided by jet turbines. According to the cutaway diagrams, the entire thing would even be capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). The fact that there are no disc-shaped aircraft in the skies today, though, suggests that the USAF's flying saucer efforts probably never got past the prototype stage."
so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Interesting)
the photos look just like some of the descriptions from the last few decades. probably explains the lights too. if its US Government then they have to follow most of their own laws and put lights on an aircraft so others can see it
why would aliens put flashing lights on an interstellar space craft? what is the point of glass and flashing lights in space other than to be broken by tiny particles
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Interesting)
You assume they'd use glass. You also assume that it's not a 'local' craft that would dock with a carrier for interstellar travel.
The lights on the craft could serve the same purpose as those on a airplane.
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh. Could you produce documents of their registered flight paths?
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
You assume that they can even see light in visible wavelengths.
That's our visible wavelength, you insensitive clod.
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"I saw the best lights of my generation ... "
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
No most of the reports were nutjobs with wild imaginations. SOME of the reports were a military prototype.
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes people do see something, but they just didn't understand the technology at the time. There was some preacher missionary on a Pacific island who reported hearing a buzzing noise and seeing a craft that looked a glass dome on legs hovering above the tree-line, being controlled by a pilot who seemed to be sitting at a chair pushing and pulling levers. They achieved some basic communication where the preacher bowed, and the craft's pilot reciprocated. I hate to say this, but it does sound a bit like a navy helicopter.
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm trying to still wrap my head around the inspirations for Renaissance paintings like The Madonna with Saint Giovannino [crystalinks.com].
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The Judeo-Christian bible includes a UFO in the book of Ezekial:
And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.
Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was
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Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Funny)
I understand some things are questionable, when all you see is a bright light moving in the sky, but detail accounts cant all be spoofs.
Before the Lindisfarne monastery was attacked by Vikings in 793, the monks reported having seen a multitude of omens, among others, swarms of fiery dragons were seen in the sky. I sincerely hope these weren't real, since my country not only has no anti-UFO missiles, but no anti-dragon missiles as well.
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:4, Funny)
Well, if they *said* they saw those things, OK then.
since my country not only has no anti-UFO missiles, but no anti-dragon missiles as well.
I'm in the USA. It would not surprise me greatly to find out we have anti-dragon missiles somewhere.
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:4, Informative)
I've wondered about that - the exact words were:
AD. 793. This year came dreadful forewarnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter."
I'm wondering whether that was an meteorite impact or weather conditions?
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but detail accounts cant all be spoofs.
Sure they can.
Your comment reminds me of the crop circle conspiracy theorists who *still* assert they are way too complicated for humans to have created - even after a couple of drunk British farmers *showed* people how they did it. (Not to mention humans have built a building over 800m tall, an aircraft that weighs 600 tons and can fly at 600 mph, and fucking spacecrafts that have gone to the moon and Mars. Yet it's too hard to flatten wheat in a perfect circle?)
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why would aliens put flashing lights on an interstellar space craft? what is the point of glass and flashing lights in space other than to be broken by tiny particles
Perhaps the aliens were filming a space opera.
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Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:4, Funny)
So, even aliens have problems with teenage and drunk drivers.
Imagine you are an alien exploring Earth: "Hey, dude. Look at that Earthling. I will fly in all sorts of crazy patterns to get his attention while you lube up the anal probe. Remind me again why we are doing this? Buttholes stink."
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You looked up the stars and satellites but didn't think to film this amazing event?
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe her smartphone didn't have a decent flash...
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Difficulties identifying flying objects (Score:5, Insightful)
People's brains are not especially good at identifying objects above the horizon. We typically determine the size and distance of distant objects with visual cues because our stereoscopic vision is limited to close range. For example, we are able to determine the distance of a person because we know (generally) how big a person is. If there's something next to him, we can then know it's size (by comparing it's apparent size to the apparent size of the person) and distance (it's about the same distance as the person). But in the absence of these visual cues, we are unable to determine the size and distance (as well as a host of related factors such as velocity and acceleration) of objects. Moreover, even the color of objects is determined by visual cues, since we color correct images to account for differences in lighting.
This leads to a lot of difficulty in identifying objects in the sky. Since flying objects are not arranged in a plane, we can't use their position in relation to the horizon to approximate their distance. Nevertheless, we often do. The moon seems to be much larger when it's near the horizon because we assume objects near the horizon are much farther away (the moon also appears larger due to atmospheric distortion, but this effect is minor).
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:4, Funny)
why would aliens put flashing lights on an interstellar space craft?
Why not?
You saying aliens can't be pimpin their rides?
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:4, Funny)
what is the point of glass and flashing lights in space other than to be broken by tiny particles
Don't you just hate it when you are doing 0.99c along an interstellar freeway and some photon is tailgating you?
Re:so all those people weren't crazy (Score:5, Funny)
Hi, I'm an alien (many of us are reading /. and even posting
On the "B" Ark, I presume.
or ... (Score:5, Funny)
"The fact that there are no disc-shaped aircraft in the skies today, though, suggests that the USAF's flying saucer efforts probably never got past the prototype stage."
or they work so good that only blurry and shaky videos exist of them flying around and terrorizing cows
Re:or ... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, the cow thing was me. Sorry, my bad.
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I thought it was "Carl"?
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They all crashed in Roswell....
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Re: only blurry and shaky videos exist (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone in saucer design knows that the Coanda Effect also causes the outline to appear blurry and shaky.
It is the first step towards cloaking which was later perfected using techniques developed by Tesla.
It all sounds vaguely familar... (Score:2)
I wonder if this is a concept that was before it's time much like the flying wing. Early prototypes of flying wings failed and it was thought that the entire concept was discarded until the B-2 was exposed to the world.
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the b2 has advantages over other designs. what is the advantage of a flying saucer compared to wing based aircraft? at least on earth
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Seems like it would be VTOL. But helicopters already fill that area nicely.
Re:It all sounds vaguely familar... (Score:4, Insightful)
Helicopters are usually extremely loud and, most importantly, simply unable to fly faster than 300mph or so: any faster and the supersonic shockwaves from the rotors tips (keep in mind those are traveling at helicopter speed + rotational velocity) destroys it's ability to fly. This could go much, much faster, as fast as you want, and probably be a fair bit more maneuverable.
.
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Helicopters are usually extremely loud and, most importantly, simply unable to fly faster than 300mph or so: any faster and the supersonic shockwaves from the rotors tips (keep in mind those are traveling at helicopter speed + rotational velocity) destroys it's ability to fly.
Only the rotors on the side of the helicopter moving in the direction of travel are going aircraft speed + rotational velocity. An equally serious problem is the rotors on the other side are going aircraft speed - rotational velocity. The faster the chopper flies, the more imbalanced it becomes as the lift from one side increases while on the other side it decreases. If the chopper reached the speed of its own blades, it would lose all lift on one side as the blades would be essentially motionless on one
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That is another issue, although that problem can largely be solved by using a co-axial rotor system, so it isn't an insurmountable problem.
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the b2 has advantages over other designs. what is the advantage of a flying saucer compared to wing based aircraft? at least on earth
The primary thing that made the B-2 doable over previous flying wings is the microprocessor and the ability of modern computers to stabilize the aircraft in flight. The computers make constant changes to the control surfaces that would overwhelm human pilots.
Re:It all sounds vaguely familar... (Score:5, Funny)
" what is the advantage of a flying saucer compared to wing based aircraft? at least on earth"
To completely screw with the enemy.
Broadcast loudly "ACK! ACKACK!" from loudspeakers while you only use lime green lighting.
Project "1794" sounds awfully damned familiar (Score:5, Funny)
...as in re-arrange those digits and you get 1947, the year of the famous Roswell New Mexico UFO crash.
Coincidence?
Correction (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, Slashdot still thinks Unicode is some fancy new fangled craze that will blow away. So the a with the funny cup on top gets stripped away.
But what I'm wondering is: how exactly do you use the coanda effect on a spinning saucer? Things spinning around a horizontal axis, like a ping pong ball with backspin, sure, they can provide lift. But spinning around a vertical axis? How does that work? I would think you would need to use blades on the edge or maybe diagonal holes through the spinning part, but I do
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Also, it's need a tail like a helicopter and for exactly the same reason.
Or two counter-rotating discs, like a multi-rotor helicopter. Double advantage is you can rotate extremely quickly simply by slowing one of the discs a bit (assuming the humans inside don't mind).
Re:Correction (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know much about the Coanda effect or the other factors that would affect flight, but I observed a craft just as you describe when I was a kid living in Australia in 1989. My father worked at the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap. I asked him about it and of course he said he wasn't aware of any such thing. But he didn't seem to have any concern at all that I was lying or mentally ill. Lying was dealt with very strictly and I would like to think my parents would care enough about my mental health to show some concern if I was clearly delusional or describing hallucinations. Only years later as an adult have I read online how Pine Gap is the Area 51 of Australia and numerous UFOs have been sighted in the area. My father passed away earlier this year so there is no longer any risk of secrets being divulged from him.
The craft I saw flew on a straight path like you would expect from an fixed wing aircraft or helicopter, except it was a pair of counter-rotating disks stacked vertically. The disks seemed more like ovals though, as the top disk appeared to shrink slightly in diameter while the bottom disk would increase proportionally, and this motion would alternate about once per second. The craft was a fair distance away, so I saw more of a side view and not much of a bottom view. I watched soon after it appeared crossing the horizon of a nearby mountain until it disappeared behind the horizon of another mountain, for about 40-60 seconds. But it was close enough to see clearly the counter-rotating ovals and to notice the complete absence of any sort of extended fuselage or tail assembly. Soon after seeing it I was puzzled trying to guess where the cockpit on such a craft would be located.
Maybe in another 30 years the docs on this project might get released. I'd like to know exactly what I saw that afternoon.
Unmitigated crap (Score:4, Informative)
Title of the article is unmitigated crap. The Avrocar, which was actually built, was a miserable failure which could barely lift off the ground, wallowing dangerously, with very poor control. It was abandoned as absolutely useless.
Yes, some blue sky dreamer in defense probably did dream up the mach 3 flying saucer, but it was never any closer to reality than any comic book or lurid magazine article.
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Indeed. Here's a picture of it doing pretty much all it could do:
http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/AVRO-pict/avrocar11.jpg [laesieworks.com]
Re:Unmitigated crap (Score:5, Interesting)
They thought the same about flying wing designs in the 1950s. Indeed, they never did get the design to work right at the time. Turns out, the US Air Force did [wikipedia.org], eventually.
While the saucer design is a challenge to make work, I'm sure if the Air Force saw some great advantage in it, they would have built it. I'm not sure what the advantage of such a craft would be, though, besides VTOL capability being standard.
Re:Unmitigated crap (Score:5, Informative)
> They thought the same about flying wing designs in the 1950s. Indeed, they never did get the design to work right at the time.
Flying wings have been successfully built and flown since the 1930s. The problems with the B-35 and B-49 were inherent in the platform:
* Conic Instability - in a banked turn the outer wing goes faster than the inner one and gives more lift with increases the bank angle until it flips over and spins. I have seen film of a B-52 doing that.
* Nodding - The Northrops were designed for bombing and later for photo work. The wing 'nods' due to lack of pitch stability which makes it impossible to aim using a bomb sight, and difficult to get the photos to overlap correctly.
* Slewing - with no tail the wing does not care whether it is aligned with the flight path or skewed from it by several degrees. Bomb aiming is thus impossible.
The planes were actually very successful as flying machines (though the propeller gearboxes failed too often), but useless for the missions they were intended for. The B-2 fixed all those issues with computers compensating for the instabilities.
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I'm not sure what the advantage of such a craft would be, though, besides VTOL capability being standard.
Let's see...
2000-3000 MPH? 100,000 foot ceiling? and VTOL?
Hell, we can't do that now!
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Interestingly, if control was a problem, then modern electronics / servos and similar technology could probably mitigate those issues successfully. I think a personal flying saucer, even if it didn't hit Mach 3, would be pretty damned cool.
The Jetsons!
Who are they kidding declassified LOL (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Who are they kidding declassified LOL (Score:4, Informative)
I know this is Slashdot, but you really should try reading TFA. The Avrocar was a separate project:
It’s worth noting that Avro Canada also worked on the VZ-9 Avrocar, though — which is basically the same as Project 1794, but a lot smaller.
It's okay... I know you had to hurry to get that ninth post...
Note to self: (Score:5, Funny)
So how did this interact with pop culture? (Score:4, Insightful)
The 1950s were saucer crazy. And apparently the US government was too, at about the same time. So was this leakage from inside the weapons program showing up in Hollywood or were the engineers looking at Ed Wood movies and saying, "Yeah, let's give that a shot"?
1950: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Saucer [wikipedia.org]
1956: crazy USAF saucer design
1959: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Outer_Space [wikipedia.org]
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You're forgetting the most important one, Forbidden Planet [imdb.com] (and Anne Francis, pooh on Natalie Portman....)
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Shhh! And don't call me Shirley.
Alien Reverse Engineering? (Score:2)
I wonder if this was an attempt to reverse engineer what the supposed aliens were doing, which didn't produce much usable technology. That is an interesting (if expensive) way to prove or disprove the existence of UFO's.
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Failing to make something work is not a feasible way to prove that something doesn't work. It only proves that you are currently incapable of doing it.
See: Microsoft's repeated attempts to make a smartphone that people actually like.
Re:Alien Reverse Engineering? (Score:4, Informative)
More likely an attempt to reverse engineer experimental craft or designs for such captured by the allies near the end of WWII. Long range guided missiles, line-of-site remote controlled bombs, helicopter gunships, CCTV, the assault rifle, jet fighters and the Uranium used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were all conceived, designed, built and with the exception of nuclear weapons, deployed by the Germans. This technology and the scientists who ended up on the western half of the iron curtain were employed to develop America's nuclear deterrent of ICBMs and the space program.
If Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor and if Hitler had not attacked Russia, Germany would probably still occupy most of Europe and would have placed a NAZI flag on the moon in 1959.
this is a cover up!!! (Score:2)
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Sure, it was the government (Score:2)
That's what they want you to think!
The fact that... (Score:5, Interesting)
"The fact that there are no disc-shaped aircraft in the skies today, though, suggests that the USAF's flying saucer efforts probably never got past the prototype stage."
Or more likely, the fact that it was a huge success led the military to slap top secret over it and any aircraft maker selected to work on it was told of "permanent, irrevocable loss of DoD contracts", "lifetime bans on employment and security clearance", "intrusive FBI investigations and tax audits", "nationalization of defense critical assets" and "extremely likely criminal charges for treason, sedition or aiding the enemy tried in military courts with punishments handed out by military intelligence.."
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Nah. That only happened to Cartman.
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You forgot to list anal probing.
No, it was there. It just wasn't spelled out in detail.
"intrusive FBI investigations and tax audits"
Ziff Davis (Score:2)
Project 1794?? (Score:5, Informative)
Do you people realize the significance of this? If this Project 1794 was the saucer that crashed 27 miles outside Roswell and was taken to Area 51...1794/(51+27)=
THE NUMBER TWENTY-THREE!!
Re:Project 1794?? (Score:4, Funny)
Ewige Blumenkraft!
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Wouldn't this be clearer for the slashdot crowd?
int [] nameProjectFromDate( int [] date ){
int i = date.length -1
while( i > 1 ){
int tmp = date[i];
date[i--] = date[i];
date[i] = tmp;
}
return date;
}
(and yes I should have made it a void method that edited date directly, but you're not paying me to make good code.)
Spike and Suzy: The Martian Ambassadors: 1956 (Score:2)
I presume that these things were not that secret at the time.
At the end of the story it is revealed that the flying saucer is made by Avro Canada.
George Adamski's UFO also looks somewhat like this design.
It's a proposed follow-on to the failed Avrocar (Score:3)
This project is from Avro (A.V. Roe, a respected Canadian aircraft manufacturer in the 1950s) and is clearly a follow-on to the Avrocar. [wikipedia.org] The Avrocar, of course, really was a flying saucer. But it could barely fly.
The Avrocar was an interesting idea, but presented control problems that couldn't be solved in the 1950s. Like all thrust-based VTOL craft, it was unstable. It turned out to be really unstable at the transition from ground effect to thrust lift. Getting it out of ground effect without crashing was very hard. Forward motion made the stability problem worse. Despite several redesigns, it remained unflyable.
A design like that probably could be made to work today, with computers, gyros, and control jets fighting to keep the thing stable. Toy-sized quadrotors are widely available now, and they have many of the same stability problems. It's not clear there's any advantage to a disc shape other than coolness, though.
Bear in mind why this was built. Nobody knew what a supersonic aircraft needed to look like, so lots of things were tried. The opposite extreme from the Avrocar was the X-3 Stilleto [wikipedia.org], probably the pointiest-nose aircraft ever built. It flew, but couldn't go supersonic. Flying wings were tried - they had stability problems not solveable with 1950s technology. Finally, it was figured out that swept-back wings could be made to behave at both subsonic and supersonic speeds, and that became the standard form for supersonic aircraft.
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This project is from Avro (A.V. Roe, a respected Canadian aircraft manufacturer in the 1950s) and is clearly a follow-on to the Avrocar. [wikipedia.org] The Avrocar, of course, really was a flying saucer. But it could barely fly.
You might want to actually read the article before posting on here, given you can't edit your post and everyone who read the article now knows you didn't. (Although interestingly, a moderator clearly didn't either...)
I saw this documentary on Discovery (Score:2)
Back in the '90s
It was unstable out of ground effect, and only got a metre or so off the ground
Theres no way it would have been seen 'in the skies'
No flying saucer for you! (Score:4, Insightful)
"The fact that there are no disc-shaped aircraft in the skies today, though, suggests that the USAF's flying saucer efforts probably never got past the prototype stage."
Not so! It in fact suggests that the Greys filed a cease-and-desist suit with the Galactic Court to stop humans from producing a craft in that shape. They won, and *that* was when the Americans really sat up and started taking notice of Patents.
Other galactic species are talking behind their back, though, because the Greys sued with a design patent based on "rounded corners" for a flying saucer...
First thing that comes to mind (Score:2)
The first thing that comes to mind is that a round craft might be good at hypersonic speeds. Instead of one leading edge taking all the heat, all sides would take a fraction of the heat. I wonder if they've run any models with rotating heat shields for re-entry capsules. Of course, anything that has to move like that is always somewhat risky. AFAIK, variable wing geometry for civilian supersonic transports was rejected for this reason. Variable geometry is used on fighters though, so it's not a total n
Re:Didn't Get past prototype (Score:5, Funny)
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How do you prove a negative? (you don't)
I think the point is that if this was a workable solution, we would likely have at least some flying examples of this design by now. Even after this many years we have no known flying saucer designs in either military or civilian use so it seems *unlikely* that anybody has one of these things.
Of course, it is possible to prove a positive, so if someone thinks something exists, I would insist on proof.
Re:Didn't Get past prototype (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but if you are using inductive reasoning, there is no difference between proving a negative and proving a positive. The only thing that allows you to make a reasonable conclusion in those cases is statistics. For example: the if the Higgs boson was believed to be observed with a 5 sigma certainty, you can't prove absolutely that its apparent existence wasn't due to random interactions. Conversely, if it wasn't observed with a 5 sigma certainty, you can't prove absolutely that its apparent nonexistence wasn't due to random interactions. Only a belief in statistics will resolve this inherent problem with inductive reasoning.
Since we use inductive reasoning in the real world, saying that you can't prove a negative has no meaning if you don't provide context. Intelligent Design and Russel's Teapot are unlikely, but not impossible. Statistics allows us to throw these ideas in the trash. The fact that UFOs aren't identified often is another item that we can use to dismiss the existence of flying saucers still being flown by the USAF. The certainty isn't nearly as high as something like Russel's Teapot, but it isn't something to be ignored either.
Re:Didn't Get past prototype (Score:4, Interesting)
The British Rail (a railway company!) flying saucer has been public knowledge for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_flying_saucer [wikipedia.org]
Of course, it never flew, as far as we know...
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The fact that there are no disc-shaped aircraft in the skies today
How did we prove this again?
Probably proved impracticable. Higher cost over contemprary designs, reliability, serviceablity, things like that. Just strap a saddle on a turbine engine, tape on some wings and you're off and flying.
Re:Didn't Get past prototype (Score:5, Interesting)
Another possibility is that the Air Force never intended to develop a saucer prototype. It could be that these "designs" were disinformation left where Soviet agents could discover them.
The timing is right for this being part of the effort to divert attention from the Air Force's super-secret Blackbird program [wikipedia.org]. The Blackbird became operational in the 1960s and development began in the latter part of the 1950s. By the 1970s, after some 15 years of service, the Soviet Union was apparently aware that the USA had something that could go really high, really fast, and take lots of photos, but apparently they still had no clue about the design. That suggests that the Air Force had done a really good job of hiding the production of lots of titanium parts, etc-- capitalizing on the UFO craziness of the times would have been an excellent ploy.
And it is clear that releasing some of the documents used in disinformation strategems is part of the declassification process. However I do not believe there is anything that requires the US Government to say what was disinformation and what was factual. I rather think that they would leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Does anyone know the more recent history of the Blackbird? IIRC, the program was terminated around 1998, then there was talk about reactivating them for a time when we got into the Bush wars, and that's the last I remember hearing about it. Are any of these planes still flying?
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Why would you want a fast plane nowadays? All it will do is burn fuel and cost so much you'll be afraid to deploy it. There were 32 SR-71's, for example, and 12 were lost in accidents. That's a pretty expensive cost for ... what? To get to the Middle East slightly quicker?
Blackbird is likely to remain the fastest plane for a long time, like the fastest horse-drawn carriage that ever existed. Nobody's going to splash that amount of cash to go in a circle at great expense when that same money would buy s
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No, but it is an important one, if you want to get on-target quickly. The point of the SR-71 was it could get much higher detail than a satellite more reliably and very quickly. Turns out that wasn't as important as the cost (and new missile system made it a bit less practical). There are still plenty of reasons to develop high-speed aircraft, from surveillance to first strike ability, which is why they are doing so, right now, with the X-51 [wikipedia.org].
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>
Speed isn't the only statistic when it comes to military aircraft.
That depends on what you intend the aircraft to actually do. You want a fighter? You need sustained turn rate first with as much speed as you can manage from there. You want to intercept oncoming aircraft? You need speed first, range and then turn rate You need to move cargo? You need VSTOL and lifting capacity and decent range but not speed. You want to deliver ordnance in support of ground forces? You better have the ability to lift lots of ordnance and loiter for hours but short field performanc
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You got it backwards, they claimed saucer sightings [archive.org] to cover up experimental aircraft crashes.
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No, very possible, even very likely. The very fact that we don't know about it, that they haven't publicly admitted the existence and regular use of these saucers, is proof of their existence and their effectiveness. Why, just last night aunt Bertha saw one of them things hovering over the local Wal-Mart. It then went to the Piggly Wiggly and some strange creature came out of the store carrying a six pack. The government knows. They just aren't telling you. Which is how you can
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It then went to the Piggly Wiggly and some strange creature came out of the store carrying a six pack.
Strange creatures [peopleofwalmart.com], indeed.
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Nice rant, really very impressive! However, I think it's worth pointing out that this (top speed of Mach 3 or Mach 4, service ceiling above 100,000 ft, range 1000 miles) is a bit different from the Avrocar (top speed less than 100 mph, service ceiling under 10,000 ft). Your rant is like complaining that the B2 wasn't really secret for decades because everyone knew the Germans were working on a flying wing design in WWII.
Which brings me to my own rant: I don't see very many flying wings flying through the
Link in previous message may contain hostile code (Score:3)
The link mentioned above, to "http://4domfay.mrslove.com/", is to a multi-frame document which tries to load "http://www.etehadiyeamlak.ir/components/com_media/helpers/media/www/index.php", which tries to download a plug-in. Although the domain is in the Iranian ccTLD [whois.nic.ir], it's actually hosted by "webhostbox.net".