1. HZ-1 Aerocycle
Strictly speaking no, this is not an aircraft. But it is an aeroplane, it did fly, and it boggles the mind to this day, 70 years or so after its inception. The HZ-1 Aerocycle was a personal helicopter meant to be flown by pilots with no training at all and just 20 minutes of lessons. It takes approximately as much time to figure out how to operate an Instant-Pot, and it doesn’t have whirling blades or the ability to drive at75 miles per hour.
Despite the fact that the two sets of blades would occasionally clash during flights and that they’d send up rock fragmentation, the concept was pushed extremely vigorously by the military. Twelve of these devices were produced, loaded with airbags to soften an otherwise hard landing and they were effective enough until wind-tunnel testing started. Subject to unstable circumstances these devices were unpredictable and experienced uncontrolled pitching. The proposal was subsequently rejected for being too unreliable.
2. Bartini-Beriev VVA-14
By now it should be evident that after mastering flying itself, perfecting vertical take off was the principal ambition of practically every aircraft designer in the world. The VVA-14 aimed to combine that with an underwater aircraft that might be deployed by the Soviet Navy to detect hostile submarines approaching Russia. In so many words it was a flying boat that just happened to look like a second-string Star Wars throwback.
The first design used inflatable pontoons and subsequently stiff ones and test flights were not a letdown. It reached 32,000 feet and they flew it for nearly 1,500 kilometres. So far so wonderful. The difficulty was the major feature of the aircraft was to be vertical take-off and the creator of VTOL engine was never able to come through on it. Without the engine that made it anything more than a futuristic-looking aquaplane, it got off the ground physically but not symbolically and the project was cancelled two years after its unveiling with no more than 100 hours of battle time logged.
3. Solar Impulse
Renewable energy is the best way of the future and although Tesla is leading the charge in terms of electric cars and solar power cells, the Swiss-made Solar Impulse put that technology to practical use by constructing a working, solar-powered aircraft. And it wasn’t just a feeble little butterfly-high puddle leap, either. In a July 2010 test it flew for 26-straight hours including 9 hours at night.
The team created an updated version with 17,000 solar cells and better power systems and started a flight in March 2015 that lasted all the way until July 2016. The adventure started in Abu Dhabi and finished there as well. It was the first trip in history that flew 26,000 miles around the whole world in an aircraft driven by nothing more than solar energy at an average, slow speed of just 45 miles per hour.
4. X-51 Waverider
Even though the Boeing X-51 WaveRider is an unmanned aircraft it 100% merits praise for being one of the most stunning aircraft ever made. It was what s known as a scramjet, a form of aircraft that depends on supersonic airflow for propulsion. It was tested three with limited success beginning in 2010 but in 2013 it accomplished a 6-minute flight with a 210 second run at Mach 5.1. That became the longest hypersonic flight ever. If you’re not all up to date on your Mach speed equivalents, Mach 5 happens at slightly over 3,400 miles per hour. For contrast, the F-35 can attain roughly Mach 1.6, or 1,200 miles per hour.
The WaveRider was fired like a missile from another vessel, in this instance a B-52 Stratofortress. It really has no wings of its own and instead rode on its own shockwave which is how it acquired its moniker. Because it was developed as a method of showing the technology rather than a practical ship it was never put into production after its test flights. Instead, the information obtained from what it achieved was used to subsequent designs for aircraft, surveillance systems, and weapons.
5. Goodyear Inflatoplane
Balloons can fly, blimps can fly, and an inflatable aircraft can fly if you try hard enough to make it happen. Goodyear, the corporation famed for tires and its iconic blimp, built the inflatoplane in much the way inflatable rafts are designed. Made from rubber, it required to be inflated to its useable form and then placed in motion. It took five minutes to inflate and used less air pressure than a vehicle tire.
The aircraft looks absurd when you first hear about it; why would anybody want or need an inflated rubber plane? But the premise was reasonable and even good. The aim was to drop an inflatoplane behind enemy lines as a rescue plane if a pilot was shot down. It could be inflated fast and flown to safety, it was able to function on land or water, and it was reasonably affordable.
While it wasn’t smashing speed records, the inflatoplane had a cruising speed of 60 miles per hour and a range of 390 miles carrying 240 pounds. Tragically, one of the test pilots died during a flight when a control cable broke free and a piece of the wing structure struck the pilot in the head, knowing him from the plane. The project itself was discontinued soon afterwards.
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