the Wright brothers didn't exactly
create an immutable set of design
instructions for the worlds when they
took that first flight in 1903 and
really it wouldn't have mattered if they
had they had proven fly mechanics could
work and that was all that was necessary
for the spirit of innovation to take
hold in others and look at us now just
over a century later and we've produced
over 150,000 different planes some of
those have proven to be immensely
popular like the Cessna 172 of which
44,000 have been produced but then there
are those that never really escaped the
prototype phase those aircraft had
actually get into the air but not
production most were average and
forgettable but these 10 were absolutely
incredible number 10 Vieira Dean
alexander lippisch was a man with a
dream and no desire to let the wisdom of
the day keep him down first flown in
1959 the lippisch era dime was what can
be best described as a wingless plane to
look at it is to be baffled utterly as
it appears to be a giant jet engine and
little else
the era Dean was a fluid sustained and
fluid propelled aircraft it achieved
flight thanks to coaxial propellers and
flaps that we used to divert the
slipstream so that it could fly up or
down test flights were conducted with
unmanned versions of the plane and it
worked
piloted version was plans but never
implemented because there was no need
for this kind of engineering and the
concept may have just been a little too
far out number nine venomoth parasol
what you guess when a biplane and a
flying saucer have a baby well there
would be the nemeth parasol looking at
this plane with modern eyes you'd be
forgiven for thinking that was in no way
it would get into the air B it'd be
wrong the parasol did manage to get
airborne described as a parachute plane
it used a massive round wing rather than
the horizontal wings that were used to
in order to maintain flight Stephen
Emeth inventor claimed it was so easy to
fly that you could master it in a tight
thirty minutes even if you'd never flown
a day in your life its maiden flight in
1934 saw her get up to 135 miles an hour
and then Nemeth stored the engine the
results
well the parachute wing did exactly what
its name suggests it should do it
generally floated down to the ground for
a soft landing despite a successful test
flight no other parasols were ever built
the parachute wing caused considerable
drag that made flying one in a fish
compare typical aircraft number eight
the Africa how fascinated were people
with flying saucers in the 1950s well
Avro Canada's vz9 avrocar can adequately
answer that first designed by a Canadian
firm in 1958 and then taken over by the
United States military this vehicle was
100% designed to look and function like
a flying saucer
and the only thing weirder than the fact
that it looked like a flying saucer was
that it actually worked the Africa
function thanks to something called the
Cohens our effect that's the same
phenomenon that will keep a ping-pong
ball floating on a jet of air from your
leaf blower it's described as the
tendency of fluid jet to stay attached
to a convex surface and it can make a
saucer-shaped craft stay aloft the plan
was for the amber car to be a supersonic
bomber capable of vertical takeoff and
landing and while it was capable of
flight during tests it proved to have
serious issues with thrust and stability
making it unreliable the project was
abandoned in 1961 number seven with a
vertical flyer also known as Snecma
Cleopatra this French craft was designed
like a donut with a plain fuselage
jammed in the hole a single person
playing the point was to take off and
land vertically thus eliminating the
need for runways the closed annular wing
had the cockpit held inside of it and
served as the power source the frame and
the wing of the plane and it works
though the pilot was sitting on little
more than an ejector seat on top of a
jet engine that was all that was needed
the plane managed eight successful test
flights and it became so famous in
France it even ended up in the comic
book Tintin but despite its relative
success it was not without issues the
lack of a delta wing meant it tended to
slowly roll on its vertical axis and was
hard to steer the test pilot even called
the speed indicator of fantasy on the
ninth test flight things went from
problematic to catastrophic horizontal
flight was only briefly achieved but the
pilot lost control and had to eject the
plane crashed and all future tests
scrapped number six for v1 73 it's odd
to have a lot of faith in something that
was known as the flying pancake but this
goofy manta ray of the sky got the job
done around fuselage flanked by two
propellers the pancake took flight for
the first time in 1942 utilizing a novel
all wing design that meant the entire
plane created lift the propellers on the
plane was sixteen point five feet in
diameter
the plane had to sit at a 22 degree
angle rest requiring the pilot to look
out of a window in the floor to see what
he was doing during takeoff or landing
after working out vibration issues the
plane was tested successfully in
Connecticut in 1942 and 1943 which
prompted a number of locals to call the
authorities with UFO sightings test
pilot Charles Lindbergh praised its
ability and handling and thanks to its
massive propellers and wind design it
was capable of near vertical takeoff so
why didn't it last
while the jet engine made it obsolete no
matter how efficient it was it wasn't
fast enough meant it wasn't needed
number five Goodyear inflator plane
balloons can fly blimps can fly as an
inflatable plane can fly if you try hard
enough to make it happen Goodyear the
company famous for tires and their
eponymous blimp designs the inflator
plane and much the way inflatable rafts
are designed made from rubber they
needed to be inflated to its useable
shape and then put in motion it took
five minutes to inflate and required
less air pressure than a car tire the
plane seemed silly when you first hear
about it why would anyone want or need
an inflatable rubber plane but the idea
was sounds and even Noble the plan was
to drop an inflator plane behind enemy
lines as a rescue plane if a pilot was
shot down
it could be inflated quickly and flamed
to safety it was able to work on land or
sea and it was relatively cheap while it
wasn't breaking speed records the
inflator plane had a cruising speed of
60 miles per hour and a range of 319
miles carrying 240 pounds tragically one
of the test pilots died during a flight
when a control cable came loose and a
piece of the wing frame that the pilots
in the head-knocking him from the craft
the project was ended shortly thereafter
before x51 Waverider
even though the boeing x51 Waverider is
an unmanned aircraft it 100% deserves
recognition for being one of the most
amazing aircraft ever created it was
what's known as a scramjet type of
aircraft that relies on supersonic
airflow if a propulsion it was tested
with little success starting in 2010 but
in 2013 it completed a six-minute flight
including a 210 second runback 5.1 that
became the longest hypersonic flight
ever if you're not up to date on your
max speed equivalents Mac 5 occurs just
over 3,400 miles per hour for compare
the f-35 canet about Mach 1.6 or 1,200
miles per hour the Waverider was
launched like a missile from another
craft in this case a b-52 stratofortress
it actually had no wings of its own and
instead rides on its own shockwave which
is how it got its name because it was
built as a means of demonstrating the
technology rather than as a functional
craft it was never put into production
after its test flights instead the
knowledge gained from what it did was
applied to later designs for planes
surveillance systems and weapons number
3 Solar Impulse renewable energy is the
way of the future and while Tesla is
leading the charge in terms of electric
vehicles and solar power cells the
swiss-made Solar Impulse put their
technology to practical use by making a
functional solar powered plane and it
wasn't just a weak little butterfly hi
puddle jump either in July 2010 flew for
26 straight hours including 9 hours at
night the team built an improved version
with 17,000 solar cells and better power
systems and began a flight in March of
2015 that lasted all the way until July
2016 the journey began in Abu Dhabi and
ended there as well it was the first
flight in history that travelled 26,000
miles around the entire globe in a plane
powered by nothing more than solar
energy at an average leisurely speed of
only 45 miles per hour number 2 bar
teeny barrier BVA 14 by now it should be
clear that after mastering flight itself
mastering vertical take-off was the main
goal of nearly every plane designer in
the world
the vva 14 wanted to combine mass with
an aquatic plane that could be used by
the Soviet Navy to monitor enemy
submarines approaching Russia in so many
words it was a flying boat that just to
happen to look like a second string Star
Wars throwback the original design
featured inflatable pontoons and later
rigid ones and test flights were not a
disappointment it reached 32 thousand
feet and they flew for over 1500 miles
so far so good the problem was that the
main feature of the plane was to
vertically takeoff and the designer of
VTOL engines was never able to come
through on it without that engine that
made it nothing more than a futuristic
looking aqua plane they got off the
grounds literally but not figuratively
and the project was Cannes two years
after its introduction with
barely more than 100 hours of flight
time completed number one the hz1
era cycle strictly speaking no this is
not a plane but it is an aircraft and it
did fly and it boggles the mind to this
day 70 years after its creation the edge
said one error cycle was a personal
helicopter designed to be used by pilots
with no experience at all and only 20
minutes of instruction it takes about
that much time to figure out how to use
an instant pot and that doesn't have
rotating blades or the ability to travel
at 75 miles per hour despite the fact
that the dual sets of blades would
sometimes collide during flight since
that they'd kick up rock shrapnel the
project was pursued very
enthusiastically by the military 12 of
these devices were built outfitted with
air bags to cushion and otherwise rocky
lands engines they were successful
enough until Windtunnel testing began
subject to unstable conditions these
machines were unpredictable and suffered
uncontrollable pitching the idea was
eventually scrapped for being too
unreliable so I really hope you found
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