Here we are again; The Gralien Report brings you the latest on the worldwide obsession with building flying saucers, this time in the UK as reported by The Register:
GFS Projects of Peterborough was registered in 2002, following early efforts by former hovercraft engineer Geoff Hatton to develop a working “flying saucer” aircraft based on the Coanda effect. (GFS stands for Geoff’s Flying Saucers.) The Reg spoke to GFS marketing chief Mark Broughton this morning, who gave us a run-through on the “Fenstar 50″ autonomous unmanned saucer which the company hopes to have flying in the first half of next year.
The little saucer was displayed as part of “Team MIRA” at a recent event hosted by the British Ministry of Defense, called the “MoD ‘Grand Challenge’ ambush-sniffing tech contest.” I’ve reported here on this site about other saucer-builders in the UK recently, as well as in China, India, and not forgetting those here in the US. One can’t deny that there has seemed to be a prevailing interest in this particular design for the better part of the last century, and it only appears to be growing in popularity today. This leads one to ask: If the typical “flying saucer” design is so popular among fringe aircraft engineers and, presumably, government aeronautics outfits the world over, does this mean that mastering the flight of hovering disks actually presents us some formidable qualities that other conventional aircraft don’t? How aerodynamic is a flying saucer, and once they are airborn, how easily can one be controlled? What obvious advantages can they give us?
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