Man-Carrying Flying Saucer proposal

UK based GFS Ltd (which stands, in typically English style, for Geoffs Flying Saucer) are already known on these boards for their US Army and UK MoD sponsored flying saucer UAV project.

Now the company seems to be broadening its horizons, certainly with a view to partnership with one of the aerospace majors (please let it be BAE Systems! ) as they have now revealed plans for two different versions of this basic vehicle type, this one, illustrated below, is a single or two seat man carrying 'scout' vehicle which could also serve as a medevac craft.



an interesting point to note on the design is the raised platform fairing on the forward edge, where the canopy is mounted on this drawing, this is intended to deflect any headwind allowing the coanda effect to do its thing, undisturbed, on the remaining disc surface below the vanes. This has been a serious barrier to progress with coanda effect flight in the past and is also why all the GFS demo video's were shot indoors, this simple measure however alleviates the problem and GFS now believe they are very close to a practical 'outdoors' flying saucer.

The other design they have proposed is a larger unmanned cargo carrier with, at present, a 100ft diameter disc envisaged. This scheme is however extremely preliminary in nature and no further details are available just yet.

[edit on 5-5-2007 by waynos]

interesting to note that the saucer shape does not make a big bang when it goes supersonic

Good find Waynos!

This is a very unusual design for several reasons:

1. Vertical Surfaces- you don't see large vertical surfaces on most flying disks.

2. The tradition style fighter cockpit with bubble canopy, the last time I saw this layout was in the XF-5U1 Flying Flapjack, and Weapon System 606A

3. Under-wing Scoop Inlets- I think this is the first time I've seen them on a flying saucer

Tim

reply to post by waynos


How big would it have to be to carry a person? How much lifting power?
It seems is a model can fly a bigger prototype could be built to carry a man.
Maybe 10 ft wide? How could one scale this up accurately to be big enough and powerful enough to carry a man? Can anyone make a good guess? I would like to see one built to carry a passanger on a safe flight for about 20 miles. This really would kind of be like the jetsons. What a neat way this would be to commute to work! I can see me flying one now.

I distinctly recall watching a documentary several years ago about US military tests involving a sort of personal troop transport. It was essentially a flying pad with enough thrust and control to lift a soldier and his gear and fly tens of feet of the ground and forward at medium to high speed. It spun off the "rocket man" hype of the time (I believe these tests were done from late 1950's-1960's). The technology worked well but it was found to be too impractical as soldiers would be whizzing across the battlefield and treetop level, among other things. There were some rather amazing videos shown of demonstration tests but I am having zero success in locating any online information about this program.

Does anyone know what specifically the program and or the vehicles were called? Kind of off topic but this reminded me of that show which I had forgotten about up until now.

WP23,

I think one of the vids I've posted on an old thread of mine features that flying pad of yours.

abovetopsecret.com



It's the Hiller VZ-1 (incorrectly labeled Hiller V7-1 on my post in the video thread, my bad) and here's a link to wikipedia for more info about it.


[edit on 10.18.07 by toreishi]

Yup that's it, thanks for the info; the videos from that program still amaze me. Amazing that they could essentially prefect this technology without fancy FBW or computer systems.