Slowrotor
I agree with your two comments. There was a half-hour documentary on hovercraft a couple of nights ago and some of this gentleman's work was featured.
His work does conjure up another crazy idea to go on the pile. It was mentioned in the documentary that for hovercraft a radial fan is better than an axial fan. This is because it distributes the thrust out to the periphery of the 'disk area'.
In addition, rotorcraft books say that during an autorotative descent, the rotor provides the same lifting force that a parachute of the same diameter would. This implies that if one were to locate a motor and radial fan in a hole at the top of a parachute, one should be able to have a VTOL device, albeit with limited lateral speed.
Last, and far from least; the lb/sq-ft force on a parachute is very low and the strength of the parachute's skin is relatively weak. An airplane's wing is subjected to a greater lb/sq-ft force and therefore must be stronger. It would be interesting to try and conger up an idea where a 'so-called parachute' could be transitioned into a 'so-called wing', or wings, During this transition the lb/sq-ft lifting force will increase but the overlapping fabric of the parachute would proportionally support this higher disk loading.
Now back to watching your Seahawks.
