Ideas that didn' fly
 

I was reading the MLS thread and I realized that over the years a number of ideas appeared very bright as they were launched only to be abandoned only few years later. Besides the MLS, what are the ideas you remember that appear and went out of sight some time later without any commercial application?

Thanks for the idea

Supersonic airliners.

PDR

He said with out commercial application PD. 27.5 years of passenger carrying on Concorde, though economics can be argued about.

Bit of a strange wording. MLS has/had a commercial application - as mentioned in the thread.

I stand by my statement. Concorde never had a commercial appl;ication, just a political one. If there had been a commercial application then others would have followed.

PDR

But you could add FIDO to the list, and commercial fixed-wing VTOL/ASTOVL (HS140/141, Dornier Do31 developments etc). And of course there was nuclear-powered aircraft (NB-36/X-6/Tu-119 etc).

PDR

Two segment noise abatement approach.
Aircraft would remain high over populated areas, descending at 5-6 deg to intercept a 3 deg GS at 1000 ft for landing.
Never progressed in commercial aviation as engine and airframe noise reduction gave similar benefits. However the idea was used by the space shuttle as a landing flare aid.

The Fairey Rotodyne!

BA have carried out two-segment approach trials at Heathrow in the last year or so, using both B777 and A380.

The Prone Meteor.
A Meteor 8 with what looked like a glider cockpit welded to the nose.
In it, a second pilot would lie flat on his stomach with his head supported by a chin rest clutching a mini control column and throttles.

Great when pulling "G" especially if you didn't like the seated pilot behind you.

I had it in the Colerne Museum and it was last seen in the Cosford collection.

The Saunders Roe SR53 and SR177 rocket powered fighters. The Saunders Roe Princess flying boat and SR A/1 , in fact, anything built by Saunders Roe after WW2 that was meant to go more than a few inches above the surface.

So what were all those passengers paying for, if not for commercial transportation?

Brabazon.

Rotordyne - what a machine that was - remember seeing it, and hearing it, at White Waltham

Hydrogen fuel (Lockheed Tristar was the lead type for this idea).

Ekranoplan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea_Monster

Short Mayo Composite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Mayo_Composite


Scheduled service city-to-city helicopters

Hughes H-4 Hercules, or more commonly known as the "Spruce Goose".

The passengers werer paying for flights, but the operatiopn was not a viable commercial proposition unless the development costs were written-off and funded by the government (ie the taxpayer). >99% of those who paid for it never got to use the product. Ergo it was a purely political, rather than commercial, venture.

PDR

What might be termed commercial is perhaps tenuous, but the Short Mayo referred to by WHBM actually made the first east to west trans Atlantic commercial flight by a heavier than air machine, carrying 1,000 pound of mail/freight/newsreel. It performed other commercial flights as well, South Africa being one, prior to war breaking out.

PD, I wonder how many of the British airline manufacturing ventures made a profit? I'm guessing not too many based on the numbers sold. Viscount probably the only one.

Doesn't that describe almost every military aircraft programme. And a fair few civil ones as well. Even the Boeing 707 would not have got going were it not for it's military-funded predecessor KC-135.

Well before its time and it had an outstanding payload/empty weight ratio.

(But there's only on "r" in its name - it was the Rotodyne).

Oh I don't know the Scout and Wasp seemed to have done a good job.
Even the Skeeter taught the army what you could do with a helicopter (admittedly the Skeeter did on occasions struggle to get more than a few inches off the ground)