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Is the UFO's flying saucer a smart design ?

If it keeps spinning to achieve stability, it is not a good design. Aerodynamically, it is ok.

10 Answers

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  • Chris
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    This is really two questions:

    The first, a flying saucer is *not* a sound aerodynamic design, this is true. The Nazis were in the process of developing a flying saucer design to use as a bomber interceptor (the central fan allowed it VTOL capabilities, in theory, but they never did work out the stabilization issues) in the end phases of the 2nd World War. A prototype wound up in US hands, and it is very possible its American made successor is what crashed in Roswell in 1947, creating the whole "ufo flying saucer" myth in the first place.

    But that being said, as most "flying saucer/UFO" sightings are making the claim they are "aliens", it's really a moot point anyways. There's no need for Aerodynamics in space. A saucer's not a terrible design for a spacecraft-- it may allow it have some measure of artificial gravity via centripetal force by rotating the disk. And if something had the energy output to travel interstellar distances, it probably has the propulsion to overcome its non-aerodyanmic design by weight of sheer muscle.

    However, that's all just speculation, because flying saucers are either mistaken identities (it's very easy for a normal airplane to appear saucer-esque if sun hits it at the right angle. I've seen it many times myself) or, in earlier cases, military prototypes. "UFOs" sightings mostly stopped being saucers and started being wedges in the '70s, right before the F-117 went into production, and later became "V" shaped, not long before the B2 went into service.

  • 4 years ago

    Flying Saucer Design

  • 1 decade ago

    If you have ever seen a government video showing their best (and most expensive) efforts, it proves that a spinning propeller or something of the sort provides very weak and unstable lifting. A helicopter may have a rotating device for flying, but if you have ever noticed on its tail the second propeller, helicopters are unnavigable with just one. Even Ospreys, which have four propellers on its "arms", cannot achieve complete stability. It has consistently been the cause of dramatic crashes during takeoff and landing. I cannot disagree that it is aerodynamic (unless the cockpit sticks up like in the Jetsons and other cartoons.) The biggest thing about an galactic flying saucer, however, is the fact that once in space, propellers do you no good. They rely on matter to push from the front to the back, propelling the craft forwards. There is no matter in space. Hence the jet-powered shuttles, rockets, satellites, and landing crafts.

  • 1 decade ago

    UFO doesn't imply flying saucer or alien spacecraft. UFO just means unidentifiable flying object. That just means that the observer of said object sees something flying and doesn't have enough information from observation to identify what it is.

    The "flying saucer" is just a shape that some UFOs tend to look like. It isn't necessarily what these objects may actually be. Your eyes can deceive you, and so can a photograph.

    Alien spacecrafts in fiction can be whatever shape the author wants them to be, because it is fictitious vehicle. Also, aerodynamics isn't really the concern of a spacecraft once in empty space. In fact any shape can travel through empty space just as easily as an aerodynamically streamlined object.

    The only reason why human spacecrafts need to consider aerodynamics is such that they can minimize drag upon escaping of Earth, and so that they can re-enter our atmosphere without burning up from hitting it too fast. It is Earth's local atmosphere that forces rocket engineers to study aerodynamics.

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    A spaceship doesn't need to be streamlined aerodynamically for its journey through the vacuum of space. What it really needs is impossibly thick dense shielding to protect its crew from radiation caused by its relativistic speeds which will blue shift the background microwave radiation permeating the whole of the universe into the lethal gamma range.

    Unless your flying saucer is truly massive and the desired rotation is to create a gravitational effect, spinning to achieve gyroscopic stability would make a crew somewhat dizzy don't you think; unless the cabin part was isolated on some kind of frictionless super cool fluid bearing; another engineering impossibility.

  • 7 years ago

    The vehicle will need a couple of Taurus to develop the Space Time Warp Bubble and a central compartment for Persons and equipment. Once Dark Matter is identified the power source will be unlimited.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Not really, even aerodynamically, lenticular spacecraft are pretty bad, since they have no stability at high Mach numbers and very bad aerodynamic heating properties - you would need a huge heat shield on them. The shape had been tested in the early 1960s, but other shapes like lifting bodies quickly proved better for the task.

  • 1 decade ago

    Looks like a good design, little air resistance in flight.

  • DrDave
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    Youre looking at too many faked UFO photos. If its spinning, there is NO doubt its fake.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    smarter then the average bear

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