Slashdot led me to this post on the military’s program to develop the “Walrus”:
According to DARPA’s press release, “the Walrus aircraft will be a heavier-than-air vehicle and will generate lift through a combination of aerodynamics, thrust vectoring and gas buoyancy generation and management.”
This sounds a lot like the aircraft that John McPhee wrote about in a wonderful little book called The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed more than 30 years ago. Like the Walrus, the Aereon craft was a hybrid aircraft: though it was filled with helium, it was still heavier than air, and it relied on its aerodynamic shape to get off the ground. In his book, McPhee presents a sweetly sympathetic picture of Bill Miller, the Presbyterian minister who inherited the company from another minister, Monroe Drew, who had a vision of a “Faith Fleet” of Aereon airships traveling slowly but certainly around the world, delivering needed supplies to poor communities, along with tons and tons (literally) of Bibles. Miller preserved some of that evangelical vision, but also recognized the necessity of discovering an economic niche for his technology that paid its way.
McPhee tags along as Jack Olcott, an ace test pilot, takes off at the controls of the Aereon 26, a proof of concept machine, and runs it through its paces—yaws, rolls, smooth landings. The next step was to have been the construction of a 320 foot prototype, capable of flying great distances on small amounts of fuel and carrying enormous payloads.
But the Aereon company ran out of money and never was able to build that prototype.
The Air Force won’t run out of money. And tanks and troops represent a payload that has more urgency today than Bibles and emergency rations have ever had. Perhaps this time, the concept will get off the ground for more than a test flight.
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