They Cost BILLIONS But Turned Out to be Worthless!!

They Cost Hundreds of Millions But Turned Out to be Worthless!!

In the closed-door of the world of aerospace engineering, common sense and restraint often lose out to imagination and ambition. Aviation history overflows with radical aircraft designs that achieve the unattainable and sometimes the near impossible, yet still take wing thanks only to copious amounts of brainpower and optimism holding their flaws together.

Can you imagine an airplane built for speed rather than stability? An aircraft made of glue and titanium instead of aluminum? A cockpit so tight the pilot had to squeeze himself in sideways?

Let’s together uncover the truth about The Aviation Absurdities. So without further ado, let’s jump in!

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In the closed-door of the world of aerospace engineering, common sense and restraint often lose out to imagination and ambition. Aviation history overflows with radical aircraft designs that achieve the unattainable and sometimes the near impossible, yet still take wing thanks only to copious amounts of brainpower and optimism holding their flaws together.

Can you imagine an airplane built for speed rather than stability? An aircraft made of glue and titanium instead of aluminum? A cockpit so tight the pilot had to squeeze himself in sideways? Let’s together uncover the truth about The Aviation Absurdities. So without further ado, let’s jump in!

Nowhere is the triumph of fevered imagination over practicality better illustrated than in three record-setting aircraft – the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 airliner, Lockheed’s secret A-12 spy plane, and Britain’s mythical Blackburn B-20 mega bomber. On the surface, these three flying machines share little beyond perhaps wandering into aviation by evading more rational scrutiny.

Yet peer closer, and you’ll discover airframes that spit furiously in physics’ face, confound critics at every turn, and laugh off external doubts to become icons of aeronautics. First comes the DC-10, a droopy, ungainly airplane whose very ability to remain airborne perplexed the experts. Then the even more improbable aviation atrocity – the A-12.

A pointy titanium tube faster than bullets that made the term “engineering limits” laughable. And finally, the Blackburn B-20, a gravity-mocking behemoth decades ahead of either materials science or common sense. Talking about this magical machine, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, an airliner known for its incredible

Ugliness, and it is even more incredible ability to remain stubbornly airborne. When it first rolled off the assembly line in 1968 with much fanfare, the DC-10 was marketed as a revolutionary new design that would transform aviation. With its wide body design and powerful high-bypass jet turbofan engines, it was meant to carry

Over 300 passengers in comfort and style to destinations all over the globe. What McDonnell Douglas didn’t want you to know, however, was that the DC-10 was practically held together with duct tape and wishful thinking. It was a slapdash, last minute jumble of questionable engineering choices that somehow didn’t

Immediately cause the plane to crash every time it tried to fly. To understand why the DC-10’s very existence represents an absurd affront to sensibility and logic, we have to look at some of its more creative design elements. Firstly, let’s examine the DC-10’s wings, which were mounted surprisingly low on the aircraft’s body.

This gave the plane a distinctly droopy, sad dog look that designers tried to mask by angling them sharply upward. Not only did this high angle of attack make the DC-10 look almost comical, it meant that the wings didn’t actually generate enough lift.

As one NASA engineer put it, the DC-10 had basically the absolute minimum wing surface area needed to get airborne. Any less lift, and the plane would essentially fall to the ground like a rock. Then there’s the issue of the DC-10’s engines.

Unlike modern airliners that mount engines under the wings for stability and balance, the DC-10 had one engine under each wing, plus a third mounted on the vertical stabilizer at the rear of the plane. Cramming an engine back there meant the rear of the aircraft was incredibly heavy compared to the front.

This made the plane want to tip over backwards, a problem the designers “solved” by moving the wings aft and giving the plane its droopy look. With such a gross imbalance airframe, wing-mounted engines working overtime to keep it flying level, and barely enough lift being produced, every single DC-10 flight was basically a

Physics miracle. Climbing aboard a DC-10 as a passenger meant you were essentially taking your life into your hands and hoping the law of averages didn’t bite you on that particular trip. But despite how obviously jury-rigged the DC-10 seemed to aviation experts, it did okay

In its first few years shuttling people around the world. Sure, it was ugly and consumed copious amounts of fuel just to remain airborne, but hey, it flew. Then in 1974, disaster struck. An improperly closed cargo door blew open during a Turkish Airlines DC-10 takeoff from Paris, causing an explosive decompression.

Control cables severed by the blast made the plane nearly impossible to steer, sending it careening nose-first into a nearby forest, killing 346 people. Turns out that cramming an engine inside that pointy tail section required running hydraulic lines right through the cabin walls, leaving them exposed to damage.

Combined with the airliner’s other balancing deficiencies, this made catastrophic failures a lot more likely. After the horrific crash, the DC-10 was grounded worldwide pending investigations. Aviation authorities eventually let the DC-10 fly again with mandatory design modifications. Over the next two decades these changes combined with an overall strong safety record restored

Confidence in what was still, let’s admit it, a pretty preposterous airplane. DC-10s went on to log thousands of hours in the air despite their design shortcomings, although there were still occasional emergencies caused by the plane’s intrinsic desire to plunge uncontrolled from the sky.

Later passenger versions, called the MD-10 and MD-11, fixed some but not all of these issues before being retired in 2014. And the DC-10 soldiers on even today flying freight, making it one of the longest serving airliners out there. Over 50 years after that questionable design rolled out of a California hangar, DC-10s

Somehow still haul themselves gamely across the heavens. If you think the DC-10 pushed the limits of aviation technology, get a load of Kelly Johnson’s A-12 spy plane. Designed in the late 1950s at the Lockheed Skunk Works, this aircraft makes the DC-10 look graceful and shrewd at the same time.

The CIA desperately wanted an undetectable, fast, high-flying reconnaissance aircraft to spy on the Soviet Union. What Kelly Johnson created, against seemingly impossible demands, was an otherworldly black dagger of a plane that looked like nothing that should ever leave the ground.

Like something out of a comic book, the A-12 was literally skin tight by aircraft standards, with no antennae that could increase its radar signature. To achieve speeds over Mach 3 at 90,000 feet of altitude, Johnson came up with an innovative

New structural approach – about 90% of the A-12’s airframe was made of titanium. Crazy! Titanium is as strong as steel but much lighter, however, it was nightmare fuel for engineers at the time. No one knew how to shape the exotic metal into such a complex design.

But since impossibility was his specialty, Kelly Johnson wasn’t about to let a little thing like metallurgy get in the way of building his insane airplane. He basically had to invent new tools and techniques from scratch to work with the finicky titanium and produce the hundreds of custom curved panels needed.

Every day that his engineers would come to work, not even knowing if their crazy titanium plane would even maintain its structural integrity. Aeronautical madness![a] Nobody knew how to shape the rare metal into such a complex design because the A-12 had to fly fast.

Johnson had to slap not one, but two monster jet engines capable of generating over 80,000 pounds of thrust under that skinny fuselage in order to fly faster and higher than anything. It became an engineering feat just to start this city-block-long power plant without melting the entire aircraft.

When the pilots finally got the A-12 airborne, the engines guzzled so much high-octane fuel that they had to refuel immediately from aerial tankers. Speaking of takeoff, to get this beast off the ground took 8,000 feet of runway – nearly

A mile and a half – before it could sluggishly claw its way into the sky. Once there, the phenomenon of supersonic shockwaves resulted in cabin temperatures exceeding 600 degrees. Without its special heat-reflecting paint, the A-12’s titanium skin would warp and buckle during flight!

So in summary a pointy titanium tube with wings composed of non-aerospace grade mystery metal, powered by a pair of after burning engines that came straight from the gates of Hell, flown by pilots on the edge of heat exhaustion in pressurized oven suits.

And yet somehow, this aviation atrocity not only got off the ground routinely, but absolutely smashed all records for altitude and speed like they were nothing. NASA still considers the A-12 one of the greatest piloted aircraft ever built. Like the ugly DC-10, the A-12 overcame countless Engineering Absurdities to embarrass the rule

Book of aviation. Six times heavier than the intelligence estimates said was possible, twice as fast as experts thought survivable, and able to cruise three miles higher than existing aircraft could fly, it laughed in the face of reality. So while the DC-10 may be aviation’s poster child for ridiculous design, the A-12 spy

Plane demonstrates the madness of human creativity at its finest. It shattered so many limits on so many fronts, this aircraft of extremes made the utterly improbable the new normal. Hand Kelly Johnson an impossible task, stand back, and watch insanity take wing.

When seen from a safe distance, the sheer immensity of the Blackburn B-20 bomber defies belief. This giant plane’s 230-foot wingspan casts a literal shadow over far smaller modern jets nearby. Standing taller than a 5-story building, its massive double-decker fuselage built to carry impossible payloads peers magnificently down at stunned onlookers below.

Ascending exterior access stairs taller than most houses, we enter the cave’s main cargo bay. This aircraft’s voluminous interior could swallow an entire train worth of arms and still have room to spare. Yet climbing higher through multiple levels, we see even more expansive storage spaces

Within the high-ceiling superstructure, broken only by the occasional curving titanium bulkhead. Arriving breathless in the forward compartment, a small glass cockpit provides the flight crew their only view outside the tunnels and passageways threading this plane’s vast interior spaces. Seated behind an instrument panel the size of a cinema screen, pilots ignite deafening

Turbines mounted not below fragile wings, but atop them to avoid obliterating the fragile propellers struggling to pull this monster skyward. Under stress, high-bypass turbofans produce over 300,000 pounds of thrust, their sounds drowning out all other noise even at idle. Bracing against the building vibration, we notice the entire giant aircraft slowly moving

Forward, gathering momentum for an anguished takeoff run. Rolling down miles of runway like a drunken aluminum titan, the B-20 finally, gradually, tips its drooping nose skyward. Massive wings generate unprecedented lift as they slowly lift the metal megastructure into the heavens.

The overwhelmed pilots breathe a sigh of relief while praying their ambitious outrage of engineering maintains structural integrity under maximum dynamic pressure. The B-20, buffeted by turbulence powerful enough to destroy buildings, gains altitude through the sheer force of its record-breaking engines.

Crew members wear oxygen masks to function in the thinning air five miles above Earth’s surface, their bodies leaden from a G-force workout comparable to an astronaut launch. Somehow cheating velocity’s cruel equations, the diabolical giant B-20 holds together to complete its critical maiden flight.

An insult to aerodynamics and affront to design logic, the Blackburn behemoth shows that British bulldog determination can sometimes triumph over physics itself. No matter the cost in vertigo or frayed nerves for those braving a ride inside aviation history’s most epic absurdity.

Yet the DC-10,A-12, and mythical B-20 represent merely the pointy tip of aviation’s irrational spear. History shimmers with legions of radical yet successful aircraft, too numerous to profile in depth here. Take the supersonic Concorde airliner, a needle-nosed technical tour de force that inaugurated super rich travelers zipping about at twice the speed of sound.

Designed to cheat physics and master the temperamental edge of uncontrolled airflow, the Concorde made its first pioneering transatlantic flight back in the 1970s. Then there’s NASA’s bizarrely shaped supersonic X-planes currently being tested. The X-59 QueSST, with its impossibly long nose and strangely angled wings, is one of these.

It’s meant to reduce shockwave intensity as it flies faster than rifle bullets. And the X-57 Maxwell, whose tiny wings and distributed electric propellers make you wonder if its designers ever glanced skyward at actual soaring birds. Mainstream manufacturers have also fielded their share of radical concepts.

Boeing’s 2707 SST design of the 1960s envisioned a passenger aircraft so gargantuan it would dwarf even the mighty B-20 Bomber. This aluminum leviathan tipped scales at nearly a million pounds when fueled and ready for its parade of supersonic luxury liner service. On the military side, swing-wing war birds highlight ambitious aeronautics, securing

Funding despite exceeding all engineering sanity. Aircraft like the F-111 Aardvark medium bomber, capable of takeoff speeds over 200 miles per hour backwards! Its automated terrain following capacity allowed flying barely above grassy hillsides at night despite carrying tons of explosives internally. Then there are the even more repulsive Russian Ekranoplans.

These bizarre hybrid water-skimmers soar just feet above wave tops using ground effect at remarkable speeds. Reaching lengths over 500 feet – greater than a Saturn V moon rocket – they can carry hundreds of passengers or military vehicles riding this aerodynamic miracle. The aerial oddities extend into amateur sport flying machines also.

Man-powered aircraft like the Daedalus 88 crawled its way through the air on delicately pedaled bicycle s powering fragile, gossamer wings. While the jet-powered Fly board ir “hoverboard” screams over waves and fence lines with its pilot strapped standing atop what seems a particularly extroverted backpack.

In fact, the growing legions of personal electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing craft, or eVTOLS, represent a centuries-old explosion of impractical yet bold small aircraft hopes. Promising urban mobility through compact air taxis sans runways, the concepts multiply while skeptics await viable products emerging beyond the CGI hype reels.

So whether airliner or fighter, fact or fancy, aviation’s irrational allure sparks inventors to routinely flee restraint’s surly bonds and dare graft wings pan optically upon any vehicle they can conceive or fund. Because nested within our desire for unfettered flight persists an innate impatience with technology’s limits today.

We celebrate outrageous concepts pushing boundaries because they often evolve into the mundane machines later taken for granted. Every implausible spark advancing airborne arts benefited from an earlier, wilder prompt. This concept shines as a defiant thread connecting bizarre designs that challenge convention across eras. Hucksters hawking personal jetpacks stand spiritually alongside Concorde’s designers

Grappling incredible speed into an acceptable product. And tomorrow’s engineers immersed in arcane fields like boundary layer control, pulse detonation engines, and plasma aerodynamics explore the same irrational conviction that Hutin & Gonord first acted upon in 1783 when they launched history’s first manned balloon flight.

That underlying belief being a species born earthbound cannot, and shall not, remain there. So there you have it – a whirlwind tour through the hallmarks of absurd engineering and irrational vision, somehow triumphing to achieve fantastic flight. We’ve covered ungainly airliners, impossibly pointy spy planes, and mythical mega bombers.

Yet for all their differences in origin and intent, at heart each remained a defiant bet against the possible – and flew magnificently despite it all. Hopefully, their ridiculous stories stirred that spark of inspiration dwelling in all who dare let imagination really soar. Who knows where restless minds might transport that prompting next?

After all, much of what was sheer flight of fancy just years or decades ago glides routinely through our skies today. Did these absurd tales of extreme aircraft blow your mind? What other ridiculous planes merit profiling? Let us know in the comments below!

And don’t forget to smash that Like button, share this video with fellow aviation geeks, and subscribe if you want to see more aeronautical impossibilities explored. Clear skies await the irrational, my friends! [a]sarcastic note