Pushing the Envelope

 I'm having a great time sorting out my dads old collection of books on aeronautics. Theres always something new and exciting to be found in the magazines and periodicals dating back to about 1958. Most notable and of relevance to the blog were these loose sheets taken from Flying Review and an unnamed book on aircraft from 1968.

The first drawing shows a remarkable lifting body design with the shape of a 'pyramid'. The text with it suggests it was under consideration by a team headed by Dr W H Hilton and is presumably from the late fifties. It describes a piloted re-entry by two crew sealed inside a pressurised capsule inside the craft and a possibility of a 'vostok-style' recovery of the interior capsule by parachute as the glider landed separately - possibly 'on rough ground'. Ouch.

Another loose sheet that I found showed a cool submarine launched aircraft proposed by Convair and the text of the 1968 article actually mentions 'Stingray' and 'Thunderbirds' and suggests that such fanciful craft may not be so far off...  i'm not holding my breath!

The closest thing we've seen so far is the Lockheed Martin Cormorant submarine launched UCAV.