There is a generation in aerospace and aviation that first became enthralled with the possibilities of flight in the 1960s. That was the twilight of an extraordinary era of innovation that had lasted a quarter of a century. It was era in which the world airspeed record rose fourfold, air travel went from the wreck of the Hindenburg in 1937 to the Concorde treaty in 1962, and rocketry from an eccentric hobby to the ultimate weapon. Where is the inspiration today for the airships, spaceplanes, tailsitters, flying cars and hypersonic gliders that fired our imagination?
Happily, we need to look not back to the 1950s, but to here in the 2010s, where these ideas are being actively pursued—mostly by companies that are far from household names. It might not be rife in Big Industry, but there is still a strong current of innovation in aerospace. This is particularly true in unmanned aircraft, where removing the size and safety constraints imposed by a human pilot has opened up the trade space and allowed designers to revisit unconventional concepts discarded decades ago as unworkable.
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