Company Invents Entirely New Type of Aircraft

Imagine a stingray, the silent menacing creature from the ocean, if it was able to fly in the air; that's the D-Dalus, or as Gizmag calls it, and entirely new kind of aircraft. Popular Science says in speaking with reps from the company that the goal was to create a flying machine "... that floated like a hummingbird, traveled as fast as a jet, was as quiet as a hot-air balloon, and was simple enough that a car mechanic could repair it."

In reality it's a novel concept that has, through many years of hard work, made it to the real world. The idea is simple, even if the realization of it has not been: To use rolling turbines to create lift.

Underneath the shimmering silver exterior, the craft has four rotors that spin at 2200 rpm. Each has six blades attached that scoop up a tiny amount of air. That scooping effect is what generates lift. To keep the bearings from burning out, the engineers invented a new type of rotary structure that they compare to a rolling arch bridge. Too keep everything balanced, four servo motors connected to high speed processing chip apply just the right amount of power in response to the pilot's movements of a joy stick in the cockpit.

Outside the skin is made of carbon composites, very similar to that used on B-1 bombers, it's light but very, very strong.

The Austrian company by the same name demoed the new vehicle at the recent Paris air show, but mysteriously, there seems to be no visual record of the event on YouTube, or even on the company website.

The D-Dalus, a play on the name Daedalus, from Greek mythology about the man and his son who flew too close to the sun, is neither a fixed wing nor rotary craft, and thus earns the distinction of belonging to a class all its own. It owes its impressive stability to the gyroscope effect provided by the four turbines, plus the incredible amount of power they put it. It can hover, like a helicopter, dart like a bird, and shoot across the sky at jetliner speeds. And if that's not enough it can climb straight up and straight down and move between fixed ground features with far more dexterity than anything else ever made; all with far less noise than virtually any other powered aircraft in existence.

And because it's parts are so simple, it fulfills the requirement that it can be maintained and repaired by an auto mechanic.

Truly, the engineers behind the D-Dalus have created a masterpiece of engineering.