The US government nearly spent £12billion on some ‘ridiculous’ flying hotels as wide as football pitch – it would have carried thousands of tonnes of cargo by ‘hovering’ across the Atlantic
The US government once financed the design for an experimental new 566-ft long aircraft, the Aerocon Wingship.
Powered by 20 rocket engines, it was meant to be twice as big as a jumbo jet and fly at 460mph. It would have been capable of carrying 3,000 people across the Atlantic at record speed.
The US military even almost spent $15billion (£12bn) of taxpayers’ money on 13 of the aircraft so they could ship military vehicles and personnel across the sea.
The craft was invented by American inventor Steven Hooker, who wanted to ferry people across the Atlantic for £60 per ticket.
He was inspired by the Soviet Union’s gigantic ‘Caspian Sea Monster’, a similar sea-faring ‘wingship’, and wanted to build something even bigger.
When the ‘wingship’ was designed, US Lt Colonel Michael F Francis said: “We’ve never built anything on this scale, so we’ll have to learn more about the physics and aerodynamics associated with it.”
Unfortunately, they never did. The Aerocon Wingship was considered too much of a ‘technical risk’ and DARPA binned the design in the 90s.
Even though it never got built, the Wingship has undoubtedly inspired other mega-planes.
Last month, ambitious designs for a nuclear-powered flying hotel were revealed.
The AI-piloted Sky Cruise is designed to fly forever and never land, with normal planes docking on its wings to deliver passengers to and from the vehicle.
The concept design features restaurants, a shopping centre, gyms, theatres and swimming pools all in the sky-faring vehicle.
Some have called it the ‘new Titanic’ and argued that if the Sky Cruise crashed, its nuclear reactor would easily destroy a city.
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