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The AEREON 26 was an experimental aircraft developed to investigate lifting body design with a view to using its shape to create hybrid designs, part airship, part conventional aircraft. It was powered by a piston engine, driving a pusher propeller, and generated lift through the aerodynamics of its lozenge-shaped fuselage. Although results of flight tests conducted in 1971 were promising, funding for larger and semi-buoyant aircraft was not forthcoming at the time. The story of the test program was recounted by John McPhee in his book ''The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed'' (ISBN 0-374-51635-9). This aircraft has a special place in UFO and conspiracy lore, since enthusiasts have drawn parallels between the shape of this aircraft and some reported UFOs from around the same era. ==Background== (詳細はAEREON III''. Completed in 1965, the prototype was lost during taxiing tests the following year, without having flown.〔McPhee, pp.49-50.〕 Following the destruction of the ''AEREON III'', the firm sought "a new and better solution." AEREON's Monroe Drew and John Fitzpatrick employed German physicist Jürgen Bock, formerly of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, Germany, and the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, to develop a list of parameters that would be fed into a computer at the General Electric Space Center, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in order to determine "the optimum configuration for enclosing maximum volume without too much penalty of drag."〔McPhee, pp. 62-3.〕 ''AEREON 26s deltoid configuration, "a shrewd and practical compromise between an airfoil and a sphere,"〔McPhee, p. 4.〕 was the result of these efforts. Rubber-powered and gasoline-engined models of the configuration were flown and wind tunnel tests conducted before testing of the ''26'' itself began.〔Miller, p. 443.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「AEREON 26」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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