It's amazing how many of these ideas have already been tried in some way or another. I thought I had a couple of clever, novel ideas for aircraft design, but th

It's amazing how many of these ideas have already been tried in some way or another. I thought I had a couple of clever, novel ideas for aircraft design, but then I came across this book[0]. The book is about technical progress more generally, but has a long section that goes over aircraft development (mainly focusing on VTOL). All sorts of things were tried from roughly the 30s-70s, including most of the stuff that is reappearing today. Basically every clever idea I thought I'd originated had already been flown, and while some worked okay, none were better in practice than what's been settled on commercially. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Where-My-Flying-Car-Memoir-ebook/dp/B07F6SD34R https://www.amazon.com/Where-My-Flying-Car-Memoir-ebook/dp/B...