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Michigan Man Builds His Own Flying Saucer
Monday, January 22, 2007
CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. - Some people may call Alfie Carrington crazy or
foolish.
How else do you describe a man who has spent more than half his life
building a flying saucer?
By day a construction worker, Carrington spends his free time inside a
rented storage garage in Macomb County's Clinton Township where he broods
over a 14-foot-wide, carbon fiber, fiberglass vessel.
"Something genius is hiding away in Alfie's eccentricities," friend D.L.
Bradley, a pastor in Clinton Township, said.
Thirty years ago, when Carrington was 27 and obsessed with science
fiction, he set out to build a UFO look-alike. But something inside him
cried out for more.
Inspired by ordinary Americans like Orville and Wilbur Wright, who piloted
the first heavier-than-air aircraft 103 years ago, Carrington pored over
books, magazines and studies about aviation. Never mind his lack of
engineering experience.
(He has spent nearly $60,000 for some of the materials he believes are
needed to launch his creation - a lot for a man who drives a rusted 1986
Mercury Cougar.
Carrington does it because he believes he has discovered a simple design
for an aircraft that aeronautical engineers have spent countless millions
trying to build.
"People are going to say I'm nuts," Carrington shrugged.
Unlike aeronautical engineers who have tried to build vessels for
commercial flight - most notably those who entered the X-Prize contest for
a reusable, privately built suborbital spacecraft - Carrington's aim is
more terrestrial. He wants to replace the automobile with a Jetsons-style
vehicle.
"Why drive when you can fly 500 mph?" he asked.
Carrington has two patents on the design and a company called Vertex
Aerospace. His work caught the attention of NASA, which invited him to a
conference in the mid-1990s where engineers scratched their heads when he
confessed he knew nothing about computers.
His idea is to fire up the vessel with a rotary engine to stimulate a
magnetic levitation system to rotate the ship's two discs. The discs would
draw air into propeller blades.
"It's a simple concept," Carrington said. "There is no way this thing
can't get off the ground because 40 percent of it is rotating."
Aeronautical engineers aren't so confident, especially considering the
rotation speeds needed to lift the aircraft.
"Things spinning at those speeds are worrisome because of the stress from
centrifugal force," explained Cornelis van Dam, professor of mechanical
and aeronautical engineering at the University of California-Davis, a
leading aviation school. "If it's not properly designed and built, it will
rip itself apart. I wouldn't want to stand next to it when it gets up to
speed."
Even aerospace experts rely on other professionals to build such complex
vessels, van Dam pointed out.
But Carrington doesn't have time for naysayers. In eight months, he hopes
to launch his dream, assuming he can raise at least another $40,000 to
complete the project.
"When he starts it up, we'll know either it was the biggest folly of all
time, or one of the most ingenious inventions of all time," Bradley said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245439,00.html
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