The Register®  Original URL:  DARPA funds radical disco-copter
concept  Spinning-platter switchblade chopper takes wing  By
Lewis Page  Posted in Government, 5th September 2008 15:06 GMT
Pentagon boffinry chiefs, not content with the existing panoply
of wacky new whirly-copter concepts, are to fund still another
radical rotary wing project - the "DiscRotor".  The idea of the
DiscRotor is that of a helicopter with a large circular saucer-
like hub and ordinary rotor blades extending out from it. The
disco-copter takes off, lands and hovers just as an ordinary
whirlybird does; but at high speed the blades retract into the
central hub disc, which continues to rotate and so functions as
a "rotating circular wing".  The Gerbino Flight System concept
A new way of getting 'round.  The disco-rotor plan comes, as one
might expect, from DARPA - the Pentagon notionry outfit which
dislikes any idea raised in captivity. DARPA originally had the
scheme checked out under a "phase zero" funding deal with
aerospace giant Boe