blades are too expensive. We need a powerful new powerplant that can direct a stream of deficient energy in sufficient quantities to enable flight. Powerplant doesn't yet exist, and my energy converter doesn't, either. In the 50's it wasn't imagined that commanding computers would use so many resources, rather human ingenuity would be directed towards revolutionising existing technology. This is yet to materialise. Sad

"directed energy stream of sufficient quantity" sounds like a jet engine, which exists.

if you're proposing something more powerful than that... that sounds like a fantastic weapon. Someone get the Pentagon on the horn, let's get this shit funded!

With apologies to Larry Niven: "A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive."

steam engines were replaced by oil, and then, the rulebook was rewritten when jets were invented. That was 80 years ago. Jets are old. We need to minimise the moving parts. To do so we need to increase the density of stored energy so more can be used. The answer is atoms. Not old fashioned uranium atoms, but fresh, new fusion reactors. They shall create not heat, but clean electricity. It is long overdue. Even professor calculus knew that the best way to get tintin to the moon was by using nuclear energy. We need to reinvent the plane, not make a better version.

A solid fuel rocket engine has no moving parts.

we need an blinding flash of technological innovation to illuminate this century, not dissimilar to last centurys mushroom cloud.

You mean graphene...?

We have this, it's called the F35 (Also AV8B in previous years). See the article in this thread however :P