Fellow GoFlyer ZEVA recently raised $230,000 in crowdfunding towards development of its circular personal air vehicle in which you were to stand within a scallop-shaped shell and launch into the air, only to lie prone once it pitched over into cruising flight. An innovative concept altogether, but from which there was always something to be learned from conventional aviation.
Firstly, 'flying saucer' shaped wings have been pursued on any number of occasions in the past but ~ frisbee aside ~ have rarely proved enduring on view of the fact they are decidedly inefficient as aerofoils.
Secondly, prone-piloted aircraft also share a long history, both the French and British having adapted jet-fighters in that way. Broadly speaking they were dropped because in the event of a crash the first thing to cushion the blow would have been your head, and also because people themselves were not really designed for lying on their front. Nonetheless that does not debar the more adventurous of us (or rather, them) from doing so dressed in wing-suits.
Needing not to disappoint investors though, the emphasis has clearly turned toward a more conventional from of flight altogether, not altogether different from any number of similar air-taxis currently under development ~ with the exception perhaps of using a 1940's airframe as its basis.
The question in all of this being, is there a market for a personal air vehicle based only on vertical forms of lift in the shape of propellers? The answer is that it is difficult to tell without seeing the number of consumers buying the product, whilst the product itself remains ever beyond the reach of the end-user.
