12 Most Incredible Abandoned Technology And Vehicles

building something new is a complex process first you have to take an idea out of your head and turn it into a plan on paper after that you have to follow your paper plan and use it to build a prototype just getting that far is an impressive achievement but not all of those prototypes are successful for a variety of reasons technology sometimes gets written off or abandoned after a prototype has been built or test trials have been performed this video is full of technological wonders that have been drawn or built but were never developed further as Europe headed for an armed conflict during the mid 1930s armies on all sides of the divide began to reassess and develop their resources that led to the creation of some innovative unusual prototype vehicles such as the german Blum and Voss BV 141 reconnaissance aircraft you definitely know one if you saw one it's one of the very few planes ever built with an asymmetrical design all the tests performed on the bv 141 suggested it was a good performer but it never made it into mass production there were two primary factors that went against it firstly the ideal engine suddenly became difficult to acquire and secondly the focke-wulf fw 189 was seen as being able to do everything the Blom and Voss model could three prototypes were built along with two separate production batches of five then a further 12 of the planes were ordered despite that limited run not one single model survived to this day the development of new vehicles by the military didn't end when the war stopped the Americans feared of fresh battle was imminent immediately after the Second World War ended so they carried on innovating and inventing one product of that innovation was the Northrop YB 49 heavy bomber plane an aircraft with an appearance that was so unusual that it might even explain a spate of UFO sightings that were recorded during its test flights the jet-powered plane was developed in 1947 for use by the US Air Force but the military never followed up on their interest by placing a large order the flying wing design was distinctive and the turbojet powered engine performed well but was beaten to the post by the development of the Convair b-36 with its piston driven alternative design elements of the YB 49 were picked up and used years later when Northrop went on to make the b-2 stealth bomber during the 1990s everybody's heard of the American space shuttle program but far fewer people are aware that the Russians were experimenting with the idea of space planes before during and after the launch of the first space shuttle it was ultimately the Buran program that won approval from the Russian government but they very nearly went with mikoyan-gurevich instead the company was well known for their fighter planes and happy to take on the challenge of building an orbital space plane an aircraft that could fly like a conventional plane but also exit the Earth's atmosphere and enter space their best shot at it was the MIG 105 which was a part of the spiral program work officially began way back in 1965 but was paused after the American moon landing and then begun again in 1974 as the Americans started the space shuttle program the MIG 105 achieved subsonic flight in 1976 and flew eight more times until the end of 1978 when the decision was made to pull funding from spiral and put everything into buran instead the unwanted big space plane is now an exhibit at the Monda no Air Force Museum speaking of the Buran here's how the famous space vehicle was treated after its failure to achieve what was expected of it this wrecked shell is not the brand model that went into space it's an unfinished sistership that was seemingly written off and discarded on the outskirts of Moscow when these images were taken in 2010 it was unloaded schneier street close to the metro station at Schoen skya the official designation of this forgotten moran is product 2.01 and it was once a labor of love for many people working at the tushy no engineering plant the money to carry on making the Moran ran out when the Soviet Union collapsed and so it was left inside the factory by 2004 there was no room for it in the factory and so it was simply dragged outside and left to rot it seems like no way to treat a vehicle that was once expected to symbolise the USSR's triumph in the space race but what else is to be done with it if nobody wants to take ownership of it the Cold War was a time of unending intense paranoia there were always rumors that a new super weapon was being built on either the American or Russian side and both sides were therefore always suspicious about what the other might be working on most of the fears were unfounded but there was truth to some of the stories for example the suggestion that the Russians had a device that could burrow underground like a mole and then set off a nuclear bomb beneath the city they had such a device and here it is this subterranean device had a body made of titanium and a pointed nose to make its task of tunneling through soil and rock easier if the ground was particularly hard the tip of the drill could heat up to melt the surface before attempting to drill through it its ultimate undoing was the simple fact that it was far too dangerous for its own good during a test in 1964 the prototype exploded thankfully it didn't have a nuclear bomb attached to it at the time but the failure worried the Russians enough to call the whole thing off having invested so much time and energy into splitting the atom and developing the nuclear bomb during the Second World War American scientists started to consider what other benefits their new mastery over nuclear power might bring during the post-war years one of those scientists was physicist Lyle borst who worked with his students at the University of Utah to develop the blueprint for a nuclear train during the 1950's codenamed the x12 the train would be 160 feet long and host a cylindrical nuclear reactor one foot long and three feet in diameter using uranium-235 as fuel just 11 pounds of fuel would run it for an entire year and so refueling brakes would become a thing of the past 200 tons of the 360 ton total weight of the Train would be the shield required to protect passengers from radiation but that seemed a small price to pay for progress what wasn't a small price though was the estimated cost per train of the x12 Bork's worked that out that every train would cost 1.2 million dollars to build which was even more than it is now that combined with the fact that the reactor could explode in the event of a crash that nobody ever tried to build such a train just climbing aboard a helicopter is enough to make some people nervous so we hate to think what these people would make of the Hiller vz1 paani the idea behind this rotor aircraft was very basic it was literally a platform you could stand on and take off into the air it's the most straightforward kind of single-person aircraft you could ever imagine all you needed to do to change direction was to shift your weight on the platform and the vehicle would respond it seems like a science-fiction idea but the prototype was up and flying by 1955 and work began in 1953 two differently sized prototypes were also built although none were ever put into mass production later tests performed on the pony saw helicopter controls added to make steering the platform easier the designers hope that the army would be their major customers but the army wasn't overly keen they thought the platforms were too slow to have combat use that soldiers inside them would be sitting ducks the project was discontinued but two of the prototypes still exist and are on display at museums the tanks you see on battlefields today all have fairly similar design but that's because the concept of a tank has had years to evolve back when the concept was new tanks came in many unusual shapes and sizes as an example here's the steam wheel tank which was built by the Holt manufacturing company in 1916 and intended for use in the First World War it didn't actually see any action but its unique design shows us the thought processes that went into tank design during those early years the framework for the tank was a common agricultural tractor with two large wheels at the back and one at the front power to the wheels was provided by a two cylinder steam engine capable of 75 horsepower and a kerosene boiler two cannons and two machine guns could be mounted inside the tank shielded by a half-inch thick armor plating when tested in the field the tank was too slow too hard to maneuver and the armour plating was too thin it was then scrapped and forgotten about in 1918 the Soviet ts3 looks like a house or possibly an entire office block mounted on tracked wheels to be carried around that would be an impressive achievement but it's actually nothing so simple the t e and s and the name stand for transportable electric station and this is actually a whole nuclear power plant on wheels that would seem like a remarkable thing to achieve in the here-and-now but the russians had a prototype up and running in the 1950s it was hoped that ts3 units could reduce the need for centralized power supplies which were an easy target for potential enemies these nine wheeled 310 ton vehicles with their 40 pounds of uranium payload could take power wherever it needed to go the project was abruptly cancelled in 1961 not because the Soviets were concerned about the risks but because they didn't think it was financially viable apparently the idea of a mini power station driving down the road didn't alarm anybody who worked in the field of health and safety this is a video about lost or abandoned technology and yet we're showing you footage of two massive crawler transporters used by NASA which are nicknamed Hans and Franz both of the 1960s vehicles are still used whenever nasa has a rocket to launch so why are we calling them abandoned here's the simple answer we couldn't build them again if we tried they were purpose-built to launch these Saturn 5 rocket during the 1960s and once that job was done they were mothballed and the people who worked on them went on to other projects the plans were lost it's not that we couldn't build a new type of vehicle to help us launch space rockets because of course we could it's just that they would look nothing like Hans and Franz the time it would take engineers to take the two crawlers apart and re-engineer them from scratch might as well be spent working on something new that's why NASA has the crawlers maintained and repaired so regularly if they ever break down completely nothing can fly until replacements are built making a vehicle that can function in more than one kind of environment has been a challenge for designers for a long time we've seen plenty of attempts to make planes that can go into space or cars that can fly this strange Brown Russian vehicle from the 1960s might have been the most ambitious design ever attempted designed by a nickel ovitch melon and chinko this is our go had the eccentric inventor been able to follow through on his original vision the Argo would have been able to drive around regular streets like a car functioned as a tank in wartime and even been safe to drive across the ocean floor well in the chenko teamed up with workmates from the GK SB chug a banks tractor plant to try to make his dream into a reality and he got as far as this prototype show sadly he didn't get any further the body of the car with its hermetic seal may or may not be waterproof he never put an engine inside to find out could the Argo really be an aqua car the current owner has offered to sell it to anyone who had an engine and test the theory so be our guest and find out during the 1960's and 1970's several major nations were trying to create a working financially viable hover train or maglev train the British were no exception to this although they called their experimental vehicle by the slightly less glamorous name of the tracked hovercraft instead there are TV 31 tracked hovercraft model may have been ugly looking more like a boat that it did a futuristic high-speed train but it might have been effective it was supposed to be able to reach a top speed of over 300 miles per hour but we never got to find out if it was capable of such a feat in a true British farce the five million pound test track that was built to trial the tracked hovercraft was built on marshland and partially sank in 1973 the government of the time was furious about the international embarrassment and the wasted money and refused to invest any further cash in the project the tracked hovercraft was abandoned and the prototype is now a strange exhibit at a museum in Peterborough subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications and you will be the first to know when a new video comes out thank you for watching and see you in the next video

Channel: Inforado

Views: 421,115

Rating: 4.6734695 out of 5

Keywords: 12 Most Incredible Abandoned Technology And Vehicles, abandoned technology, abandoned vehicles, abandoned spaceship, abandoned train, abandoned prototype, incredible abandoned, amazing abandoned, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: RlGKurRUOSs

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 21 2019