There are certain things we have always with us; the Bible mentions the poor, but believers in the ultimate superiority of flying wings are another, and almost equally persistent, category. Like devout knights bent upon finding the chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper, they keep their eyes unblinking on the prize. Their Grail is a pure airplane consisting of a wing alone, uncluttered by any sinful excrescence: an immaculate temple of Lift.
Flying wings-a goofy name, really; “tailless aircraft” is better-are not merely an obsession of cranks, however. They appear periodically among the meditations of even such organizations as Boeing, which, in spite of a brief delusional period characterized by persistent repetition of the phrase “sonic cruiser,” is on the whole crank-free. Giant transport planes consisting of nothing but wing are proposed; they are called “blended wings” or “spanloaders.” The latter name hints at one of the characteristics that make them desirable. The idea is to lighten and simplify the airplane by putting the weight where the lift is, in the wing, rather than concentrating it in a slender tube at the middle.
