Take the body of a small plane with stubby wings. Replace the wheels with heavy-duty helicopter skids, add four buzzing dronelike electric fans to each one, and you’ll have something like Boeing’s ...

Ever since he was a kid in Sweden, Peter Ternström wanted to make a sci-fi-style flying machine. In 1983 he saw Return of the Jedi five times and dreamed of zooming through the forest of Endor on a ...

Leif Ristroph wanted to build the “simplest possible” flying machine. The applied mathematician at New York University glued together several tubes of carbon fiber to build this: a sphere with four ...