What Could Have Been Archive

In 2010, Jim Kor's Urbee became the first car with a fully 3D printed body, a three-wheeled hybrid achieving 200mpg on the highway from a chassis weighing just 1,200 pounds. Proven as a prototype yet stalled indefinitely when crowdfunding failed to raise the funds needed to build its road-ready successor. If it had reached production, could 3D printing have replaced the assembly line as the way cars are built?

In 1955, Convair's NB-36H flew 47 missions carrying a live nuclear reactor, proving crew shielding worked and that a bomber could stay airborne for weeks without refuelling. Cancelled in 1961 after $7 billion, the contamination risk from any crash proving impossible to justify.

If that danger had been engineered away, what might long-endurance aviation look like today?

In 1960, Buckminster Fuller proposed a Geodesic Dome three kilometres wide over Midtown Manhattan, calculated to cut the city's energy consumption to 20%. Sound in engineering, yet never pursued beyond paper, with no institution willing to champion a proposal of such unprecedented scale. If it had found backing, what might urban climate control look like today?

✨ New to the Archive: In 1953, Oerlikon put the Gyrobus into service, an electric bus that stored its energy in a 1,500 kilogram flywheel spinning at 3,000 revolutions per minute and recharged in minutes at a roadside contact point. But it was too heavy for the roads, harder to steer than a conventional bus, and cost twice as much to buy as a diesel. What if the flywheel had become the way we stored energy?

👉 Read here:

What Could Have Been: The Gyrobus The flywheel-powered bus that proved clean urban transit was possible decades before it became necessary

In 1994, IBM's Simon combined a phone, fax machine, and touchscreen PDA into a single device, a decade before the smartphone became mainstream. Pioneering yet undone by a two-hour battery life and a mobile network too immature to support it. If those barriers had been overcome, what might the mobile industry look like today?

In 1919, Alexander Graham Bell's HD-4 Hydrofoil skimmed across Baddeck Bay at 114 km/h, a world marine speed record that stood for two decades. Proven yet repeatedly rejected by the US Navy despite multiple proposals, the programme ended entirely when Bell died in 1922. If the Navy had committed early, how much sooner might hydrofoil technology have transformed maritime transport?

In 1932, Luigi Stipa's barrel-shaped aircraft enclosed its engine and propeller inside a hollow fuselage, using the venturi effect to accelerate airflow for greater thrust. Proven in flight yet the barrel fuselage created so much drag it negated every advantage, topping out at just 81mph. If that flaw had been solved, might ducted propulsion have reached jet-like performance decades earlier?

✨ New to the Archive: In 1962, Jacques Cousteau built Conshelf, a series of undersea stations where oceanauts lived and worked on the seabed for weeks at a time without surfacing. But the stations cost more to sustain the deeper and larger they got, and the programme was abandoned after the third. What if the continental shelf had been settled the way coastlines were?

👉 Read here:

What Could Have Been: Cousteau's Conshelf The undersea colonies that proved humans could live on the seabed

In 1956, Chrysler's Norseman was built after 50,000 hours of labour. Its roof cantilevered from the rear with no structural pillars framing the windscreen. Never seen by the public, it sank with the SS Andrea Doria off Nantucket while en route to its American debut. If it had arrived, how might it have changed automotive design?

In 1924, Abner Doble's Model E steam car started in 30 seconds, ran almost silently, and reached 75mph with no clutch, no gearbox, and no transmission. Superior in design yet never scaled beyond a handful of cars due to chronic manufacturing inconsistencies. If those barriers had been solved, could steam power have become a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine?