This past April 2009, a team of five Mechanical Engineering students at Virginia Commonwealth
University unveiled their Senior Design project - the Hover Car Air Transport.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Darrell Morgan Kellam owned a grocery store in Weirwood, Virginia which specialized in produce and blue coal. But sometime after his 40th birthday in 1926 he had a life-changing experience. Barnstormers were making their rounds in those days and inevitably one came to his town. The barnstormer took people on flights around the area and Kellam was one of them. He was hooked. It ended with the barnstormer teaching Kellam to fly.

On 27 March 2004 NASA’s scramjet powered X-43 broke the world speed record for air breathing engine-powered aircraft. At 5,000 miles/hour, the X-43 covered about 13 miles in 10 seconds of powered flight. It then glided 450 miles to a controlled, pinpoint landing in the Pacific Ocean off southern California. The Hyper-X Program, a joint effort between NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC) and Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) executed this record-breaking flight.