It seems inconceivable that an aircraft that can travel from New York to Los Angeles in 12 minutes — less time than it takes to wake up, whip together a proper breakfast and soak in the world news exists. But it does and DARPA's planning to test the unmanned Falcon HTV-2 aircraft today!

Last week, Burt Rutan announced his retirement from Scaled Composites while simultaneously unveiling a prototype of his latest design, the Model 367 BiPod flying car roadable plane. Rutan gave each of his aircraft designs a model number, and as you may have surmised by now, he's got a lot of designs, and most of them are innovative and, let's say, unorthodox. Possibly the most extraordinary thing about Rutan's aircraft is how many of them were actually built and flown by the company he founded, Scaled Composites. And it's not like it's just the (relatively) ordinary ones that got off the ground either, since no less than five of his designs now reside in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. You probably already know about Scaled Composites' spaceships and carrier aircraft, but today, we're taking a look back at fifteen of Rutan's earlier extreme designs.

Kids have some pretty crazy ideas about technology, as General Electric discovered when they asked children about their visions for the future of passenger aircraft. And somehow, none of these ideas were too crazy for GE.

The closest thing to a flying car that we've realistically developed are various types of drivable planes that don't fit into our futuristic fantasies all that well. If this flying car concept ever gets produced it'll finally signal that the future has arrived, especially since it's an eco-friendly gas-electric hybrid.