Continuing with my personal ranking of the most innovative aeronautic designers, today we reach number 9 on the list. After my own criterion, this place shall go to the Horten brothers, Walter (1913 – 1998) and Reimar (1915 – 1993) for their development of the first operative flying wings. Along with a lot of gliders, they designed the HO-229, the first flying wing powered by two turbojet engines that was fully operative and was very close to Göring’s dream of a 1000x1000x1000 aircraft (1000 kg of payload, 1000 km range and 1000 km/h). The Horten brothers were also pioneers in stealth coating with the purpose of minimizing the radar footprint.
Therefore, position 9 in my ranking goes to the Horten Bros.
Continuing our thoughts of the last entry, the answer to that open question requires a scientific approach. The big companies we were talking about are profitable and keep a high technologic level due to the fact that the amount of stupid people in an organization, if you consider the organization as a big sample of people, is a non measurable fraction, but still finite of it. Besides, if you take into account the second law by Carlo M. Cipolla (The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity) :
The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
