When I worked at Lockheed a secondary job was to teach a course to aeronautical engineers. It wasn't a course in AE but I am pretty sure that I know how airplanes are designed as I later on worked with a number who were doing just that.

They weren't whipping up anything as crazy looking at that Blohm&Voss on the right of the two picture examples above, but they were doing some pretty interesting exploring. They were tasked to "think outside the box". And they were doing just that. And to see if their wild and crazy ideas were worth pursuing, they'd apply the formulas. They didn't work from a list of soundbite simple ideas that would create yet another Ugly Stick.

whatever..... this spin off has had enough said.