Comments on: It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's…Yeah, It's a Plane.

By: Georg

Georg — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 10:40:25 +0000

Such designs
were popular with sailplanes in the 20/30ties.
But because America is so self-referential,
such things never popular there are “sold”
as being new.
Georg

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 01:15:22 +0000

@3. MT-LA,

I remember reading that low energy systems (I’m badly paraphrasing) favored low speed operations, and high energy systems favored high speed operations. It also had something to do with the low viscosity of air.

The basic message was that there was a reason why birds flap their wings in cycles of low integers per second or minute. On the other hand, practical human flight has always had motors (read: propellers or turbines) that operated in the hundreds or thousands of RPM.

This carried forward into the motion of the complete flying system. Nature achieves tens of km/hour. Humans achieve hundreds or thousands of km/hour. What is interesting is that neither ‘technology’ works in the others operating range very well. Even the exceptions are notable mainly for being exceptional.

By: amphiox

amphiox — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 04:56:19 +0000

re #2, why would the sharks be unhappy?

But I wonder which of the 9000+ species gets the title of “last” living dinosaur?

By: MT-LA

MT-LA — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:38:13 +0000

Al Feersum: I really dont think ornithopters are the way to go. Yes, nature obviously likes flapping wings for propulsion, but I can’t imagine that a flapping wing is more efficient than a turning motor.
Nature never implemented the wheel in biological locomotion. Does that mean that walking is more efficient than rolling? I dont think so.
And as for ballistics: What? Maybe I’m getting lost on the lofting part. Are you proposing shooting a manned vehicle into LEO on a ballistic trajectory? The acceleration at “take-off” would be enormous!

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:49:26 +0000

The sharks might not be to happy about the last living dinosaur bit… thankfully they can’t hold still long enough to read blogs.
That being said, I too think that low earth orbit is probably the next big thing, unless someone perfects a scram jet, which might give LEO a run for it’s money.

By: Al Feersum

Al Feersum — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:04:41 +0000

Gahh. We’re being too conservative. Too simple. Why not go the whole hog and do ornithopters?

But even then, we aren’t aiming high enough.

Ballistics. That’s where the next step should come. London to Sydney in less than 3 hours – and two of those hours are for launch prep and landing. Loft up, quick suborbital jump, landing. Could all be fully automated as well. It might even be less polluting than a long-haul jet…

So, Virgin Galactic may be getting there with SS1 and White Knight – but for two or three people? Why not two or three hundred people? Bring in the economies of scale and make it faster, better, cheaper.

Go anywhere is less than 3 hours, can’t go anywhere in less than 2. So there’ll still be a market for short haul.