Free flight?

[Xavier_Onassis]

If they build it, I want one.

Fuel-Less Gravity Powered Airplane

[Kramer]

a knock-off of one of howard hughes planes

[Xavier_Onassis]

Well, no, it is not. The wings and fuselage are filled with helium, so it can take off vertically. Its propulsion uses compressed engines. It is alternatively a lighter than air plane, a glider and a heavier than air plane. You have to watch the video to tell what it is about.

Hughes did not develop any lighter-than-air, Helium filled planes. Nor did he use compressed air as a propulsion system. Nor did his planes change wing configuration in flight. Nor did any plane Hughes built take off vertically.

It just may LOOK to you like some twin-fuselage plane Hughes built.

[Plane]

Submarines that use that principal of propulsion have been proposed as a way to move massive freight cheaply.

It isn't that there is no power requirement , only that the power required is a small fraction of the engine power needed for heavyer than air flight.

This aircraft might be able to get by on solar power , perhaps on auto pilot it could take a rest on station "parked " in an out of the way spot.


I wonder how it deals with passengers sensations of pressure change?

[Kramer]

Well, no, it is not. The wings and fuselage are filled with helium, so it can take off vertically. Its propulsion uses compressed engines. It is alternatively a lighter than air plane, a glider and a heavier than air plane. You have to watch the video to tell what it is about.

Hughes did not develop any lighter-than-air, Helium filled planes. Nor did he use compressed air as a propulsion system. Nor did his planes change wing configuration in flight. Nor did any plane Hughes built take off vertically.

It just may LOOK to you like some twin-fuselage plane Hughes built.

that was a joke bozo. boy, you really are insecure.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The problem is that nearly every comment you make is so amazingly stupid that it is indistinguishable than those you say are jokes. You jokes are stupid, all your "serious" comments are also stupid, and it is really impossible to distinguish between the two.

I fail to see what this could possibly have to do with my insecurity. I am not afraid of you, I am not afraid of stupidity. They are indistinguishable anyway.

[Xavier_Onassis]

It isn't that there is no power requirement , only that the power required is a small fraction of the engine power needed for heavyer than air flight.
========================================
This is how I see it as well: this plane needs no energy to keep it in the air, just to propel it forward.
==============================================
This aircraft might be able to get by on solar power , perhaps on auto pilot it could take a rest on station "parked " in an out of the way spot.

I am sure that this could be possible, but the clip does not mention solar power, It seems to suggest that by descending it can recharge its air tanks. So I suppose that to ascertain the practicality of this craft, we should wait until someone actually builds one.


I wonder how it deals with passengers sensations of pressure change?

Isn't there a way of isolating the passengers from this? In addition, if you fly above a certain altitude, the lack of pressure and heat would make the plane inhabitable.  At some point the passengers explode, freeze or both, which tends to be rather unpleasant. I suppose that the pilot would keep it below such a level.

[Plane]

Most commercial aircraft are pressurised.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_pressurization.

This also is a power requirement.


I once worked on a project to make a few F-15s capable to fire anti satellite missile. The biggest change was to greater pressurisation to keep the pilot alive and alert at the new higher service ceiling.

Lighter than air craft have all sorts of altitude records , just rising up is almost no power requirement and it is possible to use buoyancy to reach even the uppermost levels of the atmosphere , by the time there is so little air that balloons no longer work the vacuum outside qualifies as space.


I have been playing with an idea for getting a tall building using buoyancy.  If a building were built as a very large cylinder includeing gas bags it could rise to the upper atmosphere , sixty miles or so, much as a lotus reaches from the bottom of a pond and floats its leaf on the top. The foundation of this buiklding would not need to bear much weight , on the contrary it would more like need to be an anchor and have much weight. A wide cylinder can be internally braced a lot and the upper floors could be pressureised. At the very top a structure like an aircraft carrier top could launch and land orbiters and a ribbon of carbon fiber cold be spun to reach geosyncrinous orbit from the top of the atmosphere rather than just from a mountaintop.


Someday in the future the money of the planet will migrate from the northern hemisphere twards the equator. It is on the equator that all the best spaceports will be built .

[Xavier_Onassis]

Someday in the future the money of the planet will migrate from the northern hemisphere towards the equator. It is on the equator that all the best spaceports will be built .
=====================================================================

This would be based on the assumption that all the rich people will be engaged in space travel and will see it as necessary to live near their investments. This does not seem to be the case in other industries. BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company, has its center of mining operations in the town of Broken Hill, which has a population of around 18,000. Note that the Chrysler Building was built in NYC, not in Detroit. People with money do not seem to have any pressing need to live near where their money is made. BHP Billiton has its HQ in Melbourne and London.

NASA has no major operations on the Equator, either. Both Houston and Cape Kennedy are above the Tropic of Cancer. Only the French have some operations in French Guiana and Tahiti, so the Equator must not be an indispensable location.  The US could have built NASA in Micronesia or Hawaii or the Marshall Islands or Guam had this been essential. Tropical monsoons and desert dust storms are a feature of much of the equatorial latitudes. Most of the Equator passes over water.

I imagine that the main obstacle to building a 60 mile high building is a need for that much space as compared with the expense of building the thing. Anything that holds gas will have at least a slow leak, and there isn't all that much Helium around to refill the gasbags. Plus, there is the difficulty of storms and aircraft, so I would think that a 60 mile high building will not get built for a really long time.

Sooner than a Dyson sphere, perhaps.

[Plane]

Yes much sooner than a Dyson sphere.

A 60 miles tall building that used buoyancy for weight support and internal bracing for stiffness would not need any new technology , it would be in effect a stack of zeppelins .

The elevator that you would ride to the top would be as fast as possible , but would need a magazine rack quite a long elevator ride.

If we want a "beanstalk" using a carbon fiber ribbon or the yet to be developed monomolecule cable it would save a lot of troubble to make the reach through the atmosphere with a tall building , at least for the first one.  The entire cable could be lighter because the last bit was left off.

Beanstalk spaceports would save huge expenses in fuel and once we get one running building a second or third would be trivial in expense. The planet could be ringed with spaceports every few miles each one operateing an elevator to sling prospectors to the goldfeilds in the asteriod belt.

Unfortunately although each beanstalk might generate enough business to found a city , the concept will only work very near the equator .

[Xavier_Onassis]

Time will tell if there are ever such buildings, or Dyson spheres. But I would like to see them build a prototype of this plane.

[Kramer]

Time will tell if there are ever such buildings, or Dyson spheres. But I would like to see them build a prototype of this plane.

With you liberals it's always somebody else that has to build it, invent it, make it or mold it. Why don't you build the damn plane?

Obama sits around all day long bitching about oil and expects that imaginary person to build his allusive other technology. Yup all the liberals just moan and cry about gas as they drive that SUV, fly the private Jet and pollute to high heaven demanding all of us figure away out of their sky is falling mess.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Why don't I build it?
(1) I am not an aeronautical engineer. An airplane of this sort would involve all manner of engineering problems.
(2) The design was already devised by someone else. At worst, that is theft. At least, I would have nothing that I could sell, and it would cost a huge amount to develop this.
(3) I have no place to build an airplane. I live in a residential area.
(4) I do not have the funds sufficient to support my self and develop an airplane.

Whether I choose to build an innovative aircraft or not is not a matter of a political issue or attitude. I might as well ask you the same question: why don't YOU invent something? Are you too liberal to do this? Your argument makes no sense.

[Kramer]

Why don't I build it?
(1) I am not an aeronautical engineer. An airplane of this sort would involve all manner of engineering problems.
(2) The design was already devised by someone else. At worst, that is theft. At least, I would have nothing that I could sell, and it would cost a huge amount to develop this.
(3) I have no place to build an airplane. I live in a residential area.
(4) I do not have the funds sufficient to support my self and develop an airplane.

Whether I choose to build an innovative aircraft or not is not a matter of a political issue or attitude. I might as well ask you the same question: why don't YOU invent something? Are you too liberal to do this? Your argument makes no sense.

now that's the old can do attitude --- NOT

have  you ever heard about assembling a group together?

engineers
financiers
designers
etc.

You sit around all day long wishing for others to do it for you. Be a man, take the bull by the horns. Go for it!
You remind me of the daydreamer with no ambition, no energy, no drive, you just sit on your fat ass hoping the next guys does it.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I have seen no signs of any sort of action about anything from you. Just a hateful, racist doofus that hurls stupid insults. Bug off, Kramer.