4 ms·
Do these designs scale up? Don’t see why we haven’t created full sized aircraft with this form factor. Seems like it would make a great aerial weapons platform.
by xwdv 4y ago
Do these designs scale up? Don’t see why we haven’t created full sized aircraft with this form factor. Seems like it would make a great aerial weapons platform.
- convolvatron 4y agoI'm pretty sure many of the new military designs (f-117) are inherently unstable without a machine to constantly adapt their control surfaces. this is just going all in.
- qzw 4y agoFun fact: the F-117 had its first flight in 1981 and has already been retired from combat duty for nearly 15 years[0]. So “new” is perhaps not quite the right word to describe it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk
- Ancapistani 4y agoIt’s definitely been done before. The closest to this design off the top of my head would be the Lockhead XFV (1954): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_XFV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_XFV The idea of a VTOL tailsitter, but without the single primary planar wing surface, goes much further back. The Nazis were in the process of building the Triebflügel at the end of WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Triebflügel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Triebflügel
- rikeanimer 4y agoyeah there were a handful of tailsitter designs that era. Cool concepts but pretty much all had an achille's heel or two.
- yencabulator 4y agoHaving a human in the controls, trying to land it without seeing the ground, was a major hindrance. Drones don't really care about that.
- dredmorbius 4y agoYes, though practicality to date has been limited. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter>
- NortySpock 4y agoIt's all fun and games until the engine or propeller goes out.... Mustard on YouTube did a video on the French SNECMA Coléoptère, which had a ring for a wing. It tended to rotate while hovering, and hard to steer during landing. (9 min) https://youtu.be/unz6mfjS4ws https://youtu.be/unz6mfjS4ws
- abecedarius 4y agoInteresting, thanks. At the end (~6:50) there are a few seconds about the aerodynamics of the 'wing', which had been my first question.
- jojobas 4y agoProbably nowhere near this performance. Their motors instantly vary thrust by a factor of ten or more, this just can't be done at human scale.
- namibj 4y agoDid you forget about adjustable pitch propellers? We have managed to use human-scale ones even to synthesize low-frequency audio by building a sealed room and putting a reverse-thrust-capable one on the only opening of that room (besides a closed door). It spins and the pitch is adjusted to modulate thrust in response to the sound signal. Those rotary woofers deliver supposedly good distortion up to their rotation frequency; 13 Hz / 800rpm seems common. For reference, a tail sitter propeller would probably spin faster than that, though even this is plenty to control the aircraft. A blade design using a servo flap easily keeps up with those control speeds, and could likely even offer thrust vectoring like the rotor of a helicopter (could eliminate the flaperons). The real enemy is power-to-weight ratio.