Posted on 10/09/2007 7:46:20 PM PDT by Reaganesque
October 8, 2007 Its as big as a superyacht, and not quite as fast as a supercar but it does have a range of over 3000 miles and can do it over land, sea or snow, lingering anywhere you like the view. A new category of aircraft that fits somewhere in between a blimp, airship or dirigible, the Aeroscraft ML866 project was recently presented at the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) show in Atlanta, Georgia. The key factor of the ML866 design is that it offers superyacht size and comfort in a platform that can operate independently from airports, meaning that a new class of luxury conveyance is about to become available which appears to trump them all.
Based on concepts developed for the (now apparently shelved) US Army Heavy Lift Project Walrus, the Aeroscraft ML866 has some remarkable capabilities not available in other aircraft - it is incredibly spacious offering a cabin area of 5,382 square ft (500 square metres), boasts low operating costs, has all-weather capabilities, vertical takeoff and landing and extended range along with its ability to hover for long periods, meaning it can be utilized for a range of different applications from a private air yacht to a business office (even offering conferencing facilities catering for 100 people) in the sky or for commuting, freight solutions and sightseeing.
The Aeroscraft ML866 is a buoyancy assisted air vehicle with a rigid structure and gas cells. It uses Aeros proprietary Full Authority Direct Organic Lift Control (FADOLC) - a dynamic buoyancy management system that provides the low speed control capability. While 70% of the aerodynamic lift comes from helium, the remaining 30% is derived from its innovative wing shape. As well as being able to hover the aircraft will be capable of speeds up to 138 mph (0-222 kmh) and will operate at altitudes of up to 12,000 ft (3,657 m). and the massive 210 ft (64 m) long by 118 ft (36 m) wide by 56 ft (17 m) high structure will deliver a roomy 5000+ square feet of cabin space.
Aeros displayed a 1/48th scale model at this years NBAA show and hopes to begin airframe static testing of the rigid composite structure within months, with flight testing at the San Bernadino International Airport to follow as early as 2010. An additional series of commercially focussed Aeroscraft is also on the drawing board and will be scaled to payloads of up to 60 tons.
No exact pricing details are available as yet but reports suggest the tag will be under $40 million.
I bet the Navy would have given you one at the end of their airship program!
I can see the USS Macons original hangar at Moffett Field from my house.
Nice! Hopefully you'll still get to see it in the future, if they don't tear it down. My office is at the north end of the hangar (I also volunteer at the Moffett Field Museum).
That's the one the Germans screwed up, not the paint on the exterior cancas.
Not many Silicon Valley Freepers as far as I can tell. Has there ever been a meeting?
Fun post, but the one you were responding to was a historical device called the Hindenburg, and the picture you posted was a fictional device from a game called “Command & Conquer”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_technology_of_Command_&_Conquer
I prefer real over imagined technology.
You mean it’s not REAL?
Probably wouldn’t work. If I remember correctly, He is 5#/100 cf and H is 7#/100 cf of buoyancy lift. Are you thinking of reaching LEO w/a rocket/blimp combo? Do the math....
Yeah, I think we're pretty rare out here. I'm not aware of any meetings..
“Canvas and dope...”
I’ve re-skinned old fabric aircraft and occasionally we would take a piece of doped fabric and burn it for anyone that wanted to see what it would do. It burns very well and very fast. You get one of those fires going in a hanger and you the only thing you can do is run.
That, and the fact that it was filled with hydrogen instead of the specced helium. The Germans couldn't get helium due to trade restrictions.
Agreed. The (essentially) thermite-doped skin ended up serving as ignition source and fuel, and the hydrogen served as fuel and accelerant.
It if had just been the hydrogen, or just the outer skin burning, it would have taken *much* longer to burn. The combination of the two produced a devilish inferno.
Silly me.
All this time I thought the Hindenberg burned because it caught on fire . . .
Well, maybe. Helium is less bouyant than hydrogen (it provides 92% of the bouyancy), and I think there would have been some engineering issues.
More importantly, though, the US was the leading supplier of helium and (according to this wiki article) we had an embargo against Germany that prevented the Hindenburg's builders from using it ... they had to use hydrogen.
Why not use the exhaust off of a jet engine for hot air for lift then port it out to drive and control it?
The design, in words, doesn’t make much sense. I get the picture that the hydrogen used for buoyancy is somehow fed thru the rocket engine. Gaseous H vs liquid H(at cryogenic temps)? No, that doesn’t work. Obviously I’ve gotten the wrong mental picture here.
I CAN see where a blimp of some kind can get you part of the way to LEO, thus reducing the fuel load; but that seems kind of retro doesn’t it? A far more efficient way to get mass into LEO is the artillery approach. EMSL was all worked out 20 years ago, the quenched superconducting rings being the best design I ever saw. Since 1# in LEO(5 mps and 100 mi up)is worth all of 4 KWH, a system efficiency of 10% = 40 cents/#(at 10 cents/KWH). That’s 16 times cheaper than postage....
The primary lift would be from the rocket engines. The use of gaseous H is merely an attempt to turn a hazard into a useful asset (a lighter net launch weight.) It only has merit for this unique high volume and relatively low weight rocket/payload design.
For more dense payloads that can stand high acceleration certainly the various mass driver concepts are more efficient over the long haul. Different solutions for different payload requirements and constraints. Both extremes of payloads will be needed to launch different things needed in space. The launch of dense commodity items is relatively straightforward. It is a much more difficult task to bring more delicate large scale items into space, just as it is transporting similar items terrestrially.
And of course the economic transport of people and other high value, moderate sized, delicate items to orbit is still the missing piece of the launch line up. It still costs way too much to get us up into space. That is the critical challenge that needs to be overcome.
The H2 contributed, but the main cause of the fire was the “dope” applied to the canvas skin — it was, basically, thermite. Aluminum oxide and I forget what else. The Mythbusters aren’t the most scientifically rigorous folks around, but their demonstration is especially vivid.
The notion that H2 was the principal fuel for the fire has been long-debunked.
I’m certainly not the space expert you are, that’s for sure. As for your venting the excess H into a blimp instead of wasting it(or recapture w/the cap), that may be a useful idea. Since the rocket would be relatively short compared to the blimp, perhaps the pumpkin balloon configuration may be better suited to your design. Even if it only gets you to 30,000 - 40,000 ft, that’s still a lot of fuel saved.
Besides a UFO there are basically 2 ways to get to LEO : 3 g on the shuttle, and EMSL projectiles at 100,000 g to 250,000 g; something like the passenger and freight cars on the train; different handling techniques. During the heyday of EMSL(during the Star Wars/SDI era)all the possible components were g-tested. Only a delicate clock mechanism was damaged(that was expected).
My(hokey)design was a ring cannon about 1/2 mile in diameter at 15 deg to 45 deg tilt, built like a bicycle wheel lying on its side, straight Q tail w/about 15 movie films separating 1 psi step-up chambers(advance 1 frame per shot), thus maintaining internal vacuum. 1 g accel(13+ minutes to reach 5 mps injection velocity)w/machine gun burst(up to 20 projectiles/burst). Figured about 2 shuttle loads/day at 40 cents/#(10% efficiency).
It MIGHT have worked but Reagan’s SDI approach bankrupted the USSR, funding was slashed to near zero; and besides, NASA rocket scientists feared for their own space budget funding. Being shown up by EMSL as a better way to LEO gave them the willies. Thus they ignored it, and EMSL died in the cradle.
Still though, it was well researched by some brilliant people, I still have those 20 year old tech papers around here somewhere. The very best concept, in my opinion, was the quenched superconducting rings design. Basically it was a souped-up, modernized version of the old 105 howizter cannon, achieving 5 mps in a few hundred feet of length.
But it was all for nought, and nasa still makes $20,000/# to LEO for doing 4 KWH/# of actual WORK. Pretty good mark-up, yes?
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