In article fd456a18-e444-4b5c-b8dc-cafde4fe0203
@u4g2000prn.googlegroups.com, says...

On Sep 22, 8:04*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 9/22/2010 12:18 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:

That vertical landing on a mobile landing platform by those tail sitters
was abandoned in the 1950's for a reason. *The transition from
horizontal to vertical flight was tricky, and the actual "landing" onto
those platforms was even trickier.

The Convair Pogo could be landed on any flat surface, but its one
vertical landing left its test pilot so spooked by the process that he
felt he was lucky to be alive, and they never tried it again.
When the French tried in in their straight-out-of-"Thunderbirds" SNECMA
Coléoptère, the result was the aircraft going out of control and the
pilot ejecting.

Pat

The tail sitting system is well defined

No it's not. It was abandoned as an R&D program before the serious
problems were worked out of the system.

and modern avionics and
computing obviates any concern over the legends you repeat here
without any analysis.

This remains unproven in flight hardware.

VTOL aircraft like the Harrier had similar
teething difficulties which were addressed by improved avionics and
computer control.

Not true. The tail sitters were much more difficult to fly than the
early Harrier, due partly to the fact that the pilot was trying to land
with his back to the ground and eyes pointed up at the sky. At least in
a Harrier, the hand-eye coordination was more natural because the pilot
could easily see and feel what he was doing.

Plus, if the pilot got into real trouble, ejecting from a tail sitter
was more challenging than ejecting from a Harrier, again due to the
orientation of the pilot's seat during the tail sitting landing. Even
with its early teething problems, the Harriers were safer for the pilots
than tail sitters would have been. Thankfully, the tail sitters were
abandoned well before the stage where "teething problems" would likely
have killed several pilots.

Jeff
--
The only decision you'll have to make is
Who goes in after the snake in the morning?