Why Didn't the Wright Brothers Invent the Helicopter?

John Savard wrote:

Why didn't the Wright Brothers invent the helicopter?

Their engine didn't have the power-to-weight ratio needed.

Paul

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 12:08:27 GMT, in a place far, far away,
lid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Why didn't the Wright Brothers invent the helicopter?

Because it's a much more technically difficult problem. Da Vinci
invented it conceptually, but couldn't build one, and no one at the
turn of the twentieth century had the capability to do so, either.

Why are the Wright brothers more celebrated than the Montgolfier
brothers?

Didn't the Montgolfier brothers invent flight, while the Wright
brothers just added a small detail - heavier-than-air flight?

It's not a small detail. It's the difference between flight, and
practical, useful flight.

Is it
because the Wright brothers are Americans, while the Montgolfier
brothers are French?

No.

Oh, that was a rhetorical question?

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 12:08:27 GMT, lid
(John Savard) wrote:

Why didn't the Wright Brothers invent the helicopter?

If they had what would Igor Sikorsky have invented then.



Christopher
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Kites rise highest against
the wind - not with it."
Winston Churchill

"Christopher" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 12:08:27 GMT, lid
(John Savard) wrote:

Why didn't the Wright Brothers invent the helicopter?

If they had what would Igor Sikorsky have invented then.

Is the inventor the one that comes up with the idea, or makes it work ?
Becase there were people thinking about helicopters long before.

-kert

"Christopher" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 12:08:27 GMT, lid
(John Savard) wrote:

Why didn't the Wright Brothers invent the helicopter?

If they had what would Igor Sikorsky have invented then.

The airplane you ninny!

He'd have said.. "what's this with putting the prop on TOP? Let's put it in
front! It'll make things easier."




Christopher
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Kites rise highest against
the wind - not with it."
Winston Churchill

I've heard that Sikorsky tried to invent the helicopter before WWII, but he
didn't have the engines for it. Airplane engine technology improved greatly
during the war so he could complete his invention.

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 04:19:06 GMT, in a place far, far away,
lid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Why didn't the Wright Brothers invent the helicopter?

Because it's a much more technically difficult problem. Da Vinci
invented it conceptually, but couldn't build one, and no one at the
turn of the twentieth century had the capability to do so, either.

Now, that is something that was not obvious to me, but then, I am not
familiar with the engineering of helicopters.

To me, it would stand to reason that one could, with a *less* light
and efficient engine, get off the ground if one used nearly all the
wind produced by the propeller to go up, with only a small bit used
for movement, rather than the other way around.

The problem is the same one that the Wrights solved for fixed-wing
aircraft, but a much more difficult one for rotary-winged
aircraft--control.

In article ,
John Savard wrote:
To me, it would stand to reason that one could, with a *less* light
and efficient engine, get off the ground if one used nearly all the
wind produced by the propeller to go up, with only a small bit used
for movement, rather than the other way around.

Nope, not so. For a helicopter, thrust must exceed weight. For a
fixed-wing aircraft, thrust need only exceed drag. If the L/D, lift/drag
ratio, of a winged aircraft was around 1, then there would be no reason
to use wings. But airliner L/D is 15-20, and sailplanes get up to 40.

Now, if you have power to burn, that's different. Max Hunter commented
once on rocket engines: "Had the Wright Brothers had engines with
similarly high thrust/weight ratios, it is very doubtful if there would
be any runways on this planet."
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

" It's not a small detail. It's the difference between flight, and
practical, useful flight.

I agree. It is the difference between floating and flying.

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 11:30:10 GMT, in a place far, far away,
lid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:25:15 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote, in part:

Nope, not so. For a helicopter, thrust must exceed weight. For a
fixed-wing aircraft, thrust need only exceed drag.

And lift, which is necessarily a tiny fraction of thrust, must exceed
weight. At least, that is what I thought, which may be my mistake.

It is a large mistake. Lift is a large factor greater than thrust in
any well-designed aircraft. Thrust only needs be enough to compensate
for drag. So if an aircraft has a lift/drag ratio of, say, twenty (a
not unreasonable number for an airliner), then lift will be many times
the thrust. This is one of the reasons that many still like the idea
of wings on space vehicles for the first part of ascent.