The Moon

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

Oh....Dear....God! Mook has undergone binary fission, and now
there are_TWO_ of them! This has to be the dire effect of
electromagnetic fields from those damn EERs that everyone told us
were the wave of the future- but which have only led to thousands of
incinerated Electro-Flivver drivers and countless unwholesome
mutations....remember: Birds Fly....Men Drink; Mook Thinks....and
Turds Fly! Stop the insanity! Stop the insanity NOW!

:-)

You might want to consider some things he
1.) What exactly is the tether made out of? Let me guess....Fullerine,
right?

S-Glass, though spectra, kevlar, carbon fiber, piano wire, etc., would
all work, they are just unnecessarily expensive. The atmosphere is not
really thick enough to justify Fullerine. :-)

2.) What exactly is the tether hooked to at the base end? There's
going to be a tad of a pull on it as the aircraft accelerates, isn't
there?

The same thing a wind turbine is attached to, though without the healing
moment, the loads otherwise being proportionally about the same. The
anchor has to offset the lift force of the wing. Even at twice the size
of a 747, with similar power levels, that is still probably less than a
1000 ton.

Let me guess, there are going to be two aircraft on it; one per side
to
balance the forces, right?

That is one of many options.

3.) I assume that the aircraft detaches from the tether once it's
airborne (I sure hope so, or you've come up with an idea that makes
Mook's laser-driven flying cars look safe- at least all they do is fry
birds and decapitate buildings as the beams whizz and fizz on their
way to the cars; this thing could mow down whole forests like a giant
Weed-Eater); so, think about this a second- when the plane
detaches itself, which way is it going to travel?

It remains attached to the tether, obviously there are numerous safety
possibilities, apt analogy. :-)

It's going to come off the wire at around a 45 degree angle to it's
normal direction of flight, and this isn't going to help its
controllability
any as it leaves.

Could be worse, could be a space elevator. :-)
Seriously though, I would suggest far off shore for big ones.

During WWII the Germans experimented with large Cody trains many
kilometers high flown on piano wire. They had a few interesting
experiences. I remember something about one instance where they lost
the train and retrieved the piano wire by just winching it in across the
country side, gaining all sorts of things in the process, like a sheep
in less than perfect condition.

I once saw an idea like this on the cover of a 1930's Science
Wonder Widgets magazine; in that case it was a airliner taking off the
back of a locomotive running on a circular track... I notice this
never
caught on. ;-)

That is not the worst of them.

Pete.

I'm still not getting it. Do you have a pointer to a picture or white paper?

"william mook" wrote in message
m...
I'm still not getting it. Do you have a pointer to a picture or white
paper?

Beyond the primitive website no. I am still working on the control
system of the prototype, so no working pictures yet.

http://www.inet.net.nz/~cbrent/pete/

Another analogy, a tail sitter fixed wing aircraft circling very tightly
in fixed wing mode, with a payload, fuel, cockpit, etc., suspended
beneath on a long rope at the centre of the flight circle.

Pete.

"Pete Lynn" wrote in message ...
"william mook" wrote in message
m...
I'm still not getting it. Do you have a pointer to a picture or white
paper?

Beyond the primitive website no. I am still working on the control
system of the prototype, so no working pictures yet.

http://www.inet.net.nz/~cbrent/pete/

Another analogy, a tail sitter fixed wing aircraft circling very tightly
in fixed wing mode, with a payload, fuel, cockpit, etc., suspended
beneath on a long rope at the centre of the flight circle.

Pete.

The rope would have to pull a lever or something right? The lever
turns and generates power.

william mook wrote:


The rope would have to pull a lever or something right? The lever
turns and generates power.


I still want to see somebody make this thing work:
http://home.att.net/~dannysoar2/Whirlygig.htm
http://modelbox.free.fr/photoscopes/...hot/index.html

Pat

"william mook" wrote in message
om...

The rope would have to pull a lever or something right? The lever
turns and generates power.

That is woefully awkward. Motor generators on the wing, with power
transmission up and down the tether.

Pete.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

I still want to see somebody make this thing work:
http://home.att.net/~dannysoar2/Whirlygig.htm
http://modelbox.free.fr/photoscopes/...hot/index.html

Pat


This is way cool, those were indeed the golden years of aircraft
development.

(From 1914. A single very large blade helicopter powered by a gas jet
through to the tip. The whole thing spins with the pilot sitting in the
middle.)

I do not immediately see any reason why it could not be made to work -
not that I am volunteering. :-)

Here is a modern UAV under development, (called the whirl), it has four
blades instead of one with propellers at the tips instead of an air jet.
Fundamentally it seems pretty similar.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996380

UAV's seem to be the driver of out there aircraft innovation at the
moment, (SS1 excepted).

Pete.

"Pete Lynn" wrote in message ...
"william mook" wrote in message
om...

The rope would have to pull a lever or something right? The lever
turns and generates power.

That is woefully awkward. Motor generators on the wing, with power
transmission up and down the tether.

Pete.


Hmm... I'd like to see a side by side comparison to prove that
statement. You're going around in circles anyway right?

Oh, wait a minute. You're saying you're tethering it like a kite?
So, its not going around in circles. Why did I think that?

Okay, like a kite, and you're putting extra drag on it with a
propeller that's attached to a motor generator. Right?

Got any efficiency estimates?

I love those wings though, they're beautiful. What's the longest
period of time these things have flown without collapsing? You'd need
some fancy automated control to keep it flying. One advantage though,
you'd be able to collapse the thing if winds got out of hand and pick
it up later. Also, the infrastrcture to hold it would be very small
compared to a windmill.

It puts me in mind of a machine a friend of mine once built at
Princeton. The machine consisted of two servos setup like a plotter.
One acting along the x-axis. One along the y-axis. Driving a small
pad with a load cell on it. He had it programmed so that you balance
a broom on the pad and turn the thing on and it would keep it
balanced. He never got it to work for more than a day. Theoretically
it should have worked forever, but it didn't. Something would always
perturb it weirder than the machine was designed to account for.

That's what I'm thinking now.

Don't mean to be a pain in the butt. But that's what I'm thinking
now.

Of course, if you put a lot of starch in your wing with titanium
wires and such (I just bought a cool pair of Maui Jim sunglasses this
summer with no hinges, just a well shaped and engineered titanium
wire, very cool.) woven into the fabric, you might reduce or eliminate
the need for active controls. But then you couldn't collapse it so
easily (you might be able to roll up the wires into little cannisters
maybe, hmm..)

But talking and handwaving won't get it. I'd like to see the
differential equations the detail the control requirements - and those
related to fabric stiffness. Any pointers to those?

I was thinking about getting my PhD in aerospace. I'm thinking hey-
if no one's analyzed these wings - that'd be a cool way to do it.
Okay, anyone out there searching for a PhD topic? What'd ya think?

Pat Flannery wrote in message ...
william mook wrote:


The rope would have to pull a lever or something right? The lever
turns and generates power.


I still want to see somebody make this thing work:
http://home.att.net/~dannysoar2/Whirlygig.htm
http://modelbox.free.fr/photoscopes/...hot/index.html

Pat

This is definitely weird. This is what I thought he was describing or
something like it. Its just too weird to credit. I guess if maple
seeds didn't exist no one would come up with a craft like this.

http://homepage2.nifty.com/chigyoraku/seed-Eur.html

Okay, I can imagine perhaps that a rotorary flying wing might be
possible. But, other than the maple seed, why wouldn't we build it so
there were one wing on each side of the center?

I'm thinking a powered maple seed could be built with micromotors.

http://www.me.berkeley.edu/mrcl/pictures/rockexp.gif

It might be a great way to disperse large numbers of small things
across a large area. Drop a bazillion of the maple seeds out of an
airplane and they spread out and blanket the sky above a target area.

What would they carry?

Hmm... surveillance equipment tied together with WiFi and equipped
with GPS. That'd be way cool. You could survail an entire city very
quickly. Scientific monitoring. You could listen for voices the same
way. So, if you had the voice print of Osama Bin laden frex.

Any other ideas?

Pete Lynn wrote:

This is way cool, those were indeed the golden years of aircraft
development.

(From 1914. A single very large blade helicopter powered by a gas jet
through to the tip. The whole thing spins with the pilot sitting in the
middle.)

I do not immediately see any reason why it could not be made to work -
not that I am volunteering. :-)

Imagine what happens if the bearings on the de-spun pilot's cockpit
freeze up- he would get pretty dizzy pretty fast. :-D


Here is a modern UAV under development, (called the whirl), it has four
blades instead of one with propellers at the tips instead of an air jet.
Fundamentally it seems pretty similar.


The Germans had a plan for a a one-man helicopter "flying belts" during
W.W.II, one of which appears to have had two counter-rotating rotors;
each with one blade, and a drive motor counterbalancing it on the other
side of the mounting shaft:
http://www.germanvtol.com/baumgartl/baungertl.html
Baumgartl looks like a worthy opponent for The Rocketeer in the top
photo... but he needs a catchy name...let's see...The Rocketeer Vs.
HelioHun ... yeah, that's the ticket! :-)

Pat