OT Forget rocket engines...and also walls and wounded animals

.....the "Gyradoscope" is the wave of the future!
Meet the 1931 version of the Dean Drive:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...novel-airship/
As to why its name makes it sound like a optical instrument of some type
is anyone's guess.
Meanwhile, on to other Marvels Of To-morrow!
Let us examine the future world of 2055, as seen from 1955... a daring
world where women wash in showers that are basically high-frequency
vibrators, still wear sexy see-through nightgowns to bed, and the
question of "Who's going to be on top?" can mean "Who's going to be
floating nearer the ceiling?:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...s-of-tomorrow/
(Surprisingly, most of these do get developed in one form or another,
sometimes in the exact form predicted; though not:

"Instead of doors and walls, force beams cut off vision by bending light
rays. To enter a house you merely step through the electronic beam.
Larry Hyder, Metolius, Ore"

This needs more thought...the walls _look_ like they are there, but
_really_ they aren't? So things like blowing leaves, birds, bugs, and
the neighbor's flea-infested dog can appear right out of the wall in
your living room? Buglers are going to love this. Also, what's holding
up the roof?
And of course, hunting with Tasers:

"For hunters and cops, a paralyzing ray which stuns temporarily. No more
fatal gun accidents or cruelly wounded game. Daniel Garcia, Chicago, Ill."

This also needs some more work; assuming the stunned duck didn't die on
impact with the ground, what are you supposed to do with it then? Either
you let it go (which means you are really more interested in petty
sadism towards ducks than hunting) or you kill it somehow - which sort
of defeats the whole idea of shooting it with the stun gun in the first
place.
Also, I want to see what happens to the guy who shoots the lion with the
stun gun, and then discovers the Range Rover won't start...and he's out
of stun ammo. What's he supposed to do then...take a tire iron to its
head before it regains its wits? :-)

Pat

On 28 May, 14:21, Pat Flannery wrote:
....the "Gyradoscope" is the wave of the future!
Meet the 1931 version of the Dean Drive:http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...ng-force-used-...
As to why its name makes it sound like a optical instrument of some type
is anyone's guess.
Meanwhile, on to other Marvels Of *To-morrow!
Let us examine the future world of 2055, as seen from 1955... a daring
world where women wash in showers that are basically high-frequency
vibrators, still wear sexy see-through nightgowns to bed, and the
question of "Who's going to be on top?" can mean "Who's going to be
floating nearer the ceiling?:http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...ggest-amazing-...
(Surprisingly, most of these do get developed in one form or another,
sometimes in the exact form predicted; though not:

"Instead of doors and walls, force beams cut off vision by bending light
rays. To enter a house you merely step through the electronic beam.
Larry Hyder, Metolius, Ore"

This needs more thought...the walls _look_ like they are there, but
_really_ they aren't? So things like blowing leaves, birds, bugs, and
the neighbor's flea-infested dog can appear right out of the wall in
your living room? Buglers are going to love this. Also, what's holding
up the roof?
And of course, hunting with Tasers:

"For hunters and cops, a paralyzing ray which stuns temporarily. No more
fatal gun accidents or cruelly wounded game. Daniel Garcia, Chicago, Ill."

This also needs some more work; assuming the stunned duck didn't die on
impact with the ground, what are you supposed to do with it then? Either
you let it go (which means you are really more interested in petty
sadism towards ducks than hunting) or you kill it somehow - which sort
of defeats the whole idea of shooting it with the stun gun in the first
place.
Also, I want to see what happens to the guy who shoots the lion with the
stun gun, and then discovers the Range Rover won't start...and he's out
of stun ammo. What's he supposed to do then...take a tire iron to its
head before it regains its wits? :-)

I am sorry to have to say it but there appears to be a perfectly good
aerodynamic explanation. Rotating discs cause air to circulate. When
air circulates it creates a partial vacuum. This generates lift. It is
not all that far in principle from ye bog standard fixed wing
aircraft.

Better than discs in fact would be a turbofan engine which blew air
though orifices in a disc, caused circulation and thereby generated
lift. I feel that this could provide for vertical take off aircraft.
The effect though is purely atmospheric. For something to be an
"exotic" space propulsion system it has to be shown to work in a
vacuum. To my knowledge nothing has.

It is NOT a space propulsion system, but could this priciple be used
for vertical take off aircraft? Yes and no. An aircraft can indeed
take off quite easily and hover (powered by a small turbofan or
gasolene engine). There are the following difficulties.

1) A disc is not the ideal shape for 800km/h cruise. OK if you had a
blended wing, but not a disc this could be overcome.

2) Although the aerodynamics of lift in stationary air is easy to
visualise and understand, lift when the aircraft is moving at a finite
speed, I am talking now about a speed below the normal fixed wing
stall, but non zero. The areodynamics here is complicated and
unstable.

The Nazis in WW2 produced aircraft working on these principles. There
were hailed as exotic aircraft working on forces from I think
Aldebaron. History says they flew, but not that well. As you can
probably imagine there were a lot of crashes. The helipcopter won the
battle to be the general purpose VTOL aircraft.

Now that we have high performance computers and sohisticated
aerodynamic understanding, should we revisit the concept? I think
perhaps we should. Let us be realistic though about what the effect
is.


- Ian Parker

Ian Parker wrote:
I am sorry to have to say it but there appears to be a perfectly good
aerodynamic explanation. Rotating discs cause air to circulate. When
air circulates it creates a partial vacuum. This generates lift. It is
not all that far in principle from ye bog standard fixed wing
aircraft.

I don't know what article you are reading from Modern Mechanix, but this
gyro-widget lift sucker uses whirling weights sealed inside of a
cylinder to generate lift.
If you want to you get something that interacts with the atmosphere,
head for the article about the Magnus Effect Rotors:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...wing-airliner/

Pat

On May 28, 7:21 am, Pat Flannery wrote:
....the "Gyradoscope" is the wave of the future!
Meet the 1931 version of the Dean Drive:

And the illustration of its principle shows that the lift created by
the thrown ball pulling on the screen is exactly cancelled by the
force exerted by the shoes of the man who threw it. I suppose Newton's
Third Law was not yet well-understood by the general public in those
days before Sputnik.

still wear sexy see-through nightgowns to bed,

Given that this doesn't seem to have changed between 1955 and 2005, I
think we can be confident that it won't change in the next fifty years
after that either.

John Savard

On May 29, 7:55 am, Pat Flannery wrote:

I don't know what article you are reading from Modern Mechanix, but this
gyro-widget lift sucker uses whirling weights sealed inside of a
cylinder to generate lift.
If you want to you get something that interacts with the atmosphere,
head for the article about the Magnus Effect Rotors:http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...wing-airliner/

There's a group of NACA papers on the Magnus Effect. I have at least
two of them in PDF format. I've not read them completely, but there
seems to be something there -- for boats, though.


Mike

On May 29, 6:48 am, Ian Parker wrote:

Now that we have high performance computers and sohisticated
aerodynamic understanding, should we revisit the concept? I think
perhaps we should. Let us be realistic though about what the effect
is.

I'm certainly interested in exploring some of those old ideas. Now
that we can simulate stability by forcing it through high-speed
computers, some of those screwball ideas may work.


Mike

The "whirling weights in sealed cylinders" bit makes it sound like a
tricked-out version of the same old unbalanced-wheel perpetual
motion. Nothing to look at there.
The idea about jets used to force air out openings to provide lift to
a disc - is it not more efficient to simply provide lift directly from
the jets, as in the Harrier, etc.? Any intermediate step is only going
to reduce net lift.

Regards,
Matt Bille
Sci/Tech news and comment
http://mattbille.blogspot.com

On May 28, 9:21*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

Buglers are going to love this. Also, what's holding

Stop peeking on Wrangler Jane, Dodds!

Quadibloc wrote:
And the illustration of its principle shows that the lift created by
the thrown ball pulling on the screen is exactly cancelled by the
force exerted by the shoes of the man who threw it. I suppose Newton's
Third Law was not yet well-understood by the general public in those
days before Sputnik.


The Dean Drive was the same story all over again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_drive.


still wear sexy see-through nightgowns to bed,


Given that this doesn't seem to have changed between 1955 and 2005, I
think we can be confident that it won't change in the next fifty years
after that either.


Obviously, you are hanging around the right kind of women. ;-)

Pat

wrote:
There's a group of NACA papers on the Magnus Effect. I have at least
two of them in PDF format. I've not read them completely, but there
seems to be something there -- for boats, though.


This was a fairly odd Magnus Effect concept; a Trac-Ball scaled up to
huge size to make an airship: http://www.magenn.com/about.php
Golf balls use the Magnus Effect; that's what the dimples on its surface
are there for - to create air turbulance over its surface as it spins
while in flight and gains altitude from the lift it generates.

Pat

Mike