I love the slow rotor technology developed by Carter Aviation Technologies. It is a smart vertical takeoff and landing craft with long range. Hopefully it will find a good market in aviation. The engineering being this tech is pretty impressive. As cool as it is as it is, I love to imagine what technologies can do if they were configures or applied differently.
What if the Carter Copter had a different wing configuration? Actually I was thinking about a lifting body configuration. Now that may sound strange or even insane, but bear with me a minute. The wings on the Carter Copter are long and thin. They are not used to provide lift during takeoff and landings, the rotor does that. They are to provide lift during cruise at speed. A lifting body needs speed to provide lift. In fact it needed a lot of speed even to land. So it could be a good candidate for the Carter Copter.
Now, the engineering needed to fashion an appropriate lifting body for the Carter Copter has to be creative. The lifting body has to provide lift for the craft at cruise, stability for flight, and allow for enough down wash of air from the rotors for takeoff and landing. I imagine a rather thin one with a rounded nose and a bulbous dorsal. The benefit of a lifting body to the craft is that it would have less drag while in cruise increasing the lift to drag ratio. It should also provide a good volume inside the body for accommodate crew, passengers, and cargo. Could such a lifting body be designed? Would its performance be better than wings? Would it be stable enough? Would it really be worth it? These are the questions engineering would answer on paper. Some major aerodynamics would be utilized in such a project.
Let's take this tech to the next level. Could it be pushed to supersonic speeds? Lifting bodies can even do hypersonic speeds. The real question could the rotor be designed in such a way to handle such speeds. The rotor was redesigned by Carter Aviation Technologies just to crate the slow rotor tech. What design changes would you have to make to handle transonic speeds? Doesn't it get you thinking? You could end up with a supersonic aircraft that doesn't have to land or take off from pavement, let alone a runway.
Such musings are fun for me. You can take an existing technology and turn it into so much more. Of course, it's just musings. Reality has a tendency to shatter dreams. Proof is in the numbers and experiments though. Those can be just as fun.
Have you read Dr. Zubrin's article on VASIMR? WOW! Dr. Zubrin knows his stuff. Many scientists and engineers know their stuff. There is just a lot of controversy and opinions about how to get to Mars. Thank goodness that they are not trying to decide on a recipe for pumkin pie. They'd have to put on my tomb stone, 'Died waiting for pumking pie.' Yeah, Dr. Zubrin has some misgivings about VASIMR, but what is VASIMR and what are the other propulsion systems he's talking about?
Deep Space 1 - first spacecraft to use Ion Drive
VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) is taunted as a plasma propulsion system. It uses radio waves to turn matter into plasma then uses magnetic fields to accelerate the plasma out of the exhaust. If the energy is doing two things, you can see that the efficiency of the system is probably not good, just as Dr. Zubrin said. Sometimes projects need longer time than others to come to a good solution. If you look at the history of the internal combustion engine, you will see that it has a long list of epochs and people working on one thing or another that eventually became the internal combustion engine we so adore by revving our engines while standing still at a red light looking at one another as if we were a formula 1 race car driver while living things choke on the fumes. Despite Dr. Zubrin's desire to excuse VASIMR and politician's desire to promote it, it still may be key to a future and better propulsion system than we have today. Yes, we should've told old Robert Goddard to stop playing with those toy liquid fuel rockets, nothing would come of them. No, nothing; just taking men to the moon. That's all.
Ion drive is a propusion system that emits ions. It uses an inert gas and voltage differentials to accelerate the gas. The result is that it takes a long time to get to the destination, but its cheaper than large conventional chemical rockets to get up to speed. Deep Space 1 got to fly around the southern pole of the Sun and Smart-1 got to go from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit on ion thrusters. Dawn got to Vesta and then to Ceres. It could only accomplish visiting two space bodies with an on board main thruster such as the ion drive to escape the orbit of one and insert into the orbit of another. It's like scampering around the asteroid belt. I hope it finds its cheese.
Thermal nuclear propulsion system is one that emits matter heated by a thermal nuclear reactor. We're talking a rocket here. Well, the idea is that energy in the form of heat from a nuclear reactor can heat up a gas and produce really fast speeds for a spacecraft. That could be a potentially good propulsion system. OK, let's see. In the wiki it mentions thermal nuclear reactor and hydrogen in the first sentence. It also mentions that a core was made in 1955. I don't know what they were smoking in 1955, but it must have been good stuff. What do you tell the first guy that's going to fly this thing?
"Here you go buddy, just plant your seat right there and strap in. Concerns? Nah, we don't expect anything to go wrong. It will be a fun ride. Here, just sign on the dotted line right here. Small print? Don't let it concern you, it's just some legal mumbo jumbo and all. Have a safe trip."
Who in their right mind would fly this? I don't think the human psyche can dismiss images of a big explosion when talking about nuclear reactor and hydrogen together. Dr. Zubrin wants NASA to research this. I hope a working model would be indeed safe.
Let's talk about the big one, nuclear pulse propulsion studied under the name of Project Orion. Essentially, its thermal nuclear explosions detonated just behind a very thick pusher plate. Do this several times and the craft accelerates in pulse intervals. It's funny that the scientists were talking about making a farm on a spacecraft that uses this propulsion. The energy this thing can harness is enormous. It's the largest energy per weight that we know of. The scientists involved do agree that there were some issues with the system to be worked out. The basic idea works, and was tested on small scale with conventional explosives. Now, it's pulse propulsion. That means one minute your all fine and dandy and the next your splattered against the back bulkhead until the acceleration stops. Then it starts all over again. How uncomfortable does this seem? Can you imagine a cow handling this? You'll probably end up with sour milk. In spite of the challenges of this system, the scientists were optimistic about making a viable system.
Light Pulse propulsion is a modern idea that has some relation with nuclear pulse propulsion. The idea is that while in atmosphere, a laser can give a reflector with a particular shape power to heat up air and make it expand thus propelling the craft. The laser is shot form the ground. This is to propel a craft from the ground to orbit as a first stage. It's a compelling idea, because you have your power source on the ground and not as dead weight on the craft. If you use a dedicated nuclear power facility with a very large laser, then you can lift a lot of stuff and many craft to orbit reducing the cost of launch over time. I like this idea. I wonder if it can roast some marshmallows in flight. The in-flight meal should have s'mores in it.
Well, that's what Dr. Zubrin was talking about, and more. We get weird ideas about how to travel from point A to point B. Most don't work. We keep trying until we get it right. You can get your idea a try if you study Math and Science. Your going to have to learn to write and argue as well, because your going to get criticized. Are you up for the challenge?
[NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The humor in this post is and experiment. In no way was the intention to criticize. I'm sorry if it comes off that way. I'm keeping the post as is as a reminder of how poorly chosen humor can hurt.]
The Shuttle had wings to fly its way to a soft landing on a runway. So wings were used in the Earth's atmosphere to help spacecraft operate. What if rotary wings could do something similar? The first commercially successful rotary wing craft were De La Cierva's autogyros. The autogyro works on the principle of auto-rotation. Therefore, it can make safe unpowered landings. A helicopter works on the principle of powered rotors which allows it to take off vertically. A rocket lifts off vertically and its capsule lands with parachutes in a vertical fashion. So you see mixing these technologies together may not be so far fetched after all. Let's look at a couple of projects.
NASA's Roto-Capsule concept
NASA put out the news report entitled Engineers Test Rotor Landings for Capsules. Apparently the Roto-Capsule (I just made it up), uses auto-rotation like an autogyro does. They also want to figure out how to get the rotors to start spinning. In old and small autogyros, you hand start the rotor spin. Yep you have to use those mittens, and don't stand up too tall or you might get whacked by a blade. The larger and enclosed autogyros use a bendable drive train from the engine to the rotor hub. I suppose NASA could start the rotation of the Roto-Capsule's rotors with simple thrusters or even with an electric motor. I'm sure they can come up with better ideas than I can. They do have to figure out what the best solution is, what is the lowest weight for a system, how strong is it, and what are the operational costs to it. Looking at the picture, I can't help but wonder if this is an excuse to get scientific data form the engineers propeller beanies.
Another project was, if you can believe it, a rocket with rotors on the top. It was called Rotary Rocket. Apparently its rotors were also for landing. The concept was revolutionary for its time; late 1990's. It was touted as a single stage to orbit. It went as far as a demo vehicle that flew with powered helicopter rotors. There were aerodynamic problems with it, but an arial test vehicle was made and flown showing that rotors could lift the rocket. It was almost sad to see this project die, but I think they put too much in the concept. I mean, why would you want to use rotors to land a rocket? Wouldn't the rotors be useless weight for most of the flight? You can say that wings are too, and they are. Rockets would be less overhead weight as far as hardware because you need to rockets to launch as well as land. I suppose the argument is how much extra fuel your willing to take on a flight. That's where the weight trade off is. Rotary wing craft are what we have that closest behaves like a small space ships in sci-fi fiction in atmosphere; they land and take off vertically. I guess sometimes we can dream too big.
In my own muses, I thought if we can air launch a rocket to orbit with a plane, then why not with a rotary wing craft? The craft would have to be very large though. It would have to be custom made to lift vertically to altitude. It would have to be a separate vehicle from the rocket. I imagined it being large enough to fit the rocket in the middle of it and launch at altitude in a vertical attitude. The savings would come with launching from altitude in a vertical position. It does seem superfluous though. Stratolaunch is making the largest plane to launch a medium size rocket from altitude. The plane will probably need the biggest of runways. That's where my rotary wing craft could come in; in scaling up. I wouldn't need a runway, just a pad. That's less ground infrastructure than a plane. These are just muses though; ideas of runaway imaginations. Rarely does a dream come to life. I'm glad of that, cause I've had some nightmares.
So we looked at a couple of projects that involved rotary wings and space craft, and then one of my imaginations. That's what your going to get when you read my stuff. I just scrape things off the wall. Is it really a good idea to mix rotors and spacecraft? Maybe, but also maybe later. We still have a lot to learn about launching stuff into orbit on a shoestring budget.
