# Aero dynamics in Aircraft



## Creator (Sep 20, 2007)

Hi I am writing Alpha Omega, sci fiction tale set on future Earth.

But I have been looking thru many aircraft and I see that I am rather restrict to the archtypal plane shape or helicopter

Cause I am an budding artist too and I don't very much want to be uncreative.... I need a lesson on planes and aerodynamics and I do not wish to bend the rules like Star Wars aircraft. 

Star Destroyers will crash airports if it were to land 
I just wonder how did that thing manage to get the lift anyway?!!!! 

LEt discuss on realistic aircraft design and aerodynamics....
Zeppilins are welcome too as well as supersonics..... <the glass breaks all of a sudden!>


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## Delvo (Sep 20, 2007)

Is there something specific you're trying to find out?... such as why fighter planes' wings have evolved in the particular way that they have over the decades, or why some cargo planes have engines way up in their tail fins...?


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## chrispenycate (Sep 20, 2007)

Shapes change with speeds, energy requirements, stability, lots of factors.
If you're going to want maximum energy efficiency and minimum polution, and accept slower speeds, then you're stuck with a fairly conventional looking wing desighn (though it can be a flying wing, with no body as such.
If you want a reasonably efficient sub-orbital, you're going to need variable geometry or a launch system, such as a big linear accelerator.
If your society has energy a plenty, cheap hydrogen fusion with reactors small enough to fit into the craft, for example (and we can assume any star-travelling society will have at least that) it's possible that the wings would disappear completely, and the lift would come from a slightly flattened tear-drop shape of the body. A plane microwave powered from a circuit of satellites would be different again, with the wing probably mounted above the body as receptor and shield, as well as providing lift. Military crart, police craft, small "executive" machines, all change the economy/speed/manouverability/stability equations, and give different optima, as do the surfaces over which you're intending to fly it low. Of course, if you discover gravity control, all this goes out of the window, and you start afresh…


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## Creator (Sep 21, 2007)

In Alpha Omega the fuel source has many faces..... solar-power, ammonia power, hydrogen power and helium power/ steam power for Hybrid Airships.....

And the shape of the aircraft on Earth appears to be restricted to those that have worked so far.....  

And the Zepplins's ressurection might come in the near future.

I am an artist too so I have to observe the "patterns" of the evolution of aircraft.

And I have one question if a helicopter has 9 blades will it still be able to fly?


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## chrispenycate (Sep 21, 2007)

Any number of blades greater than one can be balanced, and will give lift, which is all that's important (helicopters are inherently inefficient and wasteful, but can do things, like hover or go backwards, the no lifting-plane design will do. Smooth curves generally lose less energy in turbulence than sharp edges, but angular structures have flown.
What shapes were you considering? Flying things would generally be bilaterally symetrical, but if there is a real need even this could be compromised by asymetrical aplication of drive.
Airships - dirigibles, great; but weather forecasting (or even better weather control) become critical. With that much surface area for air friction, finding a wind at some altitude which is going where you want to is a major energy economy. Still, they'll never go as fast as heavier than air craft; days of travelling, rather than hours, with considerably more comfort than today's commercial flights.


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## Creator (Sep 22, 2007)

So should a so-called Transonic Attachment to a Hybrid airship needs a cigar shape to reduce shockwaves...

Supersonic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sears-Haack body - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Delvo (Sep 22, 2007)

What you're thinking of with the idea of "folding" the wings is the swing-wing mechanism. The idea is to get both sides of an aerodynamic trade-off in one plane. If your wings stick out straight, you catch more air, which allows you to produce more lift at slower speeds and to make sharper turns, but increases drag and thus keeps your speed and fuel efficiency down. If they're swept back, you catch less air, which means you have less drag and can cut through the air more cleanly, so your fuel efficiency at any speed is higher and your top speed is higher, but you lose some maneuverability and can't generate as much lift at low speeds.

(Lift is upward pressure created by the plane's forward movement. More lift means you can carry more weight, or your stall speed, the speed below which you would just fall to the ground instead of flying, is lower.)

So normally, wings that stick straight out are on planes that won't be going very fast, or on planes that just need to carry lots of weight, while swept-back wings are on planes that need as much speed as they can get, or on planes that need high fuel efficiency for a given cruise speed. Swing-wings let you switch back and forth between the two options in flight. The main example of them is the American navy's F-14, a long-range interceptor/fighter. It would launch, land, dogfight, and do other low-speed or maneuvering-intensive functions such as reconnaisance and ground-target-bombing with its wings out, but cover the distance to and from a mission site with its wings back.

The closest thing to it in the civilian world is the Concorde-type passenger jet. Its wings didn't move, but its nose did. It needed to be long and pointy for supersonic flight, and its high drag when in the drooping position wasn't very important or useful for aerodynamics, so why didn't they just make it permanently pointing forward? Because then it would obstruct the pilots' view during launches and landings.

Since the F-14's decommissioning by the U.S. Navy last year, there are very few swing-wing planes left flying. It didn't catch on very widely because most planes don't need such a combination of speed, maneuverability, and low stall speed, or they could meet their needs with other more modern wing types, and the swing-wing's structural reinforcements, joints, and machinery just added more weight, complication, and expense.

In modern planes with similar performance requirements to the F-14 (in other words, fighter planes that have been designed since then), a single fixed shape is used, combining some traits of both the sticking-out wing and the swept-back wing. Essentialy, these days they all have a front edge that sweeps back fairly steeply and a back edge that either sticks straight out sideways or even sweeps forward... which means the "base" of the wing (where it attaches to the body of the plane) is now much longer in fighter planes than than in non-fighters and older designs. Also, tail fins on these planes now stick out farther back behind the jet exhaust openings than they have before, where they can apply more leverage and make sharper turns even in a very fast plane at high speeds.

I'm attaching a file that I happened to have made recently for another purpose. I wasn't into this stuff before but started learning it because of the American political issue over the F-22. I ran into comparisons among the F-22 and other planes (and the distinction between light fighters and heavy fighters), so I gathered the numbers for length and width, found some diagrams I could scale and turn into silhouettes, and made this thing so I could SEE the planes together beside each other.

These are all American jets that are designed to shoot at enemy targets: Air Force in the top row, Navy below. In each row, their noses are all lined up exactly, for size comparison.
Left to right, Air Force: A-10, F-15, F-16, F-22, F-35
Left to right, Navy: F-14, F-18A-D, F-18E-F, F-35 (aircraft carrier version)

The numbers they have for names, which you might notice increasing in each row from left to right, also correspond to the planes' ages; the A-10 is older than the fighters, and the fighters' numbers, which start at 14, are sequential.

The A-10 is the only "attack" plane here. Attack planes are for clobbering targets on the ground to support your side's infantry and cavalry in land battles against other infantry/cavalry. They have to fly slowly in order to stay on the scene for a decent length of time instead of just zipping by, and they expect to get hit so they're very heavy with armor and designed to keep flying even if parts of the wings and/or tail get perforated or even blown off. All of that means they need lots of lift. Notice that the A-10's wings just stick straight out and don't look sleek and swept and pointy like the fighters' wings; the A-10's aerodynamic design sacrifices efficiency and speed for lift and low stall speed.

Below it is the F-14, the only other plane on here with the old-school wing shape: mostly narrow and not very tapered because the base is narrow and the choices are whether to stick them out or sweep them back. It's shown in its spread-out mode, even though the wings are still slightly swept; in its swept mode, it would almost be just a black triangle in the image. It was designed in a time when wing shapes were always very similar and the only thing they changed for speed was to slant them back instead of sticking them out.

Next to the A-10 in the top row is the F-15, in which you can see a change in wing shapes for pretty much the first time in filght history. The base of the wing is elongated, taking up much more of the plane's length from front to back, and the angle between the front and back edges is steeper, essentially making the wing both swept back (along the front edge) and stuck out (along the back edge) at the same time without any need to move parts back and forth.

To the right of the 14 and 15 are the 16 (top row) and 18 (bottom row). These planes are what happened when the USA noticed that its fighters were getting big, heavy, and expensive, and decided to balance them with lighter, cheaper little brothers, although the second 18 in the picture shows a slightly enlarged ("mid-sized") version the Navy started getting when they found out they couldn't keep their 14s mouch longer. The 16 has the first wing with a back edge that isn't swept back at all, not even for part of its length like the 15, and the 18 has the first wing with a back edge that's actually swept forward.

But the most modern planes in the American armed forces (last two in top row and last one in bottom row) have moved beyond that to a serious forward sweep of the wings' back edges. Also notice how far back in the back their tail fins hang out now. This seems to give the best combination of lift, maneuverability, speed, and such with the least sacrificing of any one of them for another or getting other penalties like excessive stall speed. But even between them, you can still see a bit of a difference. Although they all have wings swept back in the front and forward in the back, it's the most drastic in the 22 (fourth in top row), which is the fastest of them all, while the 35s (at the right in both rows), have their wings swept just a bit less and sticking out just a bit more, and aren't as fast but get more maneuverability from their wings & fins. (The 22 might be about as maneuverable or even more, but I don't know, and if so, it's only because they can also pivot their engine exhausts instead of using flaps alone.) Also, as you can see in the two versions I've shown of the 35, the Navy asked for bigger wings and fins because they're a bit more interested in control at low speeds and the Air Force is a bit more interested in high speed.

So, although they've found a wing form that gives a better combination of performance traits than in the old days and rendered swing-wing systems unnecessary, they can still tweek the new modern wing shape a bit to emphasize one purpose or another. It's just that the modern wing type makes the performance trade-offs much smaller now instead of being such major sacrifices like they used to be with older wing shapes.


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## Delvo (Sep 22, 2007)

Great, you changed the post while I was answering it...


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## Delvo (Sep 23, 2007)

Creator said:


> So should a so-called Transonic Attachment to a Hybrid airship needs a cigar shape to reduce shockwaves...


There's no such thing as a "transonic attachment". The whole vehicle is moving together, so it's all at the same speed, so either it's all transonic or it all isn't. And there are no attachments to airplanes that affect whether they have transonic ability; it's all about the shapes of the same few basic parts they all have, not attachments.

And the cigar shape you're looking at doesn't represent an attachment to or part of any plane. It represents the increase and decrease in cross-sectional area of the entire plane from nose to tail... idealized, as if it didn't need intakes and exhaust openings for the engine and a cockpit, so the doesn't even show anything real, just a mathematical concept. The idea is that gradual changes in the plane's shape and area from one cross section of its body to the next cross section behind it are better than abrupt, drastic changes; this is part of the reason for the changes in wing shape that I've outlined above, and also the reason why wings have been getting more blended in with the shape of the body (not really visible in my silhouettes) starting with the F-16.

And a "hybrid" vehicle, aside from being impossible as I've already said, would never be supersonic for the same reasons why any lighter-than-air vehicles aren't: too little momentum and too big of a cross section add up to too much resistance from the air at even moderate speeds, and too much engine power sucked up in fighting against that, especially for a vehicle that needs to have small engines in the first place in order to be so light. Make the vehicle dense enough and its engines proportionally big enough and its shape non-bulbous enough so that it can really be supersonic, and you've made it thoroughly heavier than air, nothing "hybrid" about it.


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## Creator (Sep 23, 2007)

So a Hybrid airship with the cigar area rule being slender and sleek and fold back wings like the now defunct Concorde would be able to fly at supersonic better than a good old blimp which is fat and slowly...


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## Delvo (Sep 23, 2007)

No.

First, a hybrid ship could not even exist; its density would be lower than that of air, in which case it's a lighter-than-air vehicle, or not, in which case it would have to work like planes and helicopters. There's no overlap there, just one or the other.

Second, if a vehicle's density is low (either lighter than air or just even too close to air's own density), then changing its shape won't help its performance like it does with real planes. Lower density means less mass and/or more volume, and more volume means more surface area and cross-section area. Having more volume and area to catch air with and less mass with which to cut through the air on momentum means having a severely reduced speed limit. Making something go fast in the air means reducing its volume/mass ratio; you can test this for yourself by throwing a styrofoam packing "nut" and throwing a real nut, rock, piece of wood, or such of about the same size and shape. The denser thing keeps going faster and farther, while the low-density one gets bogged down in the air and stops going forward much sooner.

That means if you started with a lighter-than-air blimp/zeppelin type of vehicle and wanted to modify it to become supersonic, the first thing you'd have to do is make it much denser, in which case it becomes much heavier than air, just like airplanes. And then it's not lighter than air anymore or even any kind of impossible "hybrid". It's just a plane. If you only tinkered with the lighter-than-air vehicle's shape without shrinking its size or adding more mass, you'd accomplish nothing because if it were to stay lighter than air, then it would have to still be too big for its weight and have too light for its size.


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## Creator (Sep 24, 2007)

Yah... maybe the era of airships is over.... maybe Concorde Aircraft carriers are the next gen...


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## Delvo (Sep 24, 2007)

Creator said:


> Concorde Aircraft carriers


What do you mean by that phrase?


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## woodsman (Sep 24, 2007)

Yeah I'm wondering that.
Look up Barnes Wallis something goose or hypersonic jet. He came up with a brilliant idea which never got past prototyping but should still work IMO. I'm too tired to describe/look it up now I'm afraid but....


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## Creator (Sep 25, 2007)

basically I am looking at a good alternative to the aerial aircraft carriers which were kinda Zeppelin in design... which they are.... So I was thinking if an aerial aircraft carrier is feasible.... if it was heavier than air and even better it can travel at supersonic speeds... into battle.

Airborne aircraft carrier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## woodsman (Sep 25, 2007)

The bigger the target the easier it is to hit, and surely taking off landing would be a bugg*ry to deal with?


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## Delvo (Sep 25, 2007)

Creator said:


> basically I am looking at a good alternative to the aerial aircraft carriers which were kinda Zeppelin in design...


Their alternatives have already been created, which is why they’re gone now, having been replaced by the alternatives. Those alternatives are planes with longer ranges on their own, and mid-air refueling. It’s just more efficient to keep the small thing going farther than to move the big thing the same distance (or even just half as far).

And the idea of carrying fighters on another flying vehicle has gotten even less practical than it was back then when it was dropped, because modern fighters weigh over a dozen times as much as those old fighters did, which would mean their carrier would have to have about that many times as much capacity in order to hold the same number of planes... and the number of planes in those cases was only 1-5 anyway.

If the flying carrier were lighter-than-air (which it would have to be if it’s built any time soon because we just can’t keep enough engine power going for any worthwhile length of time with current technology), it would need to be miles long and wide in order to hold up a flight deck similar in size to an oceanic aircraft carrier’s. That’s probably possible, but it’s also very expensive and yet very easy to damage, in a situation where even minor damage equals total loss of the ship and everything on it or under it... not only by enemy weapons, but even by accidents which would be minor on a normal aircraft carrier.



Creator said:


> So I was thinking if an aerial aircraft carrier is feasible.... if it was heavier than air and even better it can travel at supersonic speeds... into battle.


This could be pretty nifty, but requires a propulsion system or gravity-neutralizing system to be running constantly in order to stay up, and no suitable technology has been invented or is even anywhere in sight as a theory for future development. (Consider that a heavy fighter plane can burn more than 40,000 pounds of fuel in one flight of several hours, and an aircraft carrier, which presumably you would want to be up for more than just a few hours at a time, weighs two and a half thousand times as much as even a fully fuelled and fully armed heavy fighter.)


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## Creator (Oct 13, 2007)

Hey guys maybe the airship won't be so bad afterall

Howstuffworks "How the Aeroscraft Will Work"


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## Delvo (Oct 13, 2007)

The problem hasn't been that airships are "bad". It's that, like any design, they are good for some things and not for others, and you've been proposing trying to use them for what they'd be bad at instead of what they'd be good at. Trying to get an airship or even an airship-like heavier-than-air vehicle (ALHAV?) to do a plane's job is like trying to get a hammer to do a wrench's job or get a pair of scissors to do a chainsaw's job.

The page you just linked to shows exactly why that vehicle wouldn't be good for the functions you've been thinking of: even going by the author's own numbers, which sound rather high to me, it can only carry 400 tons at only 174 MPH. An aircraft carrier carries dozens of thousands of tons, not just a few hundred. 174 MPH isn't even a fourth of sonic speed or a third of the speed of a normal passenger/cargo plane. The page's authors suggest what their proposed vehicle's uses could be, and they're not the uses you've been talking about.


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## Creator (Oct 14, 2007)

Hmmm maybe transporting aircraft maybe out of the league... just leave it to the aircraft carriers maybe or...... maybe a hybrid between a Hovercraft and an aircraft carrier...

Hovercraft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maybe too much expectations for an airship.... and the readers won't believe it!

but


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## Delvo (Nov 22, 2007)

A conversation I was having at another forum about the new giant passenger plane, the A380, reminded me of your quest for funky new vehicles, especially military ones... and especially your tendency to want to combine two or more different things into one.

The main limiting factor to keep civilian passenger/cargo jets' sizes down is not the ability to make them fly, but the lack of airports with big enough runways and enough other infrastructure for maintenance/repair, fuelling, loading/unloading, and such. Otherwise, they seem to want to keep making them bigger. That creates a situation similar to one that existed around WWII, when the biggest planes were medium by today's standards but still had rather few places to land and take off from.

Back then, the answer was what they called "flying boats": big heavy planes that landed on water because their hulls were like boat hulls. Landing on the ocean or a large enough lake means there's no worry about landing/takeoff strip length, because the water gives you miles and miles more space than you need. So they could land pretty much anywhere with a body of water that was big enough, which was a lot less limiting than having to land at an airport that's big enough. They fell out of use because airports big enough to handle their wheeled counterparts were eventually built in more places. But that still isn't really the case for today's most gigantic plane, or for the next gigantic one they might want to make after it.

When I first thought of the idea of making the next giant airliner a flying boat (flying ship?), I pictured civilian planes "landing" at coastal airports, because the main use for the biggest planes is on transoceanic routes instead of over the continents anyway. But since then it's occured to me that the military services would be more interested in it than civilians, because such plane has a lot more potential "landing" sites than a wheeled one does, including some areas with no suitably large and "friendly" airports nearby.

Military services already use big heavy planes to move people and cargo around like civilian organizations, but also for some more military-specific purposes. A bomber is essentially a just cargo plane that drops is cargo in flight, and so is a plane that soldiers jump out of with parachutes. At least one type of cargo plane has had guns and missile launchers stuck in its cargo hold, making it a ground-attack plane capable of more narrowly picking its targets than a bomber but delivering more firepower to more targets than a fighter or smaller attack aircraft. Another, called AWACS, houses lots of fancy electronics and a technical crew in its cargo hold for surveillance, coordination of other forces in the area, intelligence gathering, and "electronic warfare". Some cargo planes have been known to fly slow and low to the ground with the rear ramp down, and let large packages slide out the back and onto the ground while the cargo plane went on by, providing remote troops in combat zones with supply loads up to and including trucks and tanks.

Essentially, anything you can do with a conventional cargo plane, you can do with a similar-sized "flying boat", except put it down on solid ground... and the giant A380-sized planes I'm thinking about would be so big that their cargo hold size gets comparable to that of an "amphibious assault ship". An AAS looks a bit like an aircraft carrier, but is too small for naval airplanes. It carries helicopters and hovercraft, and some trucks and other land vehicles, to be moved ashore for an attack to quickly establish a presence of military forces on the ground. It even opens up its internal hold by a ramp in the back like a cargo plane does. Even a very big plane might never be quite as big as a true AAS, but they might be able to carry similar stuff, so that one or two of them carrying the right stuff could do the job in a matter of hours instead of the days that an AAS might take to reach the site.

There are technical challenges, like the drag on the hull during landings and launches, the weight of water while it's in flight, the shape of a ship's hull being different from an ideal aerodynamic one, the potential for corrosion with exposure to salt water... but the basic concept works; it doesn't violate basic principles of physics like some other combo ideas do. So the challenges are essentially little details that can be tweaked with modern design and materials to make a concept that already works work better...


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## Wiglaf (Nov 22, 2007)

Um, what is the job of your aircraft?  The F-14A was replaced by the F-14D which came out after the F-15, F-16, and F-18.  The reason, the planes all had different purposes and requirements.  Sea landings on rough seas?  How about vectored thrust? By the way, the F-16's wings most closely resemble shorter, stubbier F-14 wings in the foward position.


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## Deathpool (Dec 23, 2007)

If you want a sleek design you could use the SR71 black bird design. At least for the fighters. I wish I could provide you with a photo. Also vertical landing and take off I believe is feasible, at least for the smaller aircraft. Other designs are possible including a revised design of the X29. If you wanted you could use the X-Men's jet design. Harriers land vertically and take off in a very short distance. When they were testing the F35 it took off in less than 500 feet.


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## Dave (May 1, 2008)

I just visited the Imperial War Museum, aviation museum at Duxford, Cambridgeshire, UK today. Looking at some of the exhibits and photos I was struct by the idea that they may have been the inspiration for some famous Scifi spacecraft.

In particular, American Grumman Hellcats with their wings folded away on the deck of an aircraft carrier look very much like Darth Vader's Tie Fighter, and the Russian Mil Hind Helicopter looks very like the Firefly class ship Serenity.

They have a Blackbird there. They also have a B-52, Concorde, a Harrier, Spitfire Supermarines and well, practically everything.

Maybe a trip there might give you the inspiration you are looking for?


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## chrispenycate (May 5, 2008)

Can I use fusion power? I need a lot of energy for this one.

Our basic airframe is about two kilometres long, and quite narrow, but apart fro a rigid spine the rest of the body is articulated, expanding out into wings, or ultimately a hot air lifting body. The “runway is a set of linear accelerator coils running the length of the vessel (actually two sets of coils, one for the launch, one for deccelerating incoming craft – as long as these are totally under control and exactly on the correct axis, not, as might be the case with combat damage or a severe gale, in danger of endangering the carrier ship, in which case there is a net  system deployed underneath, but using this can cause damage th the craft, and its crew.

The small craft are fuelled either chemically (probably a hydrocarbon) or from energy stored in a superconducting coil battery. Either way, they only have a few hours autonomy, and less if they’re required to take evasive action.
With the lift bags deployed, the mother craft’s fusion jets cab barely  bring it up to 150 kM/hr., something a wheeled vehicle can maintain on a good driving surface) In ‘wing’ mode this goes up to 800, and in ‘everything folded down’ Mach 2.5, but can’t lauch auxilliary craft, or missiles. With all cabin space folded flat, everyone has to be strapped in combat positions, with the strike craft crew in their cockpits, in the dark.

The electro-magnetic acceleratot can also be used to launch missiles, though only along the main axis, starght forward or straight astern. Radiant energy weapons (Lasers or masers) and directable projectile weapons (turret-mounted railguns) are also available, but can’t be deployed in hypoersonic mode. Landing is done in ‘zeppelin”  mode, and requires a considerable expanse of calm (but not necessarily deep) water. Since the thing can fly for several months without refuelling, this rarely becomes a problem. 
Unfortunately both materials science and the development of fusion generators are a bit backward in producing the required components to build this, the ultimate variable geometry design.


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## Nik (May 6, 2008)

Stand-off distances...
You really, really do not want to put such a big, juicy target in harm's way. Remember Naval aircraft carriers must maintain a stand-off distance that allows their CAP and fleet screen to work...

Gets to point where you do not want crewed aircraft aboard, but only drones and cruise missiles. And dispersed between several much smaller, cheaper, affordable aircraft, perhaps Airbus derivatives...

Um, if you have a really big wing or blended-wing aircraft, the wing becomes the hull and you can take liberties with the internal lay-out.

Couple of issues--

How do you *launch* such a monster ?? Okay, it could probably take off at a surprisingly low speed, but then the design keeps it *firmly* sub-sonic. Besides, the shock-waves around any transonic aircraft are really terrible-- Getting to or from such a carrier would be appallingly dangerous, making a naval-carrier landing in bad weather feel like a quiet stroll in park. Check out issues of intake flow-splitters, aircraft munition dispensing etc etc...

Even at modest speeds, the vortices shed by a big aircraft force wide traffic separation at airports. Sadly, there have been accidents when such vortices were carried by cross-winds into other traffic's path.

And 'Clear Air Turbulence' would be a nightmare for navigation...

Fuelling-- Okay, big enough could be nuclear, probably with twin cores out on the 'wing-tips' for max safety. You would also have to consider replenishment. Takes a lot of stuff to feed crew, lots more to supply the aircraft. Above a certain size, you're talking daily Hercules landings...

Even US proposals for mid-air re-arming along with refuelling are very tentative...

Um, you want wondrous / weird / alternative aircraft lay-outs ?

For 3D models...
3D Meshes Research Database by INRIA GAMMA Group
For Burnelli layout...
Unreal Aircraft - Weird Wings - Canadian Car & Foundry lifting body designs
For background...
Aerospaceweb.org | Reference for Aviation, Space, Design, and Engineering
For flying wings--'The Wing Is The Thing'
The Wing Is The Thing - Flying Wings and Tailless Aircraft

Um, may have been Murray Leinster's 1950s SciFi tales that used 'push pots' as zeroth stage of space launchers. Those were over-powered 'parasite' jets designed to provide vertical launch boost, then uncouple, peel away and fly back to skid landings. Think Starfighter crossed with SRB. If those seriously scary designs were replaced by 'Harrier' vectored thrust, they could offer a horizontal launch / land assist to a really big wing...

And, yes, check out 'Caspian Sea Monster'...


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## Pyan (May 6, 2008)

Nik said:


> And, yes, check out 'Caspian Sea Monster'...



One _amazing_ machine....

YouTube - Ekranoplan Caspian Sea Monster ground effect plane


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