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what would be involved in designing a crossbreed helicopter for flight to earth orbit?
What problems to fix? What problems to solve? How high can you go on rotors? How much extra energy would you need to make up as rocket thrust? Can we rig up rotar blades as robot arms and have them fully retractible?
What problems to fix? What problems to solve? How high can you go on rotors? How much extra energy would you need to make up as rocket thrust? Can we rig up rotar blades as robot arms and have them fully retractible?
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Space helicopter
Sat, July 8, 2006 - 6:08 PMif we can imagine it, it can be......
...that's a lot to imagine prometheus -
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 10, 2006 - 5:05 PM...that's a lot to imagine prometheus
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does that mean that you opt out?
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Re: Space helicopter
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 1:05 PMnot opting out, just trying to wrap my head around it........ -
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Re: Space helicopter
Thu, July 13, 2006 - 8:19 AMJust to clarify, are you talking about a heli with blades that could take off from the ground and fly up to outer space?
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Re: Space helicopter
Sun, July 9, 2006 - 10:59 PMcall burt,
www.scaled.com
if he cant do it , no one can.
hes got the coolest millng machine in the world! -
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 10, 2006 - 5:06 PM
if he cant do it , no one can.
hes got the coolest millng machine in the world!
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before we call him we should have some blueprints and designs.....
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Re: Space helicopter
Thu, July 13, 2006 - 7:30 PMLet's call it the "Daedalopter."
Bonus points if you get the reference.
:-)
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Re: Space helicopter
Fri, July 14, 2006 - 6:16 PMDaedalus, the Greek architect and perhaps the grandaddy of all gearheads :)
He built wings for himself and his son Icarus to escape King Minos...but his foolish son flew too close to the sun and died.
Where's my gold star?! -
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Re: Space helicopter
Fri, July 14, 2006 - 6:27 PMdesign criteria;
1. This helicopter will function as a full version of an earth to orbit shuttle craft.
2. This helicopter will use blades to gain altitude to the maximum height that is possible,
and then fold the blades into an internal storage compartment.
3. What will take over from the blades will be ramrockets.
4. What will take over from the ramrockets above the atmosphere to orbit will be chemical
rockets.
5. The helicopter will then be able to drop a payload in space, drop back
down through the atmosphere, and use first the ramrockets and then the helicopter blades
to brake.
6. this Helicopter is obvioiusly the largest helicopter ever designed.
7. This helicopter obviously runs on nuclear power.
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Re: Space helicopter
Tue, July 18, 2006 - 12:45 PMHis son made wings out of wax and being too close to the sun melted the wax so the wings fell apart. Then he fell and died.
Silver star.
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Re: Space helicopter
Fri, July 14, 2006 - 6:33 PMokay, thats fine. The question is not the feasability nor the pragmatism, but only
the aesthetics of the problem itself as the ultimate expression of the helicopter form.
I don't mind calling it the Daedalopter or owning the joke that entails, it is a somewhat rediculous
concept. However, i am bored by normal chit chat, i'm an aspie, i have a 180 IQ, and the idea
of concept design in a social environment intrigues me.
If you want a more realistic thought experiment, i suppose we could drop our expectations to
a high atmosphere blimp rendezvous.
Another interesting sub thought experiment of course is simply the ultimate weapons platform,
but thats allready been done (piss poorly i might add) by the USA military, "airwolf" and "blue thunder."
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Re: Space helicopter
Sat, July 15, 2006 - 12:40 PMthe auto rotation feature on hc rotors sould be very handy for breaking back into the atmosphere. if you look at space ship one it has giant tail feathers that glide the craft back into earths atmo. im just wondering about rotors big enough to lift a craft with solid/hybrid rockets up and out of the atmo and then fold the wings/rotors back into the fusalage fast enough? im thinking flying wing with high glide ratio in an attempt to slow the descent allowing the rotors to fold out and the attitude to change and fire the rockets geting the craft into extraorbital.
not like i have any experience designing or building space craft, but what thehell??? -
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Re: Space helicopter
Sat, July 15, 2006 - 12:53 PMgood thoughts, keep em coming!
:)
The use of modern lightweight materials could actually make such a vehicle much lighter
than the shuttle is now...
auto rotate feature is good point, tho you have to be going slow enough so that the
rrotor blades don't just sheer off...
the rotar apparatus does get complicated fer sure when you have it doing so much
and yet folding into a compartment...thats a robotics arm problem...and a doozy. -
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Re: Space helicopter
Sun, July 16, 2006 - 4:05 PMim not sure if heli is the most efficiant way through the liquid atmo into non-liquid atmo?? burt uses an extremely light fixed wing aircraft.. www.virgingalactic.com
payload, is a problem too.
question: what is the celing on a stadard turbine heli?
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 17, 2006 - 10:45 AMi can't read your info as it would require me to install a program and i'm not allowed to do that.
Theres no doubt that the Daedalocopter is not the "BEST" way to do things....
However thats really not the question, its sort of true but irrelevant.
what is the ceiling on a standard helicopter? the hull cieling i assume you askign what
its made of? I dunno, i would guess steele.
My first assumption here is that we would use light weight new modern materials with tensile strengths equal to or greater than metals.
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 17, 2006 - 11:20 AMsorry, what i ment was max altitude, aka service ceiling. in other words how high up can a heli go. the problem with vehicles that are designed using fluid dyanics is they have a fixed service ceiling wich is where the vehicle runs out of air to fly on. i can only assume that a helicopter since flys on using fluid dynamics it can only go so high.
fuselage on a heli is alluminum or carbon fiber.
carbon fiber is stronger and lighter than alluminum and in some cases steel. a typical carbon fiber fabrication includes allot of alluminum or magnesium.
that link was for virgin galactic it runs on flash, it just shows the new flyer and the space port they are building. -
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 17, 2006 - 11:30 AMRe: Space helicopter
sorry, what i ment was max altitude, aka service ceiling. in other words how high up can a heli go. the problem with vehicles that are designed using fluid dyanics is they have a fixed service ceiling wich is where the vehicle runs out of air to fly on.
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Yes, its a pretty low cieling actually for helicopters with a lot of atmosphere left to get
through, which is why ramrockets are still a pretty good option.
On the other hand, it still maybe 20 miles up or so, depeding on which helicopter
we are talking about, its weight, and how fast the blades go. Ideally, we could probably
get our blades going say upto 10 times faster than the standard....
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i can only assume that a helicopter since flys on using fluid dynamics it can only go so high.
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I don't know any mathematics, i have a sort of laypersons knolwedge of physics. I'm only guessing, but i'd think that cieling would be 20 or 30 miles hi or so. Essentially a third of the way through the atmosphere and a smaller fraction of the way to orbit.
However, thats still a significant fraction, and the re-usability and versatility of such an overall system would have many advantages also.
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fuselage on a heli is alluminum or carbon fiber.
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see? good thing i had you to answer, cuz i am just guessing.
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 17, 2006 - 2:04 PMokay, sos theres a very general cutaway side views sketch to cover the basic concept...
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cut away side view of main hull and ramrocket Engine.
red main hull area is nuclear power area,
orange area is rotar blade area and storage
compartment.Dark Green is the main cabin,
light green is the aft cabin.
Red ramrocket object is the rotary blade,
purple is magnetic acceleration systems,
orange is microwave laser array,
aft red circle is intended ignition chamber,
yellow is obviously the open internal area..
(though some of the yellow spaces would
be ducted or etc, yellow is whats dealingwith
the flow of air.)
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 17, 2006 - 2:32 PMthats a total of four images...i hope that this helps people to get the general concept
in their heads and doesn't fool anybody into thinking i actually think that those shapes
and sizes are the ones to go with.
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Re: Space helicopter
Tue, July 18, 2006 - 12:51 PMThe forces on rotor blades in normal atmosphere strain the materials so much already. They flex and rotate askew of the axis of rotation as a matter of routine, whereas most engineering applications would only do that as a last resort. In high density altitude, even say only 14,000 feet above mean sea level, the air is so thin that the rotor blades have a difficult time creating even enough lift to hover much less break through the atmosphere. It may be helpful for a spacecraft reentering the atmosphere slow down, but the rotor disk may have to be 500 feet across to slow an object traveling at mach 3. That would be really cool. But then they would be more likely to snap off at the base because more leverage force at the tips. -
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Re: Space helicopter
Tue, July 18, 2006 - 1:13 PMThe forces on rotor blades in normal atmosphere strain the materials so much already.
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yes, true. To compensate for this i was figuring on both thicker and wider as well
as longer blades than have been generally done before.
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They flex and rotate askew of the axis of rotation as a matter of routine, whereas most engineering applications would only do that as a last resort. In high density altitude, even say only 14,000 feet above mean sea level, the air is so thin that the rotor blades have a difficult time creating even enough lift to hover much less break through the atmosphere.
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To be totally clear, the only thing the blades really must be able to do to make the system
work as designed is make 350 mph so that the compression on the ramrockets works out.
After that its really a cruise missile.
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It may be helpful for a spacecraft reentering the atmosphere slow down, but the rotor disk may have to be 500 feet across to slow an object traveling at mach 3.
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yes, which is why i was actually thinking of using the ramrockets for breaking prior
to blade takeover.
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That would be really cool. But then they would be more likely to snap off at the base because more leverage force at the tips.
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leverage vs longer blades is a very key physics problem, thanks for bringing our attention
to it.
:)
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 24, 2006 - 8:29 PMYesterday on my way back from a friends flight school in bakerfield my fellow instructor and i decided to check out Mojave airport on the way home. There they have a project that is called the Rotary Rocket. It is now cancelled and the prototype sits on the ramp fading into history. What it was supposed to do was launch using rockets to space then descend in a autorotative state back to earth. Here are some sites with pics and info on the ship.
www.airteamimages.com/31578.html
www.spaceandtech.com/spaceda...um.shtml -
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, July 24, 2006 - 8:34 PMwow. thanks, thats interesting...at least somebody else had the idea...
say? what about counter-rotation? i don't see any obvious means of dealing with that?
Actually the blade size to vehicle size ratio seems off and a few other things as well...
Not surprised they scrapped it it looks not very well designed...?
since posting the sketches i posted i went back and thought it through and realized
a tall and skinny rather than a flat body would be much better...
n-y-ways....
thanks again, kewl detail for us!
:)
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Re: Space helicopter
Tue, August 8, 2006 - 11:24 PMWell the main reason we have a counter rotative force on the fuselage of the aicraft is due to the torque produced from the engine. Like when you have an osscilating fan and you hold the fan cage and the base turns instead... same concept. Since the Rotory Rocket does not use an engine, but autorotative forces to spin the blades, there is no torque therefore no need for an anti torque system such as the tail rotor on a helicopter... -
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Re: Space helicopter
Mon, August 21, 2006 - 3:48 PMi am sorry, but the physics engine in my head just won't accept that. if you have spin going one way theres going to be spin going the other way.
for every force equal and opposite force... etc.
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