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Fanwing Planes?
waimate writes "Up until now, there's been fixed wing, or there's been rotating wing, and that's it. But now thanks to Patrick Peebles, there's an entirely new principle of flight called the Fanwing. Initially developed in secrecy and flown only at night, as reported in this Bulletin article this machine combines the many of the attributes of helicopters and conventional aircraft, but not by combining the worst aspects of both like the V-22 Osprey. The FanWing is a whole new way of getting off the ground, particularly suited to inner city applications. It's only downfall (he he) is that it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage. Includes videos of the prototype in action."
It is a neat concept and works well on the model. But it just feels like scaling it up to the point where it will lift meaningful weight will prove it to be not efficient.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
I do not want to see flying cars until people learn to drive the ones that don't fly. As dangerous as these "I am the only person on the road" mentality drivers are, imagine them with an "I am the only person in the sky" additiude. Goody, another whole dimension to cut people off in.
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
"...particularly suited to inner city applications ... it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage"
No way, bad idea! I've seen more people that I need to running out of gas to recognize this as a *bad* idea. The ability to glide is *important* and very useful when things seriously seizes to function
I say make 'em get pilots' licences, or some modified form thereof. That'll cut down on the soccer moms and grandparents and who(m?)ever else causes all the problems on the roads today.
Synergy is your friend
A reconnaissance platform needs survivability. A design such as this does not appear to offer any sort of low-observabilty, or alternatively, high speed for defensive requirements. This particular design could be brought down with the lowest-tech of weaponry. That said, it might serve well as a surveillance platform for peacetime uses, if it had loiter time that made the development effort worthwhile - if such a wing/propeller design could handle heavy weather well, and hold together for long periods of time (you are rotating a large mass at a high speed in this design). A development effort for a large passenger-carrying aircraft such as depicted in the google cache of the photos can be a several hundred million dollar process to meet FAA certification requirements to have people on board.
Because of the design expense, an aircraft needs to be focused to a particular market segment. However, paraphrasing Bill Lear, who designed the Lear jet, the trick is to discern that market before others. This particular aircraft has a unique wing and lift-engine design, but that doesn't mean at endgame that it'd be a worthwhile development effort, since the technology in use now has made great strides in efficieny and cost. But it's certainly worth studying at a certain level of investment (of time and money), since who knows what will turn out to be the better mousetrap.
Capitalizing on such technological improvements in design approach, material availability, market desire for a particular platform, etc, is hard work and a lot of luck to make it a cost-effective endeavor considering the (necessary for safety) expense of certification.
Disclosure: I work in the business - www.avtechgroup.com
gliding an airplane seems "boring".
Just gotta say that in anything that flies, boring is considered a good thing. Excitement can mean something is going very wrong.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
OK so they're not as bad as giving nukes to everyone. But a flying car typically can take out far more people and stuff than a normal car - just the potential energy of being much higher up is bad enough. Add in the fact that there's no equivalent of road barriers and emergency lanes for flying vehicles - say you have problems midair in the city you can't really pull-over can you?
Also, humans don't appear to have any innate flocking instinct. You can get a million flamingos to fly in various flock patterns and paths without colliding with each other, but try get humans to do that.
So I personally think consumer level flying cars are a bad idea. Even masses of above average humans won't be able to fly and maintain them safely amongst other masses. I doubt you can get masses of people to do it safely.
It's not like slowly getting people used to flying- e.g. performance envelope of flying chickens - that won't sell. It's like a jump to eagle speeds and altitudes with 1 ton inertias - no stopping on a dime. Eagles and other birds have had a long time to slowly get things right.
I don't trust computers to get it right either - especially since computers and sensors still have to be maintained.
Also if you look at the passenger airplane safety - despite all the training, equipment and controls, they're often worse than cars on a _per_trip_ basis. They win in safety just because of distance travelled.
In the typical "rose tinted view" of free flight in cities, when you have consumer grade flying cars and pilots you get the worse safety of both worlds - many short-medium trips, low level flight, no open air space - lots of cables wires and obstacles around, and lots of other unpredictable flying vehicles around.
So I argue that they'll remove too much more than just the plain idiots.