First Hover Flight Test of X-50A Dragonfly

kbielefe writes "On Wednesday, flight testing began on the X-50A dragonfly canard rotor wing unmanned aircraft. For those of you not familiar with the dragonfly, its rotors work like a helicopter for takeoff, hovering, and slow-speed manouvering, and then lock into place like a fixed-wing aircraft for cruising. The X-50A's reaction drive makes it "much lighter, simpler and more affordable to operate and support than traditional rotorcraft." And the technology is scalable to larger, manned vehicles. Truly a revolutionary aircraft, with a multitude of potential military and commercial applications." There are some more photos and artwork.

Comments

Deathtrap?

[The Snowman]

So far, our attempts at bridging the gaps between helicopters and fixed wing aircraft have met with disaster. Take the Osprey, for example. I don't know who it was but he said that it took the worst features of both types of aircraft and mashed them together with poor engineering. Hopefully this new aircraft does not suffer the fate of the Osprey... and her pilots.

Re:Deathtrap?

[sllim]

Can I assume you are a 19 year old AMERICAN college Sophmore?

Yeah, actually I do think you should at least have heard of this.

The Osprey is supposed to be a replacement for the very aged Chinook helicopters.
If ever the military had a vehicle that outlived its usefulness it was the Chinook.
My father was in 'Nam and he tells me that he couldn't get out of those things fast enough. They were flying bullseyes as far as he was concerned.

The Osprey has the range and speed of a propeller aircraft but the VTOL capability, and the hover ability of a helicpoter.
This is acomplished by putting extremely large propeller (turboprop) engines on the end of the wings. The largest damn propellers you are ever going to see. The ends of the wings actually rotate 90 degrees to facilitate take off and landings.

When they first started testing this thing they found a lot of flaws. Some where engineering problems, but there is one nasty one they have been working on.

The engines can create an unusual vortex that has never really been seen before. When this vortex happens they loose lift and control of the aircraft and it crashes.

Is it a bad aircraft that we need to give up on?

I don't really know.

John Glenn seems to think the Shuttle's are flying death traps and we were better off putting capsules on top of rockets.

The Hubble was a real mess when it was first put in orbit as well. There was an enormous public outcry after the press labeled it 'a failure'.
Hmmmm some failure.

The B-1 bomber also suffered a number of crashes in testing.

Aviation is HARD and DANGEROUS. Someone else already said it for me, it is about time we took the 'pilot' out of test pilot. I can only imagine what the difference in public perception would be if the Osprey had gone through an unmanned testing phase.

The Osprey does hold tremendous promise though. If we can iron out the problems in it, it really would be a new category of aircraft. Something that can economicaly provide city to city air service, something that can bridge the gap between helicopter and airplane.

While I am not yet convinced that they can get a grip on the vortex problem, I am very far away from saying they need to give up.

Re:Deathtrap?

[bm_luethke]

Great post.

Too much we focus on the nay sayers, sometimes they are correct, but many times they are not. How many times were people told you couldn't fly, dive beneath the ocean, or go to the moon. All of which were wrong. Not only that, but the amount of injuries and deaths to get to those points is absolutely stagering and would not be tolerated in todays society.

Yet those things are what we define as great moments in our history.

Just because those things are decried by some people doesn't mean they are, in fact, impossible.

*shrug* we need to keep a balance in things, spending 3 trillion on a perpetual motion machine isn't exactly good money spent, but there are a myriad of projects that get a bad rep because a few (or even more than a few) names say it is impossible.

Re:Deathtrap?

[Moofie]

Uh, so how many Marines can you deliver into hostile territory with an A-10?

I'm pretty sure the number is awfully close to zero.

There are NO armored airborne personnel carrying vehicles. Zero. That means, if you're flying in a C-130 or a Sea Stallion, that there is pretty well nothing between you and fiery death at the hands of bad guys.

It's a problem that is solved by tactics. The Osprey permits a larger variety of tactics (because it's faster and longer-ranged than other heavy lift helicopters).

Being in the Army is dangerous. That's what soldiers sign up for. It's up to the engineers (that's me) to provide them with the best possible hardware to complete their missions, but there is no such thing as a "safe" combat insertion vehicle.

Great technology

[dema]

I love how the pictures just have to include one of these plans shooting a missle. You'd think the atomic bomb would've taught us all a lesson.

Re:Great technology

[still cynical]

I love how the pictures just have to include one of these plans shooting a missle. You'd think the atomic bomb would've taught us all a lesson.

That lesson being not to make sweeping judgements and generalizations based on publicity-driven artist's conceptions? Funny, I thought that (one of) the lesson(s) of the atomic bomb was that overwhelming force (when not guided by an idiot, not that I'm referring to a sitting politician or anything) can be used to end wars started by others.

Re:Great technology

[Clever Pun]

That's a rather odd viewpoint to have - it sounds about the same as "I love how the recruitment posters just have to include one of these soldiers shooting a rifle" to me. The plane is being designed for MILITARY use. This means that people are going to be taking potshots at it whether its manned or not. That picture, in particular, depicts the manned version of the Dragonfly. Would you really want to send a soldier into hostile territory without some kind of defense? I don't think that's the kind of move the government wants to try. Nor would the government want to lose a multi-million dollar drone if it could avoid doing so by giving it something to hit back with, eh?

Re:Could be good for general aviation...

[pbug]

>>I'm surprised Boeing is taking a risk though with such a strange new craft
Well when you have you have a 24 million dollar contract to develop a plane for the US Governemnt you can take that risk to develop two concept planes for them.

Joint Strike Fighter

[corebreech]

The most brain-damaged aircraft I've ever seen.

Sure, it may make some sense to get the Navy and the Air Force to jointly develop a plane, although some compromises would have to be made and problems are sure to develop.

But to add as a requirement VTOL for the Marines? Oh my God! This is just so stupid! And the way that they're doing it only makes matters worse! Lockheed-Martin won the contract with what can only be described as a truly regretable approach to vertical takeoff that involves generating enormous amounts of mechanical stress. The Boeing design was much simpler, although apparently more prone to exhaust finding its way into the engine (which is bad, but is a flaw shared to some degree by LM's version as well.)

That said, air superiority in the future isn't something I'm terribly concerned about. Look at what we do with the air superiority we have now... bomb this shit out of people who can't defend themselves.

Go Congress!

Re:Joint Strike Fighter

[Hallowed]

"Look at what we do with the air superiority we have now... bomb this shit out of people who can't defend themselves."

Hmmmm, seems to me that is the point of calling it air superiority!

I agree on the JSF tho, it is a swiss-army plane, like a swiss-army knife, and it will be expected to do multiple jobs, by replacing dedicated platforms that were designed specifically for certain combat roles. Despite it's versatility, I really doubt it will be as good at any single job as the planes it is replacing were. I imagine it will be a good replacement for the Harriers (seeing as how they are pretty much first-generation VTOL planes) but there is no way it is going to replace a A-10 for the close air support role.

Re:Joint Strike Fighter

[afidel]

I don't think anything will ever replace the titanium bathtub for close air support. Those things are amazing. They can take a beating, kill a tank, yet can fly slow enough to kill infantry with the vulcan cannon.

Re:X-50 half helicopter half plane

[Gunfighter]

I doubt we'll see any supersonic helicopters any time soon. Harriers can't even go supersonic. It would be one hell of an engineering feet to build a rotary-to-fixed aircraft like the X-50 and work supersonic flight into it's capabilities.

The airfoil...

[trinitrotoluene]

How are they going to make the airfoil symetrical for fixed-winf flight? Wouldn't one half of the wing be facing in the right direction, and the other half be "backwards"? It didn't mention this in any of the links as far as I can tell. The only solution I can think of is a symetrical airfoil from front to back.