Russians Invade with Flying Saucer

Ridgelift writes "Wired is covering a project revived from Russia by the US Naval Air Systems Command: The Ekip, a pita-bread-shaped, stubby-winged, wheel-less, unmanned ship that weighs in at 500 pounds. 'For more than two decades, engineers at a former Soviet aerospace plant have been toiling on a drone aircraft that looks a whole lot like a prop from Plan 9 From Outer Space.'"

Comments

Ever heard of the AVRO Car?

[evil_one]

AVRO Canada had a working flying saucer back in the height of the cold war.
Link: http://www.avroarrow.org/Avrocar/Avrocar.html

Re:Ever heard of the AVRO Car?

[digital bath]

Moller International has been working on personal 'skycars' for a long time. Some of their earlier models resemble flying saucers, strangely enough.

I can't wait to own one of these, though.

UFO sightings

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a field investigator for MUFON. I've been investigating sightings here in the Midwest for quite some time now, and I've come to believe that stories like this one are planted by the government to make people believe that UFO's are secret military aircraft.

Well, I've been out there, in the field, taking the eyewitness reports. I do not believe for a second that these craft that people are seeing are made by humans.

Go out there, talk to eyewitnesses, talk to an abductee - you'll quickly realize that stories like this are carefully written "plants" by conspirators that reach the highest corridors of power in World Government.

Re:UFO sightings

[jamesh]

Damn. They got to this post and moderated it 'Funny' so nobody would take it seriously.

Re:UFO sightings

[earthforce_1]

I have been thinking about those rumors of a crashed UFO being studied at the Groom Lake facility, and it got me thinking about the possibilities. If the stories were true, I doubt they would gain much useful knowledge from it. Technology far in advance of your own, (or even moderately in advance of your own) would be unfathomable. Consider the following:

A modern F-16 enters a temporal vortex, and crashes on the White House lawn, back in 1862 or so. The pilot is dead, and the plane will never fly again, but President Lincoln realizes the by studying the wreakage of this futuristic machine, they might be able to develop a flying war machine that would bring a speedy victory against the south. He summons the top scientists and engineers of the day to study the wreak and learn what they may.

They would discover that the machine is made of wonderous materials - Aluminum was newly discovered and more expensive than Silver in that day. Titanium was unknown, as would be carbon fibre and other composites. They could discover some of its physical properties, but would have no idea how to manufacture it.

The principle of the turbine was known, but they would likely assume the aircraft was steam driven. The electronic fly by wire controls and on board computer systems would of course be completely unfathomable. It would be doubtful they could even determine the function of the countless electronic black boxes on board, let alone try and reproduce them. Even if the plane and landed intact, and the pilot was co-operative, he could not help them design and build another F16 with the technology of the day. It is doubtful they could even refine the fuel that would enable the one aircraft they had to fly a single mission!

An examination of the overall aircraft would not give them any advantage in learning how to build a flying machine either - aircraft of the early 20th century bear no respemblence to a modern jet fighter. If the Wright brothers were given the opportunity to carefully examine one before they started building their flyer, it would have set them back many years. They might have been wasting time trying to build gas turbines, instead of using internal combustion engines with propellors. Also, modern fighters are not aerodynamically stable, a sacrifice made to improve maneuverability. They require active computer control systems - if the onboard computer goes down, so does the plane. And 1900's era flying machine design attempting to emulate the construction of a modern fighter would be doomed to failure.

Re:UFO sightings

[blincoln]

Technology far in advance of your own, (or even moderately in advance of your own) would be unfathomable.

You bring up some very good points (and I really enjoyed the post), but I think that if genuine alien technology ended up in our laps, we would be able to learn at least something from it.

History isn't my forte, but I would think that an F-16 crashing in America of 1862 would give the US a head-start on technologies like radio and television, lasers, and jet engines.

You are right that they wouldn't be able to build a plane using those technologies, but having jet engines might be useful for something else, like watercraft.

I very much doubt that the modern US has gotten its hands on alien technology. There are some interesting theories that use it to explain how we got our hands on transistors, for example, but I think they are best used as an inspiration for historical fiction, not an understanding of how the technology was invented.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Covering all bases...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, saucers belong to all bases welcoming new alien overlords.

Wright Flyer vs Flying Saucer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just found out that the Wright Bros had used lift tables on their early gliders that had been made 30 years before by a German man, and that they found these tables to be in error, when they made their own wind tunnel, with instruments and came up with the cross section of the perfect wing that we use today. Seems that changes to the wings didn't have the expected results, so the Wind Tunnel had to be made, and hundreds of wing configurations had to be tested. I don't know why the Wright Flyer didn't use that cross section, or at least look like it did.
Then, they designed and made their own engine to use in the powered Flyer, right down to casting the engine block. Just two guys doing this, with helpers, ranging from machinists on the engine, to crew at Kitty Hawk. Interesting to note that their parents encouraged them at an early age, and that they had a limited social life, directing their energy instead toward their scientific explorations. One time when the glider part of the project was going badly, one of them supposedly remarked that it would take 1000 years to come up with a design that would fly. I've gotten in that mood myself, especially when working on modern automobiles, where no thought was put into "ease of service" on certain components by the designers.
The development of flying saucer machines seems to be aimed at looking like something that a science fiction writer/illustrator came up with, rather than going after the final design of a real flying machine, like the Wright Flyer.

Oh No!!!

[d3faultus3r]

Not only are they sapping and impurifying our precious bodily fluids, they're in league with the aliens. close off all communications at the base, Col. Mandrake.

Bad Design for Passengers..

[hopbine]

One of the things that killed the passenger flying wing project was that folks on the outside of the aircraft will be going up and down too much when the plane rolls. This design appears to have the same problem. Hand out the sick bags!!!

Re:Bad Design for Passengers..

[drinkypoo]

Personally, I want to be inside the airplane, where it is considerably less windy. If your design includes placing passengers outside the aircraft, perhaps it is time to consider a significant alternation.

(With apologies to G. Carlin)

pita-bread-shaped?

[drinkypoo]

The Ekip, a pita-bread-shaped, stubby-winged, wheel-less, unmanned ship

Pita-bread shaped? And I suppose a bus is shaped like a loaf of bread, a 747 is shaped like a baguette, a croissant, and some pieces of matzoh cracker.

Please, if there is any alternative, avoid copying text verbatim from Wired. Their editors make the ones around this joint look like the heads of mensa.

Ekip Aviation Concern Site

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out http://www.ekip-aviation-concern.com/ for a brouchure with lots of details and more pictures.

The AVROCAR couldn't even get it up

[Colymbosathon ecplec]

According to the article (yes I actually read it before posting, and yes I am new here): But despite piles of Pentagon cash, and years of testing, the Avrocar couldn't stay stable more than a few feet off the ground. The program was finally killed in 1965. An Avrocar test model can still be found in a National Air and Space Museum storage facility near Washington. A "working flying saucer"? I don't think so.

Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets

It's time for somebody to do this

[Animats]

Aviation R&D in the 1950s produced several interesting, but unstable, design concepts. The flying wing, the flying disk, and the flying platform were all tried. Many of the prototypes ended up at the Hiller Aviation Museum in Silicon Valley, which is worth a visit. But all those designs lacked stability, and electronics technology wasn't good enough to do active stabilization at the time.

The Flying Wing concept was pushed all the way to bomber size, and several were built. Most of them crashed. (Edwards AFB is named after a Flying Wing pilot.) Not until the 1980s, and the Have Blue stealth prototype, was the stability problem resolved adequately. (A modified F-16 analog autopilot handled the stabilization.)

Some of those 1950s designs could now be revisited. The AvroCar could be made to work today, if anybody cared. If a competent aircraft designer, like Rutan, built one, it would work.

The problem, of course, is that all pure-thrust vehicles need huge engines and have lousy fuel economy, since they need enough power to go straight up on thrust alone. The only sucessful pure-thrust VTOL aircraft is the Harrier. Since modern fighters have enough thrust to go straight up anyway, a VTOL fighter is feasible. Marginally.

This new Russian thing sounds flakey, but not fake. They should be able to build a prototype and fly it. But the claims for efficiency are probably not real.

It sounds like they're fooling around with boundary layer control. This has been done before, all the way back to WWII. Aircraft with "blown" or "sucked" wings have been tried. It works, but the practical problems with a wing full of holes and plumbing have been too great. Ice, for example. A few aircraft, including the C-17, have blown control surfaces, but not the whole wing.

There's considerable interest in disk-shaped craft in small scales, from the micro air vehicle people. AeroVironment has built some.

Re:It's time for somebody to do this

[uradu]

> This new Russian thing sounds flakey, but not fake. [...]
> It sounds like they're fooling around with boundary layer control.

I think there's a bit of tunnel vision involved here. I read their "brochure", and they do mention that it's supposed to fly at 500-700 km/h at an altitude of 8-13 km, but the rest of the text only talks about ground effect flight and landing. Judging by the shape of the plane, its flat underside (it's definitely no lifting body), and the minuscule wing surface area, I'm convinced that whatever they've tried so far was a pure ground effect vehicle. Their thinking might have been, hey, once we've got that licked, we'll worry about getting higher up. Except that getting out of the boundary layer and high up into the atmosphere involves a very different type of flying, which would explain their lack of success so far.

Mind you, Russia has taken ground effect flight further than anyone else with their Ekranoplans, particularly the KM. That was a pretty awesome vehicle, even though ten jet engines sounds a bit ridiculous.

WTF? No it doesn't!

[lommer]

Um, I don't know which article you were reading, but this plane does not use any kind of ion engine, nor are ion engines even mentioned in the article! While your post was factually correct, it has nothing to do with the article in question and is in fact completely offtopic. Hrm, maybe you've stumbled on a new formula for cheap karma:
1) Claim that something you know is relevant to the story (even if it's not)
2) Talk about what you know
3) Karma!!!

aliens

[sklib]

We always thought aliens from outer space would descend in flying saucers, but it's actually going to be (possibly illegal) aliens from Russia.

I, for one, welcome our vodka-drinking overlords.