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Jet-powered Nausicaa Glider Project
SuperElectric writes "As reported on slashdot.jp, Opensky is a project led by media artist Kazuhiko Hachiya to implement a working, jet-powered version of Moewe, the vehicle (pic) that the heroine rides on in "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind". They've successfully test-flown (.mov, 8.6MB) a 1/2 scale model, and are moving into phase 2, which includes interviewing for test pilots (women only!). Can anybody knowledgeable in experimental aeronautics speculate on how doable this is? While it's not designed for general production (riders must be less than 50 kg/120 lbs), this would certainly beat Segway any day!"
Well, off to join my buddy Wile E. Coyote, walking off cliffs and holding up little signs and waving bye-bye before I fall and that sort of thing.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why? Those people who can use this gilder are either: naturally small and/or fairly in shape. The Segway, however, has no such restrictions, and allows anyone to go fast without effort.
In shorter: wider (figuratively) audience == good.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
I'm curious about the degree of comfort when landing this thing. The undercarriage looks awfully small and your feet would most probably hit the ground before you go down to a decent speed. I'd hate to have to jump off in mid-air and perform a bad-ass roll everytime I have to go somewhere! (While also destroying my mean of transportation in a spectacular crash.) (These people might have played BF1942 before and realized that's how everyone land in that game, so it must be the best way to do it...)
A lot of technology stems from ideas and designs in science-fiction. Always has always will probably. Submarine, Fax machine, just about everything on my desk.
So, like, yeah. It is only a cartoon, but then some guy went out and built technology from that cartoon, so now it's sitting right there on a football feild. Neat.
Disclaimers: 1] I've never seen the cartoon in question, and I'm not going to rush out to grab a copy... for reasons that are my own, and Maddox's. 2] I like anime, just not every single damn thing penned. Flying schoolgirls? Creepy. I'll stick with the giant robots kthx.
-- The unsig...
Anime is one thing, but bringing this idea to life as a jet powered aircraft which could potentially take the life of the person piloting it in some, not too pleasant ways is yet another.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I can think of a lot of negatives:
Noise of a jet that close to your head,
An Intake that close,
ditto for hot exhaust gasses
the thought of injesting foreign objects and having a T-wheel cut me open is not fun.
I would rather have the wing above, and not spoil the view, if I am going to lay prone.
What is wrong with a BD-5J with fold up wings as seen in James Bond? At least he can sit like a human.
It doesn't look much worse than riding a fast motorcycle. Maybe they'd need to add a small windshield for the pilot if the nose didn't separate enough of the airstream, and flying inverted might be hard work, but that's all part of the fun.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
"Can anybody knowledgeable in experimental aeronautics speculate on how doable this is?"
IANAAE (I-am-not-an-aeronatical-engineer, yes folks, a new acronym is born) but I think this thing is pretty dang doable.
Which illustrates the point...why would you consult slashdot for aeronautical advice?
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
That flying wing sure isn't going to. Just the pendulum instability from the offset between CG and CL (that's center of gravity and center of lift for you 'dotters who never study anything but web engines and FPS technique) is going to drive you bats, and each change in thrust or drag is going to result in pitch moments. If designed badly, these can be fatal; if you have any doubts about this, you should look into the history of "interesting" airplanes like the original Mignet HM-14 Flying Flea.
There is a very real possibility of any such craft having serious PIOs (pilot-induced oscillations). Have them in a situation where you have no time to recover, and you can lose the airframe along with the crew.
While I am a firm believer in the value of Darwin Awards, I thnk that such a machine should not be flown with a human aboard. No matter how utterly fucking kewl all those anime fans would think it was, their refusal to recognize the distinction between cartoon physics and reality is not worth someone else's life, or undamaged brain, or functional spinal cord. It's appropriate that such a machine fly with only a dummy aboard; if it cracks up, you've got a hilarious photo-op rather than a tragedy.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
That's nice. Too bad the FAA doesn't have any jurisdiction in Japan where this is being built.
Yes, but you still won't have a 5 digit user ID here, will you? And besides... Isn't the whole thing a little bit pointless? I don't even look at user IDs unless somebody calls attention to theirs. I judge posts by their *content*... imagine that!
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
color me unimpressed...
:-)
i've been flying Zagi flying wings for about 2 years now..
bfd.
this thing doesn't even look as big or as fast as the new dual engine Zagi XT, which basically is just a $250 70 mph crash just waiting to happen.
holy shit - those videos are crazy.. you have better be someplace where augering in at 90 mph is not a big deal... and you better have reaction times like a rattlesnake on a triple espresso.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
All they would need to do then is put her in costume and give her a pet like Nausicaa's Teto, and they'd be all set :)
- Hachiya is looking for a test pilot for the first version made this past year. Applications accepted up to March 15.
- The faq has another picture including something that looks more like an ordinary glider. To answer the question "What kind of project is this?" he writes, "The final goal of the 'Open Sky Project' is to produce a 'personal jet glider' that can be ridden by a single person (a girl up to 50kg)." Phase 2 which he is working on now includes consideration of ideas like those in the photo.
- He is being assisted in phase 2 by Aircraft OLYMPOS, looks like this guy (Mr. Shibe? Yobe? The name reads like "four doors"..heh) knows his planes.. and he says he thinks it is possible.
- The part about a girl being needed is basically a matter of image.. no reason can't be a guy. The point is to have someone as light and strong as possible, so 40kg plus or minus 5 kg, say 55kg max with full equipment. There is a training program for the pilot budgeted. And since he wouldn't put anyone on it without doing it himself first, he's in training now too. Sounds more ballsy and realistic than at first, no? I think we're back to "KEWL!"
- For phase 2 it will be called another name, not Moewe since if there did happen to be an accident Studio Ghibli (Nausicaa creators) would be inconvenienced. Also because when he looked it up it turns out that Mazda owns a trademark for a plane called Mehbeh. He wonders if they are actually thinking of building it?!?!
- Answering the question "Is this Open Source?" he says "Funny you should ask about that, the was originally developed as an Impac project but since it ended up not getting realized there I decided to do it by by myself. Even this phase I plan to make it open source to some degree, for example releasing diagrams and discussing problem points openly and so on. But as for completely open source hardware (?) I've given up on it. That is, when constructing the body someone should take responsibility for designing it, and when putting someone on it, obviously should take responsibility for that. And considering that kind of responsibility, I don't think it's possible to do that and try to get opinions about an under construction aircraft, or get advice on important parts of the project. However, I am looking for staff (link), so if anybody is interested they are welcome."
- Hey people this sounds like it is maybe real. And while he is an artist not an aeronautics engineer, he does have a good deal of clout and Nausicaa is a powerful image in Japan among the general public, in particular I think among engineers.
I'd like to mention the opinion of an older man who took me out for sushi tonight as I think it may be salient. We were talking about the way sushimaking is taught.. He said the difference between Japan and the U.S. is that Japan is a nation of craftsmen, and they don't teach just anyone what they know. In the U.S. everything is written in a manual, anyone (even someone who doesn't really *care*) can learn whatever is needed. In Japan the expert is not going to teach the young man the trade unless he has fire in his eyes.. Oh so you really *want* to know huh? And the student has to "steal" the information.
Well maybe this is a bit off and might have more to do with chefs than aircraft and open source, but I think it is safe to say at any rate whether this has anything to do with it or not, that a huge percentage of aircraft engineers in Japan have long dreamed of building something like Moewe, compared to their U.S. counterparts, and Hachiya does have a pretty strong way of grabbing people's attention with his designs. Anyway I'd like to hear if people think he is right and if open source aircraft is impossible. Seems it is possible but litigous..
By the way I just caught "BPS: Battle Programmer Shirashi" a (new?) Japanese cartoon. Whit
The plane itself is sweet, and with modern control systems would fly fine...with no rider. With the speed that this thing should operate at, the drag on a human, even a prone human and *especially* a moving human, would destabilize the craft. The moment that the human's extra drag creates may be too much to compensate for, no matter what is done aerodynamically or with the control system.
I may be proved wrong, but that's how I see it.
-working on PhD in Aerodynamics