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Human-powered Helicopter Fails to Lift Off
Peter writes "The Human-powered helicopter didn't even get off the ground. A team of University of British Columbia engineering students tried to win the $20,000 US prize offered by the American Helicopter Society. Three metres off the ground and hover for a minute was the challenge. But before the rotors were able to produce enough buoyant force they hit each other. More details: Vancouver Sun."
"My feeling at the moment is that the machine is actually quite unstable," said Mike Georgallis, leader of the team that has been working on the project for six years.
Maybe they did know that this wasn't likely to be a success.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
This is kind of a nitpick, but buoyant force has nothing to do with how helicopters work, blimps and boats use buoyancy, helicopters and planes use aerodynamic lift.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
here are the rules of the competition.
The obvious cheats (lighter than air gases, storing energy in a battery) are banned, but you could 'cheat' by using a human to store up a lot of energy in a low-drag rotor that then changes angle of attack to convert the stored energy to lift.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
BECAUSE it's cool, because I look at it and go "damn, that would be quite the engineering accomplishment right there," because college isn't all about inventing things that need to be invented, it's about expanding the mind to accomplish abstract ideas. Think of every lab that students do in their science courses: what's the point of those? It's old technology, it's certainly been done before. Why aren't freshman chemistry students working on cold fusion or something else the military will jump all over?
Besides, this is impressive science, since the human legs can put out a sustainable 100W, it's the attempt to built something light enough to get off with minimal power. And the $175,000 they've spent over 6 years to educate students and built a prototype is cheap in the education world.
Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity. For many years the thought of sustainable human powered flight of any kind was considered an impossibility but in 1979 we saw the Gossamer Albatross cross the English Channel. I believe that sooner or later someone will manage to meet the requirements to win this American Helicopter Society prize. However without a doubt even then human powered flight will be just an interesting curiosity and not of any practical use.
They have done their tests, and they have a guy which can do well beyond 500 watts, that's a lot.
The next thing is of course to make the helicopter lighter, and optimize everything for efficiency.
At some point, energy demands will get low enough, and then you may have liftoff. I think you're a bit too pessimistic. It's not easy, but that's not why they do it.
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"The result was an ugly collision between the two less than one minute after the team made its first attempt at flight, around 11 a.m. Seventeen minutes later -- after a roll of cellophane was used to repair the damaged wing -- the team tried again."
That doesn't sound like massive damage to me, if they were able to patch it up with a roll of cellophane -- in 17 minutes. Sounds like part of the blade cracked or got smashed in, and that's it.
At which point, they continued the test:
"This time, the chain connecting pilot Peter Hudson's pedals to the top rotor snapped. Continued problems with the chain led Georgallis to finally abort the day's mission."
Sounds like they decided to give up before they did any real damage to the helicopter. So, rendering thousands of hours at $30,000 dollars wasted? I don't think so.
People have a way of blowing things way out of proportion, don't they?