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British Start-Up Tests Flying Saucers
Sabre Runner writes to mention that a new British start-up, Aesir, has acquired the assets of a defunct drone company and is working on evolving a working model from several prototypes of "flying saucer" drones. "Aesir's first prototype, named 'Embler' [...] demonstrates the so-called 'Coanda effect,' where air speeds up as it 'sticks' to a curved surface. Aesir's drones take advantage of the Coanda effect to direct air down, away from the drone, boosting lift. Aesir doesn't appear to have any paying customers yet — and is reportedly bankrolled by a single investor."
Aesir doesn't appear to have any paying customers yet -- and is reportedly bankrolled by a single investor
CSG?
reportedly bankrolled by a single investor
...until he's finally extradited to the US.
My webcomic
So assuming it's for real, how do they cancel the spin?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
It's hard to make a more efficient rotor, and it's hard to make a duct light weight at large enough sizes to compete on power. So, unless I'm missing something these guys are using the same petrol/kerosine/lipo power sources as everyone else, except with higher power consumption. It's the same problem quadrotors and jet VTOLs have - they simply can't compete with helicopters on hover efficiency.
That's bad news for startups, though, because the helicopter space is already crowded with heavy hitters like Sikorski and the like.
Where does this leave UAVs? It leaves us with incremental improvements (my PhD involved making freaky aeroelastic UAV rotors that were fiercly optimised for the hover regime, just to squeeze out more flight time) with no real long-term flight performance in sight.
Why do these start-ups appear and disappear so quickly? Because they're trying to 'solve' a hard laws-of-physics style problem that isn't bounded by UAV technology, but rather power technology.
YIAAUHETYVM (Yes I Am A UAV Helicopter Engineer, Thank You Very Much)
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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If nothing else, maybe they can appeal to the RC hobby community.
It's only a model.
Sig this!
Let me be the first to say, I for one welcome our new flying saucer overlords. =P
I regret that I only have one mod point to give per post.
It looks really fake is all I can think. I know it's real but the speed of takeoff and whatnot makes it look fake.
I can see a lot of military and spying technology resulting from this. Dependent on how quiet it is and how much it can lift and how long it can fly anyhow. Other than that, they could at least corner the market on hobbyists and children's toys.
Personally I suspect (but couldn't hope to prove, of course) that most of these UFOs are actually advanced, classified military vehicles. Isn't it true that the projects that eh, "don't officially exist" are usually a decade or two (or more) ahead of private industry? That would hold for a variety of reasons, not the least being that the government can get the funding and talent it needs and doesn't have to make a profit in a marketplace. If so, it would make sense that people have been reporting "flying saucer" type UFOs for years and finally we see companies starting to independently produce them.
Remember that the stealth bomber was classified for some 30+ years. Someone who saw it, a large black "flying wing" (I think it's called a delta wing?) object in the sky, would have concluded that it's not likely to be a normal airplane and certainly isn't a helicopter, making it an "unidentified flying object." To me that seems quite plausible.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Some title - quick parsing of it threw up an uncaught exception in the brain.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
How does this differ from the Moller Aerobot?
Looks a lot like:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-447317/The-flying-saucer-snapped-US-army.html;jsessionid=646AE8D297BA42F4A5BDDD6223D5FA58
from the slashdot story back in 2007:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/04/09/1723218/Combined-Hovercraft-and-Helicopter?art_pos=4
In fact, the 'first' prototype looks like the prototype from 2007 (even the same yellow body!!)
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Hell does this video cry out loud *fake*. And even bad fake. The composing sucks. Guess every beginner at composing could do better work.
The avrocar didn't use the Coanda effect, they had a turbine through the center.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Alright, Ahmadinejad. Give up the nukes, or we send in the Flying Roombas of Death to clean house.
Aesir doesn't appear to have any paying customers yet â" and is reportedly bankrolled by a single investor.
John Bigboote
CEO/CFO Yoyodyne Corporation Intl
1938 Yoyodyne Way, Lot 49
San Narciso, CA 92129-3064
[End Of Line]
IANAAE, but those are different concepts.
A delta wing is a kind of wing: one that is shaped like the letter delta (a triangle).
A flying wing is a king of aircraft that essentially lacks a fuselage. It's an aircraft that is all wing.
Relatively airplaney-looking things (e.g., a A-4 Skyhawk) have delta wings.
-Dave
No. This saucer company is named after Æsir, the True Norse Gods and will make drones that will be used to hunt down and KILL! Taliban and other Islamists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Malmö.
According to Norse theology those killed will then suffer forever in Hellheim. Soon the survivors will burn down their mosques and begin sacrficing to Odin to stop the attacks. Then it will be time to deal with the Christians. Eventually Ásatrú will dominate the world.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
My world was a spinning jumble of images, burned into the core of my mind. Valkyr was bad news, sending you sky-high for a psychedelic ride on flying saucers.
Aesir was the darling of the stock market, but I knew the saucer stink would stick to those at the top. I'd pay them a visit, and bring their flying saucer crashing back to earth.
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
Actually, we Brits have been building the world's flying saucers since the 1950s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Bedstead
There were always rumours about something based on this flying around, near London, in the late 1950s. I remember our neighbours calling us into the garden to watch something that, by then, was distinguishable in deep detail.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Personally, as a follower of Chulthu and the ancient ones I declare holy war on Asatru
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
The point of the Coanda effect is NOT that the flow speeds up. Rather, and as Wikipedia correctly points out, the point of the Coanda effect is that the flow stays attached to the curved surface, which allows you to redirect it...
The CoandÄf effect is the tendency of a fluid jet to stay attached to an adjacent curved surface of a specific radius. The principle was named after Romanian aerodynamics pioneer Henri CoandÄf, who was the first to recognize the practical application of the phenomenon in aircraft development.
FYI, the Coanda effect is what makes leafless gutter systems work. It allows the water to turn the corner and enter the gutter while the leaves shoot over the side.
Here's a link to a YouTube video that shows a STOL (Short TakeOff and Landing) aicraft called the QSRA that could takeoff from and land on an aircraft carrier without the use of arresting gear and catapults through the use of the Coanda effect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_eDutgh4IU
I've seen some RC Coanda models before. The concept is very interesting, but unfortunately any attempted design based on the principle runs into a lot of problems. The main issue I've seen with the RC models is slow turning, and very steep listing to either side on turns.
I know virtually nothing about aeronautics, but I've only just finished reading about how apparently this idea was studied for close to 20 years by people who are experts, and in the end they couldn't produce a working craft out of it. That tells me that there are obviously some almost intractable problems.
I've wanted one of these things since the 1970s, but I could never sell quite enough subscriptions to Grit magazine or American Seed packets to earn one.