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An Entirely New Class of Aircraft Arrives

Posted by Soulskill on from the pretty-fly dept.

fergus07 writes "Austrian research company IAT21 has presented a new type of aircraft at the Paris Air Show, which has the potential to become aviation's first disruptive technology since the jet engine. Neither fixed wing nor rotor craft, the D-Dalus uses four mechanically-linked, contra-rotating, cylindrical turbines for its propulsion, and by altering the angle of the blades, it can launch vertically, hover perfectly still, move in any direction, and thrust upwards and hence 'glue down' upon landing, which it can easily do on the deck of a ship, or even a moving vehicle. It's also almost silent, has the dynamic stability to enter buildings, handles rough weather with ease, flies very long distances very quickly and can lift very heavy loads. It accordingly holds immense promise as a platform for personal flight, for military usage, search and rescue, and much more."

3 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. "Immense Promise" requires Efficiency by randyjparker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thirty years ago I was in the Propulsion & Thermodynamics group at Lockheed. One of the guys had a research project on spanwise rotor propulsion - his proof of concept used a beefed up cylindrical hair dryer rotor of the day. Yeah, you can get some net thrust, but at nowhere near the efficiency of conventional designs. There has to be a really strong reason to sacrifice all the extra fuel and weight and safety deficits when compared to better techniques. Perhaps there are niches where the tradeoffs are worth it, but that is not what I'd call "immense promise". Let's see what kind of thrust-to-weight, lift-to-drag, and thrust-specific-fuel-consumption their aircraft can produce first...

  2. Flettner rotor, not Voith Schneider Propeller? by Richard+Kirk · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This looked like a magnus lift rotor to me. Have a search on Flettner aircraft.

    Here's a marvellous 1930's ref. from Wikipedia...

    http://books.google.com/books?id=xSgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA26&dq=Popular+Science+1931+plane&hl=en&ei=5r8JTaa6Ismr8AaNmb2iAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBzgU#v=onepage&q&f=true

    So... not exactly new but probably controllable with modern computer avionics.

  3. Re:Anything else? by ygslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This shows the value of issuing press releases.

    The company's web site is a small self-consciously slick flash site. It contains only a few short press releases about this and several other technologies, each with similarly outlandish world-changing claims and supposedly already built and working.

    According to Google Maps, the corporate address on the web site points to what appears to be a private home in a fancy neighborhood in Linz.