Vacuum plane

October 5 2010 3

The authors of the airship-glider believe that he will be able to move a large amount of cargo over enormous distances without spending a single gram of fuel.

Airships can lift large loads without effort, but they need engines to move horizontally. Gliders, on the contrary, make long non-motorized flights, but for the initial climb to height they need energy. What happens if you cross two types of devices?

The American corporation Hunt Aviation is designing a new type of aircraft, which, according to the main author of the idea, engineer Robert Hunt, will be able to travel great distances without using any kind of fuel.

Gravity Plane is called the device, or even more frighteningly - Gravity-powered aircraft, but there is no talk of antigravity in the draft.

This is a hybrid of an aerostat with a glider, the principle of action of which resembles witchcraft - the laws of conservation, it seems, the machine does not violate, but flies without using fuel.

So, we have a two-body catamaran aerostat, with large wings of variable sweep.

At the beginning of the flight the average density of the machine is less than the density of air. Helium in cylinders lifts the unit into the air.

By the way, the funny fact is that the engineer assumes that his child will achieve even better results using not helium, but vacuum to lift.

In the superstructure, located in the middle part of the hull - wind turbines that can store energy when planning down and, on the contrary, create jet thrust when climbing

It's funny, because hot heads have been fighting for a long time over the idea of a vacuum airship, but they break about the fact that the sturdy (read - heavy) shell, which is necessary in this case, will eat all the gain in Archimedean power, which, compared to helium is small.

Hunt also believes that with modern materials (such as carbon composites), he will be able to provide adequate shell strength with a low mass.

Let us leave such calculations on his conscience and return to a more plausible variant with helium.

In Gravity Plane, a novelty is applied that radically distinguishes the device from ordinary airships.

When a car with cargo and passengers has reached the desired height, a transformation occurs with it - compressors begin to pump atmospheric air into the gap between the “catamaran” hulls and the flexible helium cylinders inside them.

The cylinders are compressed, the density of helium increases, and the total weight of the machine is also complemented by the weight of the received air — everything is just like that of a submarine, which, in order to descend, pumps seawater into the gap between the strong and the outer hull.

We add, in the case of a vacuum option - the air is simply injected into the body, and in subsequent cycles it will be pumped out by pumps. The implementation of such an idea is doubtful, but now this is not the main thing.

One way or another, the plane becomes heavier than air and begins to fall. It is then that the wings come into action - the car works like a glider, turning a fall into a slip and a horizontal movement.

The windmill that Hunt intends to use in his car. The horizontal disc has “shutters” that open when they are pushed by the flow of air and closed on the opposite side of the disc when they go against the flow

At the same time, the windmills built into the hull (the original design, again, of the Hunt; with vertical axes of rotation) also store energy. Again, in the form of compressed air stored in separate cylinders.

It will later be used to accelerate the movement horizontally, or to facilitate lifting.

These windmills are reversible. When needed, they turn into propellers. And as engines, Hunt decided to use reversible machines - compressors and air motors in one person.

So, our glider gained high speed and went into horizontal flight. Soon his kinetic energy dries up. Then the pumps evacuate the air from the cavity adjacent to the helium cylinders.

Helium "bags" again are being straightened. The glider turns into an aerostat - gains altitude to start the cycle again.

When the gravitational plane flies, the authors of the project do not report, but they talk about the speedy testing of individual nodes on small prototypes and models.

The naked eye in the project are visible weaknesses.

Helium bags are inflated and compressed inside rigid cigar-shaped bodies, which, since they have impressive dimensions (this is still a balloon), have a noticeable resistance to air.

This fact cannot affect the aerodynamic quality of the apparatus, no matter how perfect its wings are. And a change in the sweep angle depending on the flight mode will not help much.

Helium cylinders are compressed, wings are folded and stone down

But it is precisely the high aerodynamic quality that helps ordinary gliders make amazing flights.

So the world record for planning on a free route is 2,1745 thousands of kilometers.

It is installed on the German double glider Schempp-Hirth Nimbus 4 DM in 2003 in Argentina by the German Klaus Allman (Klaus Ohlmann) and the Frenchman Herv Lefranc.

The aerodynamic quality of this glider is equal to 60, which is perhaps the best indicator among all the winged cars in the world.

By the way, if you divide two thousand kilometers on 60, you will get an unrealistic initial altitude for the start, but here you need to take into account - the glider flies along the "saw-like" trajectory, periodically compensating for the loss of altitude due to the rise in the ascending air currents existing above heated land areas, under cumulus clouds or near mountain slopes.

In addition to doubts about the aerodynamics of the revolutionary hybrid from Hunt Aviation, it should be noted that the simultaneous use of the planning properties of the machine and the charging of air batteries with compressors set in motion by wind turbines working in turn from the incoming flow clearly contradict each other.

In general, the energy balance (set the required speed and the cost of the drives of air pumps, and so on) is another question.

Nevertheless, Mr. Hunt’s train of thought deserves attention. Recall, by the way, that the idea of combining aerostatic principles of support and lift of wings in one machine is far from new.

But no one, it seems, has yet come up with the idea of using these forces in one apparatus not in parallel, but in series.

Can a gravitational plane overturn traditional ideas about aviation and become a symbol of the second century of motor flights, as the creators of this hybrid claim? Hardly.

This is how an exotic device with specific applications, such as patrol of forests or recreational flights ... Perhaps from the idea of an American company and will come out sense.