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43 Comments
- Rocketguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There's another name for a gravity-powered airplane - a glider.
- infra172, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1BLIMP
- kevin.gc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think the idea is this:
Gather the following materials:
1. Rigid, hollow, and lightweight lifting body.
2. Powerful pump.
3. Battery.
4. Helium backup canister.
5. Folded plastic bag, large enough to fill inside of lifting body.
And then do this:
1. Install the pump w/ battery, and canister into the lifting body.
2. Hook up the bag to the canister.
3. Pump all the air out of the lifting body.
4. Let the lifting body float up to a high altitude.
5. Pump air back into the lifting body.
6. Glide for a while.
7. Use pump to pump air out of lifting body.
8. Go to step 4.
If there's a hull breach:
1. Release the valve on the helium canister, which will expand the folded bag to fill up the inside of the lifting body.
2. Float to whatever altitude you need in order to get to safety.
3. Pop the bag and glide to safety.
The addition of solar panels for recharging the battery would be a good idea. - ummagummas08, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is kind of old news. And not even the good article.
But it IS really interesting, I mean the way we're headed this plane is sounding PRETTY useful.
There was a video on the old one that was much more entertaining, and educational because it showed how it would work.
Good digg for those who havent heard about it. - Web_Weasel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It could mean "fly" as in "does not suddenly plummet to the ground".
- thegrundle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'd love to hear what the Intelligent Falling theorist have to say about this one....lol
- leitjaxon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"having no waste emissions or noise, the aircraft is extremely environmentally friendly."
wow. - robweber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0they are going to reach a limit for how much they can carry pretty quickly with helium. imagine how much it would take (and the size the aircraft would have to be) to carry as many passengers as a regular jet. i don't think this will have much commercial value for replacing an engined aircraft anytime soon.
- monolith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ack! Ok this guy is grooving dangerously close to a crakpot. Erk.
- gamabunta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ thegrundle
U beat me 2 it! - Nonrev1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Looks like a shifting paradigm.
- monolith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thats awesome! thanks! Hope it works.
- dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0 It was more like 50/50, not everyone.
There are lots of idiots with degrees! - enderclone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0WTF, how did this story make front page without having Kevin Rose's name attached to it?
- shakin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Maybe the article is wrong or maybe this guy *is* a crackpot, but the Archimedes Principal has nothing to do with gravity pushing up buoyant objects (what?!). The Archimedes Principal only says that "an object immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force that is equal in magnitude to the force of gravity on the displaced fluid."
In other words, an air bubble in a glass of water is pushed up because the water, which is of greater density, is pushed down into its place.
So to make an airplane using this principal you'd need to build it less dense than air so gravity would push air below it. Actually, you'd need to be able to adjust the airplane's density mid-flight or else you'd reach a levelling off altitude where it's the same density as the air and you wouldn't be able to get down unpowered.
Now, helium could do this if you had enough of it, but you couldn't go forward unless you could release the helium to begin your controlled descent to gain speed, then capture the helium back to level off. If I were optimistic, I'd say you could do it if you didn't want a smooth flight (more like a roller coaster). However, I'm not optimistic and I think you'd lose all your speed during the helium-only ascent, so you'd go down and forward, then straight up, then down and forward again, then straight up again. The whole way to your destination. And even that's being optimistic since they'd have to continually control their buoyancy, which I don't think they can do without fuel.
Sorry to be long winded, but no matter how you look at it, this plane needs fuel. Maybe it doesn't need jet or prop engines, but it does need electricity, which is either a huge battery or a generator. And the flight is going to be very long and up and down the whole way. Sonds like fun. - dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0 At first I thought glider too but it's more like a blimp shaped like an airplane, or an air submarine.
They are going to have a "no gas blimp shaped aircraft", a vacuum instead of light gas such as Helium; but with gas as a backup.
Nothing new but put it all together and it works...I guess. - Tom_Riddle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0hmm.. this is interesting in the fact that he's trying to make something seem as if its not what it is... other than that... i think this guy is a weiro. shirly for that. good digg
- Llance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Weird. How can a "gravity powered aircraft" work if it has "aerostatic lift" and is effectively "lighter than air"? No effects of gravity = no energy = no forward motion (without engines) = no lift from wings + no functional control surfaces = balloon. Admitedly a balloon with wings but just a balloon.
- YamahaSteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So he invented a blimp that looks like an airplane? Thats what I got out of the article....
- mutant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0January 21, 2004? This obviously hasn't gotten anywhere.
- fatb0b, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Its good to see that you brilliant diggers have exposed this crackpot for what he really is. To think he hid behind his college degree from Mississippi State, job of designing nuclear reactor components in the 80's, and long list of inventions. Keep up the good work guys!
- mmm_linux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Thats not flying, Its falling with style."
- Jbob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I cant wait to watch the test pilot tremble with fear if they ever get that far
- Victr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Interesting read however the article doesn't seem to explain a lot. It seems to me that there is a lot of information left out of the puzzle. Unless I missed something, I don't see how the aircraft is "gravity powered". We are lead to believe that this technology is amazing but it clearly states that it is a helium based flight. To me that seems like a blimp with wings.
- TechnoRabbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0> January 21, 2004? This obviously hasn't gotten anywhere.
...Umm... It often takes decades for a technology to be developed. Quit being a moron. - DWatch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As a glider descends, it uses it wings to move forward, so I guess this thing also uses it wings to move forward when it ascends due to the helium/vacuum. It would cause a roller coaster ride, but would probably be so gradual you wouldn't notice it, especially thousands of feet above the ground. Constantly adjusting the gas in the ship to rise or fall, using both the up and down swings to move forward. Sounds simple enough, but the reality is, in order to have enough lift the gas bags/chambers would have to be huge, and if they are attempting to use a vacuum instead of helium, the pressure of outside air trying to get in forces them to make the ship out of material that is strong enough to prevent this, therefore is way to heavy to get off the ground.
This is one of those things that needs to be built to prove it can be done, but I don't think materials sciences are advanced enough to pull it off yet. - braydonf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Love the intention of the concept. Not sure realistic it is though. For example, doesn't it take a large volume of lighter-than-air gas to create the lift needed; blimps are huge, and how much do they lift?
- somerandomuser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think a better way to describe something like this would be that it is taken up into the atmosphere on the gas bags like a blimp. The bags are then deflated and the plane does its traveling like a glider. Another way of describing it is that its a glider towed into the air by a blimp only the blimp is built in. The problem with something like this is first off you waste space integrating the bags into the plane. Secondly, Helium is a non renewable resource to get the plane to go down you would either have to vent the helium which is a waste, or compress it into storage tanks which requires heavy equipment. Hydrogen would work much better. You could use it both to lift up the plane, and use it as fuel for the plane afterwords. If the hydrogen caught fire, you could ditch the bags and glide the safety.
- infra172, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0B L I M P
- eigh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i thought it was cool, but after reading some comments, im begining to doubt that it will do what it claims to.
- interiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Lots of questions:
1. why doesn't the article come right out and say that it's more similar to a blimp than a plane?
2. if you're going for the blimp concept, you want to minimize surface area (because it's heavier than air) and maximize inside area. ... which is a sphere. ... which makes it a blimp. An airplane shape greatly increases the surface area vs. the interior space. What huge advantages does an airplane shape give, to offset this problem?
3. does a blimp made with a solid shell and a vacuum interior really work? Isn't cloth significantly lighter? (more on this here: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Inflated_20Shell_20for_20Vacuum_20Balloon) - hax0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0D I R I G I B L E
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirigible - Lumbeekid06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0why is the link almost 2 yrs old?
- braydonf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This plane-blimp thing would work much like the paper airplane in the classic glider game for mac. Only the vents would be the lighter-than-air blimp of the plane; and, instead of a house, it would be the woooorld. Dig it!
- interiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ahh. This video makes things a little more clear. It's a vacuum blimp (to go up) and a glider (to go forward while falling). I still can't say I think it's practical though.
http://www.fuellessflight.com/index1.htm
"A proprietary low-boiling-point-liquid is vaporized into a low density lighter-than-air lifting gas using the heat in the air near the surface. This creates buoyancy that allows the buoyant aerostat to upward glide. The air becomes very cold when high altitude is reached and the lifting gas is cooled and changes phase to high density liquid that is heavier-than-air. Lift is lost and the aircraft glides back down toward the surface where the Atmospheric Power Cycle is repeated as the low altitude warmer air vaporizes the liquid back into a lifting gas to create lift again.
"Power is generated by wind turbines aboard the hybrid aerostat glider during both upward and downward gliding."
http://www.fuellessflight.com/machine%20magazine.htm
"Geometry dictates the plane must be large to be practical. (Larger structures hold more lifting gas or vacuum per square foot of surface area.) Hunt estimates a gravityplane that can carry the same payload as a Boeing 747 would be roughly 50% larger than the current 747.
"Hunt expects to take the aircraft up to 10 miles, giving it a range of 400 miles for each up-and-down cycle." - interiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's really exactly like the underwater SPRAY, which has only recently had practical success:
http://spray.ucsd.edu/
The only problems being that SPRAY only goes 0.5 mph, and trying to do the same thing in air (obviously a much lower density medium) is going to change things drastically (as hinted by the above quote... 150% size of a 747 = 350 feet long, 100 feet tall). - jccalhoun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As someone else pointed out, the whole "dual properties of gravity" is news to me. Who knew that boyancy was gravity?!?
While an interesting idea, I just don't think it's practical. How long would you have to go up before it could start gliding? Then the start of the glide, like the start of going down the first hill of a roller coaster, would be quite slow untill it built up speed. I would think that all of this would take a lot longer than a normal plane.
ALso, what kind of material would be strong enough to withstand a vacuum, and yet light enough to be lifted by that vacuum? It would have to be incredibly expensive, if it even exists right now. - mouseman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0my favorite part is where he creates energy.
- dennis111352, on 09/08/2008, -0/+0As I was checking out information around this concept, I came across this blog. I'll add 2 cents and disappear.
Is this a good concept? Maybe. The market place will tell, not a blog site. Give him credit for trying. I am encouraged that so many are working on so many ideas to move us past fossil fuels. Will it work? Maybe not the first time. Do you know how many times the Wright brothers had to redesign their concept. The answer is...not as many as Edison. I give him an A+ for using his time in life to work on turning his dreams into reality. He could be spending it blogging (like you and me). - Nestle420, on 02/25/2008, -0/+0McGuyver, evidently, is the Chuck Norris of the science world.
- Web_Weasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Doubtful.
- treelovinhippie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0When I saw 'gravity powered' I'm thinking, huh, a freakin plane put into a low-Earth orbit?
- thundercleese, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Very doubtful.
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