Instead of building a yacht to sail across the world...
What about an airship?
Nothing ridiculously luxurious, basically a flying home with all the accoutrements a long term sailboat would have... like a houseboat airship.
Check out this website. It's the most inspiring one I've seen concerning the topic of airships.
http://aeromodeller2.be/
-cont
I'm posting pictures from that site. He's got videos of tests of the development of the safest gas bags imaginable. Pure hydrogen isn't flammable at all when it's contained, oxygen makes it flammable. But what about lift gas alternatives? Hot air, helium, etc? Could you have a combination lift gas, like hot hydrogen or hot helium? Both those gasses will expand when heated and provide more lift for the same space, right?
What about combining the benefits of sailboats and airplanes with airships? Could an airship have sails? Because you could have sails beneath the ship and to the sides, I'm guessing you could design the sails so they function not only as propulsion and steering, but ALSO as a power source! Think of sails set up so they provide forward thrust, but rotate like a windmill! It would be beautiful. Let your imagination run wild with it and imagine what it would look like. Imagine a cigar shaped airship with three masts equally spaced along a central ring, slowly spinning and almost looking alive.
>>990929
>It regenerates its own hydrogen gas out of rain and wind power
Amazing. You could cover the entire balloon with solar roadways, too!
As for benefiting from the lessons learned from airplanes, I imagine a lifting body design would be beneficial. It could have wings and a tail for even greater control and lift, too. The wings wouldn't need to be large at all, lifting body designs allow for much smaller wings.
There are so many things we've learned about flight and it's kinda hard for a single person to imagine how you could combine all those features, so I'd like input.
I absolutely adore the design and theory of the ship in the pics I'm posting, by the way. It's literally designed to never have to land, like a watercraft is designed to never sink.
Oh, speaking of the lessons we've learned about flight, I realize hydrogen is a fuel source we've learned not to use but because it's literally the best fuel for personal use, it's the only realistic option I can think of... aside from using a hot air system heated by hydrogen burners and using motors fueled by hydrogen.
>>990923
Hydrogen as lifting gas? What could possibly go wrong?
Because this design made me realize you could anchor the craft to the ground and use your propellers as generators(the engines would need to be hybrid, both electric and fuel), the electrical system would need to be state of the art, too. Anyone ever heard of Tesla house batteries? Li-ion tech is getting amazing technological advances. Power storage is one of the hurdles, too.
Please, by all means, post what you think but if you're criticizing try to make it constructive.
>>990931
Actually solar panels would be a great idea to extend fight time. The tech is advancing, too. Getting stronger, lighter, more efficient, and even flexible. Ships have had thousands of years to be perfected, but flying and airships are practically brand new in comparison.
A personal airship meant for very long voyages would need every advantage it can get.
I've given a lot of thought about this idea, because even though it's not my idea, it sparks my imagination to childlike levels of awe and wonder.
By all means, this thread is a pie in the sky dream about things we will never have, but it's nice to dream about stuff like this every now and then.
People still play the lottery knowing they'll probably never win, people still daydream about what they would do if they were rich, etc so I see nothing wrong with applying this train of thought to the thread.
Just please take it a little seriously and give it quality feedback. Only a little
>>990923
not directly related but this thing is kept near to where i live and may be of interest to you.
its a pretty cool ship, named the HAV304, worth a google for sure
>>990949
The Airlander is a completely new type of aircraft, can stay up for weeks (unmanned) or 5 days manned, carry 10 tons, burn less fuel than airplanes, land on any flat surface without infrastructure, therefore opens up totally new capabilities... although a bit slow (up to about 90 mph).
It is due to have its first test flight in late May, watch the news.
It costs $35 million for one tho, and ungodly amount yearly fee.
>>990954
Iv'e been keeping my eye on it for a while, only found out because the size of the hangars its located in always used to interest me (they are fucking huge).
>>990939
I guess we shouldn't build skyscrapers either.
And the Titanic? Let's stop building ships.
And how many bridges have collapsed and killed hundreds? Clearly we need to stop building bridges.
Oh and car accidents kill an insane amount of people, let's just walk instead.
And what's with coal mining? It's also a death sentence! On a related note, crude oil kills millions with cancer and poisons oceans for decades quite regularly! We need to go back to living like cavemen! The bible says those people in the caveman days lived nearly a millennia! Now I see why!!
Livestock kills hundreds if not thousands each year!! Clearly we need to be vegan, or at very least hunt instead.
Holy shit.... I just had an epiphany. Literally EVERYTHING we have in the modern world is dangerous!! Every facet of our existence has its own Hindenburg disaster! That.... that means using the Hindenburg as a reason to completely abandon its uses is actually ignorant as fuck.
Plus, we still don't know how she went down. That was a time period when Car factory tycoons bought out and destroyed existing electric bus transportation companies to force everyone to buy a car. Did you know practically every king and national leader throughout history was poisoned so frequently it destroyed their mental faculties? It explains a lot of bad decisions throughout history. Tesla himself was strongarmed out of the business world, Eli Whitney DID NOT invent the cotton gin- the cotton gin is practically as old as cotton... Patton was assassinated, practically everything you read about history is a total fabrication, and so on and so on.
You should always have a foil hat on your hat rack, it'll look nice next to your fedoras. Did you know practically every royal leader and head of state has been poisoned so much by frequent assassin attempts, their minds were destroyed and they lived in constant mental confusion? It explains a lot of bad decisions by politicos throughout history.
-cont
>>990939
Anyhow... my point is literally every facet of human constructions has had its own Hindenburg, which means you can't use the Hindenburg as a reason to discard its potential to benefit humanity while ignoring all the other significant disasters man-made creations have had.
That would make you a hypocrite.
>>990939
Oh, and also I mentioned using many alternatives to hydrogen lift gas.
>>990949
I don't see much use for military airships :/
It could be justified a hundred years ago, but I can't see how they could be useful today..
I guess they would have a tiny or non-existent FLIR signature though.
>>990929
>pic
>hydrogen gas from ballast tanks
That isn't how weight to lift ratios work with water-hydrogen.
As a lift gas: 1 gallon of water can produce at most 166.22 cubic feet of hydrogen. You need 14.7 cubic feet of hydrogen to lift 1 pound of weight. 1 gallon of water is 8.34 pounds and would need 122.64 cubic feet of hydrogen to keep it airborne. That leaves only 43.58 cubic feet of hydrogen left to lift anything else (0.26lbs of weight.) 0.26lbs of weight capacity is about 26.21% efficiency. It would be a lot better to use those anchoring cables as a supply line for the lift gas.
As a combustible fuel: The efficiency of hydrogen is 19% to 23%. which is less than even diesel efficiency which can be over 50%. The containers used to contain hydrogen are far heavier than that of diesel. You also do not need heavy compression equipment to store the diesel or to fuel an engine with it.
It would be far better to use helium as the lift gas. It isn't flammable and leaks far slower than hydrogen. Buoyancy difference is only about 8%.
For fuel efficiency, I recommend diesel.
While solar and wind electric generation would be good, the storage mediums you would need to use isn't worth the weight.
>>990964
There's always that tard in every thread. Just ignore them. Also that little black arrow/triangle ▶ near the post number is a drop down menu where you can hide their posts.
so it turns out, hydrogen is no THAT flameable ?
>>990975
Ok but helium is super expensive and soon to be over on earth...
They get rekt in high winds retard.
What's the point if you can only use it in the best of weather and can't get out of the way of the bad weather.
>see USS Las Angeles
>>990991
>What's the point if you can only use it in the best of weather and can't get out of the way of the bad weather
Isnt that the same for all aircraft?
>>991002
No. With heavier-than-air aircraft, you can quite easily avoid bad weather, and if you keep your airspeed below Vno, they're generally strong enough not to get ripped to shreds by wind shear. That's not the case with airships (which have very large surface areas and must be built very lightly).
>>990975
He's not a native English speaker, could be a transition metro he could use the tanks to store hydrogen, adjust the airships angle of attack, etc. Many uses, there's a ballast tank at each far end seen here >>990933
I hope he designs it so it needs to reagents... designs to be truly able to never land unless to repair something. And yea, because it's designed not to land I think hoses would be used to bring in water. Yea making hydrogen from water can have loss. The propeller engines would have to be dual purpose, efficient hydrogen combustion and effectively electric. It's genius, you can use the propellers like helicopter rotors, regular propellers, generators, all that awesome shit. How buoyant is hot air compared to helium and hydrogen? What about my idea to use hot hydrogen or hot helium? Hydrogen would be better because it can produce its own indefinitely, not true with helium.
>electricity storage mediums aren't worth it
Check out the Tesla Powerwall, dude... li-ion batteries are improving dramatically. A sail powered generator would provide thrust AND power, along with lightweight solar cells etc. Electrolysis is kinda power intensive though.
Which works, because the ship is designed like a living creature... it needs rest and whatnot so it can use it's propellers as generators.
I love the design and concept but I think it could be improved upon.
And the Hindenburg dude is right... I shot him down with the truth about the sensationalist bait, but he's right there are risks just like with everything else.
-cont
Sorry everyone, this is like the third time I retyped all this shit because of hitting the wrong buttons bc sleepy as fuck. Trying to reset a fucked up sleep schedule..
>>990986
Hydrogen is not flammable if it's relatively pure. It needs an oxidizer, like oxygen, to burn. Kinda like gasoline, technically gas isn't flammable, it's fumes are.
>>990989
THIS THIS THIS
>>990991
It's a rigid hull airship dude. Plus my design would have a lifting body and maybe wings, def a tail for more control and stability, etc. You could just anchor and use the high winds to power your generators on the propellers or in my case, sails.
>>991015
That's true for old designs that weren't very aerodynamic. These days you can have a lifting body, wings, etc. Also we have lightweight materials stronger than fucking goldbeaters skin.
A hundred years ago planes would get rekt by almost everything, these days we can practically build STOVL starfighters.
>>991031
I think it is about time somebody make a helium filled air-whale, shaped and move like a whale with fins and tails, and literally swim in the air.
>>990923
>Nothing ridiculously luxurious, basically a flying home with all the accoutrements a long term sailboat would have... like a houseboat airship.
Air is not nearly as dense as water. It takes a VERY large amount of displacement to lift any significant amount of weight. Take this example you're sharing - it's almost a football field long, and yet its displacement is only about half that of a 45' houseboat.
>>990929
>What about combining the benefits of sailboats and airplanes with airships? Could an airship have sails?
Short answer, no. A sailboat functions by exploiting the DIFFERENCE in velocity between wind and water current. It relies on having BOTH sails catching the wind and providing aerodynamic lift, and a hull and keel in the water providing hydrodynamic lift (or "lateral resistance," in sailing terms) as well. Without any hydrodynamic resistance, a sailboat would simply blow directly downwind at wind-speed, as an airship does when untethered without propulsion. And without any sails or windage to catch the wind, it would simply drift down-current, at the speed of the current. It needs a "wing" in each slipstream (wind, and current) in order to actually make headway.
With an airship, there is only one slipstream - air. So whether you have sails or not, without power there's only one direction and speed you'll go - downwind, at wind speed. The exception is if you extend some tractive object (a kite, a hydrofoil, or perhaps some sort of rolling tractor) into some other medium that is moving at a different velocity than the local wind. In this sense, you could have the airship itself (and any "sails"/wings on it) act as the "sail" or kite for the hydrofoil or ground-tractor, with the tension in the tether between them providing headway for each. Or with a kite, you could fly the airship into the jet stream, then hang the kite down thousands of feet into slower air below and exploit the wind gradient to achieve headway.
>>990974
Actually the DoD was (late 2015) working on a remote very high altitude blimp. It was basically going to take the role of a cheap fully loaded satellite that could carry heavy surveillance and communication gear with an area loitering time of a few months. The idea was actually very useful and simple.
But one of the prototypes got carried away in a big storm and the long anchoring test cable got dragged around shorting some power lines along with a surprising amount of other minor damage. Given this happened so close to D.C. there was quick Congressional investigation that revealed the project was years behind and way over budget, the whole thing was mishandled. My understanding was it was quickly canceled given all the bad press.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/us/army-surveillance-blimp-pennsylvania.html?_r=0
>>991029
GOTTA FIX A FEW THINGS
>He's not a native English speaker, could be a translation error
>I hope he designs it so it doesn't need to use reagents or chemicals... designs to be truly able to never land unless to repair something or change oil or whatever.
>Yea making hydrogen from water can have yield loss but it can still be made very efficient.
>Hydrogen, hot air, etc would be better because it can produce its own indefinitely
>Which works, because the ship is designed like a living creature... it needs rest and whatnot so it can use it's propellers as generators. However if I was designing it I wouldn't want it to be cigar shaped, a lifting body with small wings and a tail would make it much better IMO. And don't forget the sails. 3 Bermuda sails spaced 120° apart and slowly spinning around the hull would look majestic as fuck. Folding masts of course.
>And the Hindenburg dude is right...
NO HE'S NOT. If there was a modern hydrogen airship that crashed and burned, it would be like if the Germans started building battleships and U-boats en masse- every single American would yell "them damn krauts are at it again!!!!"
Shit analogy, but I'm dead tired. I hope I make a little sense now.
Good God I've been trying to say this for like 15 minutes
>>991053
I think they should be dumping that money into the space program instead...
>>991037
There's a concept out there for that. Pic related. I've got two more pics of it. Small res, no deck layout, sorry :(
>>991038
I heard a good rule of thumb is one kilogram for every cubic meter of lift gas. And remember, you can arrange gas bags in many different ways and you're limited in weight, not size. It can be quite roomy. During the age of propeller flight for military craft they found out a lot of crazy configurations worked.
As for sails, there are ways to sail against the wind. And yes, sails will catch air and provide additional thrust on airships because air blows. An airship with sails could do quite well, I think. It would be a nice supplement after you figured out the best routes. Trade routes would probably be perfect. Sailboats need keels, daggerboards, or ballast to increase draft so they don't slide across the water as much, rather they go through it straighter. In monohulls keels(full keel or fin keels) counterbalance the pressures to prevent capsizing.
Furthermore. I THINK you might just be misunderstanding my idea of sail placement on an airship. Ships can't have masts and sails under the ship obviously, but airships certainly can.
I think you were confused with what I was trying to convey.
The masts and sails would be placed around the circumference of the ship, not just on the top. And there wouldn't be any water resistance so they could be quite small compared to ship sails.
>>991037
This is awesome as fug
>>991116
sauce?
>>991031
>Hydrogen is not flammable if it's relatively pure. It needs an oxidizer, like oxygen, to burn. Kinda like gasoline, technically gas isn't flammable, it's fumes are.
That's what happens when it springs a leak. It mixes with the air.
>>990942
>Anyone ever heard of Tesla house batteries?
An expensive flashy way of getting power storage in your house?
They're nothing special, and you would be better served by a bank of lifepo batteries.
>>991120
Not much to tell, sorry. Maybe you can find more?
http://youtu.be/iDdigR4psU0
>>991123
And the odds of that happening near a flame are?
>>99112
link? I've actually been to find the most efficient and compact batteries because I'm also sketching out a catamaran.
>>990923
I like the basic idea of a rigid bodied lighter than air craft.
I'd cover the upper skin with thin film photovoltaics for starters tho. Hydrogen as a lift gas is safe when you don't wrap it up with fabric using iron oxide in the primer and aluminum particles in the finish coat like the germans did.
The ability to compress the lift gas instead of venting it and ability to increase or decrease the pressure in the individual gasbags should take care of stability and give the ability to vary the lift weight on demand.
For a long term craft I'm torn between using a saucer shape and the classic cigar shape.
The cigar shape is better studied but the saucer has some interesting aerodynamic advantages / challenges including stability in crosswinds.
>>991114
>I heard a good rule of thumb is one kilogram for every cubic meter of lift gas.
Sure (near sea level, anyways).
>And remember, you can arrange gas bags in many different ways and you're limited in weight, not size.
Yes, but I think you're underestimating how critical weight is - especially considering you're talking about LIVING in this thing. Water alone pushes this concept to the brink of infeasiblity - the average person uses two tons of water per week.
>As for sails, there are ways to sail against the wind.
Yes, and I suggest you look more closely into how exactly that works. It does not work if you don't have a keel in the water (or wheels on the ground, or at the very least a kite in a different slipstream, like I said). A floating airship, sails or not, blows downwind - period.
>And yes, sails will catch air and provide additional thrust on airships because air blows.
Sails only catch air and produce lift so long as there is a difference between their velocity and wind velocity. On an airship that's already blowing downwind, sails won't do shit.
>I THINK you might just be misunderstanding my idea of sail placement on an airship.
>The masts and sails would be placed around the circumference of the ship, not just on the top.
No, I understood that. There's still no point to it, unless you have something for the sails to at against.
>>991053
JLENS is not a blimp. It's a tethered balloon that can be raised to 10,000', tops.
HALE-D was an actual high-altitude blimp, designed to fly at 60,000' and operate for up to a month, as you say. But that was a completely different project which had nothing to do with the JLENS balloon that broke free.
And you're also wrong about JLENS being cancelled.
>>991288
>an airship blows downwind
Yes, exactly. It's a supplement, not a main form of propulsion. The point is to explore strange ideas.
Are we gonna collect crystals?
https://youtu.be/xaLB5xHIjSs
Nice idea, but I think a floating plane on solar energy would be much easier to build and will be much mire conveniant for living.
Just a thought, you could also just dock at airportS with it.
A massive balloon is just a hazard and uhm massively bulky.
>>990942
More detail of these hybrid fuel electric engines? Simply an engine and motor connected to one shaft? Would they share equal power output? If not, which would be doing the brunt of rotating your propellers?
If the fuel engine, why bother with an electric motor hybrid? Why not simply use a designated alternator or other source of electric power? This would cut down on much of the expensive, complex, not to mention heavy power storage and conversion electronics. Fuel has a much higher energy density than current electric storage systems, and has the added benefit of being cheaper to obtain and easier to replace than batteries.
If the motor, have you considered how much power is desired from the prime movers? I'm speculating here but say that you wanted around a 50 HP prime mover. I'm using this Leeson Electric ($4k!): http://www.marathon-motors.com/U773-286TTDC6026-30-Hp-208-230-460-3-PH-286T-FR-1800-Rpm-U773.htm . Peak power usage is 27.6 kW at 1775 RPM, the power factor was not listed. The Tesla Powerwall is currently listed on their site as 3.3 kW per unit. I have concerns about the plausibility for continuous operation using an electric motor. Perhaps duty could be split between the engine and motor as a day/night cycle, but in that case why have both? It would be much more efficient to simply use just diesel engines, from a weight, complexity, cost, and fuel standpoint.
Depending on the set up, generating power from motors is not always as simple as putting torque on the shaft and running in reverse. I'm assuming that there would be a transmission (!!! geared transmissions are not great and usually the the first thing to fuck up on wind turbines!!! source: past wind tech) to go from high speed motor/engine to low speed propellers. Depending on the type of motor you use (AC squirrel cage, permanent magnet, etc), the way that you set up the system has to be very different. I do like the idea of simply turning the blimp into a floating wind turbine!!
>>992757
Sorry if this is too long, i realize on 4chan people usually dont read this kind of thing.
>Anyway
Making a dual purpose wind turbine, propeller is sort of a silly thing when I think about it simply because they are fundamentally different things.
A wind turbine has long, slender blades that cover a very wide swept area and turn at a low speed. This works very well because it maximizes the aerodynamic efficiency (less drag for the amount of lift, same design with gliders). An airplane propeller, however, uses numerous smaller blades with a larger chord length for strength and efficiency in pushing the incoming air.
Trying to make dual purpose propeller/turbine blades would be like trying to make dual purpose tractor/racing wheels. Something that works as both will likely be terribly inefficient at both. All I can say is that if you can figure it out, you're going to be fucking rich.
>>990939
I believe they have since figured out that the problem with the Hindenburg was more related to the heavy use of magnesium based paint rather than the hydrogen based gas itself.
>>992768
There were multiple factors. People didn't die from the burning hydrogen. Most of the fatalities were from the impact or from burning diesel. But the flammability of hydrogen meant that the gas bags disintegrated much quicker than if they had been filled with helium, worsening the impact.
>>992757
combustion engines have terrible instantaneous power and low end power and efficiency and you literally piss away energy just idling. an idling engine produces 0 work.
electric engines provide almost instant power and deliver maximum torque at 0rpm. in stop start applications, the hybrid engine out performs other engines. current designs use heat scavenging for the exhaust abd regenerative breaking. instead of conventional designs that just piss away any spare energy as heat, these devices store that energy which would simply be wasted. the advantages are that for example, when parking, you use no new energy because you can just use the stored electrical energy. the whole point of hybrids is that there is a lot of wasted energy and the electrical portion recycles otherwise waste energy.
>>990939
gentle reminder that we have better ways to create lift and zeppelins are very slow and difficult to steer. there has been literally no advantage to zeppelins since weve been able to build rock solid turbine engines.
>>992830
Engines really do have poor efficiencies compared with electric motors, and hybrid engines show great promise for cars which are doing a lot of slow driving, starting and stopping, etc.
But we are talking about (again, I speculate) a large propeller driven in order to push your blimp forward, which would most likely be used in a situation where longer, constant RPMs are used. Motors have a high starting torque true, but how often are you planning on starting and stopping your engines?
ICEs have efficiency approaching about 20% and generate significant waste heat. Electric motors can go up to about 90%. But these motors rely on large banks of batteries (LiFePo, NiCad) which get very hot as well. Electric would be ideal but I have doubts about the real application of it in this case
>>990967
everything is dangerous, can't argue with that, but every single airship ever built had at least one major accident in it's service life, quite a large portion of them was destroyed in an accident...
Quite a paradox that aircraft heavier then air are significantly safer.
>>990975
>helium
>better
If I were you, I'd look up how much a pound is worth.
>>990989
expensive yes, soon to be over - no.
It's present in natural gas (something like several % instead of several ppm), we just don't extract it and let out into the air when the gas is burnt.
There's loads of helium all around, it's just that americunts with needing an MRI even for a broken arm are increasing the demand, which is pushing the price up.
>>991031
>we have lightweight materials stronger than fucking goldbeaters skin
Yeah we do! But they're fucking expensive as all hell!! What kind of materials specifically?
>>992890
fucking americunts
but no srsly, If I build it with helium then I need to refill it every now and then for a lot of $$$ and the main reason I am buildingi it is coz I need a place
>>992897
hot air is cheaper
>>992897
I'm sure someone on /sci/ can help you setup a reactor to make your own helium, DIY style.
No need to buy it.
And as an added bonus, the reactor can also power the aircraft, and heat your bathwater. You are gonna have a Jacuzzi in cloud city, right?
inb4 shipping containers don't make good dirigibles. the higher you go, the less lateral compression. this is exactly the kind of environment corten steel was designed for.
>>991053
There were two teams, two balloons. One of them fucked up and DOD decided they didn't want it anymore.
>>991288
>the average person uses two tons of water per week
maybe an average fatfuck american piece of shit asshole in their own house. fuck off you retard. 15-25 liters per person a week for consumption (this includes cooking food), and every liter after that is a luxury and a privilege.
shitstained cunt, omfg
>>992890
not true. very few natural gas fields contain helium. the main one is hugoton gas field in kansas which "contains unusually high concentrations of helium, from 0.3% to 1.9%". helium is a pain in the ass to separate from the gas due to cooling requirements. there is not much helium left underground.
>>990929
>Hydrogen Airship
FUCKING DROPPED
>>990949
It looks like a giant ass crack.
>>992763
What if instead of reinventing the wheel we just make it easier to switch them out? We could have two separate props that are mounted on a beam and to switch modes we just swivel that beam to the needed prop.
>>993348
First of all I'm not suggesting you reinvent the wheel; rather I'm cautioning you against such effort.
Again with this idea you run into the main problem of much added complexity and weight. It would be better to just have a designated set of propulsion props and then when you want to generate wind power you uncover some other turbines. Or better yet just make a system that lets you swap out the propellers on the turbine between propulsion and generation.
Not to mention the complexity of a drive train that goes through this swiveling I beam split between your two props would be undesirable and h e a v y.
Just get some shaft couplings that can fit on your drivetrain output shaft and take off/put on the props you want.
>>993350
That was what I was going for actually. The props would be attached to the beam but are otherwise free rotating until they engage with the output shaft of the motor. It wouldn't be any miraculous feat of engineering, just two props on a stick that can swivel.
>>993351
not quite what i meant, i literally mean keep the single drive and single nacelle, the only part you need to change would be the blades. how ya plan the drivetrain to transfer power?
>>993360
I was thinking almost like a bit and chuck system where one part has a male connection and a the other has a female connection that can interlock once the two pieces are in alignment. The only purpose the entire assembly has is to switch blades without having to go out on the nacelle itself.
>>993381
ouch... sounds break-y
gearbox?
>>993388
No gearbox just some simple engagement literally along the lines of the image. Take the image literally. there are no hidden gears or belts anywhere. if its round it turns. If its not its static to what its connected to. A 360° seesaw if you will.
>>993592
O.K... some questions:
what is the deal with the third round peg in? And what's the square blockish thing connecting them? Where does the prop fit in?
Also how do you plan on using an electric motor without a gearbox to go from hi-speed to low speed? Or an engine for that matter?
>>993607
Ok I think some labeling will help with any confusion. To start of, Im not fucking with the motor, that is not what I am focused on right now. I will just see it as a box that will input and output rotational energy. My plan is purely just a method to quickly switch out props. As far as the engagement goes I'm trying to keep it simple. The prop has a philips head driver and the motor has the screw head. We stop the motor when everything is vertically aligned and that will allow us to to swing the props out without having to bolt shit on or off. This also ensures we don't end up losing any props from dropping them. They remain secured to the ship.
Many Hindenburg passengers survived.
Contrast that with a typical aircraft crash.
The reasons there are not more airships is they are slow, at the mercy of the wind, and if they cannot escape a storm you are fucked.
A personal toy version would be fun, but other airship proponent failed for what should be obvious reasons.
>>993775
Yeah that helps a lot. Would you worry about the thing flying off when you use the propeller mode? I think the prop would want to push itself away from the engine (depending on specs of prop and rpms of course) and put a lot of strain on your pivot bearings and prop axle.
Also might wanna think about some good bearings for the ends of your prop axles where they connect to the output shaft so that the whole thing doesnt just seize or snap as soon as you apply power.
also so are you guys like building this or is this more just a thought experiment?
>>992890
>it's just that americunts with needing an MRI even for a broken arm are increasing the demand, which is pushing the price up.
Helium is a valuable industrial gas used in TIG welding aluminum. Global demand is not small.
>>993775
that connection is shit
>>991002
>>What's the point if you can only use it in the best of weather and can't get out of the way of the bad weather
>Isn't that the same for all aircraft?
If you know that little about aviation, you have some homework to do...
