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Gravity Powered Flying Machine?

A blimp with wings. How heavy will all that compressed air be? Also, where do the passengers sit?
 
Sounds like something Jules Verne could have written. Looks fine in theory but fails miserably when put to test because of those pesky laws of nature.;)
 
Ove said:
Sounds like something Jules Verne could have written. Looks fine in theory but fails miserably when put to test because of those pesky laws of nature.;)
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The Laws of Nature should be repealed. :)
 
I notice he is asking for funding :rolleyes:.

Let's see, he is proposing a double zeppelin with wings so that when it climbs or descends, the wings will provide forward motion. He will also generate energy from the airstream provided by the motion.

He is proposing to get lift from vacuum instead of helium.

Yeah, the Jules Verne comparison is good, or perhaps the dream of an inventive 12 year-old. Especially rich is the idea of getting lift from vaccum, but with a helium back-up: So he proposes to gain 20% extra lift, at the cost of lugging the 100% extra weight of a helium back-up around? Just cool!
:cs:

And, of course, with air pressure at sea level being 1kg/square cm, how will he make a container of e.g. 1 cubic metre that weighs less than 300g and can withstand a pressure to the tune of 60 tons :eek:? (1 cubic metre vacuum lifts appr. 1,4 kg, so if he is to have any advantage from the 20% lift advantage over helium, his container must weigh less than 300g):rolleyes:

After careful deliberation, I have decided to deem this fellow to be a fraud trying to swindle money from people, because I think that is less insulting than assuming he is actually dumb enough to believe in it.

Hans
 
I plugged the page into the crackpot index and came up with a score less than 55, but I consider that score to be high enough to avoid any investments.

I did some back of the envelope calculations and I while I am not sure about its rate of ascent, I think when descending, think it can accelerate pretty close to 32ft/sec².
 
My favorite part was where he offered a cash prize in return for a mathematical foundation for it.

I may have to think, over the next few days, how loose my morals are --
 
A gravity-powered machine is plausible. It will fly straight down.

Same concept as when on a boat. Don't be afraid of the water, you are always within a few miles of land. Straight down.
 
Bottle or the Gun said:
A gravity-powered machine is plausible. It will fly straight down.

Same concept as when on a boat. Don't be afraid of the water, you are always within a few miles of land. Straight down.
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No, actually, gliding aircraft are gravity powered, and can achieve (over a triangular course, using atmospheric lift - thermals) glide ratios of 100:1. It's getting it up to altitude to start with that takes fuel.

This unit will work, but to go from LTA to HTA he has to compress air into the gas bags, so he has to carry a compressor and a power source. Why not just put a propellor on the power source?


For a really good read on this get The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed by John McPhee.
He mentions this form of forward propulsion which was tried by a dirigible in the XIXth century. If you release a long stick under water as it rises it will move forward. When it sinks it does the same. A LTA aircraft can be considered as a long stick floating in air. But can you get enough speed to fly upwind?
 
The gravity-powered-flying-machince revealed!



dc3.gif
 
If one is going to ignore fundemental laws of physics, like he does in this notion of this aircraft, why not just go with a glider instead. It will pick up speed as it descends to give it the momentum to fly back up and there is no need for the compressor, turbine or the gas bags!
 
a_unique_person said:
http://www.fuellessflight.com/index1.htm

Sounds more like a perpetual motion machine to me.
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Hrm... I might agree that the site is a little overenthuastic in it's pitching this as fuelless. But it seems like a good design that would have extraordinarily low fuel needs.

Basically, he's got a dirgible attached to a pair of wings, and a wind-turbine to generate extra energy.

The whole mess has to be much lighter than air on it's own, like a zeppelin. Then, you can get extremely cheap (but somewhat slow) forward motion for nearly free. IT doesn't cost much to raise and lower a zeppelin in the atmosphere, and doing so gives you forward momentum thanks to the control surfaces he's added on. Just like a glider, only you can get the forward push on the up-stroke as well as the glide-down. Lather, rinse, and repeat, and you're going someplace.

On top of that, he's basically got a big ol windmill stuck to the top that catches some of the wind going by during this operation and returns it in a useful form to the machine.

Fuelless? I doubt it. The cheapest flight ever? I don't doubt it.

This technique is already used many places underwater - the only difference there being that your materials only have to be lighter than water, not air, which is a lot easier to achieve.
 
I agree with Hans that the whole "lift from vacuum" thing is particularly rich. If they know of materials and construction methods that can produce a vacuum vessel so light that it tends to float away, I'd sure like to hear about them!

One atmosphere (or even a half or a quarter of an atmosphere, since the site mentions the possibility of using a "partial vacuum") is a LOT when one is considering vessels of significant size.


_Q_
 
What's the problem?

Just go and find some matter that is repelled by gravity, and build your airplane out of that!

Bullwinkle had an upsydaisium mine, after all. They wouldn't lie to kids....
 
Bottle or the Gun said:
A gravity-powered machine is plausible. It will fly straight down.

Same concept as when on a boat. Don't be afraid of the water, you are always within a few miles of land. Straight down.
Click to expand...

It'll have a safe glide pattern, that's for sure.

It'll glide just like a safe.
 
You know, -there IS a "gravity powered flying machine"......It's called a "Satellite".;)
 
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