BatMan Begins!!!
polycounter lvl 18
Not really, but after this article i want my very own special forces bat wings to combat evil!
i am special forces batman
i am special forces batman
Replies
r on secret peacetime missions could avoid detection or suspicion by staying close to commercial airliner flight paths.
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AUUUUHHH!!! ***SUCK****
Airline Pilot: "Gee why did the port engine just stall for a moment?"
Why in the world are you telling the world this. I really think what your are doing is absolute treason. Nothing less.
Wake up writers, set aside your Awards you think your going to win and stop aiding the enemy. If I could I would arrest the editors and the writers for treason.
- John Miller, Dallas USA
The enemy. Sure. What enemy?
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Yeah, the USA doesn't have any enemies, everybody likes them.
Tube.
Oh ya, this sure needs to be top secret. Now that this is out, I'm sure Iran is going to get all their goat herders to make woolen nets to protect their borders.
Some things are more important than government secrets, like reporters being able to print what they know. I mean, if it is a secret, shouldn't the government keep it secret? It isn't some reporters fault the government can't do it's job.
I sense a new X-treme! sport in the future.
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The delta wing has been an extreme sport for several years: http://www.felixbaumgartner.com
Felix baumgartner flew across the English channel with them in 2003.
There's a famous documentary on his attempt and the wings have also featured in major hollywood movies.
Any argument that this article is somehow treasonous in giving out top military secrets is therefore bloody ridiculous.
Intimidation can postpone a war but cannot win a war since last I checked you can't intimidate your differences away.
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Everyone knows war is the only way to make differences go away
The overall problem with the concept is that as a horizontal distance covering craft it is highly inefficient. You lose height just as much as you gain ground and have to be dropped from some insane height to get anywhere at all.
"Wearing an aerodynamic suit, and with a 6ft wide wing strapped to his back, he soared across the sea at 220mph, moving six feet forward through the air for every one foot he fell vertically - and opened his parachute 1,000ft above the ground before landing safely. "
hittin the ground at 220mph might be painfull, unless the also feed the pilots PCP
:-P
god bless the internet where critique gets critiqued gets critiqued
anyway i was just pointing out that you couldnt land without a normal parachute, it would hurt (thats a military engineering term for "ow me f****** head"), as it says in article
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I sense a new X-treme! sport in the future.
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The delta wing has been an extreme sport for several years: http://www.felixbaumgartner.com
Felix baumgartner flew across the English channel with them in 2003.
There's a famous documentary on his attempt and the wings have also featured in major hollywood movies.
Any argument that this article is somehow treasonous in giving out top military secrets is therefore bloody ridiculous.
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That was mentioned in the article. As long as we are criticising this, i want to have large autocannons like these strapped to either shoulder
and canards on my ears.
daz those wings are far too small too glide well
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So they'd be a lot better under power? The surface area of those wings is far too small to do *anything* well. You aint gonna be skimming over city rooftops with this thing! All they can do well is go down. Fast. And we already have something that can do that. It's called skydiving. That's why the whole concept is just silly.
So they'd be a lot better under power? The surface area of those wings is far too small to do *anything* well.
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So when you applied for that job with NASA, did you mention to them that you don't actually know anything about aerospace engineering?
Yes, they *would* be better under power - the more force you have directed downward, the less lifting surface is required (a virtue of what's called the Coanda effect). Seen the wings on an SR-71? They fly alright. Some flying devices don't need lifting surfaces at all to stay airborne; the fins on missiles are used entirely for stabilization and direction, with directed engine thrust entirely responsible for providing lift.
Trying to evaluate performance characteristics from that picture is an exercise in futility, as it's clearly a mockup (that or the RAF HALO jump training somehow makes the divers' hands immune to frostbite). The concept has merit; everyone reading this has as little or less experience studying lift dynamics as I do and I don't fucking know how well it'd work; we're all dumber for participating. Le Fin.
I said a LOT better. As in, would it really be *hugely* significantly better? As in, even If it was powered, I doubt they are looking at this as something akin to a mini personal plane. If you watch the documentary about the Austrians flight over the channel, and his wing looked very similiar to this one, it was very clear that it was just going down, very quickly, with some slight ability to steer. Hence the need to drop from some insane height. Watch it, it's interesting. Probably available on the discovery channel. But you probably don't need to since you've already planned this all out mathematically!
*edit* I actually don't give a 'flying' fuck wether it works or not. But the treason comments got my goat.
At any rate, I've plugged all the relevant values into my trusty Brainiac 5000 (just to confirm the calculus I had previously done in my head during lunch) and it turns out that, yes, it would be hugely significantly better. Allow me to es'plain. No, that will take to long, allow me to sum up:
If you have thrust, you can alter your angle of attack. This means that by directing the propulsion so it doesn't just push the craft forward, but that it also slightly changes the pitch of the wings, so that they're canted slightly upward relative to the horizon. When you've got this going on, the fluid dynamics change such that the air under the wing is effectively "pushed down" rather than simply past the wing (the Coanda effect I mentioned). It's sort of what you see when any commercial jet lowers the flaps on its wings (although that has slightly different effects, both are angle changes to effect greater lift).
Conceptually, this is solid stuff since it's not intended to be anything more than a directed descent vehicle rather than something designed for distance flight. And as it happens, they likely would be dropping from an insane height, just like standard HALO jumps are conducted today (a recent Bond film gave an example, IIRC). If I were to put my Junior Engineer Merit Badge on the line here, I would speculate that a greater problem than the wingspan/lift issue would be one of weight. Building the glider out of carbon fiber is nice, but those engines and fuel (or rocket motors) aren't going to be light as a feather. Adding that to the already large payloads that airborne soldiers typically jump with, I'd think trying to land this thing is likely to increase the number of chiropractors the military keeps on staff. You can't send the equipent down separately and expect it to arrive at the right place and you can't really eject the propulsion system prior to landing and expect to call that "stealthy".
But that's pulled from as far up my ass as anyone else's guess is apt to be.
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I agree the treason comments are absurd. Like slander and libel, most people have no idea what the hell constitutes treasonous action. Alas, being a dumb fuck isn't considered unpatriotic either, or we could have us a' lynchin'. I'd live, I'm a smartie
Cool toy but almost usless other than as a toy for the rich. Think about it jets make lots of noise so no sneek atack with them. Good old parachutes dont make any sounds and if droped from high enough can glid the troops for miles so they can make covert atacks. The military releases shit they dont find usefull to the public so they can make back research costs.
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Ever been to an air show? There is always a demonstration about how jets are always used for surprise attacks, since at high speeds you can't hear the jet engine until it's right on top of you. They're basically traveling at a speed close to sound during surprise attacks.
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*edit* I actually don't give a 'flying' fuck wether it works or not. But the treason comments got my goat.
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That said, the article explains how normal "covert" jumps usually use helicopters or jumping from an even higher distance, and these things can be used to allow a drop team to be deployed from an greater tactical distance to further enhance its stealthness.
Where is the love? Sheesh