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`SKY COMMUTER'
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THE STABLE FLYING TRANSPORT (SFT): To solve the world's transportation problems, we need to be able to use not only all of the numerous small airfields in the U.S.A. and all over the world, but just about any available open area. How can this be done? The aircraft must be quiet, cheap, simple, easy to fly, inherently stable, and really safe. It must be much safer than any present form of mass transportation, period. So, how do we do it? As an example, let's start out with a pair of Sikorsky sky-crane rotors, which are well proven, available, and produce 26,000 pounds of lift. Then you enclose the rotor-tips in a concentric ring raceway equipped with tip-impingement stators which not only provide a positive surface to literally push against, but allow for vectoring air to the outer skin for `boundary layer' control. No ice-up problem here, ever. Furthermore, a properly designed shroud can actually double the thrust, and laminar flow is easily attained. Passengers and cargo are situated in a streamlined fuselage surrounding the tip enclosed rotors.
The downside here is that we are designing an aircraft (the SFT) that looks like a flying saucer. Even the cyclonic vortex enhanced lift (CVEL) wing is circular. Although this may sound completely unorthodox, if you read Part II of Aero-Info bet you'll agree that the technology will work. The next question is: how do you efficiently power a couple of 72 foot diameter rotors? First, you trash the conventional engine and gearbox approach. It has to be tip-jet powered.
Why? Because of the tremendous mechanical advantage, which is related to fuel efficiency. Problem is, it's been tried many times, and dates back to to water-wheels of ancient Greece. We will succeed, though, and the reason is that we are not tied in to any particular approach and we have some of the best people in the world working on this project. If a non-moving Blastwave engine can fluidically divert exhaust to rotor tips, then fine. Or how about using a couple of the new Williams gas turbine jet engines on the rotor tips? Or using APU's (auxiliary power units) to drive several small generators for linear electric motor drive? Or using fuel cells, or even the new hydrogen battery being developed by Energy Conversion Devices of Troy, Michigan (ECD developed the nickel-metal hydride battery).
Consider this: great changes are happening in many fields of
technology, not just computers. New solid state transformers are being developed
by Asea Brown Boveri that will replace the copper coils and iron cores found
in conventional transformers. General Motors and Williams International are
developing an integral gas turbine generator with a SatCom Technology power
controller that's demonstrated 98% generating efficiency in the lab. There also
have been great advances in brushless electric motor technology, including linear
motors. And if you consider the fact that there are ongoing experiments using
superconducting linear induction motors to lift and move entire trains, it's
not a bit preposterous to propose driving a rotor-tip within a concentric air-bearing
safety ring, with its light weight and tremendous mechanical advantage. And
because the rotor is contained at the center and tips, supersonic and even hypersonic
rotors might well be feasible with rotorcraft performance that is simply unimaginable
today. But if you think the above is "far-out," then read the future section
of Aero-Info, Part II. It really is "far-out," but perhaps not far away. The
simple truth is that 'more of the same' is not going to solve the transportation
problems of today or tomorrow. We need some genuinely radical thinking, and
radical thinking 'R' us. So pleased stay tuned to our website, and buy Aero-Info
I and II. There is much more about the Stable Flying Transport (SFT)
project in AERO-INFO part II.
Aero Info I and II - BOTH for $19.95 plus $4.00 for
priority shipping (U.S. ONLY), $9.00 worldwide.