The Briefing Room
General Category => Military/Defense News => Topic started by: TomSea on August 19, 2016, 10:19:59 am
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World's 'largest aircraft' gets off ground
The world's "largest aircraft" embarked on its maiden flight on Wednesday, four days after a previous attempt was abandoned due to technical issues.
The Airlander 10 -- part plane, part airship -- took to the skies amid cheers and applause from crowds gathered at an airfield in Cardington, central England.
The successful flight comes 85 years after another airship -- the ill-fated R101 -- took off from the same airfield in October 1930 before crashing in France, killing 48 people and effectively ending the development of airships in Britain.
Originally developed for the US army as a surveillance aircraft, the 92-metre- (302 feet-) long Airlander 10, also has potential uses in the commercial sector, such as carrying cargo, according to makers Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV).
Read More At: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/worlds-largest-aircraft-gets-off-ground/ar-BBvKmhB?ocid=ansmsnnews11
Video at link, 3 basketball courts in size. SKy Bum
Stock Photo:
(http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Airlander-10-2.jpg)
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Cool!
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The Airlander can fly at up to 4,880 metres (6,000 feet)...
I hope it flies higher than that. Wouldn't be much use if it could barely make it to Denver.
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Video at link, 3 basketball courts in size. SKy Bum
Stock Photo:
(http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Airlander-10-2.jpg)
*gag*... lol, is that some poor African village down there?
Drop some Hershey's to show we care!
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*gag*... lol, is that some poor African village down there?
Drop some Hershey's to show we care!
I captioned the photo as a "stock photo", it was an image off of a bing search. That was about the best picture I found and coincidentally, it appears to be over Africa for whatever reason it was there.
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I captioned the photo as a "stock photo", it was an image off of a bing search. That was about the best picture I found and coincidentally, it appears to be over Africa for whatever reason it was there.
I am pretty sure it was a cut n paste job
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*gag*... lol, is that some poor African village down there?
Drop some Hershey's to show we care!
Better yet. A Turkey drop.
Les? Les? Les, are you there? Les isn't there. Thanks for that on-the-spot report, Les. For those of you who've just tuned in, the a sma;; african village has just been bombed with live turkeys. Film at eleven.
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Balloons, Zeppelins, Blimps, I'm not finding them trustworthy, power lines are too much of a hazard. Hit a telegraph poll in England, no serious injuries but the cockpit damaged.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/08/24/12/378AB4C300000578-0-image-a-54_1472039179823.jpg)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3756260/Bummed-World-s-largest-25million-aircraft-hits-telegraph-pole-suffers-cockpit-damage-lands-base-just-SEVEN-days-maiden-voyage.html
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Balloons, Zeppelins, Blimps, I'm not finding them trustworthy, power lines are too much of a hazard. Hit a telegraph poll in England, no serious injuries but the cockpit damaged.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/08/24/12/378AB4C300000578-0-image-a-54_1472039179823.jpg)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3756260/Bummed-World-s-largest-25million-aircraft-hits-telegraph-pole-suffers-cockpit-damage-lands-base-just-SEVEN-days-maiden-voyage.html
Airlander 10: Longest aircraft damaged during flight (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-37174417)
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_HAV_304_Airlander_10)
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telegraph??
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Better yet. A Turkey drop.
That turkey dropped, alright
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I was on the team that developed and tested this one...a conceptual design to prove the feasibility of the envelope design and effectiveness. By all accounts, as seen by the craft in this article, the envelope design is a good one. The production craft was going to be much larger, providing cargo hauling capacity to otherwise austere locations and possibly overseas faster and cheaper than by ship. The "feet" are designed to create a significant amount of suction that holds the craft to the surface without the need for a ground crew and support equipment.
(http://www.hexapolis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Lockheed-Martin-P-791_1.jpg)
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I was on the team that developed and tested this one...a conceptual design to prove the feasibility of the envelope design and effectiveness. By all accounts, as seen by the craft in this article, the envelope design is a good one. The production craft was going to be much larger, providing cargo hauling capacity to otherwise austere locations and possibly overseas faster and cheaper than by ship. The "feet" are designed to create a significant amount of suction that holds the craft to the surface without the need for a ground crew and support equipment.
(http://www.hexapolis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Lockheed-Martin-P-791_1.jpg)
When your enemy is a 15-mph gust of wind, you got issues.
:tongue2:
I'm reporting this as a UFO! @Quix
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The Crash in slow motion. Oh the humanity!
Oh wait, this is full speed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Slv6E5ntQ
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The difficulty with dirigibles is that you have to both fly them and sail them. The Americans and Brits back in the day tried to fly them through squall lines and ended up crashing all of their helium filled craft. The Germans, stuck filling theirs with hydrogen due to the US imposing an anti-Nazi embargo on the sale of helium, lost only the Hindenberg (possibly to sabotage, possibly to an electrical discharge). The Graf Zeppelin made many tran-Atlantic flights, including a record breaking one (with paying passengers) in which the captain used a hurricane to speed the journey, by sailing around the outer edge where the wind-speeds were safe. In terms of deaths per passenger mile, commercial zeppelin travel was safer than commercial airline travel.
I have a feeling the Airlander's slow-motion crash was a result of not sailing the craft properly (though why all of its gimbaled propellers seem to be aft is a mystery to me, a pair near the front could have been used to prevent the mishap).
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The Crash in slow motion. Oh the humanity!
Oh wait, this is full speed.
:silly:
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No disrespect,, but that thing looks like an accident waiting to happen. I remember the Goodyear blimp trying to land at our local airport many years ago. We had a pretty decent breeze and it hardly made it. You'd think a 40 mph wind and this thing is going nowhere in a hurry. I just don't see it....too much surface area.
None taken...at first glance, yes, you can say it's an "accident waiting to happen".
But if you don't try, how will you know if it's going to work?
We didn't know if many things would work, but we tried and look where we're at now.
For example; Hopeless diamond (mathematical equation) = Have Blue (conceptual design) = F117 Stealth Fighter (Operational aircraft that kicked ass)
That's what I enjoy about my job...I get to work with things/concepts that we're trying to get to work.
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Run!... Wait, I mean Mosey on down yonder for your lives.. *yawn*