Which ships could fly?
imipak
actually work. Well, any of them would work in space, but would any of
them work in an atmosphere?
I found this link a while back, which covers the theory of a class of
vehicles called "waveriders" (basically supersonic and hypersonic
aircraft where the vehicle surfs on its own shockwave).
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/design/waverider/waverider.shtml
If you look down at the Mach 6 and Mach 14 waveriders, the third group
(Mach 6 optimized for different boundary conditions) are basically
Kraits without the spikes. The spikes shouldn't affect the
aerodynamics that much, so we can certainly build a real-world Krait
that can actually fly in an atmosphere and do so up to about Mach 6.
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/design/waverider/examples.shtml
The artist's impression of what an Aurora might have looked like is
very similar to a Viper, except it has tail fins. Not sure if you
could get away with not having those. If you could, the Viper is also
a vehicle you could build in real-life and be capable of aerodynamic
flight.
On the same page, the designs for the cruise missiles (the two
supersonic lifting bodies below the colour picture) look suspiciously
close to a Boa and a Fer-de-Lance.
Please note that by "flight" I don't mean if you shove them on the end
of a rocket, they'll go up. Just about anything will do that. What I
mean is that if you have a decent ramjet engine on one of these ships,
you can take off and land like any other aircraft, manoever just as
easily as other blended-wing aircraft (like the current stealth
bomber), and do so all on lift generated by the shape of the aircraft.
I have not yet found any aircraft hulls that resemble the Cobra III,
but it wouldn't surprise me if there was one.
(Hmmm. This could be scary. Put Ian Bell and David Braben in Cobra
IIIs and the world's airspace would never be safe again.)
Kevin Reilly
> I have not yet found any aircraft hulls that resemble the Cobra III,
> but it wouldn't surprise me if there was one.
The F-117 always struck me as somewhat Cobra like. If you lop off the
wings, tail fins and nose and do some stretching and squashing
transformations on what's left there are definite similarities. The hull is
essentially a series of triangles that meet at a single apex, just like the
Cobra.
--
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
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The simplest, one-craft answer would be the Adder which AFAIR had
extendable wings for atmospheric flight.
Sabremeister Brian
c4ebe92b-ec1e-4b72...@e5g2000vbe.googlegroups.com,
The only craft I remember with wings were the Lion Transport and
the Puma Shuttle. Whilst the Lion's wings were a decent size, the
Puma's were little more than horizontal stabilising fins.
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Simon Challands
"Sabremeister Brian" <bpwak...@hotmail.com> wrote:
The Adder's wingfolding system hasn't been seen in any game, but was
mentioned in the original manual.
--
Simon Challands
imipak
wrote:
> In a speech called
Stabilizing fins without some form of aerodynamic lift gives you a
steerable bomb. Great for making craters exactly where you want them.
I hope it also has retractable wings, or some form of antigrav! :)
Simon Challands
ups.com>
imipak <imi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Stabilizing fins without some form of aerodynamic lift gives you a
> steerable bomb. Great for making craters exactly where you want them.
> I hope it also has retractable wings, or some form of antigrav! :)
All the FE2/FFE ships have pretty powerful thrusters that would be
quite capable of keeping a ship in the air. In this case stabilising
fins would presumably make it a little simpler to control (or need a
less complicated fly-by-wire system, although that shouldn't be a
problem in 1200 years' time).
--
Simon Challands
[Jongware]
Fly-by-wire, wasn't that already in use in the 1950s? See the UFOs in
Plan 9 From Outer Space --
http://www.theater-der-gezeiten.de/images/plan9.jpg
[Jw]
imipak
The sound of collective groans riccochets of the moon (despite sound
not travelling in a vaccuum - it was that powerful), causing huge
tidal surges and the reprinting of 195,000 horoscopes.
Ceowulf
> The simplest, one-craft answer would be the Adder which AFAIR had
> extendable wings for atmospheric flight.
Actually I think the Harris would do ok as well, it's basically a flying
wing.
--
Ceo-
Graham Thurlwell
Could do, wings are a little chunky though. Other likely candidates:-
Hawk [1] - cross between the Saab Draken and F-22 Raptor.
Kestrel [2] - it's basically an SR-71 Blackbird.
Merlin [3] - looks great but not sure about wing dimensions.
Osprey [4] - not sure about wing angle though.
Osprey X [5] - big wings but no obvious rudder.
URLs for those not familiar with FFE ships:-
1. http://www.jades.org/shiprevs/hawk.htm
2. http://www.jades.org/shiprevs/kestrel.htm
3. http://www.jades.org/shiprevs/merlin.htm
4. http://www.jades.org/shiprevs/osprey.htm
5. http://www.jades.org/shiprevs/ospreyx.htm
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