Forum: Technology

Yellow 13, great top ten!

A very ballsy # 10! Wink

Thanks for the words of support for us over here. Been a tough month. There is a great American phrase " Payback is a B@&$H!"
Not very -PC I know, but the gloves are off.....

I agree with your #7, pretty obvious in hindsight. Much of anyone`s top ten would have been driven by the USAF. May it`s good work continue!

SpaceShipOne another incredibly bold step! I don`t know much about the project, did the team fund the project all by itself? No help given at ALL by NASA or anyone else?

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snypa777 wrote:

SpaceShipOne another incredibly bold step! I don`t know much about the project, did the team fund the project all by itself? No help given at ALL by NASA or anyone else?

All privately funded, about half of which they got back a a result of winning the $10,000,000 Ansari X-prize.

In two weeks I get to go to Mojave and sit in with Burt Rutan and a bunch of other famous aero types and participate in a preliminary design review of a new project he wants to sell DoO. I am very jazzed.

Incredible......Takes some B@*&S to do what he did. If an idea is sound from an engineering point of view it breeds confidence.
My hat comes off to the flight test pilots who took the thing up there, now those are steel b@*$s!

Can`t wait to hear of his new project you lucky:devil:

I can't agree to much with SpaceShipOne, but then again my opinions are veyr different from most peoples. It took two stages to get that high remember. I guess the reusable part is cool, but whatever. Here's one that might be a little too broad, NASA. It was created in the last 60 years. I would say NACA but that's a little to old. NASA has done a sh*t ton of research in all areas of aviation and are a major contributor to everything mentioned so far. The NASA X-planes have paved the way for advanced technology throughout aviation history. SpaceShipOne had the way paved by the fact that NASA was looking for a reuseable one stage to orbit. SSO was 2 stage to suborbital, cool yes but a lot of the NASA projects have been based on teh same principle and gotten as much success.

If you wanna get weird with it, Area 51. The black project testing ground Smile

. I like UFO's too but a rock that hits someone in the back of the head is a UFO until someone recognizes it Twisted Evil

. Anyway, my Two Cents

.

Roger that allenperos- I'll keep my ego in check when it counts.

And LordOfBunnies- I don't know about Area 51 itself... the projects that have taken place there are very important. Stuff like the Skunk Works maybe, but I would say that Area 51's main staple is as a myth that generates terrible, terrible Sci Fi Channel made-for-TV movies.

And yeah, snypa777 it took some huge b@!!$ to pull off SpaceShipOne that's why it's my #3.

I think an even more interesting question would be what are the most innovative/influential aircraft since WWII? I'll start another post about that topic.

Good topic question Yellow 13, Go post it!!!!
Lordofbunnies, NASA is an excellent addition to anyone`s top ten, their X-planes have made an enormous contribution to flight.

However, Burt Rutan, from what I have just read, did it all without NASA help, this guy has designed and marketed his own aircraft in the past. Planes that WORK.

By the way yellow 13, my grandmother is Irish, top o` the morning to ya!

I'll give Burt Rutan his props:

int static props = rocketProps++;Sorry, I've been looking at way to much Java code. I have to say it's really quite cool what he did, but it wouldn't be all that hard to design something as such yourself if you had a BS in aero. The design of white knight and of SSO is pretty cool. Thing is there are a sh*t ton of books on rocketry and aerospace design floating around. With a some good knowledge and CFD tools and lets not forget funding, just about anyone could do the same. Thing is though, NASA and whatever the Russian space organization is pioneered a lot of the knowledge about rocketry. This was put into books and teachings which I'm sure Burt Rutan learned at some point. I don't mean to diss on the achievement, but to point out the fact that it can be done by anyone. Money and expertise are of real issue here.

Anyway, I must say to axial compressor set is definitely an influential achievement. It definitely helped advance jet engines. On the same note, Turbofans were pretty influential, not all that innovative but definitely cool.

PS I was kidding about area 51. The development of truly black project is actually kinda revolutionary thingy though.

Wait, syntext error? You haven't defined "rocketProps"'s data type!
Yeah, I just took Intro. Programing with Java this year... I bearly passed, I got the logic OK but I just couldn't get the syntext down... And don't worry about the Area 51 thing I'm kinding too

And Burt and Burt's team is living out the American Dream right now... I think that's what also makes it a great, historical moment in time. Anyone else seen the "Black Sky"? doc. about SpaceShipOne?

snypa777- Laughing

I'm not that Irish...

Black-sky? Have to look out for that one! Who knows what sort of "skunk works" type projects have breathed fire into aviation?

"Black Sky" is a great Discovery Channel (I don't know what the Brit equivalent is) documentary on the SpaceShipOne project, it's been out for a while.

Let's see what all has Lockheed's Skunk Works done for us lately:

- SR-71 Blackbird
- U-2 Spy Plane (not the band... but that wold be cool)
- F-117 Nighthawk
- F-104 Starfighter
- F/A-22 Raptor

Just to name a few...

Check out this website for a full intro:
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/1993/articles/oct_93/octa_93.html

"My name is Sammy Small, and 've only got one ball! But it's better than no ball at all, so !@#$ 'em all!"

Who was it that said "If you don't at least privately think you're the best fighter pilot in the world, you're in the wrong business!"?

In anycase I'm going to say...

The Afterburning Jet Engine and the Supersonic Flight that comes with it. Everyone thought it was impossible, and the F-86 broke the sound "Barrier" in a dive. Then the X-1 did it, and the X-1 was straight winged! That gets my vote.

If we could go back even farther, it was whomever decided to mount a machinegun on his plane.

I think hypersonic flight might make a huge affect in the not to distant future. We know its possible, and there is theoretically already a plane that can do it, the "Aurora" if it actually exsits. Funny thing about hypersonic wind tunnel testing, you have to heat the air before it enters the wind tunnel so certain elements don't start liquifying. Anyway, hypersonic gets my vote for current tech that could affect the future greatly. You would have some serious problem guarding against a hypersonic missile coming at you.

Damn, we don`t get "Black sky"? Get a channel called Discovery Wings, if it was on that, I missed it...

Y13 , checked out that link, an impressive list of achievements for the mighty Skunk Works! I was thinking of the projects we will never EVER hear about!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On supersonic flight; quite a few piston engined planes got close to the sound barrier didn`t they????? In a dive. They either pulled their wings off or "locked" up their control surfaces, usually fatal for the pilots......

Another advance, supercruise. Already mentioned on other threads, it`s not new. It just wasn`t called supercruise. The B.A.C. TSR2 (1960`s) was designed to fly at mach 1 without AB`s. In a test flight (before it was scrapped!!) it almost did it. With just one burner lit on 1/3 power (Twin engined). I know it`s cheating a bit, your supposed to supercruise without AB`s!

The ef2000 can supercruise at M1.2. With planned engine upgrades, will be able to SC at M1.5 with external stores. I am a bit dubious about that. Planes usually get heavier as they get "upgraded". Don`t know if this is SUSTAINED SC or not.. It`s claimed the Raptor can do close to M2!!! IMPRESSIVE.

Very Happy

If we are going to talk THE most IMPORTANT:
It's Stealth, that's the future of military aviation, with successes with the F-117 and B-2 and Raptor, it is clear that there will be more "invisible" aircraft.

But the most innovative and most important innovation that boosted the aviation world in general is got to be the one and only: radar!

Radar was basically experimented in 1887 by Hertz, but extensively used and perfected by armies around the world in WW2, since then improvements have been added and the civil industry utilized the power of radar to guide aircraft carrying people to land them safely, further enhancements led to carrying the the radar inside aircraft and use them to guide themselves to targets or away from collisions with other airliners. Without radar, fighters would heve been relient on cannons and unguided rockets and less reliable lower range IR guided missiles. There wouldn't have been these many significant improvents to the aviation world.

Forum Veteran Joined: Aug 29, 2004 - 01:05 AM Posts: 659

Many items posted I agree with. Just to put in my two cents: Frank Whittle's first jet engine and even further back, the gun synchronizer. Back in WW1 the warplane came of age. First as a recce bird, then as a bomber (first tossing grenades overboard, then real bombs) and last but not least as a fighter. First pilots were shooting at each other with hand-held guns and throwing steel darts through the bogey's wings while flying above him. Then fixed guns were mounted, on top of the biplane or somewhere down the wing span to avoid the prop. Then a bright guy (whom I won't advice to apply for a job with NASA, or NACA...) decided to mount them right on the nose in front of the pilot's eyes and armour the prop. The occasional ricochet effect resulted in the pilot getting shot by his own bullet. Here comes the revolution: although he was not the inventor, Anthony Fokker was the first to incorporate the synchronizer in his planes. This enabled the nose-mounted guns to shoot through the prop circle without hitting the airscrew. Took the Allies a couple of months to field a similar gadget. The Brits got worried: the House of Commons warned the Prime Minister that the RAF was 'Fokker Food'...

By the was, was Richard Branson not one of the SpaceShipOne sponsors..?

Forum: Technology

What is THE single biggest innovation in aviation since WW2