I don't doubt that this has been asked before, but is there any possibility that heavier-than-air craft could have been developed at least 10-20 years or more before they were in OTL? I was just wondering about the kinds of effects this would have if it had occurred.
Airplanes before 1903?
- Thread starter Shtudmuffin
- Start date
Depends on how late the POD, but definitely.
You need a sufficient level of understanding of aerodynamics and other concepts related to powered flight (entirely possible earlier - nothing changed in terms of some radical discovery that was not possible with earlier means), and effective engines (more difficult but entirely possible).
You need a sufficient level of understanding of aerodynamics and other concepts related to powered flight (entirely possible earlier - nothing changed in terms of some radical discovery that was not possible with earlier means), and effective engines (more difficult but entirely possible).
Options...
I'm working on a timeline with an 1876 POD. Because of the events, there's a huge interest in rockets. I'm investigating what might be done, but if big solid rockets are reliable, then a less effective airframe could still give manned flights, with rocket engines, for a mile or two--far longer than the first airplanes. But, it would be dead-end technology...
I'm working on a timeline with an 1876 POD. Because of the events, there's a huge interest in rockets. I'm investigating what might be done, but if big solid rockets are reliable, then a less effective airframe could still give manned flights, with rocket engines, for a mile or two--far longer than the first airplanes. But, it would be dead-end technology...
Stolengood
Banned
One of the men who died on gliders could've easily lived and perfected an airplane ten to twenty years early -- Alexander Mozhaysky, Otto Lilienthal, or Percy Pilcher.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing how ol' Gustave Whitehead would've faired if he'd gotten a recognized flight up in the air... I can imagine him being befuddled by all the attention.
It probably wouldn't be early enough (Whitehead, I mean) to change much in the long run, but, in the short term, it'd certainly break the Wrights's monopoly on the airplane before it even happens.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing how ol' Gustave Whitehead would've faired if he'd gotten a recognized flight up in the air... I can imagine him being befuddled by all the attention.
It probably wouldn't be early enough (Whitehead, I mean) to change much in the long run, but, in the short term, it'd certainly break the Wrights's monopoly on the airplane before it even happens.
You need a light-weight engine of sufficient power. If you're looking for 1880 or so, then rockets have a problem. Rockets then were pretty much of the "light'em and burn'em" variety. Modulating the output, or just turning them off early (say when one wishes to land), looks to be outside the technology of the day.
I guess you would have to work with rocket banks (light three for takeoff, one for another burst of speed....). But this is certainly not going to be a technology that's viable for doing anything practical with.
I guess a glider enthusiast could come up with semi-viable controls and then strap a rocket to his device. The other way around does not souind conducive to long-term development. The main outcome of this is going to be "the rudders work, but we need some other motive power". Perhaps additional interest in both lightweight gasoline and steam engines.
You will need a reliable light wieght engin, which means petrol or diesel. Russia was producing oil from the early 1800's so a chemist could have started playing with it to crack it into the more useful elements. I presume this would occur in Germany as they undoubably had the best chemists in the world.
Once you have petrol then it is a short step for someone to use it as an engin fuel source, as it will be more efficient than the steam engins being designed at the time.
I would have tought that 1850 should see the possibility of a working lightweight engin for cars and planes.
It would also propably bring forward plastics and other petro-chemical products, and ensure that Arabia becomes more important, instead of justing being a land route to India.
Once you have petrol then it is a short step for someone to use it as an engin fuel source, as it will be more efficient than the steam engins being designed at the time.
I would have tought that 1850 should see the possibility of a working lightweight engin for cars and planes.
It would also propably bring forward plastics and other petro-chemical products, and ensure that Arabia becomes more important, instead of justing being a land route to India.
Fuel is not the only bottleneck; you need good quality steel and precise machining, neither of which is available that early. IOTL the first internal combustion engines were developed in the 1870s (an Otto engine was on exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876) so an 1880s first powered flight seems entirely feasable, but that is probably the earliest period in which all the necessary technology is available.
I agree that high quality steel and machining would be needed. Kelly was playing around with the process in the late 1840's and Bessemer had his patent granted in 1855.
If Kelly had not stopped working on improving the quality of steel it is possible that he could have produced some interesting steel compounds in the 1860's and 70's.
I don't know enough about machining to say if high quality machines could be in use by 1860 however.
If Kelly had not stopped working on improving the quality of steel it is possible that he could have produced some interesting steel compounds in the 1860's and 70's.
I don't know enough about machining to say if high quality machines could be in use by 1860 however.
wolf_brother
Banned
Get Félix du Temple de la Croix & Victor Tatin to work together, possibly using a modified Barsanti-Matteucci engine.
EDIT: Throw in a Clément Ader interested in flight earlier for good measure and you'll have France putting scout planes on her ships by the 1880s.
EDIT: Throw in a Clément Ader interested in flight earlier for good measure and you'll have France putting scout planes on her ships by the 1880s.
Note that "sufficient" aerodynamic science doesn't have to be very accurate; as Kelly Johnson said, "put enough thrust on an ironing board and it will fly." The bottleneck is thrust, getting a good, reliable, reasonably lightweight, sustainable source of it. Given the poor options available before 1900, that does put a premium on at least a good intuitive grasp of low-speed aerodynamics. This is why the Wrights followed glider development with keen interest. And also very systematically and extensively developed their own aerodynamic theory, finding none that was very good in academic science. They built their own windtunnel for instance. (Also, their own engine, finding nothing developed that was suitable).
Even so, not every insight the Wrights had was all that valuable. They certainly got something flying earlier than anyone else, but some of their notions were dead ends, at least for generations. For instance they concluded, based on looking at how glider developers like Chanute came to their sad ends, that control was paramount--which was correct as far as that went, but then they went on to figure the best control came from positive feedback, which is why their elevator was a canard, set forward of the wing. Certainly that meant that small, precise inputs were effective rapidly, and tended to increase over time, which meant the pilot had to flick the elevators up for a nose-up moment and then quickly down again to stabilize it at the desired angle--but it certainly went up to that desired angle briskly. Which is what they figured might have saved Chanute's life. However, it had no natural stability; the pilot would be constantly having to control it very carefully. The Wrights thought that was good. The long list of early American military aviators killed after being trained to operate Wright-designed machines by the Wrights themselves showed up the drawback though, and the problem, bad enough at low airspeeds, only got worse at higher ones. Modern advanced fighters use inherent instability much as the Wrights envisioned it (mostly still with the controls behind the wing rather than ahead though) for very high performance, but they do it via advanced computerized fly-by-wire controls that intervene to take the otherwise impossible burden off the pilots.
Another dead end the Wrights believed in was wing-warping as a way of achieving what is normally (soon after them that is) done by ailerons. This was related to their philosophy of very thin wing airfoils, which prevailed in France as well, but wing-warping, workable on the rather gossamer wings of the early era, was still abandoned in favor of the movable separate control surfaces. And the Germans went over to thick wings, which given the slow airspeeds of even the later WWI era could be quite thick without undue penalty, especially if the greater thickness allowed much of the exposed wires and struts to be eliminated or contained within the wings or other fairing surfaces.
So even the Wrights didn't really have a proper scientific understanding of aerodynamics, nor did any of the early pioneers. Ludwig Prandtl generally gets the credit for putting aero theory on a really sound basis, and this wasn't until the pre-WWI 20th century. (There is a Briton who was coming to much the same conclusions as Prandtl around the same time or earlier but I'm forgetting his name at the moment, anyway no one was paying attention to him.)
Aside from sheer persistence and engineering know-how, I think the biggest theoretical success the Wrights drew from their researches that helped them win was a much improved theory of how propellers worked.
Rocket airplanes certainly could not achieve anything like the endurance or range of an engined one, but if their competition is balloons or nothing, they certainly wouldn't seem like a total dead end!
But in the Chinese case, I think the "and then..." would be, the method matures as a means of getting scouts up above a battlefield, getting messages in and out of a besieged city and other such auxiliary stunts typical of 19th century ballooning OTL, but otherwise languishes at that level until someone develops at least a steam engine--and it would have to be a very good steam engine. Maybe a Stirling-type air engine. Either way I'm not aware of any precursors to such methods being developed by the Chinese before Newcomben engines were coming into use in Britain. Perhaps one could then butterfly Chinese history so that about the time steam engine tech is developed and widespread enough to show up in China someone there is in a position to adopt it and someone else masters the theory enough to focus on making a lightweight version. Or Europeans, observing Chinese glider-planes in action, adopt or develop them themselves and similarly apply themselves to finding steam or air engines that can do the job at least as well as rockets. Whoever does this has to develop a valid theory of airscrews too, valid enough to eke out enough thrust from a marginal engine anyway.
Given the nature of aerodynamic flight, whereby a takeoff at a lower airspeed than optimum cruising speed requires a lot more thrust than maintaining optimal speed, I guess they'd keep the rockets for takeoff and possibly landing too.
Now if the Chinese glider-rockets really are exactly 1000 years before the Wrights and not centuries later, presumably the Mongols will acquire the technique (assuming they aren't butterflied away) and spread it all over Eurasia before 1400. Still, it will languish as a standard but peripheral piece of military equipment.
The idea of having a few on bigger warships will probably catch on though. Not sailing carriers! The planes just won't have impressive warfighting potential, they'd mainly be for scouting and possibly couriering messages, perhaps landing a pilot or returning them to shore, stuff like that. Every ship large enough to have room for one and a set of rockets to equip it with would have it, big ships carrying a few more. But only an engine to replace the rockets (or just supplement them) can expand their potential.
One of the men who died on gliders could've easily lived and perfected an airplane ten to twenty years early -- Alexander Mozhaysky, Otto Lilienthal, or Percy Pilcher.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing how ol' Gustave Whitehead would've faired if he'd gotten a recognized flight up in the air... I can imagine him being befuddled by all the attention.
It probably wouldn't be early enough (Whitehead, I mean) to change much in the long run, but, in the short term, it'd certainly break the Wrights's monopoly on the airplane before it even happens.
What can you tell us about Whitehead?
OTL, though the Wrights certainly did beat everyone else, they had a heck of a time proving it due to their having played their cards very close to the vest. They remained cagy, hoping to secure patents and effective monopolies on aviation, so when Santos-Dumont later flew an airplane of his own design, in clear ignorance of the Wright's earlier achievement, and unlike the Wrights was very open about how his plane worked, he was taken as the first in much of Europe; it was quite a long time before it was universally accepted the Wrights had really got there first.
Santos-Dumont also put his elevator pitch control surfaces well behind the wing, which provided for negative feedback and passive stability, which despite the somewhat less snappy control response was on the whole a big lifesaver in European aviation--France was pretty much the leading home of rapidly developing airplanes in the pre-war period. Which is why so many basic aeronautical terms are French.
As I said, I think the scope of rocket-propelled planes would be severely limited but they would have their niche uses. And in an era where no one else has any way of flying HTA at all, they'd draw a lot of attention.
I really don't know enough about mechanical engineering to meaningfully speculate about whether adequate IC engines could possibly be developed much earlier than OTL. My suspicion is that one needs the entire ensemble of science and engineering, thermodynamics and chemistry and the whole shebang, to be more advanced generally, so it amounts to a POD that moves all technology back decades or centuries, meaning that an 1870 aero engine corresponds to all technology being pushed back 30 years, and we get 1914 tech by 1884. Across the board. But I've confessed my ignorance, perhaps there were bottlenecks that could plausibly have been removed. After all the Wrights did whip up their own lightweight engine! Someone wanting to develop this line of thought would do well to investigate how much the Wrights were able to benefit from recently developed but off the shelf stuff, versus having to make it themselves from stuff that might have been available decades before.
Certainly in a timeline where rocket gliders were old hat, engine developers would be that much more interested in pushing to get something light and yet powerful. They wouldn't be as interested in making it efficient too; almost anything would be more efficient than gunpowder rockets! They might come up with something horrendously inefficient that nevertheless doubles the endurance of a glider-rocket plane and thus seems worthwhile, then improve gradually on that.
Yeah I was following that but I never believed in it. Again I don't really know.
Rather than put my hope in IC engines in the 19th century, I'd be looking at steam engines made as light and powerful as possible, at considerable sacrifices of efficiency to be sure. The OTL Besler steam airplane of the 1930s is pretty inspirational, compared to a rocket plane anyway. It was hideously impractical compared to the sorts of gasoline engines that already existed by then, because first of all even an efficient steam engine is less efficient than a mediocre IC engine, due to temperature limits. And second of all, making a condenser to reuse the water would have added tremendously to the weight of the total installation. (It also would make a plane relying on such a system terribly vulnerable to hostile fire--one shot in the radiator and the thing is going down pretty soon, once the working water has evaporated away). So the Besler plane simply vented the water, once through and gone, and that meant it had to land frequently to top off not just fuel but water, so the total propellant load was much higher per air mile than a similarly powered gasoline plane's--even given that aero engines of the day routinely wasted their oil too!
But the engine was quite lightweight compared to even a good gasoline engine of the same power, I believe. That suggests that in an era with no viable IC engines practical as of yet, a determined designer could probably turn out a suitably light and powerful steam engine that could at least seriously improve the endurance of a rocket-launched glider plane.
Provided they could develop decent propellers as well that is. But that is a matter of developing both theoretical insight and empirical trial-and-error experience, and it can be done on the ground.
Again in a timeline where the rocket gliders are all over the place and were known to people like say Isaac Newton, I daresay fluid dynamic theory would be somewhat better developed. And one can make a lot of progress investigating water flows; up to the compressibility limits (around 2/3 the speed of sound or so) air flows very much like an incompressible fluid, which water is very close to being. Science simply needs to provide the correct scaling factors to allow a good water-tank model to stand in for a wind tunnel. So the props won't be the limiting factor though someone has to do some serious work on them.
Another candidate power plant might be air engines such as the Stirling. Obviously the Stirling isn't the wonder engine some people seem to think it is, or we'd be using them ubiquitously. Enthusiasts claim they are simple, workable with cheap materials, and efficient. Clearly they can be any two of these but not all three at the same time! However if we can sacrifice efficiency, which I've argued we can for early days when there's nothing better to compare to and any improvement on rocket planes (or nothing, in a timeline without the Chinese POD, and no European gets around to trying it out before the Stirlings or steam engines are ready) is worthwhile, I can accept that maybe a light-enough, powerful-enough Stirling that burns up fuel like nobody's business could be made to sustain flight for many miles, perhaps enough to cross the English Channel say. And then be subject to incremental improvements. Stirlings for a given power output would I believe be heavier than even mediocre IC engines, but perhaps at least comparable to a fanatically lightened, non-condensing steam engine, and they wouldn't have the problem of needing water to operate.
As a side bonus they'd be quiet, but so was the Besler steam engine compared to a standard aero IC engine.
It does seem to me that these sorts of developments are more plausible in a timeline where there are already airplanes, of the rocket-driven kind, and thus people are motivated and focused to come up with the power plant as quickly as possible, to improve on a known possibility of known use rather than achieve a speculative dream.
There were a few flights during the 1890s, using steam engines and such. However, they all crashed a bit of lifting off the ground. I think some French bloke named Ader was the one who tried to fly a series of heavier-than-air craft called Avion or Eole or something like that. Since none of them landed in one piece, or even flew in a very controlled manner, they don't get the record.
Another wild speculation regarding hideously inefficient but workable IC
Since the Napoleonic-era IC engine thread had such enthusiasm behind it in its day, let me throw out another idea I've just had that I've never seen discussed anywhere--probably because it wouldn't work, I suppose.
Given that people are willing to consider something like a primitive, practically zero-compression ratio bang-bang IC engine, could there be a way to convert a continuous flame into a crude, low-efficiency, liquid fuel air rocket (ie very primitive jet)?
The sorts of airspeeds that a bamboo-silk gunpowder rocket-plane might reach and not fall apart in are much lower than viable ramjet speeds. And a ramjet, while simple, still requires some rather advanced techniques to work well anyway.
But is there any way to harness the expansive power of an open flame to drive some sort of weak air compression that can yield a respectable thrust from a prodigal expenditure of fuel? Remember the goal here is to match and exceed the poor efficiency of a gunpowder rocket, not be competitive even with a 1910 quality airplane.
I'm thinking, some kind of aerodynamic cascade, with Venturi effects of the higher-temperature, higher pressure core burner sucking in and compressing more air, possibly with several stages, possibly with a downstream augmentor of the output flow if that turns out to have more airspeed than the designed cruise speed that works on similar principles.
It might, like a ramjet, still need to be boosted to some significant airspeed to work. But that airspeed might be more modest than a simple ramjet requires.
As I say, I've never seen anyone propose any such thing in any forum anywhere. Probably it can't work.
I have seen references to components that suggest it might though. I've seen a NACA study of Venturi cascade augmentors, and a supercharger design where there isn't a separate mechanical turbine driving a separate compressor, but rather the engine exhaust flow is routed through some kind of manifold where it flows directly alongside intake air headed for the carburetor, thus accelerating and compressing the intake air directly. (Presumably some of the oxygen-depleted exhaust air mixes in to the intake and being hot, impedes the efficiency a bit for that reason too, I guess it's a tradeoff of these impairments versus the savings of eliminating the turbosupercharger machinery). So gas-on-gas engines certainly are at least a remote possibility.
Of course even a minimal, marginal such device might involve temperatures no mid-19th century material, or none suitably lightweight, could handle.
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Another, more conventional line to follow along the "crude IC" direction would be some kind of pulse-jet. Modern pulse-jets have been made with no moving parts, relying on aerodynamic resonances to achieve the necessary pulsing. Again I don't know if the German makers of the Argus engine that pushed the infamous V-1 "Buzz Bomb" were using materials far in advance of anything that could be available in the 19th century, though the fact that they wanted their engines cheap because they would be disposable suggests that maybe 19th century tech could match it if they didn't expect to throw the expensive stuff away.
Pulse-jets have all kinds of issues that make them unattractive when there are better alternatives available, but with none I can see them being tolerated. They are kind of the opposite of a Stirling being inefficient and very very loud! But light. And possibly doable around 1850 or so?
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If a 19th century pulse jet can be made, the exhaust will be moving at a high Mach factor, around the speed of sound I believe. They'd surely want that Venturi cascade augmentor, or perhaps one stage of that to cool the exhaust to power a simple turbo-augmentor--a crude version of an aft turbofan, with the core engine being a pulsejet, not a turbojet. Perhaps the augmentor can resonate so as to smooth out the pulse somewhat, lowering the terrible vibration impact on the turbine? Ideally the total airflow out the back should be only moderately faster than the cruise airspeed. This might bring the efficiency up to merely poor instead of terrible levels, allowing a smaller core pulse engine and extending the fuel supply for decent ranges. Still poor compared to OTL early planes, but impressive compared to rocket-gliders. Enough to open up niches beyond the traditional ones for rocket planes maybe? Or allow serious upgrading of the basic weight and airspeed of the planes, to allow for serious attack planes and an early version of aircraft carriers? If they go for more thrust while not improving on endurance much, the attack planes would have very limited range, perhaps not much more than line-of-sight, measured in minutes. But enough to make carriers a viable alternative to battleships, perhaps. With no radio the pilots won't want to go far out of sight of their mother ship anyway.
Besides the pulse-jets, even moderated, would probably deafen them anyway!
Seriously--if that turns out to be a thing, pulse-jets so loud the pilots go deaf, maybe militaries might recruit people who are already Deaf for this specialized role?
Since the Napoleonic-era IC engine thread had such enthusiasm behind it in its day, let me throw out another idea I've just had that I've never seen discussed anywhere--probably because it wouldn't work, I suppose.
Given that people are willing to consider something like a primitive, practically zero-compression ratio bang-bang IC engine, could there be a way to convert a continuous flame into a crude, low-efficiency, liquid fuel air rocket (ie very primitive jet)?
The sorts of airspeeds that a bamboo-silk gunpowder rocket-plane might reach and not fall apart in are much lower than viable ramjet speeds. And a ramjet, while simple, still requires some rather advanced techniques to work well anyway.
But is there any way to harness the expansive power of an open flame to drive some sort of weak air compression that can yield a respectable thrust from a prodigal expenditure of fuel? Remember the goal here is to match and exceed the poor efficiency of a gunpowder rocket, not be competitive even with a 1910 quality airplane.
I'm thinking, some kind of aerodynamic cascade, with Venturi effects of the higher-temperature, higher pressure core burner sucking in and compressing more air, possibly with several stages, possibly with a downstream augmentor of the output flow if that turns out to have more airspeed than the designed cruise speed that works on similar principles.
It might, like a ramjet, still need to be boosted to some significant airspeed to work. But that airspeed might be more modest than a simple ramjet requires.
As I say, I've never seen anyone propose any such thing in any forum anywhere. Probably it can't work.
I have seen references to components that suggest it might though. I've seen a NACA study of Venturi cascade augmentors, and a supercharger design where there isn't a separate mechanical turbine driving a separate compressor, but rather the engine exhaust flow is routed through some kind of manifold where it flows directly alongside intake air headed for the carburetor, thus accelerating and compressing the intake air directly. (Presumably some of the oxygen-depleted exhaust air mixes in to the intake and being hot, impedes the efficiency a bit for that reason too, I guess it's a tradeoff of these impairments versus the savings of eliminating the turbosupercharger machinery). So gas-on-gas engines certainly are at least a remote possibility.
Of course even a minimal, marginal such device might involve temperatures no mid-19th century material, or none suitably lightweight, could handle.
----
Another, more conventional line to follow along the "crude IC" direction would be some kind of pulse-jet. Modern pulse-jets have been made with no moving parts, relying on aerodynamic resonances to achieve the necessary pulsing. Again I don't know if the German makers of the Argus engine that pushed the infamous V-1 "Buzz Bomb" were using materials far in advance of anything that could be available in the 19th century, though the fact that they wanted their engines cheap because they would be disposable suggests that maybe 19th century tech could match it if they didn't expect to throw the expensive stuff away.
Pulse-jets have all kinds of issues that make them unattractive when there are better alternatives available, but with none I can see them being tolerated. They are kind of the opposite of a Stirling being inefficient and very very loud! But light. And possibly doable around 1850 or so?
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If a 19th century pulse jet can be made, the exhaust will be moving at a high Mach factor, around the speed of sound I believe. They'd surely want that Venturi cascade augmentor, or perhaps one stage of that to cool the exhaust to power a simple turbo-augmentor--a crude version of an aft turbofan, with the core engine being a pulsejet, not a turbojet. Perhaps the augmentor can resonate so as to smooth out the pulse somewhat, lowering the terrible vibration impact on the turbine? Ideally the total airflow out the back should be only moderately faster than the cruise airspeed. This might bring the efficiency up to merely poor instead of terrible levels, allowing a smaller core pulse engine and extending the fuel supply for decent ranges. Still poor compared to OTL early planes, but impressive compared to rocket-gliders. Enough to open up niches beyond the traditional ones for rocket planes maybe? Or allow serious upgrading of the basic weight and airspeed of the planes, to allow for serious attack planes and an early version of aircraft carriers? If they go for more thrust while not improving on endurance much, the attack planes would have very limited range, perhaps not much more than line-of-sight, measured in minutes. But enough to make carriers a viable alternative to battleships, perhaps. With no radio the pilots won't want to go far out of sight of their mother ship anyway.
Besides the pulse-jets, even moderated, would probably deafen them anyway!
Seriously--if that turns out to be a thing, pulse-jets so loud the pilots go deaf, maybe militaries might recruit people who are already Deaf for this specialized role?
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Vodka-jet!
There's no reason why crude IC engines have to run on petroleum. If the demand for them becomes massive, petroleum fuels will indeed become more attractive. But whether mechanical or the more purely aerodynamic cascade ramjets or pulsejets I'm suggesting, a 19th century fuel engine will be crude and of limited worth. Might well be a big improvement on gunpowder rockets, but there would be few if any impressive ground applications and the airplanes would still be highly specialized, mostly military things. The demand for fuel would be low; with these sorts of approaches the sort of range for long-range strategic type bombing would be unthinkable and applications will be in some mixture low-energy (ie, scouting) or very low range (possible attack applications). And by the way for some reason I've only been talking about naval uses but of course if such things are available ground armies will want them too.
Steam and Stirling-type air engines can use whatever combustible substances are most convenient, trading off between availability, storability, and suitability for clean, efficient burning to maximal temperatures (that one's materials can stand that is).
Vegetable oils would probably work just fine, no need to venture to the Middle East yet.
It occurs to me that maybe alcohol might offer some advantages, especially in pulse-jets or cascade ramjets maybe. I know that the V-2s used alcohol and LOX, and perhaps the same considerations that led Von Braun and company to use that instead of kerosene might apply in a pulsejet (the Argus did use either kerosene or gasoline though).
So I had this vision of a patriotic Polish scientist secretly developing some such thing for an uprising, and stealing Russian scout rocketplanes or making a bunch of them themselves and equipping them with vodka-fueled pulsejets! (There's a Polish vodka, I read somewhere along time ago, perhaps in a Guiness book of world records, that is almost pure alcohol).
But of course the Russians are well equipped to respond in kind...
So what if it's Russians attacking someone?
Anyway just an excuse for a cool post title, and also a serious observation that petroleum doesn't have to have anything to do with this thread.
There's no reason why crude IC engines have to run on petroleum. If the demand for them becomes massive, petroleum fuels will indeed become more attractive. But whether mechanical or the more purely aerodynamic cascade ramjets or pulsejets I'm suggesting, a 19th century fuel engine will be crude and of limited worth. Might well be a big improvement on gunpowder rockets, but there would be few if any impressive ground applications and the airplanes would still be highly specialized, mostly military things. The demand for fuel would be low; with these sorts of approaches the sort of range for long-range strategic type bombing would be unthinkable and applications will be in some mixture low-energy (ie, scouting) or very low range (possible attack applications). And by the way for some reason I've only been talking about naval uses but of course if such things are available ground armies will want them too.
Steam and Stirling-type air engines can use whatever combustible substances are most convenient, trading off between availability, storability, and suitability for clean, efficient burning to maximal temperatures (that one's materials can stand that is).
Vegetable oils would probably work just fine, no need to venture to the Middle East yet.
It occurs to me that maybe alcohol might offer some advantages, especially in pulse-jets or cascade ramjets maybe. I know that the V-2s used alcohol and LOX, and perhaps the same considerations that led Von Braun and company to use that instead of kerosene might apply in a pulsejet (the Argus did use either kerosene or gasoline though).
So I had this vision of a patriotic Polish scientist secretly developing some such thing for an uprising, and stealing Russian scout rocketplanes or making a bunch of them themselves and equipping them with vodka-fueled pulsejets!
(There's a Polish vodka, I read somewhere along time ago, perhaps in a Guiness book of world records, that is almost pure alcohol).But of course the Russians are well equipped to respond in kind...
So what if it's Russians attacking someone?
Anyway just an excuse for a cool post title, and also a serious observation that petroleum doesn't have to have anything to do with this thread.
I said that. It's a serious possibility, you don't need to design the more efficient sustainer to also manage takeoff (or landing, you can carry another rocket engine for that too). Since something using 19th century materials would probably be inordinately heavy, and withal not a lot more efficient than the solid rockets, then every such advantage helps.
To give an idea, a typical modern plane has cruise lift/drag ratio somewhere in the ballpark of 10-20. Whereas takeoff involves much higher lift coefficients (to get adequate lift at a lower airspeed--one could simply run along the ground until reaching full cruise speeds but that involves much longer runways, more severe demands on the landing gear, and no one does this). Higher lift coefficients create higher drag, I believe common L/D ratios at takeoff are closer to 5 or even 4. This is why JATO thrust rockets were developed during WWII, and used for some time after especially for jet engines, which were good at delivering thrust at high speeds but didn't enjoy the natural augmentation of thrust that props did (at least variable-pitch props) at low speeds. There's another limit of course, below a certain critical airspeed the lift coefficient would have to be raised beyond the stall limit and the lift just isn't there at any price.
So conceivably the cruiser system only needs a third to a quarter the thrust needed for takeoff. If rocket planes have been in use for a thousand years everyone already knows that; they have been taking off with massive banks of short-burn booster engines, probably with no ground run at all, just kicked aloft by these same engines, then climbing on some smaller but longer-burning rocket. Then gliding. The optimal range for gliding is actually not achieved at the minimum-drag lift coefficient but at the higher one for minimum power--power comes from sinking, so the less power is needed the slower the sink rate. They won't have experience flying planes at optimum minimal drag conditions then. But probably aerodynamic theory, and if not that practice, can infer it and size the sustainer engine of whatever type accordingly.