Weird thought on aviation

WI early experiments with heavier than air planes did not go well, maybe someone manages an ornithopter (flapping wing craft).

Maybe airships get to be big.

WI the first serious heavier than air plane were a ram jet probably taking off with the aid of a locomotive and landing on floats or maybe ski type undercarieage
 
Aeroplanes were an idea for which the time had come, it would take several massive butterflies to remove them, and it would probably involve removing the internal combustion engine
 
Aeroplanes were an idea for which the time had come, it would take several massive butterflies to remove them, and it would probably involve removing the internal combustion engine

Agreed. Maybe the external combustion engine too, I hear that Stirling-cycle engines can approach the power/weight requirements for flight.

Still, I'm quite taken with the notion of a ramjet-powered aircraft taking off from the back of a speeding locomotive. The first ramjets were patented before WW1 IIRC, so it might barely be possible... but you'll need a very fast train for the ramjet to provide any thrust. You might be better off with a catapult or ballista of some sort, with the understanding that if the jet fails for some reason the pilot will be getting a crash course in piloting heavy gliders.
 
A full-sized true ornithopter remains unproven, awaiting improvements in material technology. Once built, it will be found to be purposeless, much as man-powered aircraft have been. Useful for proving a concept but no more.
 
Agreed. Maybe the external combustion engine too, I hear that Stirling-cycle engines can approach the power/weight requirements for flight.

Still, I'm quite taken with the notion of a ramjet-powered aircraft taking off from the back of a speeding locomotive. The first ramjets were patented before WW1 IIRC, so it might barely be possible... but you'll need a very fast train for the ramjet to provide any thrust. You might be better off with a catapult or ballista of some sort, with the understanding that if the jet fails for some reason the pilot will be getting a crash course in piloting heavy gliders.
I like ramjets, too. You could use RATO... Or launch from under baloons or airships & recover on runways.

And considering the experiments with IC involved gunpowder, & recoil was well known, it need not have taken so long for someone to invent pulsejets, either...
 
Ramjets

Can you throttle a ramjet?

I believe that you can regulate the power to a small extent--but let it go too low, and it flames out--instant glider. You will be landing a very heavy, very fast glider, though.
 
Agreed. Maybe the external combustion engine too, I hear that Stirling-cycle engines can approach the power/weight requirements for flight....

I believe steam engines can do the job too, not as well as IC but well enough. There are problems to address, some of which can be solved technically with enough effort, others might simply be accepted

I like airships a lot but it is little appreciated that the same advances that made them practical were also what made airplanes practical; block the road to the latter with technical limits and you've blocked the road to the former too.

Ramjets are a good idea for going fast, at speeds greater than sound and above. They suck for subsonic purposes! Well, if you've got nothing better, I guess for some applications they might compete with steam engines. Particularly for applications where you need only a brief period of thrust; they will be murder on fuel consumption rates but they are lighter and simpler engines than almost anything. So a rocket takeoff, using storable (though toxic and dangerous!) hypergolic fuels (the rocket engine being about the only thing that rivals a ramjet for lightness and relative simplicity!) and ramjet flight (even the hideously low fuel efficiency of a ramjet at subsonic speeds is superior to the mass consumption rate of a rocket), accepting that fuel will be gobbled up hence endurance is low, might be workable. For most purposes even a mediocre IC engine, or a sophisticated steam or Stirling type engine, would be better. For missiles, though, the ramjet is attractive; I've thought of some wackier ideas too.

An option often considered but that rarely worked well in practice in WWII for instance was to land troops in gliders.

But suppose we have heavy gliders designed to fly quite fast, at nearly sonic speeds, and have a fleet of airships to drop them from, and they have ramjets? Now the glider pilot has some thrust to work with, and the plane is going fast, hence hard to intercept. If there is some method installed to enable a slow crash landing on a small pre-selected site, say a bunch of parachutes are deployed and rocket engines (like solid-fuel JATO types) are lit during landing approach for the thrust (once slowed down, the ramjets will cut off completely), then maybe we could do D-Day Buck Rogers style!:p

As for ornithopters, I just don't believe in them. I suppose today with our really high tech materials and computer control, we might manage to make some work as stunts, but they wouldn't serve any purpose we can't meet better with more conventional craft. I just don't believe someone with 19th century tech could make one work at all.
 
But suppose we have heavy gliders designed to fly quite fast, at nearly sonic speeds, and have a fleet of airships to drop them from, and they have ramjets? Now the glider pilot has some thrust to work with, and the plane is going fast, hence hard to intercept.
didn't the Japanese use something like that in WW2?


If there is some method installed to enable a slow crash landing on a small pre-selected site,
they used a 600 to 800 Kg warhead to slow it down

300px-Japanese_Ohka_rocket_plane.jpg
 
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