NASA Stealth Copter | Hacker News Reader

NASA Stealth Copter

3.ly

22 pointstechdog14 comments

Can a mod change the URL on the submission to the non-shortened one? http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2010/01/nasas-one-man-stealth...

most of the url shortening services are banned here. i'm sure this one will be too, eventually.

How the hell do you get a single digit as a domain name?

Have/buy friends in the .LY registrar and/or Libyan government?

A plug for un-tiny: http://untiny.com/ Can be used with greasemonkey (my revisions: http://github.com/markhepburn/untiny-greasemonkey/ )

Forget about scratching your knee if you have an in-flight itch! I get claustrophobic just looking at that thing.

There seems to be a company in Japan selling one person helicopters. Gasoline powered though.

http://en.gen-corp.jp/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd99ziWFF7Q

I don't think my neck can withstand that cruising position for very long. I always thought if it wasn't for Clark Kent's super strength, he would have developed neck problems.

Maybe hang glider pilots could provide more insight.

This will never fly, in the current config. Too much danger from the propellers which are level with your HEAD.

Really awesome, I'll be willing to buy this if they build it...

That is awesome, but what's the point in using batteries? It's just a sop to the environment that drastically limits the device's potential. The fact is that hydrocarbon fuel is still the best, highest density energy transport we have. Batteries are still weak and, especially for flight, awfully heavy.

Keep the electric motors but ditch the batteries and replace it with a small gas turbine generator. For the same weight, you could probably increase the flight time by a factor of 10, well beyond the willingness of most people to sit in that thing ...

Agreed. Legally, GA aircraft under visual flight rules must have at least 30 mins reserve so currently this thing wouldn't be allowed to fly!

Battery powered aircraft aren't completely impractical though. This Chinese electric 2 seater has a 40KW brushless electric motor, 400lbs of payload and up to 3 hours of endurance: http://www.flyingmag.com/pilot-reports/lsa/sport/electrics-e...

The downside is it's slow (60mph), but if the engineering challenges for lithium-air batteries are ever solved you'd have a serious competitor to piston aircraft. Not to mention that electric engines are far more reliable than piston ICEs and you don't have to worry about fuel fires (just don't use Sony batteries ;-)

electric engines are far more reliable than piston ICEs

So are turbines, by a wide margin. Electric motors powered by a gas turbine would be a pretty damn reliable system. I do not trust reciprocating engines as far as I can throw them! I know the perverse regulatory environment that has lead to the stagnation of technology in GA but still.

Not completely dead, though, it seems - thanks for that link. Most impressive. $89k! Sheesh, that's almost regular-joe level!

Exactly. The very sad reality is that humans really just were not meant to fly; we're too heavy. Luckily for us, we're smart enough to burn some hydrocarbons and lift our heave bodies off of the ground. Artificially limiting this ability using batteries is just silly.

If the tech was practical (it isn't right now) or if this project was about developing batteries (it doesn't sound like it is) then fine, but can we pretty please see a gas version?

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