Ask HN: Next Gen, Slow, Heavy Lift Firefighting Aircraft Specs?
How can new and existing firefighting aircraft, land craft, seacraft, and other capabilities help fight fire; in California at present and against the new climate enemy?
## Roadmap
- [ ] Brainstorm challenges and solutions; new sustainable approaches and time-tested methods
- [ ] Write a grant spec
- [ ] Write a legislative program funding request
## Challenges
- Challenge: Safety; Risk to personnel and civilians
- Challenge: Diving into fire is dangerous for the human aircraft operator
- Challenge: Vorticity due to fire heat; fire CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics)
-- The verticals that updraft and downdraft off a fire are dangerous for pilots and expensive, non-compostable aircraft.
- Challenge: Water drifts away before it hits the ground due to the release altitude, wind, and fire air currents
- Challenge: Water shortage
- Challenge: Water lift aircraft shortage
- Task: Pour thousands of gallons (or Canadian litres) of water onto fire
- Task: Pour a line, a circle, or other patterns to contain fire
- Task: Process seawater quickly enough to avoid property damage with untreated ocean salt water, for example
https://www.google.com/search?q=fluid+vorticity+fire+plane
## Solutions
- Are Quadcopters (or n-copters) more stable than helicopters or planes in high-wind fire conditions?
- Fire CFD modeling for craft design.
- Light, durable aerospace-grade hydrogen vessels
- Intermodally transportable containers
- Are there stackable container-sized water vessels for freight transport?
- Floating, towable seawater processing and loading capability.
-- Process seawater for: domestic firefighting, disaster relief,
-- Fill vessels at sea.
- "Starlite" as a flame retardant; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite
- starlite youtuber #Replication FWIU: [ cornstarch, flour, sugar, borax ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite#Replication
- Notes re: "xPrize Wildfire – $11M Prize Competition" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35658214
- Hydrogels, Aerogels
- (Hemp) Aerogels absorb oil better than treated polyurethane foam and hair.
- EV fire blanket, industry cartridge spec
- Non-flammable batteries; unpressurized Sodium Ion, Proton batteries, Twisted Carbon Nanotube batteries
- Compostable batteries
- Cloud seeding and firefighting
## Reference material
- Aerial firefighting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_firefighting
- Aerial firefighting > Comparison table of fixed-wing, firefighting tanker airplanes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_firefighting#Comparison...