Aug 172011
A May, 2011 video from NASA-Langley discussing current NASA work on rotorcraft design. Has some CG animation of passenger carrying high speed rotorcraft, and some footage of a wind tunnel model of something that *might* be a massively mutated UH-60.
[youtube IESNnkCcGK8]
7 Responses to “Helicopters of the future”
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The odd thing at the twenty second mark is a Kamen K cargo lifter.
http://philip.greenspun.com/images/200606-i80-helicopter-trip/kaman-k-max-heavy-lift-helicopter-1.tcl
It had a pretty short life:
http://calfire.blogspot.com/2008/12/rotary-aircraft-down-swanson-aviation.html
actually the Kaman K-MAX is doing quite well as a UAV prototype/system development
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7qWuPifPtY
some of the other Kaman helos were crap. I used to work on the SH-2F seasprites.
Why not just examine a modern Fairy Rotodyne? Modern turbo-props , glass cockpit, carbon composite structure, is there something I’m missing?
Rotodyne was canceled because the rotor tip jets made a excessive amount of noise on takeoff and landing; maybe they could help that with some modern computer-aided design, but it could still be a show-stopper even nowadays if they couldn’t.
I had always heard that at the time the Rotodyne was being developed the British government was forcing the mergers of a lot of these companies and in the ensuing shuffling about it’s one of the programs that got dropped.
The other ancedote I’ve been told was that they test flew it taking off, landing and flying to and fro in several major cities and no one complained about it being excessively noisy.
They actually tried a test route London/Paris and it worked well. Couldn’t be more of a noise problem than Silverstone on British GP day.
Ah, here we are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Z1UnRZDyo