Langley Hypothetical Airplane

[TheChronicOne]

I stumbled across this the other day. I didn't devote eons of time to searching, but I couldn't really find much information about it....

It's definitely weird.


Photo Credit: MIRIAM WEINBERG



Photo Credit: DONALD HUEBLER  "TROPHY PRESENTATION WITH NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER DIRECTOR DR D HEARTH AND NASA LEWIS RESEARCH CENTER DIRECTOR DR JAMES MCCARTHY"


More here: https://picryl.com/media/langley-hypothetical-airplane-86eef2   


Anyone know anything about this jive contraption?  The site there says the pictures were from 1980, and come from the United States National Archive.






EDIT:    I feel as if I may have posted this in the wrong forum, so if one of yous mods guys see fit and/or know of a a better place to move it to, then by all means...


EDIT 2:   H2 is Hydrogen, right? So maybe they wanted to run this thing on water. . . ... ..    (yes I know water is "H2O" but water is the "fuel" used in "hydrogen" engines from what I understood.... that's why I said "run on water" instead of just "run on hydrogen" because you have to have teh water to get to teh hydrogen )

[jcf]

H² is gaseous hydrogen, so the joke is that the aircraft would be a huge
keg of hydrogen fueling the engines, note it also riffs on the strut-braced
wing and "multi finger" wingtip concepts (the correct designation escapes
me at the moment) that were being explored in the period. 

Strut-braced wing bizjet from 1980:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810002505.pdf

[Weaver]

H² is gaseous hydrogen, so the joke is that the aircraft would be a huge
keg of hydrogen fueling the engines, note it also riffs on the strut-braced
wing and "multi finger" wingtip concepts (the correct designation escapes
me at the moment) that were being explored in the period. 

Strut-braced wing bizjet from 1980:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810002505.pdf

That's interesting. The study, quite properly, keeps the aircraft configuration the same in all three versions apart from the actual wing, which is just what you need to make a comparison. However I wonder what would be possible if you had a free hand to design a strut-braced bizjet from scratch? A couple of things that I note are that the diameter of the engines' fan shrouds are about the same at the gap between the wing and the base of the strut, and that the strut-based configurations seem to make no provision to hold the landing gear that's been displaced from the baseline aircraft's low wing. This all makes me wonder if there would be an advantage in having a short lower wing to hold the undercarriage and mount the engines at it's tips, with the shroud of the latter enclosing a C-shaped strut in order to reduce the drag from 'naked' struts.

[zenrat]

Hydrogen burns producing water.  So you run on hydrogen and produce water as an exhaust.

[NARSES2]

EDIT:    I feel as if I may have posted this in the wrong forum, so if one of yous mods guys see fit and/or know of a a better place to move it to, then by all means...

It's a good enough fit here mate, so I'll leave it 

[TheChronicOne]

Fascinating stuff. Learned about the hydrogen, and as mentioned, now the keg makes sense.     The whole plane reminds me of a beverage system. The body itself, and the nose looks like like them pointy paper cups that go with water coolers. 

I guess the stuff I heard about pertained more to fantasy auto engines. People would make "engines" that would run on water by turning it into hydrogen and somehow it made the engine go. Last I checked, they never were efficient enough to provide even a little bit of power. Different beast altogther I guess and no wonder they didn't consider it because it simply does't work. Mythbusters even tested one and it was just a pile of crap. 

Strut wings? I'll have to read through that PDF , this sounds pretty neat! Wingtips remind me of mother nature:




Thanks, Chris!! I was thinking, "Well, this could imspire someone!" so I dumped it in here. Not much thought was put into it. 

[jcf]

Yep, the birds were the inspiration.

[jcf]

Pfenninger concept from 1975:


Slides from Virginia Tech Powerpoint on their research:




Virginia Tech Powerpoint on the Truss Braced Wing (select slideshow at top of viewer window):
http://slideplayer.com/slide/5971786/

A History of the Truss Braced Wing:
http://awin.aviationweek.com/Portals/aweek/media/truss/truss.html

Boeing and Nasa have been working together on research for years, Boeing SUGAR:


https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20160007043.pdf

[TheChronicOne]

This stuff is sooooo cool, man, thanks!!!!! Very inspirational, as well. This 1975 one I really like.

[jcf]

https://www.aoe.vt.edu/content/dam/aoe_vt_edu/research/groups/tbw/reports/11-14-97mad.pdf

Wingtip engines as requested.