Part 23
August 1998
Diricopters
Think about this the next time you are
stuck in rush-hour traffic: --wouldn't you just love to lift up over all
those glaring red tail lights and go straight over to your
destination?
Here are three things to
consider:
1. Semi-dirigible, easy-to-drive,
simplified, safe and economical, inflatable helicopters.
2. 40,000 or more mothballed military
helicopters, from before the Vietnam era and since, rotting under the
sun in the Mojave Desert.
3. Beacon-to-beacon, pad-to-pad,
line-of-flight commuting to your destination (and a commerciable
community service to your destination), in a quarter to a tenth of the
time it now takes you.
The invention: semi-dirigible
helicopters. Overlooked thus far only because we think in categories
instead of realistically (is it a helicopter, or is it 'something else?'
Does it fly, or does it, um, well, fly?) Also in the combat missions and
air rescue roles which we have let define the category "helicopter," we
wanted speed and power. In those capacities, dirigible characteristics
would only be in the way.
The basic engineering would not be
difficult. In effect, wrap inflatable panels as your fuselage, around the
frame of the helicopter. Inflate them with helium to give partial lift.
Balance off the weight of the frame in such a way that you don't need the
attitude controls which make the flying of conventional helicopters such a
balancing act. (Provide a basic tilt control on a standby emergency basis,
default position standard balance, usually never engaged - automatically
pumping lifting-gas from one side to the other and/or front & back.)
Most of the lifting panels will run along the upper sides of your frame.
You want your weight down, your support up, like a child's knock-me-down
toy which keeps righting itself, so you can do away with the delicate
balancing act which so complicated the flying of today's
helicopters.
The lifting-gas can be pumped back into
pressurized tanks or canisters when the copter is going to be on the
ground for awhile. That way you don't have to even tether the thing to
keep it from blowing away.
With controls simplified, you wouldn't
need the high level of skills, training, and multiple safety overrides
which make helicopter flight such an expensive process today. With
attitude (as distinct from altitude) controls not needed, virtually
everything could be on one computer joystick or - more reassuringly for
the typical driver, one automobile-like steering wheel with not only
left-right, but forward-back for speed (back-click-further back for
reverse). --Or use the accelerator/brake pedal arrangement of a car. Up
& down on the steeringwheel to control, well, up and down. Fuel,
temperature and other gauges would give not only direct readings but run
with idiot lights - green for o.k., yellow a caution, red = DO something!
Also with a "ping-hum" auditory signal when going into the yellow and a
light continuous pinging - enough to be heard, not so loud as to panic the
driver - once into the red. Objective of all of this is to make the
diricopter easier to drive than is the ubiquitous family car - and a lot
safer.
With most - not quite all - of the
weight of the diricopter and its load effect by lifting helium, you would
not need the gas-guzzler powerful engine which also makes helicopter
flight such an expensive process today. Practically a lawn-mower engine
would suffice.
Worry about style and looks later. The
first generation diricopters - especially those which were adaptations
from all those dead helicopters rotting in the Mojave - would stop looking
like grasshoppers and start looking more like bumblebees or flying
beetles. Design engineers and aerodynamicists can go to work to pretty up
later generations of the diricopter.
Adaptable Resources Available to the
First Generation of Diricopters:
I am given to understand that the main
reason that most of those rotting 40,000+ military helicopters in the
Mojave aren't harvested for parts is that there isn't that much current
demand for parts! Only a few can afford to operate copters under current
conditions. Also, it'd cost more to harvest them than it does to leave
them there rotting, keeping happy the bureaucrats and inventory
specialists.
So should an enterprise or enterprises
be put together for this purpose, arranging to take over for certified
civilian purpose and rehabilitate a few thousand of these copters, should
be relatively easy and inexpensive. --Not guaranteed so, of course,
because politics may enter here in making such arrangements. An enterprise
or enterprises could engineer the adaptations and rehabilitation of at
least several specific types of these abandoned helicopters. Then operate
directly by franchise, or sell to, enterprises in each major city which
would provide the commuting service. There are plenty of people who would
pay the $10 or $20 per flight to get immediately to where they want to go
instead of wasting hour after hour drinking in exhaust fumes on the
clogged roadways. My guess is that even with relatively inefficient
first-generation diricopters, many commuting services could turn a modest
profit from those prices. More efficient second-generation diricopters
should provide an excellent competitive venue for further developments in
the commuter service, and expand into the "company copter" market. Third
generation diricopters should expand into the family car market, with a
hugely differential impact on some real estate values. It would seem that
there are some significant opportunities in this context for someone to
create new wealth, if anyone reading this has some initiative.
By time of that third-generation and
after, these semi-dirigible helicopters have been seen in several various
futures as the "family car." Low-flying, slow, light, can't fall, worst it
can do is only to drift if its power fails; following radar/radio beacons
like roads; low-powered and fuel efficient. Three dimensions laned instead
of two, means a few human generations before traffic gets to be a problem
again and maybe by then we'll have worked out a very different way
altogether of getting back and forth. No more traffic problems: just mount
another beacon-channel to fly through between widely spaced poles some or
many miles apart. Safety overrides force drift-down with distress beacon
if a flyer leaves the pre-programmed channel or if power fails. Wind and
storm warning provisions built into override system. If a flyer drifts
down onto water, it will float indefinitely. Nearly buoyant in the air, it
will be very buoyant in the water. Emergency anchors and anchor for normal
tethering when onsite, or fuselage panels filled with lifting gas or
helium are deflated and pumped back into pressurized canisters for
longer-term parking. Profitable for someone to provide: a simple, simple,
simple system which lets people get on with what they need to be
doing.
When, after 40 years of overlooking
it(!), people back here in the U.S. finally picked up Europe's
nickel-cadmium battery, a pretty penny got turned and new branches of
industry developed. Surely the diricopter, yet another one of our
inventions which are exercises in the obvious, now your invention because
cast into public domain to dramatize the need for Patent Reform (see posted at Project Renaissance) and in
reference to our current major new book Discovering the
Obvious.... surely this diricopter is potentially a greater
profit-maker for someone than was the likewise overlooked nickel-cadmium
battery?
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