Forums | MacLife

Bren wrote:

Doesn't having your helicopter chained to the ground make it more difficult to take off?

Yes, but that's the fun part, watching the pilots try to figure out what's wrong.

1, but it's a very small aircraft carrier.

Every measurement is a container of infinity. How many times can you divide a number? So even if the universe is finite, it is infinite.

StaticAge wrote:

Every measurement is a container of infinity. How many times can you divide a number? So even if the universe is finite, it is infinite.

What happens if you turn a bag of holding inside-out?

Tallgeese wrote:

Zapata wrote:

Tallgeese wrote:

(and that kids is why you need to leave some slack in your tiedown chains)

I don't think it was due to it being tied down. It looks like they were running the rotors at the natural frequency of the structure which caused it to tear itself apart.

No, it's called ground resonance. When in flight or on the ground with the ability to 'bounce' so to speak, the vibration of the blades doesn't set up a resonance. When it's tied too tightly to the deck the vibrations feed back through it and it can shake apart. I've been in charge of helicopter flight deck safety and operations, it's a very important thing to teach the handlers, to always leave slack in the chains and avoid this problem.

I learned something new. I only deal with airplanes so my knowledge of helicopters is limited.

Only one small, light helicopter

After all, it's only the paper plans that need to be lifted.

Bren wrote:

Tallgeese wrote:

sturner wrote:

Question: How many helicopters does it take to lift an aircraft carrier?

A CVN displaces about 100,000 tons and a Skycrane has a 10 ton payload capacity, so...

What are the ramifications for the Helicarrier?

http://home.gate.net/~furyofshield/shie … rrier.html

It couldn't really carry Godzilla in real life.

And thanks to the 1999 Korean film, Yongarry (AKA Yongarry 2001: Upgrade Edition, AKA Reptilian) which I just mentioned in another thread, we know that it takes sixteen Chinooks to lift a Godzilla-sized dino-monster:

Bren wrote:

What are the ramifications for the Helicarrier?

In the early twentieth century, airships were a promising new front of warfare, with dirigibles serving both for bombing and for intelligence gathering.  However, the advent of airplanes and key disasters such as the Hindenburg fire spelled the death of the airship as a war weapon.  Airships still stuck around, though, in the form of the blimps that float over sporting events.  They also frequently appeared in fantasy and science fiction, where they served as key attack aircraft or command centers in such works as the Marvel comic book universe (the SHIELD helicarrier), Final Fantasy, Aeon Flux, and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Now airships are poised to make a real life return to the battlefront.  Measuring 250 feet in length, Lockheed Martin's Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) is sure to make an imposing presence on the battlefield when it debuts in mid-2011.

The ship is capable of carrier passengers, or being remotely controlled by operators in the U.S.  The airship can sit at up to 20,000 feet for as long as three weeks at a time.  The LEMV is actually a special kind of airship called a hybrid airship.  Where most airships are lighter than air when flying, hybrid airships are heavier than air, though they do get some of their buoyancy from gas compartments.  The rest comes from lift during flight (like airplanes).  Some, like LEMV, feature turbines on their underside to help them initially launch into the air, though they still require a short runway.

The materials which compose the three lobes of the aircraft have not been released, so its hard to assess how resistant to enemy fire they will be.  Given, the craft's cruising height, though, it should be able to remain relatively safe.  The aircraft carries its instruments and sensors in a 40-foot long, 15-foot wide area behind the cockpit.  The sensor payload will be 2,500 pounds and draw 16 Kw of power.

The outlandish airship will see test deployment to the battlefield in Afghanistan two years from now.  It will be used primarily for intelligence.

Lockheed Martin is also developing separate airships to transport large amounts of cargo at lower altitudes.  The LEMV and Lockheed's other airships are largely based on the 125-foot P-791 hybrid airship, built and tested in 2006.  The P-791 showed itself capable of taking flight, carrying heavy loads, and executing sharp turns over six test flights.

W/pix.  Huge Lockheed Martin Airship Set to Debut in 2011, Survey Battlefields

That things is totally bad-smurf! The article is wrong, however, in describing the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier as an airship. That is, if we're agreeing that an airship is a lighter-than-air vehicle. Preposterous though it is, the Helicarrier was originally portrayed as a rotor-craft big enough for people to live in. If memory serves me, it was replaced at some point with a jet-engined model, or maybe one with some type of exotic propulsion or anti-gravity mechanism.

Back to the subject of real airships, there's now a privately operated one housed here in Northern California at Moffett Field. It's very conventional looking, in comparison to that Lockheed Martin monster, but still very interesting from a technical standpoint.

Yeah, it was really the USS  Akron crashing in a storm that killed the airships.

Helium is produced during refinement/production of natural gas. It just isn't usually captured for economic reasons. As our reserves deplete, it will become economical to capture it again.