That’s like saying you have to do complex chemistry in your head to digest your food. Magneto’s mutant ability is natural to him, like wiggling his fingers and toes (which doesn’t required you to do complex physics either - you just do it)
YOU’RE a dork?.. at one point I worked for Marvel comics! Can you get more dorky than that?
ta- DAAAAAA! IT’S SUPER DORK!!!
C’mon - I’m a nerd with thick glasses that likes to play with heavy machinery. I should have a user name of “Hank McCoy” and blue fur*.
You’d think that…but, in comic (and animation) continuity, Magneto can apparently magnetically effect any metal. It’s been noted that if his magnetism was that strong, he’d be able to levitate things like wood and frogs, too. I can make no excuses. :smack:
Anyway, in the series “X-Men: Evolution,” a vehicle called the “Velocity” was introduced in the late 1st season. It looks a bit like an early model Hind, and is said not to contain “an ounce of metal.”
Oddly enough, the Velocity has what seems to be a jet or a rocket booster mounted under the tail. (A ramjet, maybe?) While some have speculated that this is to boost airspeed, my guess is that the Velocity is actually a gyrocopter hybrid…Perhaps it uses tip jets (or rockets) to get the vehicle airborne and up to speed, then the ramjet is ignited to act as a “pusher,” and the rotor jets extinguished.
It seems possible, if needlessly complex, enough. But there’s still the problem of the electrical system. Even allowing carbon fibers as conductors, what the heck would you use for a battery or a generator?
Ranchoth
(A Leyden jar and a big potato? )
I don’t know about the electromagnetics and heating, but I do seem to recall that he was able to control fired bullets–which IIRC are full metal jacket copper over lead. Neither of which are somewhat remotely as magnetic as iron.
But I agree with Xema. The cost and safety of such a machine with untested tolerances would make it more of a nusiance than a practicality. Has anyone even tried the grinding of swashplate bearings against carbon fiber?
Besides, it’s a moot point anyway. All Magneto would need to do would be to pick up a piece of ferrous metal and fling it as a projectile at said machine anyway. He’s got a relatively unlimited suppy of ammunition in a city. . .
Tripler
Aw shit. It wasn’t X-Men. It was The Matrix. My bad! :smack:
My understanding is that rotor blades have been non-metal for a long time. Wood covered with fiberglass, carbon fiber, etc.
Composites are excellent for applications where you need light weight, stiffness, and strength in tension. Rotor blades are a perfect example of that.
You’d have no problem making the major structures out of composite materials. Airframe, main rotor, tail rotor, seat frames, engine mounts, etc. It’d be expensive as hell, but no problem.
It’s the little stuff that will be really hard to do, though. Braided lines, actuators, nuts and bolts, wiring, ball bearings, etc.
I think keeping ALL metal out of the aircraft would be next to impossible with current state of the art. Getting the metal by weight down to 10% or so might be doable.
Pardon me, but my understanding is that, metal suffers from… well, metal fatigue, after continuous loading forces the cristaline structure disgregates causing microscopic fisures that in the end cause the failure of the metal component; that´s why airplane components such as wing spars have a set use life under a certain usage; for example a spar may need to be replaced after X hours of flight in between forces of 2 to 3 Gs, but if during that time the forces where 4 to 6 Gs the life span is reduced X/2 or something.
Composites are free of fatigue as metal suffers AFAIK. And I yet have to see a composite component to fail catastrophycally, the fibrous nature of the material does not propagate structural damage as well as solid metal.
I would suggest Teflon or even Nylon for the swashplate, as long as we are talking about a small helicopter.
That´s a very good idea, plus there´s no need for a tail rotor.
Well, it’s not like comic books are known for their continuity. He can already levitate people - why not frogs, too?
You mean, it doesn’t look like this Velocity? (which has the advantage of actually being a flying aircraft)
That seems like a lot of fuss and bother… you know, there are probably some sound reasons why helis replaced gyros, but I’m not savvy enough about rotorcraft to figure that out. And I’m not sure you can really get more speed out of rotorcraft simply by hanging the equivalent of a JATO on its belly. Maybe one of the real chopperdudes here can enlighten us.
There ARE aircraft that function quite well without a battery - although they may need assistance starting from an auxillary power unit (or human being swinging a prop). Most of our power systems, though, rely on electricity, though, and where there is electricity there is magnetism (yes? It’s been awhile since Physics class)
True, metal fatigue exists - but it can be detected before failure of the part. Granted, this testing and detection is not always cheap or easy, but it can be done. It is routinely done on rotorhubs, for instance, given that a failure there is a Very Bad Thing. We do not, at present, have as much information on some of the lifespans of composite materials, nor do we have as much skill in testing composites for wear. The one exception to this is the best known natural composite, wood, which will also show detectable stress before ultimate failure.
I have seen catastrophic composite failure. I was in a hangar once when a composite prop on an aircraft outside the hangar failed and shot through one wall going in the hangar and (we presume) out the opposite wall - but since we found mostly holes in things and very few pieces we’re not sure how much of the prop made it back outside. I have a friend who lost about a 1/2 inch off the end of a composite prop blade while in flight (he did make a successful landing). Finally, when one of my flying buddies crash-landed his Vari-EZE on a local road a couple blocks from my house he rather painfully demonstrated that at least some composite hulls will shatter - and I do mean shatter, like glass - on impact with a metal lightpole (the pole, by the way, was undamaged. The pilot had made a recovery and is now flying again, although somewhat more cautiously). Granted, crashing into a lightpole does exceed design specifications, but what impressed me was how the entire composite structure, meaning the fuselage, fell to pieces and not just at the point of contact. A metal plane would also have suffered severe damage in such a crash, of course, but could probably have been either rebuilt or salvaged for parts.
And then there’s that whole bit about Flight 587 and the Amazing Snap-Off Vertical Stabilizer…
Now, every time I bring up these little flaws some fellow in the back of the room stands up and says “manufacturing defect!” Well, perhaps, but of the above incidents, only the prop-through-a-hangar involved new hardware - everything else had been in place and functioning for some time prior to failure. in the case of the VariEZE, we’re talking about a 20 year old airplane - I don’t know how many hours of service, but I do know it was flown regularly by prior owners - several hundred at the least, and possibly up to a thousand or two.
I don’t follow how using rotor-tip rocket/jet engines would elminate the need for a tail rotor. If the big blades are all swinging one way, the body of the aircraft wants to swing the other regardless of motive force and that motion needs to counteracted - hence, the tail rotor. The only rotorcraft I’m aware of that don’t have tailrotors are those with two sets of counter-rotating big blades. Of course, I don’t pretend to be an authority on rotorcraft so I certainly could be wrong on this point, just as I was on the issue of composite rotorblades.
A fixed-wing aircraft flies faster the higher it goes. In a nutshell, air pressure is less at altitude so you have to fly faster to get the volume of air you want. Rotorcraft are different.
A rotorcraft has an advancing blade (or blades) and retreating a retreating blade (or blades). Assume that a helicopter is hovering and tht the blade tips are spinning at 300 knots. Both blades (I’ll stick to a two-bladed system here) have an airspeed of 300 knots (at their tips; which doesn’t need to be repeated). Now assume we come out of the hover and cruise at 100 knots. Now the advancing blade has an airspeed of 400 knots and the retreating blade has an airspeed of 200 knots.
Here’s the rub: As airspeed increases, the airspeed of the retreating blade decreases. As we all know, there is a minimum volume of air that must flow over an airfoil in order to generate enough lift to maintain flight. At some forward airspeed, the retreating blade will stall just as the wings of an airplane will stall when its airspeed falls below a certain point.
That is, airplanes have an aerodynamic limit on their slowest speed and helicopters have a limit on their highest speed. (Aircraft have structural limits as well, but we’re talking about aerodynamic limits here.)
So while airplanes fly faster the higher they go, helicopters must fly slower the higher they go. While an airplane is pretty much limited by the strength of its structure and the power of its engine, and may fly as fast as its structure will allow, a helicopter can only fly as fast as its retreating blade will allow.
A tail rotor is properly called an “anti-toque rotor”. You are familiar with the torque in the airplanes you fly. The wings and control surfaces of an airplane are large ehough to counteract the torque without much movement. But it still helps to have aileron trim ar high power settings. The trim is not needed at lower power settings.
In a helicopter the engine, through the transmission, spins the rotors. The opposite force (torque) tries to spin the engine in the opposite direction. In a typical American helicopter (French and Russian rotors turn the other way) you need to add left anti-torque pedal as you add power. Unlike in an airplane where ruddeer pedals are required for a coordinated turn, helicopters are pretty much “point the stick where you want to go, and leave the pedals alone”. (Of course, you change the lift vector in a bank. So you should add a little power, which necessitates a slight addition of anti-torque; but it’s more subtle than in an airplane. More like adding back pressure on the elevators in a coordinated turn.)
When the helicopter pilot reduces power, he must also remove some of the anti-torque. (The helicopters I’m familiar with do not have springs in the pedals, so you have to press right pedal.) In the event of a power loss, the Sprague clutch automatically disngages the rotor system from the engine. Since the engine is not delivering power to the rotor system, there is no torque to counteract except for a residual amount caused by the friction of the transmission.
What if there is a tail rotor failure? Sporty’s has some great footage from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes showing what happens when the tail rotor hits the ground. But it doesn’t need to be as dramatic as the on-screen accident. If you have some alititude you can chop the throttle. This removes the engine torque from the rotor system and allows the pilot to maintain a fair amount of control. A really good pilot can extend his glide and/or alter his course by adding power judiciously.
If your helicopter has tip jets instead of an engine and transmission, then the only torque is that caused by the friction of the rotor shaft. I’ve never flown such a helicopter. Indeed, I’ve only seen photos. But they do work without an anti-torque rotor.
Well, it´s made of fiber-glass after all . Carbon fibre and Kevlar composites are much more tougher.
Ya think?
I have a vague memory of that; I´ll have to dig it up; of course composite structures can fail, but under normal conditions they keep going, on the other hand a metal structure (specially delicate airframes) after many use cycles do break appart, even under normal conditions. Think of a fishing rod, one made of aluminium and one of carbon fibre, do you think the aluminium fishing rod would take as much flexing cycles as the CF one? after a couple fiery trouts the metal rod would either be bent out of shape or broken.
Quite possible, but when desing specification go out of the window (lightpole) as good as composites are the structure fails. The thing is that a composite structure is usually lighter than a metal one, so usually engineers redesign the structure to be as strong but lighter; in the end the airframe can take as much punishment as before, but at great weight savings.
One thing I´m not very confident about is the resin matrix of composites, I don´t know if and how it can develop cracks, if it´s degraded by ambiental factors as UV light or heat, etc…
Oh, now you get fussy and start specifying a particular composite…!
The main point is that composite structures, for all their wonders, are not invincible and invulnerable. They can and do fail.
Let’s just say that using the rudder during normal flight should not result in departure of a vital part of the airframe from the rest of the airframe.
Ya know, when a piece of metal starts to deform, I can see that there’s something wrong. A metal-frame-and-skin airplane such as I fly will frequently show damage prior to ultimate failure, allowing the detection of many problems on a simple pre-flight. So if I approach, say, a small Cessna and note wrinkled skin, or a bent elevator, or a crack in the prop I can see there’s a problem before something snaps. The same appleis to ragwing airplanes - cloth shows signs of wear or sundamage, flying wires may fray before breaking, and wooden structures may show splintering prior to coming apart. Composites do not show such obvious signs of fatigue. It’s flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-flex-BREAK! with no readily detectable warning.
The other point I’d like to make is that you can make a landing with a bent metal wing. Not something I’d seek out as an experience, but it’s been done. Composites do not bend, they break, and can break catastrophically.
I’d rather hit a bird in a metal airplane - or even a cloth one with good ribstitching - than in a composite. I’ve seen what happens when a goose hits a small plane - it leaves a hole. Metal planes, I think, survive that treatment better than the average small composite hull.
When composites are good they’re very very good and when they’re bad they’re scary :eek:
Would I fly in a composite plane? Well, yeah - just as I’ve flown with composite props. It’s just that I’m aware composites, like everything else, have good points and bad points.
UV light and heat can degrade some composites… but most construction using such incorporate a UV block of some sort (which may be as simple as paint - which can also be quite effective). Resins may be improperly mixed, or exposed to chemicals and conditions that can degrade them (just as exposure to salt air can cause corrosion in a metal airplane). Composite layers can also delaminate, either through manufacturing defect or extreme stress.
Composites, however, do not tend to show cracks or signs of fatigue or other signs of incipient failure. At least not readily detectable ones. I’ve seen cracks in metal airplanes, and bent control surfaces that gave me warning not to fly that machine. They’re often subtle and you have to look carefully, but they are visibile to the average human being with a little training. Composites give no such warning. The inspection process is different, and with newer materials not as well understood as the materials we’ve been using for a half century or more.
Maybe I’m checking in late - but I thought I’d mention these two experimental composite helicopters.. In the 80’s the US Army paid Bell and Sikorsky to build composite airframe helicopters, which were both flown. I came across one of them in a boneyard in Virginia and tore off a little piece - kept it in my desk for years, but lost it in a move.
Composite rotor blades have been mentioned. The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior has a composite hub yoke that bears all of the centrifugal force of the blades, and I believe there are civilian helicopters with composite hubs for primary structure.
As for the engine & other stuff - why don’t you ask Wonder Woman what she uses in that glass airplane of hers?
I think the biggest challenge is the electronics. Whileyou can make a helicopter without them, if you have seen X-Men: Evolution, the helicopter has a lot. Radar and radio, LCD screens and buttons galor. Clearly metal has to be used, there is just no other way to do it. Yes, the wires can be replaced with fiber optics and everything converted to accept that kind of signal, but what makes the light? And LED? That’s got metal. You need a lot of solder to connect componants, metal again. And we have seen from sources that Magneto’s power is not just much controling magnetism, but controlling all metal as well, magnetic or not. Give him a piece of aluminum and he can make it do his will because it is metal, not magnetic.
But the helicopter might be “magneto proof” because it has low metal content. In X-Men 2, the amount of metal normally present in the human body is not enough for him to do anything with, he needed more iron injected. So if the amount of metal is just very very low and not concentrated, it may be that getting it to work for him takes too much of his time and it would be simply easier to throw something at it.
He can control magnetism. Or maybe he just thought the name was cool. Either way he can control/create magnetic fields. Of course in X2 we see him work on metal on a scale so small that there is no magnetic field and the metal would not be affected either.
And I don’t think the plastic heli would work. Very likely you’d be able to do it with a minimum of metal, maybe eventually none, but it wouldn’t be a desirable military craft.
I believe we have ignored the possibility of a human-powered craft…
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