It never flew of course—and with one 30hp engine driving two props, I don’t think it could have, unless you built it out of a ricepaper/cavorite composite.—but I’m planning on trying to get something like it flying on a flight simulator.
But my question is…how much would this thing have like weighed? (Not counting the weight of a steam engine that would realistically have had enough power to get the plane airborne. I’m not an expert, but my WAG is that any circa-1840s design steam engine with that kind of power would just be too large/heavy.)
Based on a quick study of WWI-era aircraft, I had an initial guess that the Steam Carriage might have weighed something like 15,000 lbs, empty. But I could be wrong, and/or being overly generous.
I have a more clear diagram “three-view” here, if it’s of any use. Can anyone help me figure this one out?
There isn’t nearly enough information there to guess any better than you have. What materials would be used? Not aluminum; it was too rare and expensive then. Wood? How thick, what type? What construction was the fuselage to have? You would certainly have to include the engine weight, too.
The Ariel was no better an idea than those of any of the other crackpot dreamers of the time. It’s noteworthy only in having attracted some serious capital investment, and for some pretty advertising pictures like the ones in your links.
Forget the engine and the plane itself - given the horrendous inefficiency of the engines of the time, I doubt 30hp could lift the water and fuel needed for the engine.
A 126’ wingspan and 1919 wood & canvas construction technology yielded an empty weight of 16,000 lbs and a max weight of 27,000 lbs. The NC’s engines collectively put out 1600 HP & weighed about 3500 lbs. So an unpowered airplane about Henson’s size and technology would weigh about (16000-3500)*1.2^2 ~= 18,000 lbs since it’s about 20% more wingspan and weight (very!!) crudely scales at the square of the wingspan. Now the larger airplane will also require about 45% more horsepower as well, pushing the power requirement up to about 2300 HP.
As to weight of a steam plant, well here’s http://www.vintagesaws.com/library/steam/steam.html an 1876 model that puts out 1400 HP, a record at the time. It weighed, excluding fuel, 650 tons or 1,300,000 lbs. In other words, a bit more than the max takeoff weight of the new Airbus A380 http://www.airbus.com/prehome.asp
So we now have the problem that the airplane is strong enough to lift about (27000-16000) * 1.2^2~= 16,000 lbs and the best steam engine built 30 years later weighs 80 times more than that. Even so, it puts out about 40% too little power to move the airplane, not even considering moving itself.
Propeller efficiency is another key design parameter. The NC needed 1600 HP worth of engines with propellers much improved over Henson’s primitive designs. With really lousy props it might have taken more like 3000 HP to push the thing aloft. We also have the issue that Henson’s aerodynamics were way behind the state of the art in 1919, which would further increase the HP required to make it fly.
In all, it’s not possible to compute the weight of Henson’s machine in a flyable condition because it simply couldn’t be built with the technology available. How much would a starship Enterprise weigh if NASA started on it tomorrow?
Are any of the calculations being offered taking into account the effect of the gas baloon to which this thing was attached?
There is a good article in the 1869 Scientific American that describes a small version built in that year by Frederick Marriott, and test flown in San Franscisco.
That steam engine was described as
While this was later than the 1840’s version, you might be able to use the info I provided.
Thanks for the estimates, LSLguy…yeah, I kind of figured that a powerful enough steam engine would end up being grossly overweight. (Although I admit, I didn’t think it’d be over a MILLION pounds…I figred a couple of hundred tons, tops. Which would make all the difference, of course. ) I plan on “cheating” a bit on that part (Hey, it’s the magic of steampunk. Maybe I can put Babbage’s Difference Engine onboard as a flight computer, while I’m at it.), and using the oldest airfoils available for the wings and props. (I know that the Wright Flyer’s airfoils have been modeled on my sim, and I think someone’s even done the ones from Langely’s Aerodrome.)
If it manages to get airborne, flying it should be…“interesting.” No roll control, a small rudder, and it’ll probably be underpowered. Sounds like fun.
Hijack: Would it be possible with modern materials to make an external-combustion powered airplane? Note I didn’t say practical.
Parameters: Must be able to carry 1 FAA person (170 lbs). Must fly a distance of 10 nautical miles, and reach an altitude of 500 ft AGL for at least 1 minute.
Calm winds, standard temperature and pressure.
I think it’s not currently on-line (although it’s supposed to be archived soon), but I wrote a Teemings piece about Stringfellow called “First Flight”.
Although I’m amazed at the hubris of Henson and Stringfellow in making a public announcementy about aerial transport before they ever even built a working model, the fact is that , after they broke up, Stringfellow went on to build a working flying model. AFAIK, it was the first non-helicopter heavier-than-air flying machine. There doesn’t seem to be much debate that Stringfellow actually built this, and demonstrated it on several occasions.
(A lot of people seem to be unaware or misinformed about it, though. Some seem to think that Stringfellow’s only association with flight is this early ventyure with Henson. The first version of “Flight of the Phoenix” says that Henson and Stringfellow built a rubber-band-powered flyyer. Not true.)
Stringfellows’s macine was a surprisingly modern-looking monoplane with counter-rotating propellors, one on each side. It was powered by a miniature steam engine that Stringfellow himself built.
For more details, see my essay, when it becomes available again. There’s a whole book on Stringfellow, who definitely wasn’t a crank in the “Elijah airship” mode.) For the record, I can’t believe that the Henson and Stringfellow ship was ever practical and have no idea what it would have weighed.
And, by the way, in his novel “Robur the Conqueror”, Jules Verne built his flying machine out of what were unmistakeably composites, not metal. He saw them as high strength/low weight materials ideal for flight. Equally surprisingly, composites in the form of compressed fibers + binders were already in use, for such things as railway car wheels!
True! Stringfelllow’s working flyer didn’t have one either, and it had no horizontal stability. Stringfellow demonstrated it in long enclosed buildings (long barns) and in tents (in London) because any sideways breeze would upset it. Why he didn’t put a tail on it is beyond me – the obvious analogy with a boat’;s rudder immediastely suggests itself.
In case I didn’t mention it, BTW, Stringfellow’s craft was riderless. Flying a working model is a lot easier than manned flight. Stringfellow ran out of money before he even got involved with scaling his flyer up. Many years later, he built a model of a human-bearing flyer for the Crystal Palace, but I don’t think anyone ever tried to fly it. An the design was very different from his working model.
Here’s an airplane that more than beats your performance specs: http://www.easyflight.com/pc/pcsr.html. The aircraft has a payload of 300 lbs, less our 170 lb pilot leaves 130 lbs for fuel & steam engine weight growth. Figure 2 gallons of fuel = 15 lbs leaves 115 lbs for extra engine weight.
So now we have an approximate power requirement and weight budget.
Here’s a modern steam engine that puts out 20HP: Information on our 20-Horsepower Steam Engine. It weighs 150 lbs and, no, that doesn’t include the boiler. That says we’re probably talking about 400-500 lbs for two of those engines and boilers to drive them.
So 350-450 lbs heavier than the piston engine, which blows our 115 lb weight budget to hell. We could probably cut the steam engine weight a bunch by using less material overall and substituting more aluminum as long as we’re willing to sacrifice longevity. But we’re not gonna save a couple hundred pounds, much less 300+.
Some more Googling on steam engines indicates that steam turbines aren’t efficient for low power use, so a steam piston is the best way to go. I can’t judge the validity of that, but that seems to be the concensus.
As your username indicates, you know a plane can fly above max gross weight … a little. Exceeding the max useful load by 100-125% (ie 200-225% total) isn’t gonna work. And I’d bet that aircraft type is pretty close to the minimum for HP required per useful load.
My bottom line: No, it ain’t gonna work, not even close. Maaybe you could build a powered mini-sailplane & by using a 5 year-old for a pilot you could almost maintain altitude in ground effect.
OTOH, The Gossamer Condor flew for a few minutes well in ground effect with just 0.8 HP or thereabouts and a useful load of the 130-ish lb pilot and that’s it. You could probably build a 2 or 3 HP steam engine & boiler rig for close to 130 lbs and then use remote control to fly it. Or even build up a head of steam in a boiler and then drive it into an onboard pre-heated tank for storage. That way you can leave the boiler & firebox & fuel on the ground for the few minutes of powered flight.
Yes, that’s cheating on your terms, but I think that’s the only way to do it.
LSLGuy I think you are selling steam a little short. The steam engines you are using for your calculations are pretty amateurish, very low powered, and are designed for a static (ie weight is no object) application.
You will note that these cars could develop more than 125hp for short bursts before pressure in the boiler dropped and horsepower reduced. Which is potentially acceptable in an aircraft application where you need heaps of power to take off and then much less to cruise.
I can’t find a figure for the weight of the engine, boiler etc. Probably pretty heavy, but note the information from the second cite that:
1/ The boiler is where the weight is
2/ Modern materials would reduce that significantly
3/ The Doble style flash boiler doesn’t have to have the heft that the old style boiler did.
I don’t know whether a steam engine could pass 9NIWP’s criteria, but I think we’re a long way from proving it couldn’t.
Check out this thread which is quite heavy going but if you look at page 3, about post 120, you’ll see discussion of a 90 bhp engine weighing 295 pounds. Not great, but getting there.
And now I’m really getting somewhere: check out this site which mentions a 150 bhp engine weighing 180 pounds, not optimised for lightweight application, in a plane. So 9NIWP’s test has already been passed.
) I plan on “cheating” a bit on that part (Hey, it’s the magic of steampunk. Maybe I can put Babbage’s Difference Engine onboard as a flight computer, while I’m at it.), and using the oldest airfoils available for the wings and props. (I know that the Wright Flyer’s airfoils have been modeled on my sim, and I think someone’s even done the ones from Langely’s Aerodrome.)
