magneto-hydrodynamic concepts

i saw someone put up a slide that had the idea of using MHD on something for orbital at ISDC, but i don't remember precisely who it was. it was related to using black technology from the cold war that's now becoming declassified for spaceflight, but will soon be buried in obscurity. maybe your MHD idea hasn't been sitting in the open for as long as you thought....

Well, I've been aware for quite a while of surface coatings for stealth technology and assumed someone somewhere along the line may have figured out that some of that could be applied to the concepts I'm using. However, nothing I've seen indicates that anyone actually tried it out, but, I'm the first to say that I don't have the time to dig very deep into obscure references. In the end what I'm doing is independent research and I don't really care what anyone else is doing because as far as I can tell, no one is doing anything with it, likely having been put off by the clutzy attempts at MHD propulsion systems that gobble power and don't do much of anything else.

In low orbit, you do have the chance for using ions to keep a spacecraft from decelerating from dust and escaping gases using MHD propulsion, which is more similar to what I started out working on. Now as I understand it with a closer look, the entire vehicle's surface can be used to separate it from bonding within the boundary layer to the molecules passing by in the macro flow, and, coatings applied to current grids could be a practical way to do it without adding too much complexity, weight and cost to manufacturing for such an exotic vehicle. One of the pluses is that the basic research is simple wind tunnel testing, makes life easier once I get to that stage.

I'm sold on sprayed-on coatings on top of a current grid, been working on the current fields and how those relate to flow, looks just fine !!!

Still need to set up force field equations to be able to model it but the actual layout is starting to come together. It looks easy to wire, that was a problem with a wire grid concept although the magnetic fields would be stronger for that. The trade-off for ease of manufacture looks worth it, the magnetic fields will be enough on the spray idea to do the job and will be a hundred times more practical to make.

And, for high speed travel, if the air heats up it ionizes, makes the thing work better with less power.

Happy camper here ... might have something ready for the wind tunnel by the end of summer !!! (Of course plenty could go wrong, but it's a possibility :- )

Hey, for some reason, I can type in the text area of your home page... Just in case you didn't already know.

Just keep it up, and you might be getting a call from Georgia Tech about using your idea in a design project in a few years.

Maybe I should turn the textarea into a comments section like a blog?!

G.Tech might like working on this idea for helicopter blades as well as spacecraft, you can control how much drag and where it occurs on the blade electronically ... I could use a phD ... ! :- )

Hope to have Boeing and AirBus interested in the main research by the end of three years, but, I know how things go so I'm not banking on that either. I do think the design I'm working on now is going to be a hit ... quite a bit different than where I started.

I'm not sure the Primes would be all that interested; you'd be far more likely to sell it to individual airlines. Corporate jet owners would be the easiest, as they don't have a Board of Directors and millions of dollars of profits. Of course, if you know somebody on the Board, then that's a different story...

All so true ... and about the only "bored" person I know is me!! ... LOL

I keep in mind that the boundary layer control tried in the Americas Cup racing was outlawed because it worked!! That's progress for you ...

I like your idea of focusing on the private plane industry, makes sense, they may actually want to do something with an independent designer ... I'm sure I'd need a rooom full of lawyers to get a dime out of the megaliths.

Besides, this is too much fun and too interesting for corporate land ... and I think it's going to work!!! What a bonus feature ...

Latest update is that I've been working on fast-n-easy application methods for the conductor grid as well as the coating, as well as applying these to existing wings with the rivets and all. Also been studying flow patterns on wings to design to those with the conductor grid as the magnetic field structure from the physical conductor grid caused by current flow can respond to this directional flow (and for propulsion that's what you'd want to do).

This design is close to the place where it can be modeled by software from existing data and formulas applied to this particular configuration. It doesn't look like wind tunnel testing will be required for this initial modeling. I need some fluid modeling done for another project so will see what it'll cost to run the numbers on this with the same company.

So, the initial design work is done and it's all Newtonian physics to have the numbers on what to expect from the actual system. We'll see how good my design attempt is in a couple, few months. If it does well, then finding the funding for researching the manufacturing techniques will be possible and, we got a live one Harry

I just saw a paper done in the last AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets (yes, I subscribe, on the off-chance I might learn something from the incomprehensible gibberish that I will so soon be speaking) that detailed a way to drastically reduce drag in a hypersonic vehicle by spewing molecular hydrogen out along the skin and then burning it. I know this isn't related to what you're doing, but I was just wondering if you might be able to use that idea in conjunction with your own.

Sounds pretty pricey to me, plus you need more hydrogen dipersed in a precise way and some power to fire it off in a timely manner to run it.

I'll stick with I've got for a while. For active boundary layer control systems it seems the best all around and offers the possibility of being able to help out the hypersonic vehicles once more is learned about it. Plus, the basic science has been done for MHD so it's within my ability to create a prototype from software modeling.

No argument there, just wondering if you'd heard about it. Again, the best of luck to you.

Thanks, I hadn't heard about it ... and after a first look, it'll work just fine.

Along the lines of "the expanding tunnel" idea that's been around a while where using the skin and geometry you create an area where there's very little shear in the boundary layer with some method (usually trying to reduce the number of molecules or being able to use electromagnetism on them), this one using a method to add an expanding gas to reduce shear.

Yup, different way to do the same thing I want to do with electricity, good to hear about it.

They are doing much the same thing with supercavitating torpedoes--with a bit of thrust up front to create a bubble--and a bigger nozzle behind to push. I wouldn't be surprised if one of those "Skvall" rocket torpedoes caused the Kursk disaster.

Interesting site--fictional gaming but some non-fiction.
www.deepangel.com

External combustion was behind the idea of the 'flying pumpkinseed' some believe was Aurora.

I have heard of Aurora and external combustion but what was (is?) the 'flying pumpkinseed'?

Here is some info. be skeptical, however. FAS is a pretty good site.

Pulse detonation engine--perhaps external combustion--the body is the aerospike here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/pde.htm
http://www.aemann.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ ... mpkin.html

As carried by this perhaps:
http://www.aemann.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ ... zzard.html
http://members.macconnect.com/users/q/q ... zzard.html
http://www.area51zone.com/aircraft/buzzard.shtml
http://robocat.users.btopenworld.com/xb70.htm
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/I ... /ID/254873

Misc.
http://www.lowobservable.com/Black.htm
http://www.dreamlandresort.com/black_pr ... jects.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/index.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/aurora.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rocketpro ... essage/234
http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/log/archi ... aceplanes/
http://www.colinmil.mcmail.com/latest1.htm

Japan's work:
Supersonics:
http://www.nal.go.jp/sst/eng/nexst.pdf
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/08/2 ... index.html
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... sonic.html