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[Alfie Noakes]

Many Thanks Gerax for the link to this stunning exhibition......I have instantly ordered the book 
Any idea if this show is coming to London/ Europe  in the near future ?

Cheers

Alfie

[SAS~Gerax]

Any idea if this show is coming to London/ Europe  in the near future ?

no.

[Alfie Noakes]

From the Futurist exhibition at the Guggenheim..........   " Aerial Battle over the Gulf of Naples " by Gerarado Dottori

[Alfie Noakes]

I'd love to see these break into a gentle canter and take to the air........ ???

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/community/video/37429.evolution_of_the_strandbeests.htm?utm_source=tas&utm_medium=nl&utm_campaign=strandbeest

Cheers

Alfie

[dietz]

Bolt from the Blue

[Alfie Noakes]

Pursuing a Taube by Christopher Nevinson, 1915.

[Uufflakke]

The Art of Flight.
It is art and the end of a flight. 

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Breugel or a follower

[purgatorio]

Inspired by Uufflakke

DESIGN
It was not long ago that people could only dream of being able to fly.

The dream was the subject of great myths and stories such as that of Icarus and his father Daedalus and their escape from King Minos' prison on Crete.
Legend has it that they had difficulty with structural materials rather than aerodynamics.

A few giant leaps were made, with little forward progress. Legends of people attempting flight are numerous, and it appears that people have been experimenting with aerodynamics for thousands of years. Octave Chanute, quoting from an 1880's book, La Navigation Aerienne, describes how Simon the Magician in about 67 A.D. undertook to rise toward heaven like a bird. "The people assembled to view so extraordinary a phenomenon and Simon rose into the air through the assistance of the demons in the presence of an enormous crowd. But that St. Peter, having offered up a prayer, the action of the demons ceased..."


Picture from a woodcut of 1493.

In medieval times further work in applied aerodynamics and flight were made. Some rather notable people climbed to the top of convenient places with intent to commit aviation.

Natural selection and survival of the fittest worked very effectively in preventing the evolution of human flight.



As people started to look before leaping, several theories of flight were propounded (e.g. Newton) and arguments were made on the impossibility of flight. This was not a research topic taken seriously until the very late 1800's. And it was regarded as an important paradox that birds could so easily accomplish this feat that eluded people's understanding. Octave Chanute, in 1891 wrote, "Science has been awaiting the great physicist, who, like Galileo or Newton, should bring order out of chaos in aerodynamics, and reduce its many anomolies to the rule of harmonious law."


A Galapagos hawk -- Photo by Sharon Stanaway

Papers suggested that perhaps birds and insects used some "vital force" which enabled them to fly and which could not be duplicated by an inanimate object. Technical meetings were held in the 1890's. The ability of birds to glide without noticeable motion of the wings and with little or negative altitude loss was a mystery for some time. The theory of aspiration was developed; birds were in some way able to convert the energy in small scale turbulence into useful work. Later this theory fell out of favor and the birds' ability attributed more to proficient seeking of updrafts. (Recently, however, there has been some discussion about whether birds are in fact able to make some use of energy in small scale air motion.)



The figure here is reproduced from the 1893 book, First International Conference on Aerial Navigation. The paper is called, "The Mechanics of Flight and Aspiration," by A.M. Wellington. The figure shows the flight path of a bird climbing without flapping its wings. Today we know that the bird is circling in rising current of warm air (a thermal).
... READ ON: Some historical notes on the history of aircraft and aerodynamics. from Aircraft Design: Synthesis and Analysis by Ilan Kroo


keptin, Los Angeles
"Basic Aircraft Design - Explained Simply, With Pictures", 2013



The guide sometimes refers to KSP, Kerbal Space Program, a space flight simulator. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures

[purgatorio]

Dendronautics
The science of accessing tropical forest canopy using airships or similar aerial platforms.

At present there are perhaps 100-1000 biologists worldwide actively involved in rainforest canopy exploration. Given that the canopy is so important in terms of its biodiversity, at first this number seems suprisingly low. However, it is important to realise that scientific research has been historically hindered by the problem of access. It is difficult to get safely and routinely to the canopy, especially the uppermost region - the "bright zone" that might be as high as 70 metres above the ground.   

In order to improve access, fixed-structures have be built, such as walkways, platforms and cable-systems, but these structures are  obviously restricted to predetermined locations. In recent years cranes (with rotating jibs) have been used to achieve greater canopy mobility, but they are also each limited to an survey radius of less than 50 metres. How is it is possible to access larger areas of canopy? Lots of biologists, architects and biologists have tried to tackle this problem over the past 50 years or so, with varying degrees of success. - read more


Lena Herzog & Graham Dorrington
Airship, 2008



Graham Dorrington is an Englishman who maintains a collec¬tion of antique farm tools, assembled by his late father. It contains some eight hundred pieces: sheep shears and dyke shovels, a horse-grooming scraper and a muck rake, a variety of manure knives, a bull nose ring, an assortment of turnip choppers, all manner of breastplows, and something called a wooden dibber. The tools are made of wood and iron; they are meant for working the ground; many of them depend, for their function, on com¬pliance with the downward drag of gravity; and their design has an earthbound, utilitarian simplicity. In all these ways, the tools reflect qualities that are exactly the opposite of Dorrington’s great passion and vocation, which is flying.

Dorrington is an aeronaut. At Queen Mary, University of London, he is a lecturer in aerospace design, and among his recent publications are articles titled “Rationale for Supersonic After-Burning Rocket Engines” and “Drag of a Spheroid-Cone Shaped Airship.” But what really keeps him busy is designing, building, and flying dirigibles—lighter-than-air vehicles—or as he prefers to call them, airships.



Dorrington went on: “Other balloonists apparently suffered similarly. After the success of his first flight in Scotland, James Tyler . . . was hounded out of Edinburgh when his second attempt to stage an ascent failed completely. These experiences suggest, therefore, that the pursuit of public lightness may lead to inner heaviness.”

Dorrington himself is not dissuaded by precedents, and his drawings in these pages are sketches for future projects in airship design and dendronautics. To Lena Herzog, Dorrington’s inventions, which exist at “the confluence of art and science,” have the quality of cabinets of wonder—“where genuine knowledge and the most fantastic dreams are made particular,” she says, “and they take my breath away.”








www.dendronautics.com
www.lenaherzog.com
www.theparisreview.org - Airship

[purgatorio]

Marc Newson

Kelvin40 Concept Jet, 2003






Lockheed Lounge, 1986



www.marc-newson.com

[purgatorio]

Concorde prototypes



Concorde, that most charismatic of all civil airliners, always did look like a paper plane. Not just any old school playground paper dart, of course, but the most beautifully thought out and most aerodynamic aircraft possible, folded by the hands of brilliant, if still unsung, backbench aero-engineers.

Now we learn that Concorde engineers really did make paper aircraft at their drawing boards and workbenches, testing these outside the former British Aircraft Corporation workshops near Bristol during their lunch hours. Made of any scrap of paper or card available, these primitive, hand-propelled Concordes did their bit in the design process of the most famous, and dynamic, airliner of all.
www.guardian.co.uk - Concorde for sale, pre-folded.

More on the Concorde HERE.

[purgatorio]

Ray Bournon, George Miles
Miles M.39B Libellula

The M.39B Libellula (from Libellulidae, a taxonomic family of dragonflies) was a Second World War tandem wing experimental aircraft built by Miles Aircraft; a scale version of the M.39 design proposed by Miles to meet Air Ministry specification B.11/41 for a fast bomber. The M.39B was used by Miles to generate data from which the M.39 design was improved but the M.39 project was cancelled and the B.39B broken up. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_M.39B_Libellula





from Flight Magazine, 1944: