Russian Revolutionary Hybrid car

[Doctor Drivel]

1-11 was a small plane. The other two were a failure. No one bought them.

[Doctor Drivel]

A flop.

[polygonum]

You obviously take your own advice.

[Doctor Drivel]

Such wit!

[John Williamson]

But one that's been in the air for over half a century in various versions.

[Tim Streater]

Really. Must be why they were keen to buy ours after WW2 (you'll recall we had operational jets by the end of WW2) and then reverse engineered them. Courtesy of our "wonderful labour" govt you are so happy about.

[Tim Streater]

Starting from St Panc like I said (actually Ashford in my case), hows HS2 gonna help?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They all have a form of governor - and have had since more or less first thought of.

At some point the valve will 'float' and prevent compression. But I realise the engine may not be strong enough to reach that point.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Oh indeed - used to see it on the approach to Heathrow through my front room window at about 21.30 every evening. Wonderful sight.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It is not designed for the economic transporting of passengers.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

She may be fuel efficient for her bulk, but not for the number of passengers it carries.

[Nightjar]

That is not true. Centaurs that were retro-fitted with Meteor engines, which converted them from A27L to A27M i.e Cromwell tanks, did see active service. None of which is relevant to the fact that they were, as I said, designed to accept the Meteor engine. Two early A27s were even fitted with Meteor engines, to iron out any teething troubles before the engine became available in enough volume to actually be fitted to them.

Colin Bignell

[NT]

,

Just a matter of scale - those are _really_ big trees.

NT :)

[NT]

If you go back to the hayday of airship, ie pre-war, they were pretty crude by todays standards. The Hindenberg et al used hydrogen and relied on openly venting it to descend. Even with this clearly risky practice, the overall safety record was ok compared to airplanes of the time. I think what really killed them was that the Hindenberg disaster was the first ever big disaster to be filmed, and needless to say it was broadcast all round the world, to a deeply horrified people.

In case anyone doesnt know, the Hindenberg disaster was nothing to do with its hydrogen, the cause was the use of rocket fuel to paint the outside of the ship with - it wasnt known then that aluminium powder was highly flammable, and politics overrode good sense, despite the objections from the engineers.

Helium isnt very practical for modern airships, its excessively expensive and has little buoyancy, making huge overpriced ships carry very little payload. Hydrogen plus compressors is far more sensible.

Airships are a cheap way to get a given number of people aloft, but their inherently low speed is an issue for long distance travel, and impacts a lot on payback.

NT

[NT]

I think its more a matter of different priorities than anything else. Both sides have excellent designers, and a lot more not so good ones. The russian domestic appliances I've looked at simply show different priorities to ours.

NT

[Terry Fields]

Russian spacecraft are the only means of resupplying the International Space Station after the retirement of the Shuttle.

Terry Fields

[Terry Fields]

Yes, the Americans were surprised, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to find hangars full of rocket engines made of metal alloys they were unfamiliar with. Not only that, but these were highly-efficient closed-cycle engines, something the US had given up on. They bought the lot and used them in their own launch vehicles.

Terry Fields

[Huge]

I used to fly to Denmark every Wednesday morning and Concord was frequently the aircraft in front of us in the queue to take off. When he opened up the the jet nozzles, it was like looking into the mouth of Hell, and all the fittings in our aircraft rattled. Marvellous!

[Huge]

Apart from the ESA ATV, that is.

[Doctor Drivel]

This man is a knob.