Incredible airplane
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The Spruce Goose of Howard Hughes is not so bad
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hard to believe they're from WWII! it always seems to me that people were smarter pre-computer
maybe people let computers tell them what they can't do now without trying it and learning from they're mistakes, i'm not sure. 
don't get me wrong i'd hate to design much without my computer but it does take away alot of trial and error which may be as valuable (add as much to) the end result as success. -
The whole design is certainly not meant to fly. Rather than fast water craft, a torpedo launcher on the water.
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@unknownuser said:
it was found to be most efficient at 20 m (66 ft), reaching a top speed of 300 kn (350 mph; 560 km/h) (400 kn (460 mph; 740 km/h) in research flight).
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Still inspires me for a scifi movie, all these Cameron's avatar flying machines are nothing in front of this monster. What a story it could be. Here's a pic from my favorite Miyazaki's movie "porco rosso".
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The Airfish 8
Bob
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I like these this type of engineering ,where you can almost see the the man hammering in the rivets end cutting and bending the metal.
The man who build and flew this are hero's (respect)
It looks almost like it is build a organically way.
The wear on the plane looks like its made many intergalactic travels.
Its a icon of its eraBep
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The American approach is 'technology will do it, at any price' - the Russian approach is 'engineering will do it, as cheaply as possible'.
I don't know if it's still there... but the Aerospace Museum in Washington had a display of an Apollo and Soyuz capsules 'docked', and several other exhibits...
The US Apollo was very sleek and 'futuristic' in its day, but the Soyuz was like a Victorian Jules Verne bathysphere - with rivets, exposed bolts, portholes, brass-ware etc...
For example, the Apollo had contra-rotating twin Polaroid sheets on it windows to cut out the sunlight - the Soyuz has curtains on two brass rails that slid over the porthole !
The US spend $$$ on developing a ballpoint pen that's write in a vacuum in zero-G etc - the Russians used a pencil !
"If the only tool you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail..."
This can be applied to both approaches - over-complicating stuff unnecessarily or unemployment of appropriate technology, are probably both as bad
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@unknownuser said:
The US spend $$$ on developing a ballpoint pen that's write in a vacuum in zero-G etc - the Russians used a pencil !
cough myth... NASA used Pencils as well. the 'spacepen' was developed privately and had nothing to do with NASA...
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@khai said:
@unknownuser said:
The US spend $$$ on developing a ballpoint pen that's write in a vacuum in zero-G etc - the Russians used a pencil !
cough myth... NASA used Pencils as well. the 'spacepen' was developed privately and had nothing to do with NASA...
I never mentioned NASA - you did - touché !
I know NASA used pencils - I saw Apollo 13 too... ironically it was the 'engineering botched fix' that saved them - not 'technology' per se - a lash-up using socks and duct-tape etc, if I remember rightly
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
I only use the pen/pencil as an example of the US's general 'technological fixation' versus the Russian's 'pragmatic engineering' approach - both have their place, but neither is always THE answer... -
whatever.
sigh you win....
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@tig said:
I only use the pen/pencil as an example of the US's general 'technological fixation' versus the Russian's 'pragmatic engineering' approach - both have their place, but neither is always THE answer...
It's a very bad example to use. A ballpoint pen (that cost a private company around $1m to develop, not the govt. and went on to make a profit for said company) is not overly likely to shed fragments of graphite and wood in a spaceship. Said fragments make for a lovely fatal fire risk - the graphite could cause an electrical short, the wood provide convenient fuel. This is especially worrisome in an all-oxygen environment such as the Apollo era vehicles.
Not to mention that engineering is technology.
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That's cool. looking forward to the renders on that.
As a personal ekranoplan vehicle I'd go for this (Aquaglide!):
If you're looking for more heres a site with video and more images, including orthographic: http://www.vincelewis.net/ekranoplan.html
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