Goodyear Inflatoplane

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane

by carabiner • 2 years ago

148 71 2 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

I've always wanted one of these - they seem like an awesome way to explore the world. I once fantasized about getting a couple of them dropped in some remote location, spend a few days or weeks hiking out there, and then flying back.

Wonder what a modern variant would look like?

k7sune• 2 years ago

Something like a powered paraglider comes to mind. It has the additional benefit of being reusable.

rbanffy6• 2 years ago

Imagine now it could have a much larger pressurised cabin.

hi-v-rocknroll6• 2 years ago

Why rely on an inflated wing that can be punctured or change in stiffness with temperature and altitude when fiberglass and carbon fiber rods exist?

mysterydip• 2 years ago

I wonder how much it could be impoved if this project was revisited today with modern materials and manufacturing techniques.

rbanffy6• 2 years ago

Not sure modern safety standards would be friendly to it.

throwup238• 2 years ago

It’s 225 lbs empty so it qualifies as an ultralight aircraft like powered hand gliders. It’s a class that’s much easier to certify and has many fewer safety requirements.

claudex• 2 years ago

They will self-certify themself and the problem disappear.

usrusr2• 2 years ago

Rigid flight needs exactly this, rigidity. But we do have inflatable flight: paragliders, first flight only a few years after the inflatoplane. Inflated only by the dynamic pressure from forward movement, but they make up what they lack in pressure differential with using more bracing wires (much more). But the inflatoplane relies on bracing wires as well, so the difference could be considered surprisingly small.

londons_explore5• 2 years ago

I think there are lots of possibilities for inflatable vehicles which cannot be deflated.

For example, make a flimsy structure out of thin steel foil, then pressurize it to give it far more strength than it would otherwise have.

Same as the strength of a coke can.

Except with steel as the tensile material, you can probably use pressures up around 1000 psi, making the whole structure have an amazing strength to weight ratio.

Gare• 2 years ago

Except with steel as the tensile material, you can probably use pressures up around 1000 psi, making the whole structure have an amazing strength to weight ratio.

Congratulations, you have created a bomb.

londons_explore5• 2 years ago

You certainly need to think about that in the design. But by rolling a 'texture' into the sheets the structure is made from, you can make sure that any hole can't 'rip' bigger, and therefore fails slowly rather than rapidly.

You also need pressure regulator valves in case of fire.

And you might want to make the whole thing double or triple skinned so the highest pressures can be deeper inside where they are less likely to get punctured/less vulnerable to corrosion damage/crash damage.

rbanffy6• 2 years ago

Wasn’t the Centaur upper stage pressurised. I remember an incident where one collapsed under load because the tank lost pressure.

whamlastxmas2• 2 years ago

Especially if Boeing is involved

scubazealous2• 2 years ago

It would be cool, especially with advances in plastics you could layer over the steel to protect it from corrosion like what they do with soda cans.

For reference, a steel or aluminum SCUBA tank is usually filled to 3000psi and when I fill steel tanks I can hear and sometimes see the metal start to slightly balloon. This is normal because steel is not brittle but it is very strong.

There is a lot of rules put in place for safety though. A tank has to be visually checked by a professional every year and hydro statically tested every 5. The danger is any rust/corrosion weakening the metal and causing it to rupture. More often seen in aluminum tanks, which is one reason I prefer steel.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

Yes, in theory steel is not the best material for a high-pressure tank.

We use it because it's cheap and well tested. But we are probably better of with a layered combination of a few different materials. Steel may not even enter it.

Semaphor• 2 years ago

Also discussed in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21249801

mapleoin• 2 years ago

People knew how to name things back then.

mhh__• 2 years ago

Nothing will ever top shark repellent bat spray

buildsjets• 2 years ago

I fly a Cessna from the time period with a Nav-O-Matic autopilot, Land-O-Matic landing gear, and an Omnivision window.

knodi123• 2 years ago

Okay, I had to look that one up, and:

Omni-Vision – The [term for the] rear windows on some Cessna singles, starting with the 182 and 210 in 1962 and followed by the 172 and 150 in 1963 and 1964 respectively. The term was intended to make the pilot feel visibility was improved on the notably poor-visibility Cessna line. The introduction of the rear window caused in most models a loss of cruise speed due to the extra drag, while not adding any useful visibility.

That's hilarious.

carabiner• 2 years ago

Today it'd be some vague crap like "Float."

ansible• 2 years ago

Mustard did a video on this.

Nebula (subscription required): https://nebula.tv/videos/mustard-escape-in-an-inflatable-air...

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ-4uWwQ5HA

cousin_it• 2 years ago

Can we make an aircraft with a motor and inflatable wing, such that the motor works for propulsion and also inflating the wing, and the motor's waste heat is used for heating the air in the wing?

yaakov34• 2 years ago

That's how this plane worked - the inflation pressure in flight was supplied by the motor. I don't think heating the air was desired, but some heat will inevitably end up in the air as it is compressed.

rbanffy6• 2 years ago

You could use engine exhaust to inflate the wings.

UniverseHacker3• 2 years ago

I wonder if this is more practical nowadays. Modern “drop stitch” inflatable kayaks and paddle boards are extremely rigid, strong, light, and reliable. They also have precise 3D shapes determined by the length and position of the internal drop stitch threads. Has anyone tried using that tech to create an inflatable airplane?

plasticchris• 2 years ago

Feels like an opportunity to make a very cool ultralight given the weight savings, and no pilot license is needed (though still recommended…)

RajT88• 2 years ago

DLC in a Fallout game

mapt• 2 years ago

Google recommends the Woopy-Fly inflatable ultralight, though it's not clear whether it's actually in production

Discussions are not optimistic, but do invoke some related inflatable craft - https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWings/comments/n7a4k1/what_hap...

UniverseHacker3• 2 years ago

Haha, that looks incredibly dangerous. A floppy hang glider with much less lift and stability than a regular hang glider, and it needs continuous electrical power and two working fans to stay inflated.

If I've learned anything from youtube - flying is not an expensive or inaccessible hobby. But safe flying is.

LeifCarrotson• 2 years ago

My inflatable SUP is nice, and it is impressively rigid, but I wouldn't say it's light. I got the inflatable because it can be stored and transported compactly. Competition paddleboards and kayaks are fiberglass/composite foam sandwiches, and way lighter than the inflatable variants.

I think the inflatable SUPs and kayaks are as heavy as they are because of the thick layers of vinyl and nylon that prevent punctures and abrasion.

Kitesurfing kites are made of lightweight ripstop polyester, with a super-thin urethane coating, and have an inflated bladder to help hold their shape. That might be more appropriate tech for creating an airplane.

UniverseHacker3• 2 years ago

Yeah, I'd think you'd want to apply that principle, but with different materials for an aircraft. Off the top of my head I am thinking dyneema threads inside (instead of dacron/polyester) and a carbon fiber/mylar composite for the outside cloth, like is used for high end racing sails on sailboats.

I don't have experience with hard SUPs but have a cheap RetroSpec weekender 10'6" SUP at 17.5lbs - I quickly looked up the weight of similar size composite boards (e.g. Isle 2) and was seeing more like 24lbs. I googled "competition SUP" and found some at 17lbs in the same length as my inflatable, but much narrower and 100lbs lower in max weight capacity than the inflatable SUP of the same weight.

For kayaks, high end drop stitch kayaks are about half the weight of rotomolded plastic ones of the same size, and only slightly heavier than skin on frame kayaks made from exotic materials, which are the lightest kayak technology and slightly lighter overall.

nikitaga• 2 years ago

I'm not 100% sure that they used drop stitch, but the company Prospective Concepts developed a few more modern designs of inflatable wings for various applications.

https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:306785d0...

https://www.prospective-concepts.ch/html/site_en.htm (click "Projects" > "Air" on the right)

Personally I think this is a technological dead-end, at least for the civil aviation use cases that I understand. The only advantage of an inflatable system is compactness / portability, but since the Inflatoplane, that's been solved in many other ways by rogallo wings, hang glider type wings, paragliders, parachutes, various types of fold-out rigid wings, etc.

And all of the other properties of inflatable wings aren't advantageous other. They're not simpler, lighter, stronger, more durable, or more reliable than the alternative best option, and they don't seem to have a particularly good mix of useful properties to win against the other best alternative for any given use case, even if you assume modern materials and modern techniques.

klyrs• 2 years ago

The aircraft was in a descending turn when one of the control cables under the wing came off the pulley and was wedged in the pulley bracket, locking the stick. The turn tightened until one of the wings folded up over the propeller and was chopped up.

While the pulley system at the root cause of this could be improved, the failure mode of "floppy wing got chopped up by the prop" seems like there could be quite a lot of ways to get there. Dunno what you think we've done in the last 50 years to improve on this situation, but for anything other than an emergency, I wouldn't want to bet my life on a vehicle like this. Also, I'm having trouble picturing an emergency that would be resolved by an inflatable plane.

Nevermind, I've got it. A single container could hold a hundred inflatable airplanes. That'd be a helluva surprise deployment, if you don't value the lives of your pilots.

scubazealous2• 2 years ago

Today this would most likely have the same drawbacks as the inflatable kayaks we see for sale. Saves on space (and money?) and could be good as an entry into a hobby but at any intermediate to advanced level there are better options to choose from. With the high barrier to entry to flying I think most pilots would opt for the most reliable option from the start.

I would not want to be caught in inclement weather in an inflatable anything.

IG_Semmelweiss2• 2 years ago

What if you are stuck in north korea and the duffel bag containing this landed just at your patio ?

I am surprised this was not pursued more aggressively, in fact.

whamlastxmas2• 2 years ago

Pretty sure NK would easily shoot this out of the sky

bloopernova• 2 years ago

Would inflatable wings/bodies work on Mars or a similar low pressure environment?

hi-v-rocknroll6• 2 years ago

If you searched the web, inflatable bodies have been used. The problem is Mars atmosphere is 2% and gravity is 38% that of Earth's. Gravity-corrected wing loading to reach the equivalent of say a small plane on Earth would require 20x the wing area.

A proposal demonstrator of this was suggested in a paper:

https://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS2014/data/papers/2014_...

tooltechgeek• 2 years ago

wouldn’t the lower density be equivalent to a higher altitude on earth? Propellers would be not effective but some type of jet or rocket would?

frankus• 2 years ago

I've noodled around with something like this for a climate-controlled micromobility vehicle. Something like the Nimbus but built with ebike components (https://nimbusev.com -- godspeed to them because I really want them to succeed, in part so I can buy one).

I'm pretty sure it would be ridiculous and impractical, but we could use a way to solve the "it's only five blocks away but the weather's miserable" in a way that doesn't involve huge parking lots and otherwise terrible land use.

I know that there must be clothing that solves this, but donning a whole suit for what might be a 90-second trip is a lot of friction, especially when the alternative is feeling a little bit guilty about driving for a trip that could easily be biked/walked/etc.

pbronez• 2 years ago

Nimbus looks super cool! I’d love to try one. Top speed of 50mph suggests it’s not enough car for highway commuting, unfortunately.

I’m more excited about the Aptera. I think it’s significantly bigger and more highway-capable than the Nimbus, while still much more efficient than contemporary EVs. It’ll cost twice as much as the Nimbus as well… quite different vehicles other than the common 2-front, 1-back wheel configuration.

ChoGGi• 2 years ago

The Nimbus S shows 75mph

metadat• 2 years ago

Previously discussed in 2019:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21249801 (26 comments)

hi-v-rocknroll6• 2 years ago

I saw this in a documentary many years ago as some sort of spy aircraft to exfil from a hostile country.

While a cool concept, subsequent ultralight aircraft made this design obsolete.

Just don't get shot at or have a leak. While it could be very compact to transport, it's not very practical or robust.

Also, the service ceiling and service floor(?) could vary based on temperature. For example, if it started at sea level and very cold conditions, it's possible it could not exceed a certain altitude below the need for a pressurized cabin and below its performance coffin corner.

crashmat• 2 years ago

It says because of the airflow from the engine it could be punctured by up to 6 .30 calibre bullets and maintain pressure. Is this enough resilience? (I don't really know about aircraft combat)

hi-v-rocknroll6• 2 years ago

So it's a flying bouncy castle or flying tube man. Makes sense. Imagine it would be extra fun if there were an inflatable Fokker Dr.I.

EdwardCoffin• 2 years ago

Neal Stephenson's novel Seveneves [1] included something like this (early in part 3), and it being inflatable wasn't even the coolest thing about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves

1-6• 2 years ago

Just be careful of thumbtacks in your carryon.

Goodyear Inflatoplane

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