evilkillerwhale

Very good article!

Actually, if you read their Kickstarter, they claim to be getting better fuel efficiency with higher cargo weight. They claim this is because it somehow lowers their drag. They also claim that L/D is unimportant for their aircraft, which is why a scaled test is useless to them, even in a wind tunnel. This doesn't pass the smell test for this AE.

That's not true at all. Their claims about wind tunnels are also ludicrous. Take a peak at the Reynold's number wikipedia page sometime. That's EXACTLY how aerospace engineers do preliminary calculations: by scaling aerodynamic factors (which is completely viable with a nearly incompressible fluid like low speed air).

The idea that it gets MORE efficient by having more cargo violates the energy equation. Literally. That concept was disproved (utterly) when the sound barrier was broken.

I call shenanigans.