Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#1

Post by BrooklynRage » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside
techcrunch.com

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#2

Post by whamlastxmas » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 8:20 PM UTC

It'll be cool if we can get electric aircraft like this as cheap as some of the somewhat homemade ultralights people make today. Battery and motor prices have a long way to go though

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#3

Post by bdcravens » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

I did some contract work (2002-2003, at the tail end of their bankruptcy I think) for a Kitty Hawk that went out of business (after a second round of bankruptcy), and for a minute I thought this was an old article or something.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#4

Post by baybal2 » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics.

I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines:

Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than you were banging their heads against the wall non-stop for 60 years trying to solve this exact problem.

Startup CEO: But I hired most brilliant engineers from Amazon and Waymo for that. I'm paying them near 200k each.

Me: If this, this, and this thing breaks, your drone drops dead upon an urban area. And if you get into negative gees over ridgelines, your motor don't have enough torque to keep COM behind the centre of aerodynamic forces to prevent inversion. You can't change the law of gravity.

And he was like "can't we really do anything about that, can't we?" These people are so used to the culture of "easy solutions" that it's scary.

A convertoplane this big will be extremely unstable in wind gusts

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#5

Post by tiredyam » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #4

I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics. I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines: Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than y…

Isn’t this why they partnered with boeing? To navigate regulation and bring in more aviation expertise

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#6

Post by gundmc » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #4

I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics. I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines: Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than y…

There is precedence for a fixed-wing rotor-based VTOL aircraft with the Osprey, at least aerodynamically. Operationally, the Osprey was a bit of a disaster.

But I agree that flight (and ESPECIALLY manned flight) needs extensive experience in aerospace engineering.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#7

Post by pubby » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #4

I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics. I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines: Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than y…

I haven't been following the project. How do you know they have webdev mentality?

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#8

Post by dwighttk » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 11:01 PM UTC

tiredyam wrote: post #5

baybal2 wrote: post #4

I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics. I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines: Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than y…

Isn’t this why they partnered with boeing? To navigate regulation and bring in more aviation expertise

The challenges of the Osprey with oversight from the minds that brought us the 737 MAX!

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#9

Post by baybal2 » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

gundmc wrote: post #6

baybal2 wrote: post #4

I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics. I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines: Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than y…

There is precedence for a fixed-wing rotor-based VTOL aircraft with the Osprey, at least aerodynamically. Operationally, the Osprey was a bit of a disaster. But I agree that flight (and ESPECIALLY manned flight) needs extensive experience in aerospace engineering.

Osprey is more of a true biaxial helicopter first, and a convertoplane second.

V22 have 2 lateral DOF in which it can move without moving COM relative to point of aerodynamic force, and without changing its aerodynamic cross-section, so you don't get positive feedback to change of orientation in wind gusts.

This thing cannot do that as far as a glancing look can tell.

I am not an aeronautic engineer, just a motoglider pilot wannabe. If it looks borderline silly to even a man like me, it's scary to imagine what wool they must have pulled over for their mentors and industry advisers to go with that.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#10

Post by dchichkov » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

It would be a good idea to use better baselines for noise pollution than helicopters and airplanes of today. Perhaps like this - Life in the Spanish City that banned cars. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/18/paradise-life...

This is about how much noise your aircraft are allowed to create. What you should be able to hear in the street are "the tweeting of birds in the camellias, the tinkle of coffee spoons and the sound of human voices".