I would expect more than 2 rotors for a carrier-sized heli. Especially with all of the quad-coptors people are playing around with these days.
I suspect that trying to use a jet engine would not work well due to the lack of 'forward' speed most of the time starving it of the normal amount of air/coolant. After that, I would be concerned about the size of the blades, and the amount of 'flat' surface on the top where heli-blades would not do as much good(and presumably you want the flight-deck to stay clear of whirling blades of doom, not to mention turbulence) Speaking of turbulence, if you are lifting a carrier sized object, how much turbulence would there be on your flight deck? Could you mitigate it by perhaps building some sort of wall between the fans and the flight deck?(would this force your carrier to get bigger because now your aircraft wings cannot stick out over the edges?) If you were forced to use only two rotors, are there materials in existence that will be strong enough to make the blades? Could you reach a point where there is reduced effectiveness because you are pulling air out of our source area faster than it can replenish? On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 11:47 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear GURPSnet, > > the 250-ton helicopter for Traveller (which the GM sprung on us, I just > calculated what it means to carry an ATV) made me wonder ... > > With the 3E Vehicles rules, you need 0.083 kW per lb. of loaded weight to > lift a twin rotor helicopter, 0.1 kW for a single rotor, and 0.25 kW with > ducted fans. > > Or to put it the other way around, a twin rotor helicopter has less than > 12 lbs. left per kW of power, a single rotor has less than 10 lbs., and a > ducted fan flyer has less than 4 lbs. That's for the hull, the rotors (if > any), the power plant, and the fuel (if any). If the structural weight > optional rule is NOT used, structure for large vehicles gets relatively > light due to square-cube. > > The rules allow no more than two rotors for a helicopter, but it can get > very large -- not really realistic limits. A million ton helicopter is > probably something for April Fools' Day. > > A ducted fan flyer can have any number of fans. Call it an aircraft with > six 2,000,000-kW ducted fans (2,400 tons) and a pair of 6,000,000-kW > experimental fusion reactors (VXii26, 14,000 tons). That leaves 7,600 > tons for the structure and payload, less if I want a safety margin > and/or a decent ceiling (optional rule). A single reactor saves 1,000 > tons, and since it can't fly on half power, redundancy is probably > pointless. > > A 20,000-ton ship might be 4,000,000 cf and 150,000 sf. An advanced, > extra-heavy hull is 225 tons and DR 100 advanced metal are 1,125 tons. > Composite saves a few hundred tons. > > So a heli-carrier is possible with 3E TL8 technology, it seems. Not the > chameleon system, maybe, but the rest of it. > > So are there reasons why this shouldn't work? And if the carrier works, > how about a heli-battleship? > > With TL9 tech, it gets even easier, and with TL10 it is almost routine. > > Regards, > Onno > _______________________________________________ > GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> > http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l > _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
