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I have a horrid feeling I've posted something like this before,
but now cannot find it. Or perhaps I just dreamed it after
one
of the Intercalary's cheese and wine parties.
Person-carrying electric drones are perfectly possible and
have
been designed, built and tested - sometimes without
fatalities.
The main limitation, naturally, is the batteries - they need
to
be big to sustain flight for even a few minutes, and
therefore
they're heavy, which means you need more lift, which means
bigger batteries... It's sort of like the rocket equation.
So, just run the thing off the mains, duh. Now, there are
obviously a few issues with running a person-carrying drone
off
the mains. However, being able to drone around a 100m
hemisphere (and who is to say that human creativity cannot
produce an extension lead of that length?) would still be
incredibly cool. Indeed, water-powered jet packs are
popular,
despite being hose-limited to perhaps 10 metres.
That's it, really. A human-carrying drone that plugs into the
mains on a 100m lead. Oh, and an uninterruptible PSU to
give
you 20 seconds of landing time in the event of a power cut.
Drone with Air-to-Ground Power Tether
[xaviergisz, Jan 15 2019]
PowerLine Drone Power Tether System
https://www.riseabo...r-system-for-drones
[xaviergisz, Jan 15 2019]
Air_20Swimming
[xenzag, Jan 15 2019]
Petróczy-Kármán-Žurovec
https://en.wikipedi...C3%A1n-%C5%BDurovec
Their PKZ-1 was a tethered electric human-carrying helicopter in 1918! Able to lift three men! Mentioned in my anno [notexactly, Jan 16 2019]
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Annotation:
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Mains powered helecopters for pilot training are Baked. |
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Cicaré SVH-4 flight trainer was the closest I could find,
but not mains powered. Ideal for people who get
vertigo. |
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A slightly different idea to this, but could you power a drone with a high-power laser from the ground? |
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//could you power a drone with a high-power laser// |
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I'm guessing a small camera-carrying drone uses at least a few
hundred Watts, which is a fearsome amount of power. Add a
factor of 4 for losses (or not, if your drone is steam-driven). I
guess it's possible, but you really wouldn't want anything to
get in the way of the beam. |
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Re. the links, so it can be done for regular drones used for
filming or inspection. But a man-carrying drone would be
nice. Title amended to reflect this. |
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But what if you wanted to use it to carry a woman? |
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I think the woman would have something to say about it. |
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Not just something to say - refer to chapters 3, 4 and 5, "Coping with rejection", "First aid", and "In the hospital emergency room". |
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Hang on, which "mains" are referring to 230v, 110v or
that pathetic 100v in Japan? |
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Shirley no one want to get shown up by weedy
electrons? |
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Well, a man-carrying drone is probably going to be in the tens
or hundreds of kW, so if you're running it on 110V you're going
to need some pretty hefty cables, which means the drone has
to be more powerful, which means... |
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The version we've seen (actually seen, operating) uses (used) 415V 3-phase supplied through a high-flexibility cable - possibly a silicone rubber. |
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For 100kVA, that's only 80A per phase, which is fairly modest. Because there's no fuel, just the motor, that sort of power would lift a lightweight 2-seater airframe. |
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Daft question...why not just send compressed air up a
pipe to the heli-wotsit, sufficient to drive the rotors? |
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It could be done by A) a gear box driving the rotors
[boring] or B) plumb it out further to the rotor tip
nozzley-things which could remove toupees at a
distance of 50m [not boring]. |
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Hmm. I would guess that a sufficiently robust air hose would
be less flexible than a power cord. |
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Compressed air's a very inefficient means of energy transfer. There's a huge thermal loss at the compression stage, and a risk of freezing at the motor. |
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It's fine for devices like air tools, or starter motors, which operate at high power on a very short duty cycle, but for a system required to operate at continuous full load it's not practical. |
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// plumb it out further to the rotor tip nozzley-things // |
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Tip-rotor designs, like the Fairey Rotodyne and others, have been tried - the main disadvantage is that they are horrendously noisy. |
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Why not use a rigid telescopic arm to support everything, and then the rotors can just be for show? |
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3 Phase is the way to go* and aluminium might be
preferable for the conductor in the tether-cable. The
conductivity/weight and strength/weight both work for
you there although fatigue should be a consideration. |
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I had an idea a while back of using an electric drone as a
short term take-off thrust augmentation for conventional
aircraft. Sort of an electric JATO that flies itself back
after detaching. This might be a good way of doing that,
particularly on an aircraft carrier where the distances are
already short. |
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*that's true for everything though, really. So disappointing
that none of the major manufacturers do an approved 3-
phase phone charger. |
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Or a mains-powered drone-carrying man. |
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Or a mains-powered man carrying a drone. I'm sure
Stross had a character using electricity instead of
mitochondria. Don't ask me what his output was. |
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How is it a drone if it carries a crew? |
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IIRC, one of the early flight pioneers had an electric plane
that was tethered to a tower. I can't find that now, but I can
find something even relevanter: A tethered electric human-
carrying helicopter in 1918!! [link] |
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//How is it a drone if it carries a crew? // That,
[notexactly], is one of the great mysteries of the universe. |
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//How is it a drone if it carries a crew?// |
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//one of the great mysteries of the universe// |
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To be a drone it must either be autonomous or controlled
remotely, so clearly it isn't a drone if it has a crew, doesn't
mean a drone can't carry cargo, people are often cargo. |
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People that are cargo are called "passengers". |
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// People that are cargo are called "passengers". // |
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BA cabin crew used to call them "punters", whereas Lufthansa staff referred to them as "the cattle". |
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Of all the words and phrases used by airline employees to refer to those who use their services, oddly "esteemed and important client" is not included. |
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