Reminds me of a scene in Iron Man I.
On 2019-05-13 4:17 PM, Ivan Vuletich wrote:
Does it have a stability augmentation system? At about 1:40 in this video he does a pretty spectacular flip, which would have ended badly if he'd been a bit higher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=8YWlBVjdqiU
As to practicality for HPR, I was wondering about using these types jets as a way of gaining extra altitude, but I think that you and Henry are right, it would be easier to just build a bigger rocket.
On 13/05/2019 11:37, Ben Brockert wrote:
I met with their engineer and occasional pilot Sam Rogers when I was
in London a month or two ago. We chatted for a couple hours about
additive manufacturing, he's done work on rocket engines as well.
There's some really clever stuff in the jet suit design he did,
managing temperature of metal parts so that they can be attached to
structural thermoplastic parts. The backpack is a single printed
plastic part and they can spin up another complete unit amazingly
quickly.
He has some pictures on his instagram at
https://www.instagram.com/jettisam/?hl=en
He said there were multiple people that had learned to fly it, and
they've figured out a way to do the training. So in that regard it
seems significantly more successful than Bell peroxide "rocket belt",
even though it has more degrees of freedom.
You certainly could use the engines as a first stage for a HPR rocket,
though they have the same limitations as jet engines in general,
namely a much worse thrust:weight ratio than a rocket. A reusable jet
VTVL first stage isn't likely much worse than air launch, if the
objective is just to gain enough altitude that a better nozzle can be
used on the rocket. It's still worse than a rocket if the objective is
to make orbit.
There have been a lot of "electric rocket" demos built by the RC
aircraft hobby field, which are much much cheaper than rockets or jet
engines and might be a good way to prototype GNC. Could work as a
first stage for a small rocket.
Single 'engine' with jet vanes, like a V-2 or Redstone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3jRZgqhqoU
One with a gimbaled engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7mSE_ST1gs
In the US you could have issues with legality of flying an electric
craft to any useful altitude. Drones got vastly more tightly regulated
than amateur rockets at equivalent levels of impulse. If you actually
came up with a business case for it you could try to get the FAA-AST
to claim your system as a launch vehicle, the way one company managed
to do with their (rocketless) balloons.
Ben
On Sun, May 12, 2019 at 5:24 PM Ivan Vuletich
<ivan.vuletich@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Off Topic, but the videos look really cool. Not sure if this guy is
going to be the real Iron Man or a Darwin award candidate.
https://gravity.co/
https://www.facebook.com/WevolverApp/videos/392533371341920
Somewhat more on topic, how practical would it be to integrate small jet
turbines like the ones in the videos into a first stage for an HPR rocket?
