Ever since man has dreamed about going to the stars there has one been one huge issue, how do we get there in under one lifetime? For a really long time we have used the same or similar technology, we have used airfoils in several forms. Way back when the Wright brothers were first working their kites they experimented with many designs: Flat wings, curved wings, and angular wings. After all their tests they concluded that a curved wing was significantly more efficient because as far as turbulence is concerned the smoother the object is the less turbulence you get. For example, trying to move a brick through the water would be really difficult because the water has to make a 90 degree turn, but if you had a teardrop shaped object and tried to move that through water it would be significantly easier because it has no sharp edges. The wright brothers settled on a design that was similar to half a tear drop, because the air on the top of the wing has a farther distance to go it has a lower pressure so it gets pulled up, or lift.
Essentially every aircraft from the very fist one has used basically the same design for wings.
This design of this wing is essentially the standard design.
Aircraft that are made to go much faster are designed with what is called a swept wing, or a delta wing.
Swept Wing Delta Wing
The advantage of the swept wing planes is that at high speeds the wing provides less drag and better control, and the swept wing is crucial when flying at above the speed of sound, because the aerodynamics changes dramatically. When a wing is traveling supersonic it creates a wave of air that rolls along the wing, and the longer it is in contact with a wing the more lifts it provides, on a straight wing it would be in contact for only a short time. A disadvantage of the swept wing is that at slower speeds it the lift and control it provides are greatly diminished.
The delta wing is the best of both worlds, it combines the necessary angle of attack required at high speeds and it provides the stability and lift required for slower flight.
Even though there is not very many designs of wings, each and every one is designed for a different purpose, for example, you wouldn’t put wings designed for a 200 knot plane on a plane that flies 400 knots. Each wing is specifically designed with different characteristics, some planes have leading edge slats that extend during flight to change the aerodynamics, and handling characteristics.
Leading edge slats extend to provide more or less lift at a certain speed.
For the first 40 years of flight airplanes were powered by internal combustion engines and propellers, which are good up to a point. A propeller is essentially a wing but it’s designed to be spun at a cretin RPM for maximum efficiency. normal propellers are good up to about 200 knots, but above 200 knots they need to be specially designed. In general propellers can reach an effective speed of 400 knots, but some airplanes designed for racing and ultra high performance can go up to 500 knots, but for a propeller to push an airplane that fast it needs a special engine and incredibly precise manufacturing. The main downside to a propeller airplane is its altitude it can fly at, anything above 20,000 feet is hard to fly at in an airplane without a specialized engine, because without a supercharger the engine cant get enough air and it would sputter and die out. during the last year of WW2 the Germans were working on a new technology, a jet engine, which was the epitome of flying technology for 50 years. In its most simple form a jet engine is a ducted fan, with more oomph. Early jet engines were inefficient and weren’t much better than propellers, but as the thing that jet engines had that propellers didn’t was a much higher service ceiling, about 50,000 feet. As jet engines progressed, and got faster they got more efficient and more reliable. A jet engine sucks in air, compresses it to really high pressure, injects fuel, and lights the fuel, producing thrust. the major downside to jet engines is that they are horribly inefficient, only about 15-20%, but as jet engines get more advanced and use better metals they can burn the fuel a little hotter squeezing a little bit more power out of fuel. Recently a modification has been made to increase the power output of jet engines, called a turbo fan. A turbo fan is a jet engine with an extra housing around it and another, larger fan in front of it that provides extra thrust. turbo fans are used on larger planes, for example, passenger liners, cargo planes, and large, subsonic, bombers. The downside to jet engines are that they are incredibly advanced pieces of technology, and need to be built and put together perfectly, and have what is called a service life, or, the number of times they can be started up, because of the incredible heat and force exerted on the blades, after a while they will weaken and crack.
This is a Turbo Fan, the first green fan blade is driven by the turbine and blows extra air, for extra thrust.
As long as man has been dreaming of fly they have been dreaming about going to the stars, and until recently (compared to the age of man) we haven’t been able to leave the ground, and return safely, but in the 18th century we developed rockets, which are very simple, and contain no moving parts, but require large amounts of fuel. A rocket has basically 2 parts, the ignition chamber and the nozzle. Rockets are have 2 fuels, an oxidizer and a propellant. The oxidizer can be anything from liquid oxygen to tires, it works to speed up the burning of the propellant. A propellant could be anything from propane, to natural gas to hydrogen, it is what is burned to provide the high pressure in a rocket to propel it forward.
Just recently scientists have developed a new type of engine, a plasma engine. A plasma engine works just like a rocket, but it provides more power, much more. A rocket engine has exhaust gasses in the temperature range of thousands, which provides a good amount of thrust, but plasma is in the millions of degrees, which is a tad hotter. plasma engines would create more thrust with less fuel, crucial for longer, quicker flights. A plasma engine uses a noble gas, such as argon, and turns it into plasma, the fourth state of matter, with ultra high power radio waves. One immediate problem is that plasma, being millions of degrees, would melt through anything, even tungsten (melts at about 4500 F), so the only reasonable way to contain it is with ultra powerful magnets. Even the most powerful electromagnets would be insufficient, so scientists have to use superconducting magnets, which could handle the power required to keep the plasma away, and guide the plasma away form the ship.
Surprisingly, plasma engines weren’t an intended product of research. The research started way back in the 1950’s, with research in to how to contain nuclear fusion to create energy, but one of the scientists realized that they could use the principals they worked out to contain and direct plasma out a rocket engine, at many thousand PSI. Until recently the equipment and materials didn’t exist to create a fully functioning prototype, but a team at Ad Astra’s Houston laboratory successfully tested the first stage of their VASIMR VX-200, short for Variable Specific Impulse Magneto plasma Rocket. The first stage is 30 kW, but it doesn’t actually provide the thrust, it is designed to actually produce the plasma. The second stage, rated at 170 kW is the stage that focuses and ejects the plasma out the back. The second stage work with a technology called ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH), to be honest, i have no idea how that works, so that is up to you to find out.
I think this new breakthrough is incredible, it is theorised to be able to cut the trip to mars from 6-9 months all the way down to 3 months. I think this really broadens our horizon, so to speak, because we could get man and machine farther, faster then we ever could before.
