Cool Things I Learned While Reading Fred Erisman's Book

[beamjockey]

Namely Boys’ Books, Boys’ Dreams, and the Mystique of Flight, which, as you may recall, I mentioned a few years ago. I finally got my hands on a copy.


1. The first book in Harry Lincoln Sayler's Aeroplane Boys series, In the Clouds for Uncle Sam; or, Morey Marshall of the Signal Corps, features an airplane-- pardon me, aeroplane-- engine powered by liquid hydrogen. In 1910. The U.S. Air Force spent hundreds of millions of 1950s dollars trying to do this without achieving an operational LH₂ -fueled aircraft. But it was sure a neat speculative idea when Sayler (pseudonym "Ashton Lamar") used it.

(Did anybody ever get hydrogen to fuel a plane? I can't think of one just now.)


2. Following Billy Mitchell's fall from grace, his ally Major Hap Arnold, sidetracked to a cavalry post, wrote six juvenile novels in the "Bill Bruce" series. Professor Erisman thinks they're pretty good. Arnold got his career back on track; eventually he became Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1941 to 1945.


3. Harold Blaine Miller, before becoming co-author of the "Bob Wakefield" series of 1936 to 1940, flew Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawks, unhooking from the trapeze of the Zeppelins Akron and Macon. One of the coolest jobs in aviation, ever.

Comments

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

The first 2 images in your post haven't worked,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16566/16566-h/images/aero1-tb.png
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16566/16566-h/images/aero2-tb.png

What you actually get is http://www.gutenberg.org/pics/do-not-inline.png which is a yellow box which says,
"Do not inline Project Gutenberg images
See www.gutenberg.org/howto-link"

I recently discovered there was an alternate history novel about airship carriers, called ZRS by Rowan Partridge, though I haven't read it. That led me to the video "The Flying Carriers" (half way down this page http://www.airshiphistory.com/Videos.htm) which I'm tempted to get.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

I'm getting that same yellow warning box when I follow your image links up there.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, if I choose to view the image in another window, it shows me the book cover.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Sorry; I had no idea this would go awry-- looked fine in previews. I have replaced those images with one I have hosted on Picasa.

snotty-technical point

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

The U S Navy didn't call its lighter-than-air craft "zeppelins".
It called them "airships" or "dirigibles".
Just a bit of prejudice left-over from World War First.

Re: snotty-technical point

[timill]

Well, the Los Angeles was a Zeppelin (LZ-126) whether the USN called it that or not...

I'm not sure of the relationship between Goodyear-Zeppelin (which built both Akron and Macon)and LZ in Germany.

Re: snotty-technical point

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

The U.S. Navy called in ZR-3, the "R" was for Rigid. In the U.S. Navy Aircraft 1922-1962 Designation System, lighter-than-air craft all had designations starting with Z. Goodyear did have a partnership with Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, LZ had a minority interest, but it was dissolved some time in the early 40's. The Los Angeles was built in Germany by LZ as war reparations, which is way cooler than cash.

Re: snotty-technical point

[timill]

Rather better than ZR-2...

Re: snotty-technical point

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

timill is correct; the U.S. Navy rigid airships were Zeppelin-style designs, the Los Angeles was actually built in Germany by Count von Zeppelin's company itself, and the later rigids were built in Ohio by the Goodyear Zeppelin partnership, using Zeppelin's patents and some of its engineers.

The point about the Navy avoiding the use of the term "zeppelin" had eluded me.

(Non-rigid airships are not zeppelins, and some rigid airships were not zeppelins, but Zeppelin had most of the mindshare and most of the technical success.)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Our library used to have a series of YA (?) aviator books, putatively by "Franklin W. Dixon." I confess that the hook was enough to get me to read one, after which I read the others that they had. There were maybe five or so, and I can't remember much about them at all except that the last one in their collection promised that the next book would reveal the secret of the hero's parents. I think it was something about taking air mail across the Rockies.

I'm sure they've gotten rid of all that stuff since then. Libraries now seem to exist to carry the same stuff that's in book stores, and they get rid of it after six months. (Yes, I am a fogey. Why do you ask?)

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Ted Scott Flying Stories. A Stratemeyer Syndicate product.

I cannot resist sharing Bob Finnan's account: scroll down to "A Guide To The Plot Of Every Ted Scott Book Ever Written."

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Holy Ned, they had cover art! It never occurred to me that they had ever looked like anything but red buckram with the title on the front in heavy black type. Thanks for the link to the plots -- that takes me back, I'll tell the world.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

That hypersonic X-vehicle (X-41?) was hydrogen fueled.

And don't forget the difference between rigid airships and blimps. :-)

I have a hardcover book titled _Zeppelins Against London_ which talks about the German rigid airships bombing England during the Great War, printed in 1960.

IIRC the German navy airships used duralumin and the army used laminated wood.

The US Army Air Corps process of launching and recovering aircraft became so reliable that the planes had their landing gear removed to improve performance.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

That hypersonic X-vehicle (X-41?) was hydrogen fueled.

Aha! Thanks.

And don't forget the difference between rigid airships and blimps. :-)

As many years as you've known me, I'd hope you would not be fearful that I might forget the difference between rigid airships and blimps.

The US Army Air Corps process of launching and recovering aircraft became so reliable that the planes had their landing gear removed to improve performance.

You misspelled "Navy."

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Did anybody ever get hydrogen to fuel a plane?

That one seems perfect for the MythBusters. Think of the big kaboom if this were to go wrong.

[charlie-meadows.livejournal.com]

I was checking the dates on liquefaction of gases: Dewar has gotten hydrogen to liquefy in 1898 (the regenerative cooling technique had only been made to work three years earlier). So Sayler is appealing to some really cutting-edge technology at the time. Here's NASA's little history of gas liquefaction:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4404/app-a1.htm


The idea of using liquid hydrogen for this sort of propulsion got kicked around some more in the late-'80s (by which time it had become clear the Space Shuttle was not going to cut it for some purposes) when the DoD and NASA decided to have people look into so-called "direct-to-orbit" or "launch-on-demand" * spacecraft. The motivation for this is that hydrogen is light and the oxidizer could largely be picked up along the way, supposedly greatly reducing the amount of propulsion weight the spacecraft would have to haul.

* Do they get these terms from marketing people? Both of these phrases are in common usage if you replace the last or first word with "video"...


The sticking points were (and largely still are, apparently) that

1) liquid hydrogen is *too* light, having about 1/14 the density of water; carrying enough fuel creates a *volume* problem for the vehicle (with the associated aerodynamic issues, and so forth); there was talk about reducing the volume by using hydrogen "slush", which entail chilling the liquid down further so that it starts to solidify, but I'm not aware of there being a lot of progress in using that as fuel

2) *assuming* the "supersonic combustion" ("SCRamjet") engine design problems are resolved, one finds that the spacecraft will have flown beyond the atmospheric oxygen around the time it's reached an altitude of 50 miles (the power delivery problem sets in earlier); unfortunately, about that point, the "atmosphere" is mostly hydrogen (big help) and helium (no help at all!); one returns to the matter of taking along *some* oxidizer for the ascent, which begins to defeat the purpose of the design

3) this *is* a one-stage rocket design, so there is a substantial penalty to be paid against payload weight

somewhat less critical:

4) facilities for supporting cryogenically-fueled spacecraft are pretty scarce and expensive to build and maintain (this is why there were only one or two locations outside the U.S. for emergency Shuttle landings -- they couldn't bring one down at just any Air Force base); so DTO vehicles wouldn't be getting sent up from very many locations


One becomes aware in looking at this that a planet with enough gravity to hold onto to some heavier gases like carbon dioxide and oxygen, but not so much that it also keeps a lot of hydrogen and helium around, is also a planet that is awfully hard to climb off of by using chemical propulsion...