Bill Freeman wrote:

Paul,

I had a laugh at the expense of the Carter Copter guys
the other day when I heard about their engine.  I was made
aware of this machine about a year and a half ago by a
friend who is an electrical engineer and was pretty impressed
by the web site.  I checked it out and said that the primary
unsolvable problem was going to be the powerplant.
The bullshit "600hp NASCAR racing V6" made me laugh.
I told him over a year ago that the engine would blow up
and never produce the power that this design needs.
I also pointed out that in all probability the design would
fail due to the unattainable requirements for a powerplant.

I could design a flying saucer to go single stage to orbit
and travel to the moon and back if I could only find
a affordablel rocket that puts out 100,000 lbs thrust for
10 hours and burns 500 lbs of fuel.   So when they
develop one of these, I'll be right there, until then
my saucer design is bullshit, regardless of what other portions
of the problem I might solve successfully.

Sorry to say the same about the Carter Copter.  They have
shown a lot of ingenuity (as opposed to engineering) and
have stuck to it thru a LOT of serious failures (multiple
prop explosions, drivetrain failures, serious rotor instability,
uncontrollable vertical oscillations the nearly incapacitated
the crew,etc.)   but they are not likely to meet the power
and fuel burn goals.  If it works at all it will be a turboprop
powered, ultra expensive short-ranger.   These guys
are verifying with a lot of money and sweat what smarter
engineers were able to see from a few hours of preliminary
calculations.   It won't be practical (payload & range & cost)
with the powerplants we have today.

I'm not sure whether to applaud their initiative and persistance
or laugh at their hard-headedness and technical niavete' .  The
only problem is they are funded with MY money via NASA.

Bill

Well put Bill.

Paul

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