Leon Promet wrote:

Hi Paul,

What do you or any of your readers know about Burnelli Aircraft? Thought
your guys might be interested!  I've been a plane nut ever since I could
make motor noises,  and I only came across them by accident less than 12
months ago.

http://www.hit.fi/~vzvirbly/burnelli/links.htm

While you are there,  visit John Wagner's Tesla site and see how the
illustrious Smithsonian suppresses the truth!  Bet most people thing Edison
invented the 3 phase AC electricity transmission system,  and Marconi
invented Radio!  "In yer dreams!!"  Tesla did!!

 and

Leon Promet

As Vance recently pointed out it is nearly impossible to build a light
weight pressure vessel that looks like a Burnelli fuselage.

Structurally efficient pressure vessel tends to look like a sphere or
a tube.

Also, low aspect ratio lifting bodies have high induced drag if
in fact they indeed reach a high enough angle of attack to generate appreciable
lift. If they don't they merely have excess skin friction drag due to an
unfavorable  surface area to volume ratio. In short the Burnelli flies
in the face of aerodynamic and structural principle :-)

I am sure/or hope we will hear from Vance again
with one of his very witty dissertations on this subject :-)

Paul Lamar

vjaqua wrote:

The Burnelli aircraft were a very interesting variation during the 30's and have
significant advantages in certain applications. They lifted amazing loads for their
time including one flight with a Christie light tank carried between the main gear
(The Christie tank story is another good one for you conspiracy fans - probably
with more truth than the Burnelli conspiracy claims). The primary area of advantage
is for relatively low speed, non pressurized application, where it allows large
bulk volumes with relatively low aero penalties. Planes like the Explorer flying
camper can benifit from this design approach. However, for the jet age world
traveller, the existing family of jumbo jets are hard to beat. Boeing has not
always had the corner on this market, and if a major break through had been
possible using the Burnelli features, it would have been pushed by at least one of
the competitors. As Paul stated the presurization issue can become all consuming.
The only thing more efficient than that tube would be a sphere - and they are too
draggy.

I have a mini library on Tesla alone, and he is indeed the most under appreciated
scientist/inventor of his time. However, he was his own worst enemy, in addition to
being certifiably insane, he was not above a bit of "scientific" chicanery on
occasion. I am convinced that he had the best understanding of cyclic action and
wave motion of anyone that has lived, but I think some of his claimed inventions
were fund raising fakery.

I have a personal bone of contention with the Smithsonian - The Luner Module Ascent
engine display is totally the wrong hardware and atributed to the wrong supplier,
and they have been sent the right hardware, and told of their error and appear not
to care. Myself, and the other engineers at Rocketdyne that took over the failed
program from Bell, and made it fly are justifiably pissed.

We Americans are fond of conspiracy theories (and it makes the lawyers rich), but
in most cases I think it is the cause of sore losers who were really overcome by
financial, publicity, apathy, or engineering realities.

Vance

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