Which weird design concept do you think failed because they got the execution wrong, rather than because it wasn’t a good idea?

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setthrustpositive@reddit

Continental Tiara engine.

Propeller is driven from crankshaft.

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DaveB44@reddit

Propeller is driven from crankshaft.

Autocorrect? Should have read camshaft.

Reminds me of the Lancia Gamma, which had the power steering pump driven directly from one of the camshafts. Cold morning, steering on full lock . .

. . . there goes a cambelt!

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IronMew@reddit

Lancia Gamma

Wasn't aware of this one. Interfererence engine, timing belts and a load on the cam. Really makes you wonder how this idea passed all the way from flawed conception all the way to flawed execution...

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From wiki: While the Tiara series were basically traditional boxer engines, they did have some unique features.[1] The engines had high rotational speeds, 0.5:1 gearing was used to reduce propeller speed, with the camshaft forming an extension of the propeller shaft.[1][3] The propeller shaft featured the Hydra-Torque drive to reduce the shaft's vibrations.[1] The engines were available with four, six- and eight-cylinders. All were fuel-injected, with turbocharging being optional.

What they didn't bet on was the shear loads on the camshaft from ag planes. Lots of pawnee braves were lost to the cam breaking.

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DaveB44@reddit

Nope camshaft.

Go back to the post I was quoting - it said crankshaft!

As I pointed out, it should have said camshaft; giving you the benefit of the doubt, I assume you'd fallen foul of autocorrect.

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setthrustpositive@reddit

My phones autocorrect is too strong. Fixed.

Also the Tiara almost Bankrupted Continental

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greatistheworld@reddit

Bugatti Model 100, based on purely vibes and no hard data whatsoever

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IronMew@reddit

Most beautiful plane ever made. I wish someone would make another replica - hopefully one that doesn't run on motorcycle chains.

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Foreign_Athlete_7693@reddit

there are very few planes i want high quality models of, but the bugatti is one of them....

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JumboChimp@reddit

Beautiful plane, a replica was built and flown three times, and then...mumble mumble mumble.

The replica project was running on a relative shoestring budget and didn't have the money to work out issues in the drivetrain (twin engines behind the pilot driving counter rotating propellers up front via driveshafts between the pilots legs). The pilot was the guy behind the whole project, the third flight was always intended to the last. Apparently clutch to the forward propeller slipped, the pilot did not recognize and respond appropriately to the situation, and the plane crashed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Model_100#Blue_Dream_reproduction_aircraft

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Archididelphis@reddit

My immediate thought, you could fill a whole category with "failed" ducted fan craft. Some of them clearly came from people who did not understand or utilize the concept, like the Caproni Stipa "barrel". With others, it's not at all clear why they were abandoned, unless someone decided that the whole idea was not (yet?) practical. I have been especially fascinated by the Bell X-22. That one not only tried ducted fans, but used a four engine configuration that could have offered a more safe and stable transition between vertical and horizontal thrust if you did it with one pair then the other. I'm still not satisfied that later twin prop tiltrotors were an improvement, outside of fuel economy and presumably simpler maintenance.

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Safe-Salamander-3785@reddit

The P-39 was another Bell Aircraft that didn’t get any love except from the Russians. If the original plane had the super charger like the P-38, it would have been great at high altitude.

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fireinthesky7@reddit

I still wish the Edgley Optica had been more popular. It's one of the coolest planes ever sold on the civilian market.

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Archididelphis@reddit

Don't know if I had heard of that one, but it seemed vaguely familiar. The cockpit is beautiful. Just, ah, odd placement...

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DuelJ@reddit

Mid engines for fighters.

If we didn't get jet engines, it seems like it would've been a good way to further improve for speed.

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BlackFoxTom@reddit

Canards are probably the biggest one

Arguably biplanes/box wings as they technically can have lower drag overall. Tho it sees some resurgence in ultra long range drones and cruise missiles.

Generally there is a lot of things that are more efficient, have better loads and so on

But companies, especially corporations like Boeing or Airbus, don't want to risk doing something unknown and untested

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PartyLikeAByzantine@reddit

But companies, especially corporations like Boeing or Airbus, don't want to risk doing something unknown and untested

What? Boeing is always trying weird shit. X-47/Blended wing body, sonic cruiser, X-66, to say nothing of their military projects like the Bird of Prey. Among their successful experiments, they famously bet the company on the 747 and the 777 and 787 have both changed commerical flight.

If anything, it's the airlines that are extremely skeptical of heterodox designs.

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Foreign_Athlete_7693@reddit

far as blended wing-body (also flying wing) designs go, I see no way as yet around two of the fundamental problems with having the passengers spread out across lateral axis: 1) emergency evacuation is massivly complicated, and 2) banking is an issue

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PartyLikeAByzantine@reddit

True, though I'm not sure BWB even got to the regulatory phase. I assume Boeing did the basic homework on making sure people could egress in the required time.

Airlines balked at the mere concept. The other guy who pointed out costly modifications to airports was also correct.

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BlackFoxTom@reddit

That Boeing makes on government contract all kinds of weird things doesn't mean Boeing as corporation that produces planes in large numbers is doing weird things. As governmental stuff is all paid for and extra.

And not doing weird/unusual things isn't the same as not innovating at all.

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PartyLikeAByzantine@reddit

Um, yeah. NASA and DARPA literally exist to reduce the risk of new, unproven ideas. Am I supposed to be disappointed that a government program actually works as intended and judge Boeing harshly for using it?

I'm not going to. If I ever need to shit on Boeing, I can point to its actual well known problems. Not made up stuff like how they don't push the envelope.

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cocoadelica@reddit

Actually it’s airports. They won’t pay for gates to accommodate different designs that don’t fit the model.

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ShakyBrainSurgeon@reddit

Oblique wings, since flight computers wouldn´t struggle much with it these days. It would drastically improve efficiency at higher speeds and might be a possibillity to reduce sonic booms too.

Also: Dual mode propulsion (turbojet & ramjet) for fast drones, cruise missiles and potentially planes.

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fireinthesky7@reddit

The SR-71's engines operated more or less like ramjets once the plane was traveling at supersonic speeds.

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ShakyBrainSurgeon@reddit

True, but the idea of switching inflight from one engine to another is what hasn´t been done on manned aircraft that we know of.

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Shaun_Jones@reddit

The Stipa-Capproni; Stipa himself said that the concept wouldn’t be as effective in a single engine aircraft, but they built it as one anyway only to find that the performance gains were marginal at that scale. On top of that, it made the aircraft look very goofy so that no one would ever take it seriously again even though it is the predecessor of the very concept of a turbofan engine (specifically the cold air bypass ducts).

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Allaplgy@reddit

The Wright Flyer and similar early designs like the Santos-Dumont 14-bis essentially had canards. The first real production aircraft with them came 60 years later.

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ShamScience@reddit

Did those fail? The Wright Flyer in particular is usually considered a success, in its own context. Judging those early designs by standards from a century later doesn't make a lot sense.

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Harpies_Bro@reddit

Their Model A got them $300,000 from a US military contract in 1909, but it was the last with the doubled canards.

Its follow-up in 1910 had a more modern biplane layout with its elevator on the tail boom below the rudder and its two crew sitting in front on the plane. The Model B presumably had the elevator moved to the rear for both mechanical and aerodynamic benefits on top of giving the crew a clearer view. The B was sold to both the US Army and Navy, so being able to serve as an artillery spotter with more mobility than a tethered hot air balloon was a big point. Especially once they bolted a Lewis gun to the observers’ side.

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Allaplgy@reddit

The flyer itself was a success in that it kickstarted powered flight, but it was quickly discovered that there were better ways to control an aircraft.

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HortenWho229@reddit (OP)

I think he's saying canard design didn't catch on for 60 years because we didn't execute the designs properly.

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AverageAircraftFan@reddit

Obviously the XB-35 and YB-49. Absolute pioneers of design but, interestingly, only really seemed to fail due to engine and efficiency problems

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AverageAircraftFan@reddit

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CaptainCrowbar@reddit

What's the chase plane there? P-61?

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Twilight_walker77@reddit

Yes. Also a Northrop product. Perhaps this is a contractor test flight and Northrop would naturally use one of their own planes to chase.

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Ornery_Year_9870@reddit

There was no sabotage.

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AverageAircraftFan@reddit

There are numerous instances that raised Northrop’s suspicion of political sabotage, including non-standard demonstration procedures and unexplainable failures during test flights, as well as the ordering of the flying wings to be completely destroyed and then sent to back to Northrop rather than being preserved in any form (despite requests to preserve)

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Ornery_Year_9870@reddit

Jack Northrop was very suspicious, that's for sure. The sudden scrapping of the Flying Wings did seem malicious, but Jack had been a pain in the USAAC and USAF ass for years. They were scrapped at the Northop plant in Hawthorne, so they weren't taken and sent back. I do wish one had been saved.

I've never heard any claims about unexplainable failures, credible or not. Can you elaborate? What were the non-standard demonstration procedures?

This link downloads a 25mb PDF is the best and most thorough analysis of the demise of the Northorp Flying Wing program.

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/context/cgu_etd/article/1076/viewcontent/Baker1984.pdf

The tl;dr answer to the story is that the YB-49 simply did not meet the USAF requirements for a heavy or even medium bomber. It lacked the range, speed and payload. The stability issues were largely corrected but not to the extent that it was an acceptable bomb aiming platform. The B-36 was doing the job, the Boeing B-47 was coming online and was superior in performance to the B-49 in every way. And the B-52 was in development.

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LefsaMadMuppet@reddit

They had center of gravity issues as well. It was pretty much a non-viable concept until fly-by-wire became available.

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AverageAircraftFan@reddit

The YB-49 did feature yaw damping via its autopilot, which led test pilots to describe its performance as “marvelous” and susceptibility to yaw as “[meeting] military specification”

However, the YB-49 itself was plagued with efficiency problems, as I had initially described. Its thick airfoil was not built for high speed flight and the jet engines consumed substantially more fuel than the piston engines, leading to a very short range and small payload

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Ornery_Year_9870@reddit

Well, the -4360 wasn't a terrible engine by any means. It performed well with reasonable reliability in a number of other planes, particularlly the C-97 & C-124 series.

The problem was the installation, which made it nearly impossible to cool, and as you said, the propellers, shafts, and gearboxes. The B-36 also had cooling issues because its engines were also buried in the wing.

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