An excellent summary of the history and milestones of the oblique wing program! I was fortunate to be working at Ames Industrial Corp when the AD-1 was being built. Burt Rutan did the detail design, Ames did the fabricating. Funny side-story: the government contracting guy thought he was releasing funding for an UNMANNED model aircraft due to the low cost of the contract.....he was not of course. A colleague, Ron S., who has sadly passed on, was the primary fabricator with a group of us supporting manpower requirements as needed. I participated in some of the larger structure layups for the wing and fuselage as well as in the load testing of the wing before final aircraft assembly. Good times. The aircraft was constructed in our Ames facility in Bohemia, NY and we towed the finished AD-1 (using my pickup as a tug) about 1 mile to the nearby McArthur Airport where a National Guard C-130 was waiting to whisk the AD-1 off to NASA Ames in California (no "Ames" relation) for final inspection and flight testing. During construction two designated NASA pilots would fly from NASA Ames to McArthur and visit our facility for custom cockpit "fitments". One NASA pilot, Tom McMurtry, was an especially tall dude so we had to make sure he could fit and function in the tiny cockpit. The aircraft now resides in the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos CA. If you remove the fuselage cover just forward of the wing pivot you'll find the signatures of the team who designed, built, and flew the AD-1, my signature is among them. I have some pictures from that project in my collection including a signed pic from Tom McMurtry. Great story here Mustard!
Thank you for sharing, it's pretty inspirational! However, given so many years have passed and lot of big players have come in to the market, do you think Jones ideas have been further developed/tested for the commercial usage?
as an engineer that commonly gets into situations where the design requires an "ugly" or asymmetric feature, i absolutely love this whole oblique wing concept
this is engineering not art school, p.s athstetic can help sell and such, but there are quite a small range of products that applies to. Most of the time however hard performace and cost come first. Anything that is athsetic about something as engeered as a passenger jet is either conincidental or done seperatley after other desige contrainsts have been meet. I don't know why so many people seems upset at the thought that engeering isn't art, because it's not. if you upset at being told your engeering project have no artistic value, then you probobley weren't an engeer to begin with, or putting disproportionate focous on a very limited part of your work.
1:43 So the person that, let's say, was 10 yrs old, could watch Wright Flyer, the first airplane ever to fly under own power and in just 62 years they would be watching the fastest flying jet ever made?! This is crazy!!!
This was actually an Estes model rocket back in the 70's. Send it up as a rocket with the wings folded parallel with the rocket body with a B sized motor installed, at the end of the burn stage the reverse thrust that usually pushes out the parachute would instead trigger the wings to fold outward and the rocket would then glide back safely to the ground like a glider for another round. Este rockets were a very popular hobby for kids and adults back then. Thus, why I knew about this back when I was in fourth grade.
I had a version that turned into a helicopter! It had a heavy nosecone to force it to tip over, which was supposed to only pop up and release the blades, but inevitably ended up shelling the ground with the heavy nosecone in the process. They never said why they discontinued it but I can probably guess
We put a few together intentionally to come down like a lawn dart. Go to a large grass field and send one up like that. It would come down so fast it would whistle. Of course we all had to keep an eye on it so we could avoid it coming down. Amazing to see how fast those come down like that. In soft turf, they'd stick into the soft dirt a few inches. We'd do this with relatively smaller rockets, ones that require A sized engines. Just so we could keep an eye on it coming down. Out of sight and you wouldn't know where it was coming down.@@tsm688
I had one of those rockets, painted it white. On one flight the engine pod slide out slightly just as the motor ignited, allow the spring-loaded (rubber band) elevator to move to the UP position as it would do for winged flight. As a result the rocket made several quick loops after launch and then stuck it's nose straight down into the soft grassy ground of a nearby hill or mound in the park. It sat there for a few seconds as the timing charge burned and then the motor pod ejected out the tail and the scissor wing opened up, making the rocket look like a white cross on the hill top, marking it's demise like some bugs bunny cartoon. It was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time. I saw the AD-1 up close a few times at the nearby Moffett Field Air Show they use to hold at the base until 1993. NASA Ames always had a few aircraft on display and sometimes flew them. The plane was SO tiny!
Haha i made my own rockets when i was younger by cooking sugar and kno3 and inserting it into a pvc pipe with a wooden nozzle and a stick. But I heard of Estes rockets ofc when looking for tutorials online. Half of my rockets exploded though because i wasn't doing that good with cooking xD I remember it helped by buying the cheapest 1$ artificial honey and cooking the fuel around it, it made a better mass without small crumbles and breaks that could explode
As an aerospace engineer, I think the stability and control issues are easy to overcome with modern computers and algorithms. However, I would be significantly worried about the structural stability of the wing, particularly aeroelastic flutter. This was a particularly big problem on the X-29 and ultimately led to its cancelation. Additionally, it could be difficult (and heavy) to build a sufficiently strong rotating pivot to support the forces generated by the wing. Would be interesting to hear others thoughts on this issue
As an aerospace engineer as well this is one of my concerns. All of the flights were tested subsonic. The extreme forces that are exerted on an aircraft in transonic, and supersonic fight are insane. I'm very concerned about flutter and how the different angles of attack are going to be effecting the structure. In a Delta wing you have a symmetrical stable structure which is much less complicated. You're talking about nonlinear unsymmetrical loads. That sounds like an utter-nightmare. Everything I remember doing in college was ALWAYS ALWAYS try and make symmetrical loading if you can. I had to brush up a little bit, but apparently most of the surface area on delta wings is for subsonic flight (I didn't remember or know this). I knew supersonic they were mostly just flying with thrust. Another aspect is the efficiency losses associated with the coupling effects. It's why V-Tails have never gained popularity. Had to pull out my textbook "The V-tail is intended to reduce wetted area. However, extensive NACA research has concluded that to obtain satisfactory stability and control, the V surface must be up-sized to about the same total as would be required for separate h and v surfaces." Aka it all comes out in the wash and that's just a V-Tail. You will then have to make sure the wing is inside the mach waves for mach 1.5-2. The wing actuation on the F-14 was a nightmare. There is a reason we haven't developed another variable-sweep wing aircraft. The last one made by ANYONE was the USSR in 1981. I think that dataset alone should explain why we don't use them. It's just not worth the hassle to move the wings that much. Just burn your fuel subsonic and deal with it compared to the extremely complex structure. This isn't even addressing the sheer amount of extra fuel you have to burn just to go supersonic speeds. Roughly .2-4 subsonic to .7 for 1.5 vs .4 for 2. You generally want to be going at least Mach 2. However, then you're talking about extreme forces and heats exerted on all parts of the aircraft. So you're talking about a more expensive bird and maintenance and inspection costs through the roof. My last and final statement destroys it all. WHY and WHO is this for exactly? There is ZERO market for a commercial supersonic jet. With the invention of the internet and video conference this has almost eliminated the need for faster flight times. There only market might be the super-niche businessman, but at that point just make 10 seater private yet. There was one recently, but it failed lol. So with all of these obstacles I still don't understand why people keep talking about super sonic commercial flight. It's like fusion. It's one of those engineering things people love to dream about, but will never come true. I wish someone would just create the ultimate video debunking us ever getting a commercial supersonic jet already. It's a limitations of physics, materials, and cost. Until we find a new energy source, unobtainium there is no market this will work in. Maybe I should start a channel. I've been legitimately considering it because I'm so tired of talking about this topic. I feel like I address the question of supersonic commercial flight at least once a month on the internet, and nothing has changed in 30 years. If twitter didn't randomly ban my account because I linked a Linus Techtip video I would reach out to Thunderfoot.
It's interesting to hear thoughts of an expert. It seems to me that the aim of this video even isn't realism, but to paint an unrealistically dreamy picture of something in the past that was never realised (probably for good reasons, which the video doesn't explain properly). In other words, this video is above all entertainment. The most important part for an entertaining story to work is tension, tension between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, cruelty and the revenge, and in the case of this video, what is and what could have been. People love consuming content based on that concept, and this video certainly provides, giving people a good dose of that "what if" feeling .
I think the pivot is not an issue for strength as the wing is one piece rather than cantilevered from the fuselage. Once at a sleek angle, extra locking pins could be deployed so the pivot has extra help with strength. These could be a few feet away and benefit from the lever arm thst gives. However, I bet the handling is asymmetric, and therefore not fun or predictable to fly, even with complex helpful flight computers. It'd handle differently left to right. The addition of roll when pitching and vice versa must be quite a challenge, and annoying. It looks hideous and just plain wrong. Aircraft deserve to be symmetrical!
I’m sure this idea could find a great use for drones and cruise missiles, because they wouldn’t be so challenged in terms of structural design and often require folding/pivoting wings. And off course small and cheap unmanned crafts would allow to take much greater risks in terms of design.
@@flaviosalatino8192 No, pilots can fly many commercial aircraft without the computer(s) working. I would not want to fly on the ones that can't fly without a working computer.
Most modern airliners are fly-by-wire and at the very minimum, like "direct law" in an Airbus, there is still a computer in between the stick and the control surfaces. It just doesn't modify the input at that point@@FLPhotoCatcher
I remember building an Estes model rocket based on this concept back in the early-mid 70's. It was called the Scissor Wing Transport. It launched with the wing stowed and when the recovery charge separated the booster, it released the wing which pivoted into position (via orthodontic rubber bands) and the fuselage came down as a glider. Coolest rocket I ever built.
Came here to say this. Cool concept but on its first flight when the wing moved into position it snapped off and the thing crashed to the ground a couple miles away. Never found it. I had high hopes for that one. I didn't really wonder about why I never saw them in real life.
It might have been 116 days since the last Mustard video, but it's worth it every time. How many future engineers will credit his work that got them into the field...
These are really great and informative videos, and it's great that you're highlighting concepts and aircraft not known by most people. Personally, I'd really like to know how you make these videos as I love your style and the models you use.
It's really wonderful to come across people who freely share valuable information online. You never know what kind of knowledge you might stumble upon that could have a lasting impact on your life.
@@runningwithscissors7715 I heard that too. Did you know that unicorn farts are heart shaped and rainbow colored? You can only see them if you invest with this guy.
Typically, mustard talks positively about theoretical designs before demonstrating how they weren’t nearly as good as they seemed. This is the first one where it seems like there actually weren’t many downsides that couldn’t easily be solved with modern tech.
Yeah, the plane wanting to roll over on it's back when trying to pull up, or pitching up/down when trying to roll, all this at supersonic speed, is really not a downside. If you need a computer just to keep the thing level, you have a major problem. Aside from the destruction of the plane, death of the passengers, just the act of deflecting control surfaces to counter act those uncontrolled rotation cause drag, slowing down the plane, wasting fuel, reducing range. We tolerate that in fighter jets that require extreme maneuverability, but we don't accept it in transports.
Tbh, this video feels like the section with the problems was just kinda missing. If the oblique wing was really such an amazing idea, then it shouldve been taken up by military or civil aviation. I usually like this channel, but this video seems a bit lazy, like theres something missing. It just doesnt make sense. Theres a ton of money put in RnD for aircraft, theres constantly studies into supersonic planes, electric planes, new types of drones, etc. Both in civil and military aviation. I dont buy that nobody wants to experiment with obliques wings, if they were really that good.
@@pogo1140 his video about flying wings has a similar outcome, with newer computers making the flying wing viable in ways it wasn’t when it was first theorized. That’s kinda the point of improving technologies, is that it makes things previously impossible, possible.
@@pogo1140What the fuck are you talking about? The fly by wire system for this thing looks like it can be handled by a fucking arduino. Heck it doesn't even require a computer, a simple system of gears attached to the stick could do it you can give this project to a first year aerospace engineer as an end-of-semester assignment and I bet half the class can produce something workable I wish I were joking but this seriously look like a non-issue.
what i think is more likely is that no serious design studies have been funded or taken, and any that have may have not made it into the public domain. @@termitreter6545
possible issues with this design: -airplanes usually store fuel in the wings, to do that here you'd need some kind of rotating fuel coupler normal planes don't need -instead of a nice sturdy structural wing root, it depends on the rotational mechanism bearing all the wing load which means it's going to be heavy, expensive, and space-consuming, a problem it shares with conventional swing wings -unless you're burning fuel totally uniformly across all the wing tanks the CoG is going to move fore/aft as you burn fuel and possibly also when you change the sweep angle, which is a possible stability issue -it can't use typical wingtip aerodynamic devices it DOES have the economic advantage that it would use less gate space by folding its wing out of the way during parking, which actually could make it compelling as a commercial aircraft vs. other options like the 777X they're designing with folding wingtips to squeeze in a few extra feet of wingspan.
Before anyone comments, I checked and yes, fighter jets do have fuel tanks in their wings. This isn't just a historic thing; THe F-35 has wing fuel jets. Though I'm sure the issues here could be dealt with with more testing. Testing that hasn't happened for a while.
@@edwinhuang9244even historically fighters in WW2 would try their best to centralize their fuel tanks because the main body was mostly empty, wings are vunerable to guns, centralizing wieght helped roll performance. With how fuel hungry jets are and the distance we need fighter to fly, no space goes unused.
Commercial aircrafts fly numerous times a day for weeks / months. Putting the stress to a rotating bearing instead of two, fixed rooted wings doesn't seems smart.
A lot of copycats out there, but Mustard is still the Best. Just flat-out stunning images, and raw takes on engineering marvels. Best channel for aerospace history and engineering on RUclips and Nebula.
Back in the 70s or 80s I built an Estes model rocket kit that had a rotating wing. It launched with the wing parallel to the fuselage, and then when the engine burned out, instead of popping a parachute, the wing swung out so it could glide back down. It did work!
I built a bunch of Estes rockets in middle school in the mid 90s. They had some cool designs. I remember one that didn’t have a parachute, but had three rotors that unfolded and spun like a helicopter to slowly lower it. Also one that when the ‘chute popped, it took a picture of the ground with 110 film. Good memories.
Toughest kit I made. On the last flight (naturally) the pivot failed to fully extend and it hit too hard. But on a windless day it would glide perfectly. The instructions are online! www.spacemodeling.org/jimz/estes/est1265.pdf
I stayed in a hotel in San Carlos one night when looked out the window of the hotel and saw a sign that I initially thought said, "Hitler Air Museum". For a second there I thought I was experiencing a Twilight Zone moment.
Fun fact : the two engines for the AD-1 were two little French _Microturbo_ TRS-18 engines that were derived from versions initially designed mostly for cruise missiles, surveilance and target drones (Sea Eagle, RBS-15, MQM-107 Streaker, and many others). For « manned » use, they received better bearings, a better lubrication system, more reliable parts and some other mods that allowed them to become more than a « single use engine » like they were before, as a means of propulsion for missiles (sorry I'm French, I hope my english isn't dog juice ^^).
I'm so glad I ran into this video. RT was my professor and I remember spending a bit of time at his home in the Los Altos foothills overlooking NASA Ames Research Center where he used to work. I remember making and flying oblique wing gliders that demonstrated the inherent stability of the design. When I asked him about the cost and complexity of the control system, he pulled out an HP 12C hand-held battery powered calculator. He said one of those had sufficient memory and speed to control it throughout the flight regime and if you needed redundancy, he said you could just buy a half a dozen of them and string them together! Although he was one of the most important, if not the most important aerodynamic theorists in supersonic flight (inventor of delta, swept back, and oblique wing configurations), he had no formal degrees. He told me he started as a mechanic working with a wing walking outfit and took night lessons with the German aerodynamicist Max M. Munk. Back then, there were no aeronautics and astronautics engineering degrees to earn. He worked as an elevator boy at the Boeing headquarters in Washington, because couldn't get a job as an engineer. So he'd listen in on conversations between the engineers in the elevator to hear the problems they could not solve. RT would then go home and solve them himself. Later when he saw the engineers, he'd say something like, "have you tried this for a solution". They were shocked that an elevator boy could be right so many times and they later learned what a great mind he had and brought him into the technical organization and the rest is history. His close friend told me that also because he didn't have a degree, Congress would have to make to special allowances to give him pay raises! I think he would have enjoyed your beautifully produced video. Nice job!
I can't help but also think a naval oblique wing fighter might also have advantages on carriers in storage. If the wing were capable of swinging fully in line with the body, you might be able to fit 3 aircraft in the space of 2 folding wing aircraft. I can't help but feel like they just look strange and alien.
The bottleneck for most air travel is the airport. We typically spend a lot more time getting to, at, and getting from airports than we spend actually flying.
I always enjoy these videos, it's interesting to learn about the backstory and history of planes I know and don't know of. Thanks for putting in so much effort for these amazing videos!
There are two ways the universe reminds me I'm a dad - seeing my beautiful 2-year-old, and getting obscenely excited about a new history of aviation video from Mustard.
@PWRGEUTTP You're content has zero value at all and is clearly terrible in video quality as well, unacceptable on a platform like this in this day and age.
I think that it's design principle called Form Follows Function. It instictively feels right. I remember earing Adam Savage, who worked on the Star Wars movies, refer to it.
There were two designs with oblique wings that came out of Germany during World War Two. These were the Blohm und Voss P.202 and Messerschmitt P.1101/XVIII-108. Despite never being put into operation, It appears that once again German designers were even further ahead than we thought.
Its crazy they also had a prototype flying wing that had an excellent radar cross-section. They where sloving issues before anybody else even knew they existed
what is it with the WW2-era germans and their hatred for jews so violent and want for lebensraum so strong that they single-handedly leapfrog literal decades in science and technology innovation and design. weird as hell.
@@iamsick5204 I believe the Germans also had the best wind tunnels in the world in WW2. At one location was one that could be used to test full-scale models up to Mach 4 and a hypersonic wind tunnel for testing up to Mach 10 was discovered under construction by Allied troops. The Germans were so far ahead of the Allies that the Americans had these wind tunnels disassembled and moved to the US Navy Labs in Maryland along with German scientists to work on it. The first of these went into US service in 1948 ( I think) and was still in use for calibration purposes until sometime in the late 1990s! We were extremely fortunate that there was so much interdepartmental secrecy, backstabbing, favouritism and higher level blinkered stupidity in the German system. Had they put their heads together to produce advanced weaponry, they’d likely have had ~ for example ~ hundreds of operational jets in time to rip huge chunks out of the USAAF day-bombing campaign almost before it got started.
It's sad that Jones never got to see his concept fully tested, it was so close, but those in charge pulled the plug. Would love to see this taken all the way, especially with all the new technology to aid in stability.
yeah but it would probably be impractical. It would require constant babysitting by multiple systems. If any of those systems went wrong the pilot would have to deal with a plane wobbling back and forth until they could land. Also the amount of time and money it would take to get a even somewhat practical model would probably far outweigh the benefits.
Unless u wanna go conspiratorial and say that they pretended to stop testing it to stop other countries copying them I mean these designs at 5:14 10:24 look and act like that rotating oval UFO from that footage that the Navy confirmed But that’s just an idea I’ve put only minutes of thought into, fun tho
As a non-engineer I think the problem with the oblique wing is the fact it is really hard to include the wing in overarching features a fixed wing allows. For the military that would be weapon hardpoints and additional fuel cells under the wings, or extended fuelspace for commercial flight. If the features you gain are not worth the features you lose .. then it's not worth it.
The graphics of the "barrier" in red and the sonic boom after the test aircraft went faster was so nice to watch and hear it gave me goosebump. Thank you unknown videographer that was a good job👍
Your channel helped me to decide that I wanted to be an engineer, now I'm a miserable, sleepless engineering student and its all your fault (but damn your videos inspire me each and every time to keep going, no matter how hard it is, an engineer is what I want to be ;)
Civil Engineerings is far more lucrative. Especially if you partner in a firm, instead of working as a firms underpaid overworked, always blamed employee.
You are rapidly becoming my favorite channel. Not only was this one hell of an informative video, you took your middle finger and rammed it straight up RUclips’s ass with Nebula…I love it!
Pls repent from your sins and have faith and believe in Jesus because Jesus is the way the truth and the life Jesus died for you and rose from the dead for you
Well to be fair the Mig 23 and Mig 27 are the same frame rebuilt electronics wise And the SU 17 SU 20 and SU 22 are all variants of the same base design After that the number drops down to 7
There was too much interference drag in the first oblique wing models, leading Jones to come up with his best solution -- the oblique flying wing you mention only at the end of your video. I was Bob Jones' hangar mate in Palo Alto after he retired from NASA. Bob flew a two-control Ercoupe, which he had designed for Fred WeIck of NACA in the 1930s, while I flew a homebuilt. Over turkey legs at Harry's Hofbrau, I heard all about the oblique wing and its advantages, which have been generally underplayed. It's even better than you know
R T Jones came up with the idea and demonstratéd it with a small model. In fact a full scale air craft was built. There were no control problems. We adopted the system for a 5 1/2 gun fired missile called ERGAM increasing the gliding range as the Mach number decreased below one. The glide ratio is proportional to the span. So, after the supersonic climb , the wing was straitened and the range was very high , way past the orignal powered Extended Range Guided Missile.
I always thought this Wing configuration would make perfect sense on the outside of rocket boosters like the ones on the SLS or space shuttle in order to find them back to the ground and land them like a plane
That seems similar to what was designed for the Energia 2 upgrades that were planned in the soviet union if the Energia-Buran project kept going? Though I think they were looking at folding wing, rather than asymmetric
Engineer fantasy land. Aircraft mechanic here that understands chaos theory. Shit will ice up, something will fail, and you will become the worlds fastest lawn dart.
Maybe, but maybe we can design an electronic control system to do the same thing.. We'll need to see how such a system will vary with velocity with rotation and for different air conditions. Then we can conclude if the system will be chaotic enough. Quadcopters too would be chaotic without a proper electronic control system.
@@jyothishkumar3098 If it needs electronic controls to fly then it would be unacceptable for civilian use. (They have to be stable in case of a fly by wire failure)
@@hyperx72 An oblique wing aircraft could easily include an emergency system that reset the wing to perpendicular in case of an emergency. And when the wing is perpendicular, the characteristics are roughly the same to a conventional aircraft.
The oblique wing concept is great if wings were rigid and laminar airflow was the norm. A major characteristic of forward sweeping control surfaces in practice is tip flutter increases as speed increases. Eventually, the wing or canard folds toward the fuselage. With respect to scissor-wings, uneven amounts of energy would be directed to the pivot point. On a related research path, the Soviets/Russian experimented with the Su-47 and the US had the X-29. With respect to the X-29, the wingtip issues could not be overcome.
the point with the laminar flow has some dots adressed by other research on wings like on the dreamliner, maybe someone with the guts and funding can do a theoretical / prototype of a oblique wing with an active turbulent flow limiter to see how it can help to increase performance and give focus on other challenges of the wing
Absolutely understand and agree. I'm not an engineer, but I modeled virtually and actual scale model, one day in 2001, I found something very weird : wings aren't solid straight surfaces, they bend/flex/twist. Furthermore, all those alterations occurs different from tip to root, the way it happens depend on the shape of the wing, speed, mass/mass distribution, attitude and control surfaces inputs of the vehicle, and the air density and state. Through my journey in trying to reflect all those in model design (flight simulation), I've foud out about fluttering, pressure wave, drag, wing profiles, wing structures, computer managed damping and control (A380 for eg.), flight speed ranges and their respective concerns, etc. The tilting wing only resolves a few concerns, still, there are a lot to address, way beyond just "flying okay", and will certainly bring a whole bunch of new huge challenges each time we increase mass, size, performances. The purpose will still and remain transporting something or people somewhere, while economically viable in the civilian world, and strategically relevant in the military one.
The whole point of the rotating slew-wing, is for a simpler structure. It utilizes a straight wingspar and high aspect ratio for weight and simplicity. And slews it for transonic drag reduction.
Look ape, it can pull more weight and has 50% more speed and fuel efficiency. If the damn thing fly's it uses less fuel, less working personal hours, therfore less food , and ultimatly also less risk by being airborne, we could go on.@@siraff4461
Hallo !! The need for supersonic jets is highly debatable , due mainly to high costs and noise-generation . . HOWEVER , if examined seriously , this is actually a viable design . Oblique-wings are of course , unstable at high speeds . This means that the transition must be accomplished at lower speeds and altitudes , and then the forward-wing locked securely into the axial position . Obviously , after this the plane can accelerate to cruising-speed , while relying on it's low-drag lifting-body planform to provide the necessary lift for supersonic flight . 😎
@@Haplo-sanfeels like a disability to sell remotely. It's about presence. Sure, kids today have no problem with this but so much richness of experience is lost. 100 phones calls or a 10 minute meet, hmmm.
There are always subtle challenges about these types of new designs that are often hard to predict. Variable geometry wings are a great example, because the theory is great, but it's really difficult in practice. Ground effect vehicles are another such example, where the theory is sound, and it promises much increased efficiency, but then doing it in reality is much more difficult. I put these oblique wings in the same category, where 'what could have been' is almost certainly a lot better than 'what would have happened'.
There are other considerations... Maintenance, and the fact that underwing engines are more efficient than body mounted engines (they can be bigger, but also creates a high pressure zone under the wing). Storing fuel in the wings but pumping it to body mounted engines becomes much more complicated, especially given the swing mechanism, probably you have to give up on wing mounted fuel tanks, sacrificing cargo space in the body. Wing shape has a lot of follow on effects that need to be considered to ensure that the tradeoffs are worth it. By the time those are considered, I suspect that any benefits largely disappear, leaving you with higher maintenance and complexity (and therefore lower safety margins).
Yep, engine mounting is also what i thought of - where do you put the engines on an oblique wing aircraft? As you said, fuselage-mounted engines are less efficient, are harder maintain since they're higher up, require fuel to be pumped to them from the wings, and create more noise and vibration in the cabin. Additionally, wing-mounted engines are used as counterbalances for the lift forces on the wing. When an aircraft is flying, the entire aircraft's weight is resting on the wing roots as the wings provide lift. Logically, mounting the engines to the wings themselves instead of the fuselage then means that the wing root doesn't have to carry the weight of the engines anymore, since the weight of the engines rests directly on the wings themselves. This means that the wing root can be lighter, and more efficient. Mounting the engines to the fuselage will mean that all these efficiency gains are lost.
The oblique wing might also double as a form of dazzle camouflage, because the wings are at an angle, which would suggest a different heading/ speed, than what they are in actual fact.
Fascinating! I would like to note that nature is not always symmetrical, for instance flatfish are highly asymmetrical. Also, geese typically fly in an asymmetrical v-shape formation.
@@R1GGLER That's still a misleading point to make because everything that walks is also symmetrical, as it everything that burrows. There are only a handful of fish that aren't symmetrical. Symmetry is far far simpler from an evolutionary development point of view than asymmetry.
I think this is the classic example of theoretically possible but almost impossible in practice. Like you said in the video, the Concord is the best case of why modern aviation doesnt work well with "unique" designs. We've flown the same type of plane for almost 70 years. The amount of R&D time and money they would need to invest to develop would certainly bankrupt all major airplanes manufactures(Boeing, Airbus)
@@mariussmuts3153 Boeing is going to be fine. Airbus also had issues with their planes, most famous one where the landing gear sometimes would turn side ways when deployed for landing. Would this hurt them financially? Absolutely. And probably delay the deploy of their new 777X MAX even further. But they are not going anywhere. This duopoly doesnt seem to be disrupted anytime soon.
Few major advancements in aviation have been made by airplane manufacturers in private ventures. Most groundbreaking research was either done directly by the government (NASA and others), or through military projects with manufacturers. Atm, there simply isn't a competition that would drive manufacturers to innovate in such ways. Because supersonic travel would limited to ocean-crossing routes anyway, thus there's hardly a profit margin in there. Whether anyone might innovate in that direction if supersonic flight were permitted everywhere is anyones guess. But so long as overland flights have to be subsonic, a lack of innovation in this sector is a certainty.
Aircraft weren't always semicircle before this funky number, granted not as interesting as this one, but one wing was sometimes designed longer than the other to prevent torque reaction from the propeller. And the Germans made some unhinged asymmetrical aircraft for visibility as I understand it. Good video as always and well woth the wait!!
I remember that concept from the "Usborne book of the future" I had as a kid in the late 70's/80's. It's too bad that aesthetics and symmetry is so hardwired into humans.
I'm no engineer, but I would imagine it is because of its smaller cross-sectional area in the direction of flight. Imagine standing in front of the plane; as the oblique wing rotates, you can see less of the plane. This means lower air resistance at supersonic speeds.
Starting at transonic (M0.8) and then up into supersonic speeds, as the airflow over the aircraft becomes supersonic, you are affected by a new type of drag, wave drag. To manage this wave drag you have to prevent large spikes in the frontal cross section of the aircraft; the cross section of the aircraft must change slowly, this is the so called 'area rule'. Traditional subsonic aircraft with their long, thin, straight wings have a large spike in the cross sectional area at the wings, this causes very large wave drag and effectively prevents them from going supersonic. in order to reduce the wave drag of the wings, you have to reduce the abrupt increase in cross sectional area. you can do this in two ways: make the wings shorter/fatter effectively spreading the area of the wing forwards and back (F-104 is a good example), and/or sweep the wings so that they gradually add and remove area (like the F-100); delta wings or trapezoidal wings are effectively a mix of both. The oblique wing is able to sweep it's self by pivoting, however it has a few potential advantages over traditional swing wing aircraft that can also change their sweep angle. Firstly as explained in the video the mechanism for sweep has the potential to be lighter since it recieves simpler loads. secondly traditional swing wings send both halves of the wing backwards, this shifts the center of lift backwards which adds adittional trim drag as the elevators have to pitch down and remove lift to maintain level flight, the oblique wing does not shift the COL backwards when it sweeps so no additional trim drag. Thirdly, as traditional variable geometry wings send both half of the wing backwards, they put the cross sectional area of both of the wings backwards resulting in higher wave drag; the oblique wing sends one half forwards and one half back resulting in better area ruling over all and therefore potentially lower wave drag.
@@TheAmazingchickens Very good explanation. I'd add that rearward-swept wings can be positioned to ride the cone of the shockwave from a forward point such as the canopy, while a forward-swept wing cannot. Everything about a modern aircraft is built around its intended crusing speed, takeoff and landing speeds and distances, etc. Economically it makes little sense to design a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none aircraft.
Oblique wing works the same way as a swept wing, namely by making the cross sectional area of the plane change more gradually. This is important for reducing wave drag at transonic and supersonic speed. Unfortunately swept wings also tend to produce less lift at low speeds compared to straight wings. So when designing a transonic or supersonic plane the aircraft engineer has to choose a compromise between a reasonable takeoff/landing speed and mitigation of wave drag. Swing wings address this problem by allowing sweep to be varied in the air. But they add a lot of weight and complexity. The oblique wing hopes to give the same benefit without such severe penalties.
Remembered when I used to slip plastic rules onto a pen and create an imaginary plane.. and sometimes the "wing" would be tilt to a weird position.. Never thought my absurd idea of a plane was made real by NASA Engineers and even to prototype phase... Great work for Mustard as well for the stunning visualization 💛
I am currently studying aerospace engineering and i think i know why my professor never talked about this: 1: When the wings pivots the resulting torque also changes direction --> that's what causes the need for control inputs, as now that torque is no longer in line with the axis of the fueselage. 2: You still have a pivot mechanism trough which ALL of the lift needs to go and that thing needs to hold all the Gs a aircratf has to pull and is not allowed to fail/only with a chance of 10^-9.... yeah that mechanism would be hell to design. especially for the milltiary as you need to pull your Gs. 3: The wings are elyptical... which is an absolute horror to manufacture as you not only change the profile but even the depth of your profile now. and todays wings are also everything but simple 4: As said in the video it is not a really prooven design. and like many many other ideas like flying wing and canard it would need an immense certification process... who is gonna pay for that? 5: what about the engines? If we put them at the aft we will soon get the problem because todays engines get higher and higher BPR (by pass ratios). Those huge engines probably wont fit at the aft. But if we put them under the wing we need more pivots again... and all the fuel lines need to bend too.... 6: ohhh and lets not forget that we might manage to make a good aerodynamic Design at subsonic and super sonic but what about the engine? For Super sonic we want low bypass and a Super sonic intake. For sub sonic high BPR is good for fuel efficency.... and another intake.... in conclusion this certainly is intresting. but like many non conventional designs who promsie better L/Ds etc it will be icnredibly difficult to do from an construction perspective also: the sonic booms and stuff aint even tested yet. i seriously wonder how they show when the wing is pivoted. so i am rather sure i will be another concept we might use at one point in the future.
@@rexxbailey2764 why? Because i can see the Problems? Because i already know the higher ups probably wont Cover the cost and risk. You shouldnt forget: engineers want to build the New and amazong stuff. But the guys in the money Departement need to remind us that we need to stay profitable
@rexxbailey2764 LOL are you kidding? He is absolutely right, just watch the video and you will find the problems addressed as well. The amount of torque it will experience at high angles, + maneuvering will require significant EFBW inputs. Add that to military use cases, where the payload mounts are on the wings, the CoM will shift radically when payloads are asymmetrically released. Its a problem even in swing wings but they still pivot 15-30 degrees usually, so the shift in CoM is not that great. Here it will be drastic. It will be extremely complicated to fly especially in military applications and that's where the major use of a supersonic plane. A fully oblique civilian aircraft might work, but it'll still have enough challenges.
In an oblique setup, the forward-swept wing has an advantage of less induced drag, but the rearward-swept wing does not. That's a built-in imbalance. Another imbalance is that the forward-swept wing has an exponentially larger twisting force at the wingtip the faster it goes. The forward-swept wing must be reinforced more than the rearward-swept wing, so there will be a weight imbalance along with a drag imbalance. The ideal oblique wing is elliptical. Manufacturing a curved shape is more expensive and time-consuming than a straight edge. Considering that the top and bottom of a wing is curved as well, an elliptical wing has an economic disadvantage. Also, an aircraft designed for supersonic flight must be more narrow than one designed to never enter the transonic regime. There just isn't enough time saving in the air (versus the frequent delays on the ground) to make a supersonic narrow-body jet worth the extra cost versus a subsonic narrow-body. Oh yes, almost forgot. When an aircraft isn't inherently stable, when it requires computer control, as with the 60-degree oblique sweep, how does the pilot remain in control when the wing computer suddenly dies at top speed?
@floycewhite6991 it would be normal to have multiple redundant electrical supplies as well, on an airliner there are 4: main engine generators, APU, batteries and a ram air turbine. A power surge of some sort could fry electronics, but they are typically protected by circuit breakers (which account for a lot of the switches in a typical cockpit). Multi engine aircraft can run independent circuits from each generator, so you can run redundant critical systems on totally different circuits so a power surge cannot affect both. It's worth noting that many inherently stable aircraft would also be unflyable in the event of a total power failure. The control surfaces are generally actuated by hydraulics which rely on pumps to operate. Even in cases where there is a physical cable or pushrod connection between the controls and the control surfaces, on larger aircraft the control forces would be too large for the pilot to manage without power assistance. It's common to have multiple redundant hydraulic systems as well, e.g. each engine drives an independent pump and hydraulic circuit that is responsible for half of the actuators on each control surface.
@@nerd1000ify Yes I worked in the industry when I was young. Thanks for the reminders though. The bigger the plane, the more complex, and the more overbuilt it must be for safety's sake.
The one issue I can see with this concept, is (particularly in commercial use) people wouldn’t feel as secure in an aircraft with an unusual and even confusing oblique wing as in an aircraft with a familiar symmetrical one.
The general public will of course be scared, but if a plane with an oblique wing appears, and as said in the video and by the investigators it is really faster and more efficient. Then the people that dare will use it, because its faster than a normal plane a its probably cheaper since is more efficient. And with time more and more people end up using it, that's how airplines ended up being a normal thing. You think that people from a century ago trusted planes?
Thank you for this video. Video quality is exceptional, I dare say, Netflix-esque. Thanks for the cinematography and the narrative, how you tell the story. I've always heard about Nebula but having seen this video (first time on this channel), I now think that that 2.50 is a worthy spend. Thanks Mustard, you have earned a subscription. Amazing bro!
I wonder how a "biplane" version of this oblique wing concept would perform, with each wing (one at the middle- top of the fuselage, one at the middle-bottom) pivoting in the opposite direction?
I remember seeing these "scissors-wing" planes on the cover of a Popular mechanics or Popular Science magazine in my youth in the early Seventies ... great to see them again! They were supposed to revolutionize air travel then but sort of disappeared from view - like hypercritical fuselages in the late Seventies/early Eighties...
You will always make the highest quality Videos out of ANYONE on RUclips You are the Definition of Quality over Quantity Don't ever stop being you P.S. I really adore this style of videos about these strange and interesting concepts instead of just obscure and lost vehicles, its a nice mix (not saying I also love those other videos of course, Especially the CL-1201 video)
Interesting idea. Only problem I see is potential relative wind force for the forward facing side of the wing. I think the asymmetrical force could be enough to over stress the center pivot mechanism resulting in failure. Especially at high speeds with extreme forces.
Everything old is new again. I remember making an Estes rocket model of something like this 40 years ago! These old engineers made all these amazing breakthroughs with slide rules.
Wow! Besides the script and story being so interesting, loved the quality of the 3D Animations, a beautiful mix between Retro and Hyper Realistic. And everything, music, voice over and video, smoothly edited. Congrats to the Mustard Team.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful video! It was fascinating, thought provoking, and very well done! I'm now excited to know of Nebula, as well. I'll be checking it out now! 👏🏻
That's what I was thinking, with the aileron offset it would make the plane pitch and yaw awkwardly, plus that pivot point in the middle would have to be insanely strong on a commercial aircraft carrying 200-300+ people.
I lifeguarded Rockaway Beach NYC the summers of 87,88 and 89 and LOVED when the Concord flew into JFK. It was like listening to a muscle car or tuned sports car. No airplane sounded the same as the Concord, I should know I grew up and live in Queens NY 15 minutes from JFK and 25 to LaGuardia.
It's just common sense that this video was bs in that regard. There was nothing wrong with swept wings, even when the Soviets designed and built it. I also fail to see a connection between Concorde and swept wings, despite of what he said here. Concorde failed because it basically operated at a loss. Nothing to do with booms or having to use afterburners at take off. It feels like the script of this vid was written by an AI, it's not very factual nor consistent.
can't help but wonder if a counterg-rotating oblique wing biplane (each wing being smaller) could potentially counteract the tendency to roll at high angles. guessing the extra drag, airflow characteristics and shock cones would render the advantages null and void.
I thought so too, but you wouldn't be able to use wing struts since the wings would not be parallel all the time. another issue i didn't see mentioned is that you couldn't put jet engines on the wings without rotating them in line with the fuselage.
@@martin-vv9lf The original (monowing) doesn't use wing struts either. I am not an aerodynamics person so I'm guessing there's a good reason why biplanes strut their wings together? As fot engine placement, the original monowing design for this places them directly attached to the fuselage so I am not sure that's an issue. to clarify: one wing would be on top of the fuselage, the other on the bottom, each with a big old rotating joint, set up for the flight computer to make sure they match rotation angle as they rotate.
Yeah you encounter the same losses which killed biplanes in the fist place. Another issue is that, on one of the sides, the top wing would create downwash which would interfere with the bottom wing. But only on one side. So it would be unstable
Great video about the Oblique Wing aircrafts. It made me discover this oblique wing technology which I've never heard before and that would be so cool if commercially developed. Thanks and keep up with the amazing work done for the channel!
I just see the forward-swept half of the wing experiencing catastrophic resonant vibrations induced from the drag. Most modern aircraft can still safely land even with huge segments, even entire wings, missing. The structural integrity of an oblique wing would likely instantly drop to zero if it was damaged. The larger the oblique wing, the more these issues and their consequences are magnified. It’s an interesting idea that, the research itself is worth it- new data about aerodynamics was gained. But to actually apply the idea is a different story entirely.
I had one of these in the 70's and launched it with a "C" Estes rocket engine from a rod, lit by a nine volt battery. Yes, the scissor wing popped properly and it glided safely back to the Mother Earth.
Its not bending stress, it's torsional stress. NASA solved all these issues with carbon fiber composite wing skins with calculated layup angles to cause the wingtip to twist leading edge down, instead of up.
Good idea, and even engines can be installed on the wings, it would be easy to keep them parallel by - inside the wings - connecting the two fontal (or rear) spots of the engines with a fixed beam, and also fixing those beams at a rotated mid-point on fuselage at the center so if the wings rotate, it keeps their orientation. And by not fixing the mid-rotate point to the body and making it adjustable it can even be used as thrust vectoring to rotate both (or even 4) engine together. I hope I explained it well.
😮Genuinely? But this is basic knowledge! Everyone knows that oblique wings generate practically no sonic boom whatsoever. I believe this was taught in pre-school.
Dude, its more famous than "Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell". In fact, that saying only became a thing as a result of plagiarising the far more commonly known adagé, "An oblique wing is the powerhouse of supersonic flight"
got my nebula a while back and it's pretty great, the only weakness is the interface, but that seems to be improving pretty regularly! soon, it'll be a force to be reckoned with!
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
An excellent summary of the history and milestones of the oblique wing program! I was fortunate to be working at Ames Industrial Corp when the AD-1 was being built. Burt Rutan did the detail design, Ames did the fabricating. Funny side-story: the government contracting guy thought he was releasing funding for an UNMANNED model aircraft due to the low cost of the contract.....he was not of course. A colleague, Ron S., who has sadly passed on, was the primary fabricator with a group of us supporting manpower requirements as needed. I participated in some of the larger structure layups for the wing and fuselage as well as in the load testing of the wing before final aircraft assembly. Good times. The aircraft was constructed in our Ames facility in Bohemia, NY and we towed the finished AD-1 (using my pickup as a tug) about 1 mile to the nearby McArthur Airport where a National Guard C-130 was waiting to whisk the AD-1 off to NASA Ames in California (no "Ames" relation) for final inspection and flight testing. During construction two designated NASA pilots would fly from NASA Ames to McArthur and visit our facility for custom cockpit "fitments". One NASA pilot, Tom McMurtry, was an especially tall dude so we had to make sure he could fit and function in the tiny cockpit. The aircraft now resides in the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos CA. If you remove the fuselage cover just forward of the wing pivot you'll find the signatures of the team who designed, built, and flew the AD-1, my signature is among them. I have some pictures from that project in my collection including a signed pic from Tom McMurtry. Great story here Mustard!
Thank you for sharing :)
Badass my man
As interesting as the video 😂💯
Thank you for sharing, it's pretty inspirational! However, given so many years have passed and lot of big players have come in to the market, do you think Jones ideas have been further developed/tested for the commercial usage?
Dude this is the kind of stuff I want to do in life! Such a badass story to tell someone!
as an engineer that commonly gets into situations where the design requires an "ugly" or asymmetric feature, i absolutely love this whole oblique wing concept
It put me off for a second, but it only looks cooler the longer I look at it. Especially the sleek designs
this is engineering not art school,
p.s athstetic can help sell and such, but there are quite a small range of products that applies to. Most of the time however hard performace and cost come first. Anything that is athsetic about something as engeered as a passenger jet is either conincidental or done seperatley after other desige contrainsts have been meet. I don't know why so many people seems upset at the thought that engeering isn't art, because it's not. if you upset at being told your engeering project have no artistic value, then you probobley weren't an engeer to begin with, or putting disproportionate focous on a very limited part of your work.
I don't understand why any competent engineer would sacrifice performance, cost, or reliability for aesthetics.
@@rubiconnn because looks help sell. Just talk to apple
I doubt you're an engineer 😂
obviously the main problem is that it doesn't look as cool/pointy, and being pointy is very important for jets and rockets and stuff
7 million subs?!?!!?!?1
Thanks Peter griffin
You must have seen “The Dictator” recently. Hilarious movie.
@@Guzzoline lmao
At least there's one person who gets it.
1:43 So the person that, let's say, was 10 yrs old, could watch Wright Flyer, the first airplane ever to fly under own power and in just 62 years they would be watching the fastest flying jet ever made?! This is crazy!!!
true
All that happened in one lifetime. It's insane
can you imagine how those born in the late 1800s felt when watching human beings set foot on the moon in the early 1960s 🤔🤯 …
This was actually an Estes model rocket back in the 70's. Send it up as a rocket with the wings folded parallel with the rocket body with a B sized motor installed, at the end of the burn stage the reverse thrust that usually pushes out the parachute would instead trigger the wings to fold outward and the rocket would then glide back safely to the ground like a glider for another round. Este rockets were a very popular hobby for kids and adults back then. Thus, why I knew about this back when I was in fourth grade.
I had a version that turned into a helicopter! It had a heavy nosecone to force it to tip over, which was supposed to only pop up and release the blades, but inevitably ended up shelling the ground with the heavy nosecone in the process.
They never said why they discontinued it but I can probably guess
We put a few together intentionally to come down like a lawn dart. Go to a large grass field and send one up like that. It would come down so fast it would whistle. Of course we all had to keep an eye on it so we could avoid it coming down. Amazing to see how fast those come down like that. In soft turf, they'd stick into the soft dirt a few inches. We'd do this with relatively smaller rockets, ones that require A sized engines. Just so we could keep an eye on it coming down. Out of sight and you wouldn't know where it was coming down.@@tsm688
I had one of those rockets, painted it white. On one flight the engine pod slide out slightly just as the motor ignited, allow the spring-loaded (rubber band) elevator to move to the UP position as it would do for winged flight.
As a result the rocket made several quick loops after launch and then stuck it's nose straight down into the soft grassy ground of a nearby hill or mound in the park. It sat there for a few seconds as the timing charge burned and then the motor pod ejected out the tail and the scissor wing opened up, making the rocket look like a white cross on the hill top, marking it's demise like some bugs bunny cartoon. It was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time.
I saw the AD-1 up close a few times at the nearby Moffett Field Air Show they use to hold at the base until 1993. NASA Ames always had a few aircraft on display and sometimes flew them. The plane was SO tiny!
Haha i made my own rockets when i was younger by cooking sugar and kno3 and inserting it into a pvc pipe with a wooden nozzle and a stick.
But I heard of Estes rockets ofc when looking for tutorials online. Half of my rockets exploded though because i wasn't doing that good with cooking xD I remember it helped by buying the cheapest 1$ artificial honey and cooking the fuel around it, it made a better mass without small crumbles and breaks that could explode
As an aerospace engineer, I think the stability and control issues are easy to overcome with modern computers and algorithms. However, I would be significantly worried about the structural stability of the wing, particularly aeroelastic flutter. This was a particularly big problem on the X-29 and ultimately led to its cancelation. Additionally, it could be difficult (and heavy) to build a sufficiently strong rotating pivot to support the forces generated by the wing. Would be interesting to hear others thoughts on this issue
& the flying wing?
As an aerospace engineer as well this is one of my concerns. All of the flights were tested subsonic. The extreme forces that are exerted on an aircraft in transonic, and supersonic fight are insane.
I'm very concerned about flutter and how the different angles of attack are going to be effecting the structure. In a Delta wing you have a symmetrical stable structure which is much less complicated. You're talking about nonlinear unsymmetrical loads. That sounds like an utter-nightmare. Everything I remember doing in college was ALWAYS ALWAYS try and make symmetrical loading if you can.
I had to brush up a little bit, but apparently most of the surface area on delta wings is for subsonic flight (I didn't remember or know this). I knew supersonic they were mostly just flying with thrust.
Another aspect is the efficiency losses associated with the coupling effects. It's why V-Tails have never gained popularity. Had to pull out my textbook "The V-tail is intended to reduce wetted area. However, extensive NACA research has concluded that to obtain satisfactory stability and control, the V surface must be up-sized to about the same total as would be required for separate h and v surfaces." Aka it all comes out in the wash and that's just a V-Tail.
You will then have to make sure the wing is inside the mach waves for mach 1.5-2.
The wing actuation on the F-14 was a nightmare. There is a reason we haven't developed another variable-sweep wing aircraft. The last one made by ANYONE was the USSR in 1981. I think that dataset alone should explain why we don't use them. It's just not worth the hassle to move the wings that much. Just burn your fuel subsonic and deal with it compared to the extremely complex structure.
This isn't even addressing the sheer amount of extra fuel you have to burn just to go supersonic speeds. Roughly .2-4 subsonic to .7 for 1.5 vs .4 for 2. You generally want to be going at least Mach 2. However, then you're talking about extreme forces and heats exerted on all parts of the aircraft. So you're talking about a more expensive bird and maintenance and inspection costs through the roof.
My last and final statement destroys it all. WHY and WHO is this for exactly? There is ZERO market for a commercial supersonic jet. With the invention of the internet and video conference this has almost eliminated the need for faster flight times. There only market might be the super-niche businessman, but at that point just make 10 seater private yet. There was one recently, but it failed lol.
So with all of these obstacles I still don't understand why people keep talking about super sonic commercial flight. It's like fusion. It's one of those engineering things people love to dream about, but will never come true. I wish someone would just create the ultimate video debunking us ever getting a commercial supersonic jet already. It's a limitations of physics, materials, and cost. Until we find a new energy source, unobtainium there is no market this will work in.
Maybe I should start a channel. I've been legitimately considering it because I'm so tired of talking about this topic. I feel like I address the question of supersonic commercial flight at least once a month on the internet, and nothing has changed in 30 years. If twitter didn't randomly ban my account because I linked a Linus Techtip video I would reach out to Thunderfoot.
couldn't they just pivot the stabilisers as well
It's interesting to hear thoughts of an expert. It seems to me that the aim of this video even isn't realism, but to paint an unrealistically dreamy picture of something in the past that was never realised (probably for good reasons, which the video doesn't explain properly). In other words, this video is above all entertainment. The most important part for an entertaining story to work is tension, tension between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, cruelty and the revenge, and in the case of this video, what is and what could have been. People love consuming content based on that concept, and this video certainly provides, giving people a good dose of that "what if" feeling .
I think the pivot is not an issue for strength as the wing is one piece rather than cantilevered from the fuselage. Once at a sleek angle, extra locking pins could be deployed so the pivot has extra help with strength. These could be a few feet away and benefit from the lever arm thst gives.
However, I bet the handling is asymmetric, and therefore not fun or predictable to fly, even with complex helpful flight computers. It'd handle differently left to right. The addition of roll when pitching and vice versa must be quite a challenge, and annoying.
It looks hideous and just plain wrong. Aircraft deserve to be symmetrical!
I’m sure this idea could find a great use for drones and cruise missiles, because they wouldn’t be so challenged in terms of structural design and often require folding/pivoting wings. And off course small and cheap unmanned crafts would allow to take much greater risks in terms of design.
They don’t seem great for maneuvering tho, would love to see it tested nevertheless.
I would not like the thought of flying in something that needs a computer to fly. The pivot-point also seems like a weak point.
@@FLPhotoCatcher Looool, something that needs a computer to flight ....like all the commercial aircraft on the planet?
@@flaviosalatino8192 No, pilots can fly many commercial aircraft without the computer(s) working. I would not want to fly on the ones that can't fly without a working computer.
Most modern airliners are fly-by-wire and at the very minimum, like "direct law" in an Airbus, there is still a computer in between the stick and the control surfaces. It just doesn't modify the input at that point@@FLPhotoCatcher
I remember building an Estes model rocket based on this concept back in the early-mid 70's. It was called the Scissor Wing Transport. It launched with the wing stowed and when the recovery charge separated the booster, it released the wing which pivoted into position (via orthodontic rubber bands) and the fuselage came down as a glider. Coolest rocket I ever built.
OOHHH That's a cool idea!
I miss Estes model rockets so much! So many great memories out in that farm field😢
Came here to say this. Cool concept but on its first flight when the wing moved into position it snapped off and the thing crashed to the ground a couple miles away. Never found it. I had high hopes for that one. I didn't really wonder about why I never saw them in real life.
@@brianmichaeldevault My nephews are coming into Estes Rocket age right now, perfect excuse to get back into the hobby.
Ya know, I love these videos, but damn is it always depressing learning what we could've had.
What is stopping you from having it? Don't answer that, I don't want you pulling me down that hole with you.
At least it is mostly due to a lack of funding for testing rather than a major flaw. Hopefully the idea gets explored in the future
@DanielDos2 Milliobs?
Change that M to a B.
@@HirokaAkitaBilliobs?
There's usually a reason as to why all these cool ideas never go any where. Usually involving expense, and keeping things simple.
The wait for Mustard videos is long but still worth it.
Omg these bots bruh
@UTTPOFFICERCUBANTROONJAK ok no you are not better and no to the rights
@PWRGEUTTPshut up
I think these bots have some coding issues…
Not really, it’s just that we haven’t seen a lot of long form content in a while because of RUclips shorts… 💀
It might have been 116 days since the last Mustard video, but it's worth it every time.
How many future engineers will credit his work that got them into the field...
At least one
0
@PWRGEUTTPSHOTS FIREDDDD!!!! I WILL CHECK OUT YOUR WORK
@@RobertCraft-re5sf That makes you a clown then.
Quality over quantity, it’s quite different from other youtubers.
These are really great and informative videos, and it's great that you're highlighting concepts and aircraft not known by most people. Personally, I'd really like to know how you make these videos as I love your style and the models you use.
It's really wonderful to come across people who freely share valuable information online. You never know what kind of knowledge you might stumble upon that could have a lasting impact on your life.
like hippo milk is pink or wombat poo is square?
@@runningwithscissors7715 I heard that too. Did you know that unicorn farts are heart shaped and rainbow colored? You can only see them if you invest with this guy.
Amen!
SCAM
Unicorn farts.
Typically, mustard talks positively about theoretical designs before demonstrating how they weren’t nearly as good as they seemed. This is the first one where it seems like there actually weren’t many downsides that couldn’t easily be solved with modern tech.
Yeah, the plane wanting to roll over on it's back when trying to pull up, or pitching up/down when trying to roll, all this at supersonic speed, is really not a downside.
If you need a computer just to keep the thing level, you have a major problem.
Aside from the destruction of the plane, death of the passengers, just the act of deflecting control surfaces to counter act those uncontrolled rotation cause drag, slowing down the plane, wasting fuel, reducing range.
We tolerate that in fighter jets that require extreme maneuverability, but we don't accept it in transports.
Tbh, this video feels like the section with the problems was just kinda missing. If the oblique wing was really such an amazing idea, then it shouldve been taken up by military or civil aviation. I usually like this channel, but this video seems a bit lazy, like theres something missing.
It just doesnt make sense. Theres a ton of money put in RnD for aircraft, theres constantly studies into supersonic planes, electric planes, new types of drones, etc. Both in civil and military aviation. I dont buy that nobody wants to experiment with obliques wings, if they were really that good.
@@pogo1140 his video about flying wings has a similar outcome, with newer computers making the flying wing viable in ways it wasn’t when it was first theorized. That’s kinda the point of improving technologies, is that it makes things previously impossible, possible.
@@pogo1140What the fuck are you talking about? The fly by wire system for this thing looks like it can be handled by a fucking arduino.
Heck it doesn't even require a computer, a simple system of gears attached to the stick could do it
you can give this project to a first year aerospace engineer as an end-of-semester assignment and I bet half the class can produce something workable
I wish I were joking but this seriously look like a non-issue.
what i think is more likely is that no serious design studies have been funded or taken, and any that have may have not made it into the public domain. @@termitreter6545
possible issues with this design:
-airplanes usually store fuel in the wings, to do that here you'd need some kind of rotating fuel coupler normal planes don't need
-instead of a nice sturdy structural wing root, it depends on the rotational mechanism bearing all the wing load which means it's going to be heavy, expensive, and space-consuming, a problem it shares with conventional swing wings
-unless you're burning fuel totally uniformly across all the wing tanks the CoG is going to move fore/aft as you burn fuel and possibly also when you change the sweep angle, which is a possible stability issue
-it can't use typical wingtip aerodynamic devices
it DOES have the economic advantage that it would use less gate space by folding its wing out of the way during parking, which actually could make it compelling as a commercial aircraft vs. other options like the 777X they're designing with folding wingtips to squeeze in a few extra feet of wingspan.
Before anyone comments, I checked and yes, fighter jets do have fuel tanks in their wings.
This isn't just a historic thing; THe F-35 has wing fuel jets.
Though I'm sure the issues here could be dealt with with more testing.
Testing that hasn't happened for a while.
@@edwinhuang9244even historically fighters in WW2 would try their best to centralize their fuel tanks because the main body was mostly empty, wings are vunerable to guns, centralizing wieght helped roll performance.
With how fuel hungry jets are and the distance we need fighter to fly, no space goes unused.
Also it's pretty aerodynamically unstable
Commercial aircrafts fly numerous times a day for weeks / months. Putting the stress to a rotating bearing instead of two, fixed rooted wings doesn't seems smart.
@@Serlock4869 It's not like we can't build reliable high load bearing bearings, it's that it's gonna be heavy.
Thanks
Thanks!!
A lot of copycats out there, but Mustard is still the Best. Just flat-out stunning images, and raw takes on engineering marvels. Best channel for aerospace history and engineering on RUclips and Nebula.
Hahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
You really
Hahahahahshahshahhahaahhahaahaha
totally agree on that. I always watch it straight.
There is one channel who also likes to explain a prototype of a vehicle, the RUclips name is Found and Explained
im not complaining. gives us something else to do while we wait for mustard to post once in a blue moon
@@feuby8480yep
Back in the 70s or 80s I built an Estes model rocket kit that had a rotating wing. It launched with the wing parallel to the fuselage, and then when the engine burned out, instead of popping a parachute, the wing swung out so it could glide back down. It did work!
The video's thumbnail reminded me of that exact model rocket which I also built, and was the reason I clicked on the video. :)
I built a bunch of Estes rockets in middle school in the mid 90s. They had some cool designs. I remember one that didn’t have a parachute, but had three rotors that unfolded and spun like a helicopter to slowly lower it. Also one that when the ‘chute popped, it took a picture of the ground with 110 film. Good memories.
@@djhaloeighthah, I lusted over that picture-taking rocket, but never got it.
Toughest kit I made. On the last flight (naturally) the pivot failed to fully extend and it hit too hard. But on a windless day it would glide perfectly. The instructions are online! www.spacemodeling.org/jimz/estes/est1265.pdf
Same here. It was in the 70s. Nothing new in this design - didn't change air travel 50 years ago, won't change it now.
For those curious, you can see the AD-1 in person at the Hiller Air Museum is San Carlos, CA, easily reached from SF if you find yourself in the bay!
Shit I wish I knew about this before moving to LA :/
yea I had to move out too, I miss it ;3; @@PrestonRogers-j8k
Love hiller, so many cool planes and helicopters
I stayed in a hotel in San Carlos one night when looked out the window of the hotel and saw a sign that I initially thought said, "Hitler Air Museum". For a second there I thought I was experiencing a Twilight Zone moment.
Fun fact : the two engines for the AD-1 were two little French _Microturbo_ TRS-18 engines that were derived from versions initially designed mostly for cruise missiles, surveilance and target drones (Sea Eagle, RBS-15, MQM-107 Streaker, and many others). For « manned » use, they received better bearings, a better lubrication system, more reliable parts and some other mods that allowed them to become more than a « single use engine » like they were before, as a means of propulsion for missiles (sorry I'm French, I hope my english isn't dog juice ^^).
Dog juice? Is this a synonym for "dogshit" in French?
@@strakhovandrriOr piss. Or, the other...
I'm so glad I ran into this video. RT was my professor and I remember spending a bit of time at his home in the Los Altos foothills overlooking NASA Ames Research Center where he used to work. I remember making and flying oblique wing gliders that demonstrated the inherent stability of the design. When I asked him about the cost and complexity of the control system, he pulled out an HP 12C hand-held battery powered calculator. He said one of those had sufficient memory and speed to control it throughout the flight regime and if you needed redundancy, he said you could just buy a half a dozen of them and string them together! Although he was one of the most important, if not the most important aerodynamic theorists in supersonic flight (inventor of delta, swept back, and oblique wing configurations), he had no formal degrees. He told me he started as a mechanic working with a wing walking outfit and took night lessons with the German aerodynamicist Max M. Munk. Back then, there were no aeronautics and astronautics engineering degrees to earn. He worked as an elevator boy at the Boeing headquarters in Washington, because couldn't get a job as an engineer. So he'd listen in on conversations between the engineers in the elevator to hear the problems they could not solve. RT would then go home and solve them himself. Later when he saw the engineers, he'd say something like, "have you tried this for a solution". They were shocked that an elevator boy could be right so many times and they later learned what a great mind he had and brought him into the technical organization and the rest is history. His close friend told me that also because he didn't have a degree, Congress would have to make to special allowances to give him pay raises! I think he would have enjoyed your beautifully produced video. Nice job!
Good Will Hunting
exactly!@@NewsChannel-y4g
This was so cool to read
Well this is the most awesome comment I’ve ever read on RUclips
@@noonedude101yea, and it's for the same reason the movie/book 'catch me if you can' was the greatest biography ever told, because it's a lie
Me before the video: "This looks pretty silly"
Me now: "Sideways wings are the future of air travel, I'm gonna take over Boeing"
Boeing's merger with McDonnell-Douglas and its consequences have been a disaster for human flight.
@@Moonstone-Reduxagreed
You’d run Boeing better than its current management
At 10:56 the plane looks like it's doing a superman flight it looks cool!
Don't you think they've already killed enough people of late?
I can't help but also think a naval oblique wing fighter might also have advantages on carriers in storage. If the wing were capable of swinging fully in line with the body, you might be able to fit 3 aircraft in the space of 2 folding wing aircraft. I can't help but feel like they just look strange and alien.
That’s just a cherry on top
You are right, I was thinking the same thing. Slower takeoffs and landings, better fuel economy when loitering AND narrower storage...
Dang, like a bunch of flying folding knives. I'd love to see that
not just there, but also the stands and taxiways at airports.
something big aircraft do have to consider for what airports they can operate at.
@@ARockRaider ooohhh, good point, then we wouldn't need super jumbos because of limited airport gates.
The bottleneck for most air travel is the airport. We typically spend a lot more time getting to, at, and getting from airports than we spend actually flying.
Yes. Tons of waiting on ground rather than actually flying.
Great channel. 🏴💛
Thats a bottleneck for you not for the airline. It doesnt matter to them if you are waiting at the airport, some other guy is on a plane already.
@@supernus8684 More flights could equal more money but it depends on whether there's enough demand.
that is just the nature of traffic infrastructure and has nothing to do with flying itself. Entirely a different problem.
I always enjoy these videos, it's interesting to learn about the backstory and history of planes I know and don't know of. Thanks for putting in so much effort for these amazing videos!
There are two ways the universe reminds me I'm a dad - seeing my beautiful 2-year-old, and getting obscenely excited about a new history of aviation video from Mustard.
@PWRGEUTTP you're a middle aged man making videos called "calling your missing father at 3am" im not sure about your reliability 💀💀💀
@PWRGEUTTP You're content has zero value at all and is clearly terrible in video quality as well, unacceptable on a platform like this in this day and age.
Please report and remove the very deranged person PWREGEUTTP commenting weird stuff.
Sitting in an airport watching your high quality videos is actually a great experience, thank you! Such a great production.
Shut up.
A 3 hour trip to Europe from NY would truly be revolutionary if we could do it on a large scale.
I love symmetrical/ordered asymmetry like this.
From Samus to the Millennium Falcon, it's so cool seeing stuff pulling that off
I think that it's design principle called Form Follows Function. It instictively feels right.
I remember earing Adam Savage, who worked on the Star Wars movies, refer to it.
Shut up.
There were two designs with oblique wings that came out of Germany during World War Two. These were the Blohm und Voss P.202 and Messerschmitt P.1101/XVIII-108. Despite never being put into operation, It appears that once again German designers were even further ahead than we thought.
exactly! a lot to do with all the fuss that happened between america and the soviets.
Its crazy they also had a prototype flying wing that had an excellent radar cross-section. They where sloving issues before anybody else even knew they existed
what is it with the WW2-era germans and their hatred for jews so violent and want for lebensraum so strong that they single-handedly leapfrog literal decades in science and technology innovation and design. weird as hell.
@@iamsick5204 I believe the Germans also had the best wind tunnels in the world in WW2. At one location was one that could be used to test full-scale models up to Mach 4 and a hypersonic wind tunnel for testing up to Mach 10 was discovered under construction by Allied troops. The Germans were so far ahead of the Allies that the Americans had these wind tunnels disassembled and moved to the US Navy Labs in Maryland along with German scientists to work on it. The first of these went into US service in 1948 ( I think) and was still in use for calibration purposes until sometime in the late 1990s!
We were extremely fortunate that there was so much interdepartmental secrecy, backstabbing, favouritism and higher level blinkered stupidity in the German system. Had they put their heads together to produce advanced weaponry, they’d likely have had ~ for example ~ hundreds of operational jets in time to rip huge chunks out of the USAAF day-bombing campaign almost before it got started.
@@davidpope3943a Mach 10 wind tunnel?
wat
It's sad that Jones never got to see his concept fully tested, it was so close, but those in charge pulled the plug. Would love to see this taken all the way, especially with all the new technology to aid in stability.
yeah but it would probably be impractical. It would require constant babysitting by multiple systems. If any of those systems went wrong the pilot would have to deal with a plane wobbling back and forth until they could land. Also the amount of time and money it would take to get a even somewhat practical model would probably far outweigh the benefits.
It was not his concept. He copied from German design.
@@DoctorAids
It wouldn't be wobbly constantly, only when the wing needs to sweep: below 400mph, full extension could often be used
@@DoctorAidsYoure saying like we didn't let others freaks of the air (the osprey) into full use despite it barly funtioning effectivly on a good day.
Unless u wanna go conspiratorial and say that they pretended to stop testing it to stop other countries copying them
I mean these designs at 5:14 10:24 look and act like that rotating oval UFO from that footage that the Navy confirmed
But that’s just an idea I’ve put only minutes of thought into, fun tho
As a non-engineer I think the problem with the oblique wing is the fact it is really hard to include the wing in overarching features a fixed wing allows.
For the military that would be weapon hardpoints and additional fuel cells under the wings, or extended fuelspace for commercial flight.
If the features you gain are not worth the features you lose .. then it's not worth it.
The graphics of the "barrier" in red and the sonic boom after the test aircraft went faster was so nice to watch and hear it gave me goosebump. Thank you unknown videographer that was a good job👍
I look so forward to every one of these videos. Your production value and modeling is absolutely insane. Second-to-none.
Your channel helped me to decide that I wanted to be an engineer, now I'm a miserable, sleepless engineering student and its all your fault (but damn your videos inspire me each and every time to keep going, no matter how hard it is, an engineer is what I want to be ;)
Stay with it, my brother-in-law is a long time aerospace engineer. You guys are a special breed. I never had the math skills :)
@@Splattervision-qh1sd sadly no aerospace in my country, gonna be mechanical.
@@Aluminio_siete_tres_siete A lot of it is the same stuff. I hope you have a great career.
@Aluminio_siete_tres_siete
I would rethink - If You are miserable as a Student, it might not change later on the Job....
Civil Engineerings is far more lucrative. Especially if you partner in a firm, instead of working as a firms underpaid overworked, always blamed employee.
You are rapidly becoming my favorite channel. Not only was this one hell of an informative video, you took your middle finger and rammed it straight up RUclips’s ass with Nebula…I love it!
Pls repent from your sins and have faith and believe in Jesus because Jesus is the way the truth and the life Jesus died for you and rose from the dead for you
@ WTF does your comment have to do with this video?
@@American_Jeeper pls don't cuss, and also i preach the Gospel because people need Jesus Christ and we can't wait anymore we must preach
2:38 Mig-23, Mig-27, F-111, F-14, B1, Tornado, Su-17, Su-20, Su-22, Su-24, Tu-160. Not a huge amount but more than just a sample size in all fairness
and the TU-160 is back in production.
Well to be fair the Mig 23 and Mig 27 are the same frame rebuilt electronics wise
And the SU 17 SU 20 and SU 22 are all variants of the same base design
After that the number drops down to 7
Asymmetrical paper airplanes are pain to look at, but man they’re so fun to make
I've made hundreds, and it is indeed very fun!
There was too much interference drag in the first oblique wing models, leading Jones to come up with his best solution -- the oblique flying wing you mention only at the end of your video. I was Bob Jones' hangar mate in Palo Alto after he retired from NASA. Bob flew a two-control Ercoupe, which he had designed for Fred WeIck of NACA in the 1930s, while I flew a homebuilt. Over turkey legs at Harry's Hofbrau, I heard all about the oblique wing and its advantages, which have been generally underplayed. It's even better than you know
Sick
Sure you were 😂
@@heroinmom153 go back in your basement, or start achieving something yourself
@@lothar654 LMAO @ you 🤡😂🤣
Simp, I'm a software engineer. You're just some broke dope on the internet, wishing you had an ounce of success lol
@@lothar654 But keep simping harder for internet liars lolol
Simp boi
R T Jones came up with the idea and demonstratéd it with a small model. In fact a full scale air craft was built. There were no control problems. We adopted the system for a 5 1/2 gun fired missile called ERGAM increasing the gliding range as the Mach number decreased below one. The glide ratio is proportional to the span. So, after the supersonic climb , the wing was straitened and the range was very high , way past the orignal powered Extended Range Guided Missile.
I always thought this Wing configuration would make perfect sense on the outside of rocket boosters like the ones on the SLS or space shuttle in order to find them back to the ground and land them like a plane
"you know... Now that you mentioned it...."
-Everyday Astronaut interviewing Elon musk
Like this rocket? they have the asymmetrical wing
ruclips.net/video/lihq94ugNuU/видео.htmlsi=_HFTUxU2ujLizTrg
That seems similar to what was designed for the Energia 2 upgrades that were planned in the soviet union if the Energia-Buran project kept going? Though I think they were looking at folding wing, rather than asymmetric
Engineer fantasy land. Aircraft mechanic here that understands chaos theory. Shit will ice up, something will fail, and you will become the worlds fastest lawn dart.
Maybe, but maybe we can design an electronic control system to do the same thing.. We'll need to see how such a system will vary with velocity with rotation and for different air conditions. Then we can conclude if the system will be chaotic enough.
Quadcopters too would be chaotic without a proper electronic control system.
@@jyothishkumar3098 If it needs electronic controls to fly then it would be unacceptable for civilian use. (They have to be stable in case of a fly by wire failure)
@@hyperx72 An oblique wing aircraft could easily include an emergency system that reset the wing to perpendicular in case of an emergency. And when the wing is perpendicular, the characteristics are roughly the same to a conventional aircraft.
MUUSTAAAAAAARD
The oblique wing concept is great if wings were rigid and laminar airflow was the norm. A major characteristic of forward sweeping control surfaces in practice is tip flutter increases as speed increases. Eventually, the wing or canard folds toward the fuselage. With respect to scissor-wings, uneven amounts of energy would be directed to the pivot point. On a related research path, the Soviets/Russian experimented with the Su-47 and the US had the X-29. With respect to the X-29, the wingtip issues could not be overcome.
the point with the laminar flow has some dots adressed by other research on wings like on the dreamliner, maybe someone with the guts and funding can do a theoretical / prototype of a oblique wing with an active turbulent flow limiter to see how it can help to increase performance and give focus on other challenges of the wing
Absolutely understand and agree. I'm not an engineer, but I modeled virtually and actual scale model, one day in 2001, I found something very weird : wings aren't solid straight surfaces, they bend/flex/twist. Furthermore, all those alterations occurs different from tip to root, the way it happens depend on the shape of the wing, speed, mass/mass distribution, attitude and control surfaces inputs of the vehicle, and the air density and state.
Through my journey in trying to reflect all those in model design (flight simulation), I've foud out about fluttering, pressure wave, drag, wing profiles, wing structures, computer managed damping and control (A380 for eg.), flight speed ranges and their respective concerns, etc.
The tilting wing only resolves a few concerns, still, there are a lot to address, way beyond just "flying okay", and will certainly bring a whole bunch of new huge challenges each time we increase mass, size, performances. The purpose will still and remain transporting something or people somewhere, while economically viable in the civilian world, and strategically relevant in the military one.
The whole point of the rotating slew-wing, is for a simpler structure. It utilizes a straight wingspar and high aspect ratio for weight and simplicity. And slews it for transonic drag reduction.
Bro, Let Boeing fix their planes first before you start throwing new ideas for them to screw up.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Haha latest idea Boeing uses no wings to save money Ja I love you Boeing don’t kill me ;)
Well let airbus do what they are good at though
😂😂😂
Fr 😂
This needs to make a comeback. I'm tired of sitting in a plane for 12+ hours.
How much do you pay for a 12 hour flight? If it was 10 hours instead would you pay 50x that? How about 20x if it was popular?
Look ape, it can pull more weight and has 50% more speed and fuel efficiency. If the damn thing fly's it uses less fuel, less working personal hours, therfore less food , and ultimatly also less risk by being airborne, we could go on.@@siraff4461
Do you still work with your legs in 2024? Hire someone that would sit in a plane 12 hours for you.
Hallo !!
The need for supersonic jets is highly debatable , due mainly to high costs and noise-generation .
.
HOWEVER , if examined seriously , this is actually a viable design . Oblique-wings are of course , unstable at high speeds . This means that the transition must be accomplished at lower speeds and altitudes , and then the forward-wing locked securely into the axial position .
Obviously , after this the plane can accelerate to cruising-speed , while relying on it's low-drag lifting-body planform to provide the necessary lift for supersonic flight . 😎
@@Haplo-sanfeels like a disability to sell remotely. It's about presence. Sure, kids today have no problem with this but so much richness of experience is lost.
100 phones calls or a 10 minute meet, hmmm.
Boom Supersonic need to use this oblique wing, they would be in the air already, the time is now.
There are always subtle challenges about these types of new designs that are often hard to predict. Variable geometry wings are a great example, because the theory is great, but it's really difficult in practice. Ground effect vehicles are another such example, where the theory is sound, and it promises much increased efficiency, but then doing it in reality is much more difficult. I put these oblique wings in the same category, where 'what could have been' is almost certainly a lot better than 'what would have happened'.
It’s a good day when mustard posts
DIDNT ASK + MY ANIMATIONS ARE WAY BETTER THAN MUSTARD
Didn't ask. My content is far superior and has more value than anything this youtuber has ever produced so get over it
Didn't ask. My content is far superior and has more value than anything this youtuber has ever produced so get over it
Bro these bots 🤖
Wtf
There are other considerations... Maintenance, and the fact that underwing engines are more efficient than body mounted engines (they can be bigger, but also creates a high pressure zone under the wing). Storing fuel in the wings but pumping it to body mounted engines becomes much more complicated, especially given the swing mechanism, probably you have to give up on wing mounted fuel tanks, sacrificing cargo space in the body.
Wing shape has a lot of follow on effects that need to be considered to ensure that the tradeoffs are worth it. By the time those are considered, I suspect that any benefits largely disappear, leaving you with higher maintenance and complexity (and therefore lower safety margins).
Yep, engine mounting is also what i thought of - where do you put the engines on an oblique wing aircraft? As you said, fuselage-mounted engines are less efficient, are harder maintain since they're higher up, require fuel to be pumped to them from the wings, and create more noise and vibration in the cabin.
Additionally, wing-mounted engines are used as counterbalances for the lift forces on the wing. When an aircraft is flying, the entire aircraft's weight is resting on the wing roots as the wings provide lift. Logically, mounting the engines to the wings themselves instead of the fuselage then means that the wing root doesn't have to carry the weight of the engines anymore, since the weight of the engines rests directly on the wings themselves. This means that the wing root can be lighter, and more efficient.
Mounting the engines to the fuselage will mean that all these efficiency gains are lost.
This really was the smoothest product advertising I ever witnessed in a RUclips video ( the video it self is very good thx for it )
The oblique wing might also double as a form of dazzle camouflage, because the wings are at an angle, which would suggest a different heading/ speed, than what they are in actual fact.
while also needing a smaller hangar... meaning you can be more discreet
@@lalubkoalso ideal for aircraft carriers, where as many jets are crammed into a small area as possible.
in what world are we still using visuals to identify aircraft and its speed and heading?
@@XxZeldaxXXxLinkxX lmao this guys not living in 1923 like the rest of us. Come on in, xister, the waters warm.
Bro really never heard of RADAR
I'm not sure what the technical term is for this but the way you display information in your video is really pleasing to me
Fascinating! I would like to note that nature is not always symmetrical, for instance flatfish are highly asymmetrical. Also, geese typically fly in an asymmetrical v-shape formation.
He was pointing out that anything that flies is symmetrical.
That's amazing but a formation of geese are not a single flying object unless they do this to affect the airflow over the entire formation.
@@R1GGLER That's still a misleading point to make because everything that walks is also symmetrical, as it everything that burrows. There are only a handful of fish that aren't symmetrical. Symmetry is far far simpler from an evolutionary development point of view than asymmetry.
This channel is the only channel that makes me really consider joining nebula
Love the motion graphics of this! So well done!😊
Always a great day when Mustard drops a new video!
Such high quality in this video, love the renders you've made.
It looks like superman taking off with his right hand pushing forward :D
Have been long waiting your high quality videos!! Thanks for making these beautiful yet informative videos! A real deep thanks!!🙏🏻
WHO SAID MUSTARD IS THE BEST BECAUSE MY CONTENT IS WAY BETTER
(not a bot just wanna add another spam comment here 💀)
I think this is the classic example of theoretically possible but almost impossible in practice. Like you said in the video, the Concord is the best case of why modern aviation doesnt work well with "unique" designs. We've flown the same type of plane for almost 70 years. The amount of R&D time and money they would need to invest to develop would certainly bankrupt all major airplanes manufactures(Boeing, Airbus)
Boeing is bankrupting just by building airplanes
Boeing is doing just fine bankrupting themselves with the MAX series aircraft, thank you very much.
@@mariussmuts3153 Boeing is going to be fine. Airbus also had issues with their planes, most famous one where the landing gear sometimes would turn side ways when deployed for landing. Would this hurt them financially? Absolutely. And probably delay the deploy of their new 777X MAX even further. But they are not going anywhere. This duopoly doesnt seem to be disrupted anytime soon.
@@mariussmuts3153 the us gov is doing even better bankrupting boeing with the airforce ones lol
Few major advancements in aviation have been made by airplane manufacturers in private ventures.
Most groundbreaking research was either done directly by the government (NASA and others), or through military projects with manufacturers.
Atm, there simply isn't a competition that would drive manufacturers to innovate in such ways.
Because supersonic travel would limited to ocean-crossing routes anyway, thus there's hardly a profit margin in there.
Whether anyone might innovate in that direction if supersonic flight were permitted everywhere is anyones guess.
But so long as overland flights have to be subsonic, a lack of innovation in this sector is a certainty.
Aircraft weren't always semicircle before this funky number, granted not as interesting as this one, but one wing was sometimes designed longer than the other to prevent torque reaction from the propeller. And the Germans made some unhinged asymmetrical aircraft for visibility as I understand it. Good video as always and well woth the wait!!
A lot of propeller driven aircraft also have their tails turned slightly to one side for the same reason.
I remember that concept from the "Usborne book of the future" I had as a kid in the late 70's/80's. It's too bad that aesthetics and symmetry is so hardwired into humans.
Great video, it would be nice if you get into more detail what makes oblique wing so efficient.
I'm no engineer, but I would imagine it is because of its smaller cross-sectional area in the direction of flight. Imagine standing in front of the plane; as the oblique wing rotates, you can see less of the plane. This means lower air resistance at supersonic speeds.
Real engineering has another great video on the AD-1 that perhaps you would be interested in
Starting at transonic (M0.8) and then up into supersonic speeds, as the airflow over the aircraft becomes supersonic, you are affected by a new type of drag, wave drag.
To manage this wave drag you have to prevent large spikes in the frontal cross section of the aircraft; the cross section of the aircraft must change slowly, this is the so called 'area rule'.
Traditional subsonic aircraft with their long, thin, straight wings have a large spike in the cross sectional area at the wings, this causes very large wave drag and effectively prevents them from going supersonic.
in order to reduce the wave drag of the wings, you have to reduce the abrupt increase in cross sectional area. you can do this in two ways: make the wings shorter/fatter effectively spreading the area of the wing forwards and back (F-104 is a good example), and/or sweep the wings so that they gradually add and remove area (like the F-100); delta wings or trapezoidal wings are effectively a mix of both.
The oblique wing is able to sweep it's self by pivoting, however it has a few potential advantages over traditional swing wing aircraft that can also change their sweep angle.
Firstly as explained in the video the mechanism for sweep has the potential to be lighter since it recieves simpler loads.
secondly traditional swing wings send both halves of the wing backwards, this shifts the center of lift backwards which adds adittional trim drag as the elevators have to pitch down and remove lift to maintain level flight, the oblique wing does not shift the COL backwards when it sweeps so no additional trim drag.
Thirdly, as traditional variable geometry wings send both half of the wing backwards, they put the cross sectional area of both of the wings backwards resulting in higher wave drag; the oblique wing sends one half forwards and one half back resulting in better area ruling over all and therefore potentially lower wave drag.
@@TheAmazingchickens Very good explanation. I'd add that rearward-swept wings can be positioned to ride the cone of the shockwave from a forward point such as the canopy, while a forward-swept wing cannot. Everything about a modern aircraft is built around its intended crusing speed, takeoff and landing speeds and distances, etc. Economically it makes little sense to design a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none aircraft.
Oblique wing works the same way as a swept wing, namely by making the cross sectional area of the plane change more gradually. This is important for reducing wave drag at transonic and supersonic speed.
Unfortunately swept wings also tend to produce less lift at low speeds compared to straight wings. So when designing a transonic or supersonic plane the aircraft engineer has to choose a compromise between a reasonable takeoff/landing speed and mitigation of wave drag. Swing wings address this problem by allowing sweep to be varied in the air. But they add a lot of weight and complexity. The oblique wing hopes to give the same benefit without such severe penalties.
Remembered when I used to slip plastic rules onto a pen and create an imaginary plane.. and sometimes the "wing" would be tilt to a weird position..
Never thought my absurd idea of a plane was made real by NASA Engineers and even to prototype phase...
Great work for Mustard as well for the stunning visualization 💛
Why are your videos sooo well made with such attractive color palette?
Its outstanding!
I am currently studying aerospace engineering and i think i know why my professor never talked about this:
1: When the wings pivots the resulting torque also changes direction --> that's what causes the need for control inputs, as now that torque is no longer in line with the axis of the fueselage.
2: You still have a pivot mechanism trough which ALL of the lift needs to go and that thing needs to hold all the Gs a aircratf has to pull and is not allowed to fail/only with a chance of 10^-9.... yeah that mechanism would be hell to design. especially for the milltiary as you need to pull your Gs.
3: The wings are elyptical... which is an absolute horror to manufacture as you not only change the profile but even the depth of your profile now. and todays wings are also everything but simple
4: As said in the video it is not a really prooven design. and like many many other ideas like flying wing and canard it would need an immense certification process... who is gonna pay for that?
5: what about the engines? If we put them at the aft we will soon get the problem because todays engines get higher and higher BPR (by pass ratios). Those huge engines probably wont fit at the aft. But if we put them under the wing we need more pivots again... and all the fuel lines need to bend too....
6: ohhh and lets not forget that we might manage to make a good aerodynamic Design at subsonic and super sonic but what about the engine? For Super sonic we want low bypass and a Super sonic intake. For sub sonic high BPR is good for fuel efficency.... and another intake....
in conclusion this certainly is intresting. but like many non conventional designs who promsie better L/Ds etc it will be icnredibly difficult to do from an construction perspective
also: the sonic booms and stuff aint even tested yet. i seriously wonder how they show when the wing is pivoted. so i am rather sure i will be another concept we might use at one point in the future.
YOUR AEROSPACE ENGINEERING EDUCATION JUST DESTROYED YOUR ACTUAL ABILITY TO CREATE ANY NEW PLANES. ' ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL '.😑😒
@@rexxbailey2764 why? Because i can see the Problems? Because i already know the higher ups probably wont Cover the cost and risk.
You shouldnt forget: engineers want to build the New and amazong stuff. But the guys in the money Departement need to remind us that we need to stay profitable
@rexxbailey2764 LOL are you kidding? He is absolutely right, just watch the video and you will find the problems addressed as well. The amount of torque it will experience at high angles, + maneuvering will require significant EFBW inputs. Add that to military use cases, where the payload mounts are on the wings, the CoM will shift radically when payloads are asymmetrically released. Its a problem even in swing wings but they still pivot 15-30 degrees usually, so the shift in CoM is not that great. Here it will be drastic. It will be extremely complicated to fly especially in military applications and that's where the major use of a supersonic plane. A fully oblique civilian aircraft might work, but it'll still have enough challenges.
In an oblique setup, the forward-swept wing has an advantage of less induced drag, but the rearward-swept wing does not. That's a built-in imbalance. Another imbalance is that the forward-swept wing has an exponentially larger twisting force at the wingtip the faster it goes. The forward-swept wing must be reinforced more than the rearward-swept wing, so there will be a weight imbalance along with a drag imbalance. The ideal oblique wing is elliptical. Manufacturing a curved shape is more expensive and time-consuming than a straight edge. Considering that the top and bottom of a wing is curved as well, an elliptical wing has an economic disadvantage. Also, an aircraft designed for supersonic flight must be more narrow than one designed to never enter the transonic regime. There just isn't enough time saving in the air (versus the frequent delays on the ground) to make a supersonic narrow-body jet worth the extra cost versus a subsonic narrow-body.
Oh yes, almost forgot. When an aircraft isn't inherently stable, when it requires computer control, as with the 60-degree oblique sweep, how does the pilot remain in control when the wing computer suddenly dies at top speed?
The computer reliability issue is readily addressed using multiple redundancy, the traditional approach is 3 computers that 'vote' on their output.
@@nerd1000ify I've heard that. Still there are failures that kill all the electronics.
@floycewhite6991 it would be normal to have multiple redundant electrical supplies as well, on an airliner there are 4: main engine generators, APU, batteries and a ram air turbine.
A power surge of some sort could fry electronics, but they are typically protected by circuit breakers (which account for a lot of the switches in a typical cockpit). Multi engine aircraft can run independent circuits from each generator, so you can run redundant critical systems on totally different circuits so a power surge cannot affect both.
It's worth noting that many inherently stable aircraft would also be unflyable in the event of a total power failure. The control surfaces are generally actuated by hydraulics which rely on pumps to operate. Even in cases where there is a physical cable or pushrod connection between the controls and the control surfaces, on larger aircraft the control forces would be too large for the pilot to manage without power assistance. It's common to have multiple redundant hydraulic systems as well, e.g. each engine drives an independent pump and hydraulic circuit that is responsible for half of the actuators on each control surface.
@@nerd1000ify Yes I worked in the industry when I was young. Thanks for the reminders though. The bigger the plane, the more complex, and the more overbuilt it must be for safety's sake.
No. Current manufacturers struggle with complexities such as doors.
Always excited for a new Mustard video. My favorite channel on RUclips
The one issue I can see with this concept, is (particularly in commercial use) people wouldn’t feel as secure in an aircraft with an unusual and even confusing oblique wing as in an aircraft with a familiar symmetrical one.
ah but you see, people used to be afraid of flying in the first place, before they realized how much faster it was than other forma of travel
People will adapt
It would be in the fully transverse position when parked on the ground. It would not look so unusual then.
The general public will of course be scared, but if a plane with an oblique wing appears, and as said in the video and by the investigators it is really faster and more efficient. Then the people that dare will use it, because its faster than a normal plane a its probably cheaper since is more efficient. And with time more and more people end up using it, that's how airplines ended up being a normal thing. You think that people from a century ago trusted planes?
Though of course it would have to be better and safer which it definitely is not
Thank you for this video. Video quality is exceptional, I dare say, Netflix-esque. Thanks for the cinematography and the narrative, how you tell the story. I've always heard about Nebula but having seen this video (first time on this channel), I now think that that 2.50 is a worthy spend. Thanks Mustard, you have earned a subscription. Amazing bro!
I love the style of your video and editing! Absolutely great job on the design of all the graphs! Very interesting video.
This is amazing! The wait is always worth it!❤
@TROLLSDETAINED you are a depressing person just like that LGBTQ+123=XYZ nerd who commented on my post
The Blohm und Voss Bv P202 was destined for production in 1946, had this system of pivoting wing, but was stopped by the end of the war.
This idea has been floating around for 50+ years. I remember building a model kit with this design in the early 70s.
The editing and montage of this video is mindboggling
I wonder how a "biplane" version of this oblique wing concept would perform, with each wing (one at the middle- top of the fuselage, one at the middle-bottom) pivoting in the opposite direction?
so, something like an x-wing?
@user-bj1mi1fy5f Brilliant! I had just posted then and then saw your suggestion. Thumbs up #15 is mine.
The symmetry would negate all the advantages it’s like a worse version of what we already have. It’s like y’all didn’t even watch the video?
@@Yinyankstank Asymmetric wings are already a worse version of what we have lol
I remember seeing these "scissors-wing" planes on the cover of a Popular mechanics or Popular Science magazine in my youth in the early Seventies ... great to see them again! They were supposed to revolutionize air travel then but sort of disappeared from view - like hypercritical fuselages in the late Seventies/early Eighties...
Brought back memories, I used to look through those too as a youth in the 70’s, good times.
You will always make the highest quality Videos out of ANYONE on RUclips
You are the Definition of Quality over Quantity
Don't ever stop being you
P.S. I really adore this style of videos about these strange and interesting concepts instead of just obscure and lost vehicles, its a nice mix (not saying I also love those other videos of course, Especially the CL-1201 video)
Outstanding!
Interesting idea. Only problem I see is potential relative wind force for the forward facing side of the wing. I think the asymmetrical force could be enough to over stress the center pivot mechanism resulting in failure. Especially at high speeds with extreme forces.
Everything old is new again. I remember making an Estes rocket model of something like this 40 years ago! These old engineers made all these amazing breakthroughs with slide rules.
Wow! Besides the script and story being so interesting, loved the quality of the 3D Animations, a beautiful mix between Retro and Hyper Realistic. And everything, music, voice over and video, smoothly edited. Congrats to the Mustard Team.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful video! It was fascinating, thought provoking, and very well done! I'm now excited to know of Nebula, as well. I'll be checking it out now! 👏🏻
Looks how superman flys
Wow! That's some observation!
That's what I was thinking, with the aileron offset it would make the plane pitch and yaw awkwardly, plus that pivot point in the middle would have to be insanely strong on a commercial aircraft carrying 200-300+ people.
I lifeguarded Rockaway Beach NYC the summers of 87,88 and 89 and LOVED when the Concord flew into JFK. It was like listening to a muscle car or tuned sports car. No airplane sounded the same as the Concord, I should know I grew up and live in Queens NY 15 minutes from JFK and 25 to LaGuardia.
I am struggling to see how its any better than a variable sweep wing when it has to pivot as well probably on one point instead of two
It's just common sense that this video was bs in that regard. There was nothing wrong with swept wings, even when the Soviets designed and built it. I also fail to see a connection between Concorde and swept wings, despite of what he said here. Concorde failed because it basically operated at a loss. Nothing to do with booms or having to use afterburners at take off. It feels like the script of this vid was written by an AI, it's not very factual nor consistent.
@@Wolf-Spirit_Alpha-Sigma having to use afterburners and restrictions to flight over sonic booms = concorde operating at a loss genius
can't help but wonder if a counterg-rotating oblique wing biplane (each wing being smaller) could potentially counteract the tendency to roll at high angles. guessing the extra drag, airflow characteristics and shock cones would render the advantages null and void.
You are a genius.
I should try to make a model of this.
You'd end up with a sylinder with a coned front
I thought so too, but you wouldn't be able to use wing struts since the wings would not be parallel all the time. another issue i didn't see mentioned is that you couldn't put jet engines on the wings without rotating them in line with the fuselage.
@@martin-vv9lf The original (monowing) doesn't use wing struts either. I am not an aerodynamics person so I'm guessing there's a good reason why biplanes strut their wings together?
As fot engine placement, the original monowing design for this places them directly attached to the fuselage so I am not sure that's an issue.
to clarify: one wing would be on top of the fuselage, the other on the bottom, each with a big old rotating joint, set up for the flight computer to make sure they match rotation angle as they rotate.
Yeah you encounter the same losses which killed biplanes in the fist place. Another issue is that, on one of the sides, the top wing would create downwash which would interfere with the bottom wing. But only on one side. So it would be unstable
That pure oblique wing looks so cool. Imagine seeing a wonky wing with jet engines flying over you.
Great video about the Oblique Wing aircrafts. It made me discover this oblique wing technology which I've never heard before and that would be so cool if commercially developed. Thanks and keep up with the amazing work done for the channel!
I just see the forward-swept half of the wing experiencing catastrophic resonant vibrations induced from the drag.
Most modern aircraft can still safely land even with huge segments, even entire wings, missing. The structural integrity of an oblique wing would likely instantly drop to zero if it was damaged.
The larger the oblique wing, the more these issues and their consequences are magnified.
It’s an interesting idea that, the research itself is worth it- new data about aerodynamics was gained. But to actually apply the idea is a different story entirely.
Modern aircraft definitely can't land with a wing missing. MAYBE a military craft could, but an airliner? No chance.
I had one of these in the 70's and launched it with a "C" Estes rocket engine from a rod, lit by a nine volt battery. Yes, the scissor wing popped properly and it glided safely back to the Mother Earth.
I had one too. See comment above.
Won't the forward part of the oblique wing run into the same bending stress problems as forward swept wings?
Not insurmountable but still an issue
Its not bending stress, it's torsional stress.
NASA solved all these issues with carbon fiber composite wing skins with calculated layup angles to cause the wingtip to twist leading edge down, instead of up.
Another excellent video Mustard!
Good idea, and even engines can be installed on the wings, it would be easy to keep them parallel by - inside the wings - connecting the two fontal (or rear) spots of the engines with a fixed beam, and also fixing those beams at a rotated mid-point on fuselage at the center so if the wings rotate, it keeps their orientation. And by not fixing the mid-rotate point to the body and making it adjustable it can even be used as thrust vectoring to rotate both (or even 4) engine together. I hope I explained it well.
I genuinely didn't know that an Oblique Wing would generate less of a sonic boom.
😮Genuinely? But this is basic knowledge! Everyone knows that oblique wings generate practically no sonic boom whatsoever. I believe this was taught in pre-school.
@@oksemon what kind pre-school was that? We didn't learn physic in pre-school
How tf didnt u know that? Literally the first words out of my mouth were “an oblique wing generates less of a sonic boom”.
Dude, its more famous than "Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell". In fact, that saying only became a thing as a result of plagiarising the far more commonly known adagé, "An oblique wing is the powerhouse of supersonic flight"
@@oksemon you think aerospace engineering is taught in preschool?
OCD’s worst nightmare
Real
got my nebula a while back and it's pretty great, the only weakness is the interface, but that seems to be improving pretty regularly! soon, it'll be a force to be reckoned with!