Flight Unseen
The Gossamer Albatross II makes a 1980 test flight at NASA’s Dryden Flight
Research Center in California. |
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Rawdon’s involvement
with the Gossamer Condor was largely voluntary and part time while he continued
his architecture work, but when MacCready got funding from DuPont for his next,
even more ambitious, project, the Gossamer Albatross, he offered Rawdon a paid,
full-time position, and architecture fell by the wayside. The Albatross was intended
to win a new prize set up by the same British industrialist, this one for the
first human-powered plane to fly across the English Channel. For that flight,
22 times longer than that of the first contest, the plane had to be made even
lighter, stronger and more efficient. That’s where Rawdon’s
model-plane experience came in. The flight across the channel would take more
than two hours, but in initial trials the new plane could stay airborne for no
more than 17 or 18 minutes. The problem turned out to be the propeller, which
was a relatively old design. “It happened that my friend Bill Watson and
I had been building model airplanes using a technique that was perfect for doing
high-tech, lightweight, human-powered propeller blades,” Rawdon says. “So
I took MacCready’s specs for the propeller and converted them into structure.
We built this thing, Bill and I, in a week. It was a styrene foam core, carbon
fiber spar and Kevlar and epoxy skins. It had a diameter of 13 feet and four
inches and weighed three pounds. And that was considered heavy. The whole plane
weighed about 85 pounds when it flew.”
With Rawdon’s propeller, the plane was able to fly successfully across
the channel, and it won the second prize. Then Rawdon and the rest of MacCready’s
team moved on to an even greater challenge: building the first solar-powered
plane, the Solar Challenger. Here the problem was getting enough electricity
from solar cells to run the propeller. That was a significant challenge at the
time, because solar cells were at best only about 12 percent efficient. Since
MacCready’s cells were NASA rejects, many didn’t even meet that level
of efficiency. Because sunlight produces about 100 watts of power per square
foot, the best the team could hope for was 12 watts per square foot. The plane
had a planned wingspan of 47 feet and a six-foot wing chord (the width of the
wing from front to back), so if the wings were completely covered with solar
cells, the maximum amount of power available would be about three horsepower
(2,238 watts).
“MacCready did some numbers,” Rawdon says, “sort of back-of-the-envelope
physics numbers, and said, ‘OK, guys, this is possible; go do it.’ So
we had to make it happen. The two main aspects were that it had to be very light
and efficient in order to actually fly on solar power—not just fly, but
climb, which means you have to have excess power. And the flip side was we were
going to fly high; we had to avoid killing somebody. So we tried to make a very
lightweight and suitably strong airplane. And we succeeded at that. It is remarkable.
I don’t believe anybody’s done it since—a manned, purely solar-powered
airplane—partly because it’s a kooky idea and partly because the
solar cells are very expensive. We did succeed in the end, and we didn’t
kill anybody.” The plane flew 163 miles at an altitude of 11,000 feet.
There was no prize involved in the Solar Challenger (it was again funded by DuPont),
only the satisfaction of achieving the seemingly impossible. But for Rawdon personally,
there was indeed a reward in the project: it was through this work that he met
his wife, Deborah Beron, a friend of one of the other crew members. Beron’s
father worked at McDonnell-Douglas, and he set up a job interview for Rawdon,
which led to his position with Phantom Works. His wife (now Deborah Beron-Rawdon)
also eventually went to work for the company, specializing in aircraft interiors
(she designed the interiors of all MD-11 jumbo jets). When McDonnell-Douglas
merged with Boeing in 1997, Phantom Works came with the package. Now Deborah
Beron-Rawdon is in charge of strategic development for the Pelican project.
While Blaine Rawdon has received enormous attention for the Pelican, it
is not the only major project he has worked on; one of his other designs, the
Blended Wing Body concept, is, if anything, even more striking than the cargo
plane. It is, in some ways, the opposite of the Pelican. While the Pelican looks
like a throwback to Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, the Blended Wing Body looks
like something out of Star Wars (or, more precisely, like an angelfish turned
on its side). It is sleek, with no distinct fuselage. It is, essentially, a flying
wing, with the wing thickened toward the center. This type of design produces
a plane that is lighter, more aerodynamic, more fuel-efficient and more spacious
than conventional tube-and-wings airplanes. And because it is modular by its
nature (the width of the deep center body can be increased or decreased in sections)
it can be adapted to a variety of military and commercial applications at relatively
low cost. With a wingspan of 280 feet—roughly the same size as Airbus’ forthcoming
A380 Jumbo Jet—the 800-passenger Blended Wing Body would carry 50 percent
more passengers than the Airbus while using nearly 30 percent less fuel. It would
be significantly lighter than conventional designs of the same wingspan and would
have far better handling characteristics and lift-to-drag ratio. It would have
no tail, and the engines would be rear mounted, making the interior very quiet.
Like the Pelican, the Blended Wing Body is still only a concept
at Phantom Works, but it has been in the design stream longer than the Pelican and
is therefore at a later stage. “I’m hopeful that the Blended Wing
Body and the Pelican will go forward,” Rawdon says, “but it
remains to be seen. It will be a very exciting day when either one of them has
its first flight.”
In the meantime, Rawdon has another first flight to look forward to. This man
who has spent his whole life absorbed by flight, designing and building planes
of every description, working on aeronautical milestones and redefining what
an airplane can be, has never actually flown a plane himself (excepting a few
turns in the human-powered flyers and some hours in paragliders). So for now
the big news in aviation is that this year, Blaine Rawdon will finally get his
pilot’s license.
Amherst
Photo: NASA
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