thinking about where to place the entrance/exit from the cockpit. i appear to have two options, a hatch in the floor of the rear of the cockpit leading down and out through the back of the landing gear bay( the area where i would put the hatch is not in the way of the gear and is not inaccessible due to the position of the gear when folded or lowered), or out through the side of the back of the cockpit. i was not intending to have the canopy open and want a way for the crew to enter/leave the craft easily without the need for ladders etc so some form of steps needs to be included in whatever type of exit i choose. to clarify, in the image the floor and through the landing gear bay hatch would be somewhere through the floor behind the seat( i will put in the copilot/weapons operator seat later somewhwere behind the pilot). the side exit would be a folding door in the hull of the craft also behind the pilots seat.
Well if it is a two seater, side by side, then the rear hatch through the landing gear bay could work, that would be similar to the arrangment on the Su-34. Maybe even include the kitchen and lav featured on the Su-34
MY HECK, they have a kitchen and toilet on an su 34. some of my previous fighter designs had that sort of stuff in the back for extended missions but i didn't know it was done on any real craft that small. i might make it a two seater side by side but i do not think the fuselage is neccessrily wide enough.
Ok, two questions.
1: Why is your nose gear out an angle and not straight down?
2: Why is the gear bay so freaking huge? It doesn't look like it needs to be that long, and you are losing a lot of internal volume as a result.
the nose gear is at an angle as this looks slightly better than straight down(it would have minimal impact on the fighters performance or abilities, it also allows a slight flexing on landing absorbing some impact force should the craft come down too fast). the size of the gear bay is due to the fat i originally planned much larger gear but after some redesigns i found that was no longer needed, the rear of the landing gear bay contains a small hatch for the crew to enter and exit through as shown in my image on post number 35 of this thread. it also contains space for ion column(like a hovercraft using ionised gas columns instead of rubber skirts, although unlike on a hovercraft the pressure of the gas inside the column should allow the fighter to hover rather than the gas escaping from below.) equipment allowing VTOL when carrying small or nonexistent weapon loads. currently workoing on the controls, i will reuse some parts(switches,dials,neptune engine(that is the 6 fusion ramjets in the pods) controls,reactor controls) from my hellhound fighter that i have discussed on this forum but will develop some other controls for the extra systems that this heavy fighter has but the hellhound lacks (doing so is perfectly alright as the fighters are both from the same SF universe and both operated by the same force at the same time so many of the basic components such as switches would be duplicated). thanks, more tomorrow.
p.s. you say i am losing internal volume due to the long bay for the forward gear, although it is long the height of the bay is actuallly quite small and the area it occupies cannot really have anything else fitted as it is too small for any of the large systems my fighter needs( i may put a bomb rack in the rear perhaps).
Looks are one thing, but you are really losing out on practicality with a NLG that does not extend straight down. Instead of the NLG strut itself acting as a shock absorber you have to add a shock absorber to it to take the load.
As for the crew access hatch, there appears no reason why it has to be in that same NLG bay, just give it its own door, or have the whole seat drop away instead.
So you are putting lift rockets in that bay as well? Again, why not give them their own bay, otherwise a failure could result in the exhaust gasses eating through your access door and wheel well.
Also why is that space behind the cokpit there so big? Is it another crew station, or a bunch for long duration trips? Also, if that crew space is back there then where is that lift engine suppossed to fit?
ok, although the landing gear cannot act under compression as a shock absorber as it is angled it can fulfil a similar purpose by rotating slightly about its upper end to absorb some impact force. the gear is deployed or retracted by rotating about a bar at the top of the strut, there will be shock absorbers built into this bar and it will lock in positions using some rods (not visible without removing parts of the landing gear bays). i have placed the access hatch in the landing gear bay as this appears the most convenient place to put it and saves creating structural weakness from adding yet more holes in the hull(the door that would otherwise be needed). the word "lift rockets" is not the right way to describe the ion columns, although they fulfil a similar purpose they work in a way far more like a powerful fan such as on a hovercraft. they do not take more than a few centimetres of space vertically so will still be able to fit despite the large crew compartment which will contain extra crew stations and stuff for long duration missions once i have completed the fighter. they cannot leak and spew gasses or chemicals across the gear/access/ion column bay as they are simply devices that use high voltages to create a vertical tube of ionised gas below the equipment into which air pumped in by a form of fan system is trapped providing support for the craft. think of a tube impermeable to air but filled with air and then resting a mass on top held up by the pressure it exerts on the air in the column. the high voltages should not cause a problem for crew access as the ion columns are switched off except when the fighter is hovering, landing or taking off. have been continuing with the control panel today, what sort of systems should be on it?
so far i have: shields controls, engine controls,power reactor controls,landing gear and ion column controls,touch screen advanced systems controls,environmental controls and hyperspace controls. i am planning to put all but the most basic of weapons controls along with the radar, gradar(gravitational detection and ranging) and communications in the back with the copilot, i may even add a third crew man.
i have now finished modelling the pilots control panel but will have more controls to work on for the copilot/weapons operator. i am not finished but am not quite sure what part of the fighter to model next. an image of the control panel is below...Attachment not found.
i use switches because they can be more easily protected against EMP s and other radiation and electric fields than touch screens and complex electronics. my designs of ship are fitted so that they can still operate all the systems crucial for basic "flight" and fighting even if the complex electronics and computers of the kind needed for touchscreens are knocked out by an EMP/magnetic field/electric field/electromagnetic phenomena. the tech level is quite high(fusion reactors,bussard scramjets,hyperspace systems, simple FTL radio type system) but it is good to have systems that can withstand the battering they are likely to receive in space even if not in combat, solar flares, neutron stars(from a great range of course),various high energy "stuff" near the galactic centre. also switches look quite good on a model and provide detail. there will probably be augmented reality systems as well but these will be built into the pilots helmet. i have just fitted four(small) nuclear fusion reactors for powering the ships systems into the far rear of the cockpit area. i am going to then start work on the rest of the rear of the cockpit(copilots space etc).
I don't have a problem with the number of switches. If you look at the picture here you will see what an F18 cockpit looks like. The monitors are surrounded by buttons that change purpose depending on which screen you have up on the monitor you are using.
Most often when I was doing run-ups I would be in the back seat (dual F18) and I would configure one of the monitors to display all the engine data as I was an F404 engine tech at the time. That would mean that the buttons surrounding the monitor would do different things then they would if the monitor was configured as say a navigation or secondary moving map display. Context derived you could say.
The pilot or tech who was controlling the AC during the run-up would have their monitors configured differently than me. What I think looks off about your control system is that it looks far too spread out (left to right). It seems that if the pilot was sitting in the middle then he would have too far to reach.
A ton of stuff should be in HUD as well. Makes it easier if the pilot doesn't have to keep looking into the cockpit when flying.
Controls should be easy to reach and most controls that are used most often are now usually on the stick. Cockpits are compact environments that a pilot straps him/herself into. It should surround them so that everything is close and becomes almost like an extension of their body.
EDIT: almost forgot. If the AC is wide enough around the cockpit area you could stick in another crew member (kind of like in an F111) who could be useful for maintaining and monitoring the complicated nuclear stuff. Your little craft is going to be far more complex than a modern day fighter by far.
thanks, some of the controls the pilot needs to operate are at full arms reach away, as long as the straps holding him in his seat can stretch a little this should be no problem. i did realise that i should move the main touchscreen and booster activation switches to the left side rather than the right so that they can be reached without needing to lean over the power and hyperspace levers(which now have switches next to them to lock them in position while the pilot reaches across them for the landing gear and environmental systems controls(which are unlikely to be needed during a battle or during complex maneuvers).). just to mention although the nuclear stuff is very high tech on this craft it basically runs itself only needing human intervention when some parameter(power output,exhaust velocity,flow rate,etc) must be changed. the HUD will not be shown in this model as it will be projected onto the pilots visor by his helmet, it will mainly be readings and dials rather than equivalents of switches and levers. see image for changes to control panel.Attachment not found.
what should i do for the weapons systems control panel, it will need to include everything neccessary for the operator(the copilot) to control a number of laser guns and a large selection of missiles and sensors/guidance equipment. can anyone show me some good images of what this sort of control panel might look like? thanks.
what should i do for the weapons systems control panel, it will need to include everything neccessary for the operator(the copilot) to control a number of laser guns and a large selection of missiles and sensors/guidance equipment. can anyone show me some good images of what this sort of control panel might look like? thanks.
Well, if you're going to be high tech then you can do what the F22 can do and what all the fighter makers are doing now which is a combination of extremely basic weapons controls (manual-emergency only), voice activated, eyeball tracking and a few other things. The flight helmet contains all the required stuff. So basically you wouldn't need many visible controls, just a monitor or section of a monitor (if it is a big screen) that would display what you need. Probably touch screen tech. Take a look here and you will see that pretty much the only thing you see is the defence suite (counter measures - chaff and flares) on the right side of the control panel.
When you look at this one here you can see there are even fewer switches and controls. Almost the entire thing is run off of a single massive monitor (plus the fully integrated helmet)
The F35 has a pretty interesting cockpit and display system too.
decided to wait until i have finished the weapons systems before i design the controls for them. this is a picture of some of the laser weapons on the fighter, the large silver pod can rotate and then retract up into the bay above it which can close to preserve the aerodynamic shape of the craft. there are also gatling lasers(explainedhere amongst the description for my mk iv fighter, they do make sense as it helps to radiate heat more quickly and avoid the major problem with laser systems on space craft) and LC 14 laser cannons in the wing root. i have yet to mount the missile bays but they will go just inward of the laser turret bays. Attachment not found.
Why wait to design the controls? Since you haven't fleshed out any of the screens and there are only limited physical switches you'd need for a weapon system why not just throw them in now? I agree with needing some amount of physical switches myself, however, your reasoning is flawed. All current military fighter/bomber aircraft have EMP protection. Anyway, the only switches I'd recommend would be a MASTER ARM/SAFE (arms the entire armament system), EMERGENCY JETT (jettisoning weapons for safety of flight concerns is always essential) and possibly a LOCK/UNLOCK (prevent inadvertent release of a nuke). I'd suggest doing away with the silly rocker switches and make a true toggle that you have to consciously move to a different position. Lastly, controls being at arms length is no bueno. Any craft that pulls multiple-g maneuvers needs to have everything essential as close as possible to the operator. If this is something you still refuse to fix based on previous suggestions you may want to go with a HOTAS setup (SERIOUSLY) with the throttle dual on the left and the control stick on the right.
Beyond that, all I have to offer to back up my advice is 15 years of working on fighter and bomber aircraft weapon systems. Mostly the B-1, but whatever.
Pretty much what Juvat said and what I have tried to say in my previous posts.
8 years working on F18's and 12 on Sea Kings plus working around "other" aircraft, some belonging to my country and some not. More than 3 years instructing aircraft theory and practical in CFB Borden as well.
Well said CB and Juvat. Keep your interfaces simple and within easy reach of the pilot, don't make them twist, turn or reach out to hit an essential switch.
Pretty much what Juvat said and what I have tried to say in my previous posts.
Thanks. I figure if we harp on the common sense aspect of his project we may just get through to him. Maybe by demonstrating our combined experience that might help as well.:cool:
perhaps it is not very clear, the switches are toggle switches not rocker switches. you don't just push on them like an average light switch, you rotate them about a point inside the box like structure that surrounds each one. i have attached a cutaway image of the switches where the centre of the white circle is the point that the toggle rotates about(axis of rotation is in the direction of the blue arrow).Attachment not found.
i have tried to ensure that all the controls the pilot will need to fly the fighter during a dogfight are closer to him in the centre of the panel but i do not really have any way of compressing the controls into a smaller space to make them closer to the pilot. however would i not be right in thinking that during maneuvers in space most g forces will act forwards/backwards on the pilot and not to the side as this is the direction in which the engine will be thrusting. thanks, interesting that you worked on B1 bombers.
perhaps it is not very clear, the switches are toggle switches not rocker switches. you don't just push on them like an average light switch, you rotate them about a point inside the box like structure that surrounds each one. i have attached a cutaway image of the switches where the centre of the white circle is the point that the toggle rotates about(axis of rotation is in the direction of the blue arrow).Attachment not found.
Well, that's a bit better than I could tell from the previous images, but it still poses a problem. Vital controls either need a switch cover that has to be open before the switch can be thrown or another type that has to be pulled out slightly before it can be moved to another position. Anything else has the potential to be switched accidentally...including what you've just shown. A glove getting caught on the corner of the switch, for example, could easily trip it.
i have tried to ensure that all the controls the pilot will need to fly the fighter during a dogfight are closer to him in the centre of the panel but i do not really have any way of compressing the controls into a smaller space to make them closer to the pilot.
The face of the instrument panel is extremely wide and that could be a problem. Honestly, unless you plan on adding a second crew member, ala F-111, there's no reason to have everything spread out that much. You could get by through better organization of your switches. Something to remember about cockpit controls: All of them should be on a specific panel and not just randomly spattered across the face of the overall panel. You don't have standalone switches. The reason for this is that the switch panel itself plays a large part in processing. As an example...weapons (easier to speak from experience ). On the B-1 is a system called EMUX (electrical multiplexing). It's part analog and part digital. Without giving out "too much" information it works like this: You push a button to open the weapons bay doors. That signal is then processed into binary through a handshaker sequence within the panel and sent down a single line that's time shared with many signals from many other panels. Finally, the signal reaches the avionics computers and is distributed accordingly. The end result is that the weapons bay spoiler drops and then the doors open. Why the explanation? To show that the switch doesn't stand alone (that and because I ramble). It needs the inner workings of its panel to process signals otherwise you have a purely analog system and that means, literally, a ton more weight. Bad juju in space.
however would i not be right in thinking that during maneuvers in space most g forces will act forwards/backwards on the pilot and not to the side as this is the direction in which the engine will be thrusting. thanks, interesting that you worked on B1 bombers.
If you have gees acting along the Y-axis (forward/backward) would you not want to make it as easy as possible to reach the controls? If I was accelerating at 6+ gees I would probably have issues reaching my hand out to hit one of the switches. Once again...HOTAS.
thanks, Juvat. you may notice(it probably isn't very clear in my pictures as they are quite low resolution) that my switches are not just scattered across the control panel but rather they are grouped. i have a group of switches for each engine, a group for reactors and power systems, a group for shields, a group for environmental systems, a general controls touchscreen, a small scanner display and a group of switches for controlling the landing gear. none of the switches are stand alone. what are you suggesting i do when you mention the HOTAS setup, is the idea to have all the controls slide forward so that the pilot does not have to reach out to touch them, i will not (sorry) be putting the joystick on the right and levers on the left as amongst my fighters the "standard" arrangement is this way even if that is not the standard arrangement in current aircraft. if allelse fails with trying to rearrange the controls so they are closer to the pilot i could always have some "handwavium" acceleration damping system to reduce g forces on the crew( i may have to have that anyway considering the truly colossal ( and rather unrealistic) accelerations this thing can achieve, each engine produces 2.4x10^17 watts( yes this is very far beyond current technology) and can propel 2000 kg to 80% of the speed of light in 2 minutes(ignoring the all important relativistic corrections).). honestly unless i have(or someone suggests) an idea for rearranging the controls that makes me think WOW! i doubt i willl do much more to them. i have still to do the copilots weapon controls but have now completed the weapons systems shown in the picture, 8x gatling lasers, 2x LC 14 fixed laser cannons, 2x LC 14 laser cannons in rotatable pods,20x "falcon" light missiles, 4x hawk medium missiles .
still think that there may be something that the fighter is missing(as in a particular system). wondering whta to do to it next... Attachment not found.
For pilot comfort and ability to accomplish the mission during high gee maneuvers look no further than the F-16 (HOTAS and seat reclined at 30*). That's only if you want a more realistic approach to the cockpit. Otherwise, with the "handwavium" that you mentioned just do whatever floats your boat.
Additions? Landing gear that would actually support the weight of the craft would be a good consideration.
looking at the f 16 cockpit now to see if it offers any ideas, the landing gear might be narrow but that should not matter as some very strong materials would need to be used for a craft that can travel at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. the hull will be made of some kind of metal that can withstand impacts from atleast microscopic dust grains at these speeds(although there is shielding), something that can do that should have no trouble supporting a few tonnes( the materials used for the fighter are quite low density) even with it's small cross sectional area. i may add extra landing gear if i can find space to do so. thanks.
More landing gear is more crap to break and extra maintenance. As a maintainer myself I would despise the paper pusher who processed me through training to work on this. There are physical limits to materials that you can't deny and just adding more crap to crap doesn't solve the problem. Thirty different landing gear struts with wheels the size of a hot wheel car's is an all around bad idea. Simplicity is the key along with common sense and both seem to be lacking the further you develop this. It's like making a balsa wood bridge...sooner or later it's just gonna collapse under its own weight.
Now, I'm all for offereing advice if you want it, but don't placate the people who are trying to help improve on the design as you requested in the title of this thread.
Every single suggestion has gone something like this:
Thanks, but there're "Q", "R" and "S" in my universe so I can leave it the way it is.
So, I'd say to either A) change your thread title and specifically state you don't want advice or start actively accepting advice in certain areas as you ask for it. Just sayin'.
I don't think you really have an understanding of the actual forces involved wrt landing gear. Weight is the enemy (sometimes - mass has its own usefulness) and there is not an aircraft engineer out there that will not do everything they can to minimize weight. However saying that your material should "support" a few tonnes is completely off the mark.
Your aircraft/space fighter is going to weigh a lot. Just for an example, the F18A medium sized fighter (single seat) max weight is 22317 kg or just over 22 metric tons. No landing is ever perfect or the same so, as you know, all landing gear have shock absorbers which reduce the impact forces by spreading them out over time and distance; but they do not eliminate those forces.
A key variable here is the vertical component of the descent velocity. A nosedive landing has more impact than a nearly asymptotic landing. A lot more.
The answer to the question “how strong should an airplane be” is determined largely by the use to which the airplane will be subjected. This is a difficult problem, because the maximum possible loads are much too high for use in efficient design. It is true that any pilot can make a very hard landing or an extremely sharp pullup from a dive, which would result in abnormal loads. However, such extremely abnormal loads must be dismissed somewhat if airplanes are built that will take off quickly, land slowly, and carry a worthwhile payload.
The problem of load factors in airplane design then reduces to that of determining the highest load factors that can be expected in normal operation under various operational situations. These load factors are called “limit load factors.” For reasons of safety, it is required that the airplane be designed to withstand these load factors without any structural damage. Although the Code of Federal Regulations requires that the airplane structure be capable of supporting one and one-half times these limit load factors without failure, it is accepted that parts of the airplane may bend or twist under these loads and that some structural damage may occur.
This 1.5 value is called the “factor of safety” and provides, to some extent, for loads higher than those expected under normal and reasonable operation.
However, this strength reserve is not something which pilots should willfully abuse; rather it is there for their protection when they encounter unexpected conditions."
You would not need a ton of switches for landing gear deployment either. See this pic.
You do not need more landing gear, you just need the landing gear you have to be realistic. Throwing super materials at it won't do it. I work in an environment where materials are developed, tested, deployed and either fail or succeed years before any civvie knows about them. These are super materials. But real life has a way of showing up the faults.
Here is an example that is not aircraft related but is about mass. There was a guy in the aircraft industry who was a member of the SCA. He thought it would be great to make a helmet for fighting out of titanium. It would be much stronger than steel and much lighter. He wore it in one fight and never wore it again. Why? The helmet did not have the mass required to absorb the blows. His noggin was being rung like a church bell.
For any specific purpose, engineers look at what the job of every piece of an aircraft is and what its working environment is to be. Then they look at all outside forces that may inflict themselves upon each piece. Then they design it to the credible limits (if civilian air) or to the max limits (if military). You will also have material fatigue. Even the best composites have been found to suffer from this issue. If the item is built a little more rugged then it will survive much better, have fewer maintenance costs which include monetary, man hours and parts availability.
There is so much more.
I like your design with the exceptions of the landing gear and the cockpit layout. But please listen to people who actually work on some of the top military aircraft. Even when an aircraft is "old" it is constantly being updated. And not just software either!
Posts
which should i do?
1: Why is your nose gear out an angle and not straight down?
2: Why is the gear bay so freaking huge? It doesn't look like it needs to be that long, and you are losing a lot of internal volume as a result.
p.s. you say i am losing internal volume due to the long bay for the forward gear, although it is long the height of the bay is actuallly quite small and the area it occupies cannot really have anything else fitted as it is too small for any of the large systems my fighter needs( i may put a bomb rack in the rear perhaps).
As for the crew access hatch, there appears no reason why it has to be in that same NLG bay, just give it its own door, or have the whole seat drop away instead.
So you are putting lift rockets in that bay as well? Again, why not give them their own bay, otherwise a failure could result in the exhaust gasses eating through your access door and wheel well.
Also why is that space behind the cokpit there so big? Is it another crew station, or a bunch for long duration trips? Also, if that crew space is back there then where is that lift engine suppossed to fit?
so far i have: shields controls, engine controls,power reactor controls,landing gear and ion column controls,touch screen advanced systems controls,environmental controls and hyperspace controls. i am planning to put all but the most basic of weapons controls along with the radar, gradar(gravitational detection and ranging) and communications in the back with the copilot, i may even add a third crew man.
Most often when I was doing run-ups I would be in the back seat (dual F18) and I would configure one of the monitors to display all the engine data as I was an F404 engine tech at the time. That would mean that the buttons surrounding the monitor would do different things then they would if the monitor was configured as say a navigation or secondary moving map display. Context derived you could say.
The pilot or tech who was controlling the AC during the run-up would have their monitors configured differently than me. What I think looks off about your control system is that it looks far too spread out (left to right). It seems that if the pilot was sitting in the middle then he would have too far to reach.
A ton of stuff should be in HUD as well. Makes it easier if the pilot doesn't have to keep looking into the cockpit when flying.
Controls should be easy to reach and most controls that are used most often are now usually on the stick. Cockpits are compact environments that a pilot straps him/herself into. It should surround them so that everything is close and becomes almost like an extension of their body.
EDIT: almost forgot. If the AC is wide enough around the cockpit area you could stick in another crew member (kind of like in an F111) who could be useful for maintaining and monitoring the complicated nuclear stuff. Your little craft is going to be far more complex than a modern day fighter by far.
Well, if you're going to be high tech then you can do what the F22 can do and what all the fighter makers are doing now which is a combination of extremely basic weapons controls (manual-emergency only), voice activated, eyeball tracking and a few other things. The flight helmet contains all the required stuff. So basically you wouldn't need many visible controls, just a monitor or section of a monitor (if it is a big screen) that would display what you need. Probably touch screen tech. Take a look here and you will see that pretty much the only thing you see is the defence suite (counter measures - chaff and flares) on the right side of the control panel.
When you look at this one here you can see there are even fewer switches and controls. Almost the entire thing is run off of a single massive monitor (plus the fully integrated helmet)
The F35 has a pretty interesting cockpit and display system too.
Attachment not found.
Beyond that, all I have to offer to back up my advice is 15 years of working on fighter and bomber aircraft weapon systems. Mostly the B-1, but whatever.
8 years working on F18's and 12 on Sea Kings plus working around "other" aircraft, some belonging to my country and some not. More than 3 years instructing aircraft theory and practical in CFB Borden as well.
Thanks. I figure if we harp on the common sense aspect of his project we may just get through to him.
i have tried to ensure that all the controls the pilot will need to fly the fighter during a dogfight are closer to him in the centre of the panel but i do not really have any way of compressing the controls into a smaller space to make them closer to the pilot. however would i not be right in thinking that during maneuvers in space most g forces will act forwards/backwards on the pilot and not to the side as this is the direction in which the engine will be thrusting. thanks, interesting that you worked on B1 bombers.
Well, that's a bit better than I could tell from the previous images, but it still poses a problem. Vital controls either need a switch cover that has to be open before the switch can be thrown or another type that has to be pulled out slightly before it can be moved to another position. Anything else has the potential to be switched accidentally...including what you've just shown. A glove getting caught on the corner of the switch, for example, could easily trip it.
The face of the instrument panel is extremely wide and that could be a problem. Honestly, unless you plan on adding a second crew member, ala F-111, there's no reason to have everything spread out that much. You could get by through better organization of your switches. Something to remember about cockpit controls: All of them should be on a specific panel and not just randomly spattered across the face of the overall panel. You don't have standalone switches. The reason for this is that the switch panel itself plays a large part in processing. As an example...weapons (easier to speak from experience
If you have gees acting along the Y-axis (forward/backward) would you not want to make it as easy as possible to reach the controls? If I was accelerating at 6+ gees I would probably have issues reaching my hand out to hit one of the switches. Once again...HOTAS.
still think that there may be something that the fighter is missing(as in a particular system). wondering whta to do to it next...
Attachment not found.
Additions? Landing gear that would actually support the weight of the craft would be a good consideration.
http://falcon4.wikidot.com/local--files/avionics:cockpit/cockpit_layout.jpg
http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/f-35-cockpit/
Also, just throwing hte magical tech/materials handwave isn't helping. Even if you build it out of super strong carbon nanotubes you do not just have tiny little main landing gears like that.
Now, I'm all for offereing advice if you want it, but don't placate the people who are trying to help improve on the design as you requested in the title of this thread.
Every single suggestion has gone something like this:
So, I'd say to either A) change your thread title and specifically state you don't want advice or
I don't think you really have an understanding of the actual forces involved wrt landing gear. Weight is the enemy (sometimes - mass has its own usefulness) and there is not an aircraft engineer out there that will not do everything they can to minimize weight. However saying that your material should "support" a few tonnes is completely off the mark.
Your aircraft/space fighter is going to weigh a lot. Just for an example, the F18A medium sized fighter (single seat) max weight is 22317 kg or just over 22 metric tons. No landing is ever perfect or the same so, as you know, all landing gear have shock absorbers which reduce the impact forces by spreading them out over time and distance; but they do not eliminate those forces.
A key variable here is the vertical component of the descent velocity. A nosedive landing has more impact than a nearly asymptotic landing. A lot more.
http://www.free-online-private-pilot-ground-school.com/Load_factors.html has some info in it with regards to the forces involved. Here is an excerpt from the web page:
"Load factors in airplane design
The answer to the question “how strong should an airplane be” is determined largely by the use to which the airplane will be subjected. This is a difficult problem, because the maximum possible loads are much too high for use in efficient design. It is true that any pilot can make a very hard landing or an extremely sharp pullup from a dive, which would result in abnormal loads. However, such extremely abnormal loads must be dismissed somewhat if airplanes are built that will take off quickly, land slowly, and carry a worthwhile payload.
The problem of load factors in airplane design then reduces to that of determining the highest load factors that can be expected in normal operation under various operational situations. These load factors are called “limit load factors.” For reasons of safety, it is required that the airplane be designed to withstand these load factors without any structural damage. Although the Code of Federal Regulations requires that the airplane structure be capable of supporting one and one-half times these limit load factors without failure, it is accepted that parts of the airplane may bend or twist under these loads and that some structural damage may occur.
This 1.5 value is called the “factor of safety” and provides, to some extent, for loads higher than those expected under normal and reasonable operation.
However, this strength reserve is not something which pilots should willfully abuse; rather it is there for their protection when they encounter unexpected conditions."
You would not need a ton of switches for landing gear deployment either. See this pic.
You do not need more landing gear, you just need the landing gear you have to be realistic. Throwing super materials at it won't do it. I work in an environment where materials are developed, tested, deployed and either fail or succeed years before any civvie knows about them. These are super materials. But real life has a way of showing up the faults.
Here is an example that is not aircraft related but is about mass. There was a guy in the aircraft industry who was a member of the SCA. He thought it would be great to make a helmet for fighting out of titanium. It would be much stronger than steel and much lighter. He wore it in one fight and never wore it again. Why? The helmet did not have the mass required to absorb the blows. His noggin was being rung like a church bell.
For any specific purpose, engineers look at what the job of every piece of an aircraft is and what its working environment is to be. Then they look at all outside forces that may inflict themselves upon each piece. Then they design it to the credible limits (if civilian air) or to the max limits (if military). You will also have material fatigue. Even the best composites have been found to suffer from this issue. If the item is built a little more rugged then it will survive much better, have fewer maintenance costs which include monetary, man hours and parts availability.
There is so much more.
I like your design with the exceptions of the landing gear and the cockpit layout. But please listen to people who actually work on some of the top military aircraft. Even when an aircraft is "old" it is constantly being updated. And not just software either!
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