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Cielito Libre-
Uncontrolled Airspace
DRAFT: Natural Aviation Proposed
Aerospace Ethics- The first human to fly about at will, Santos Dumont, committed suicide faced with the evolution of aerial bombing. The following proposes another sort of future, beautifully winged.
Aeronomadics, Skysteading, Earth & Sky Repair, Edible & Compostable Aircraft
Natural Aviation is contemplative nonviolent flight by creative sustainable means. Geophysical renewables power homebuilt aircraft made of biodegradable, salvaged, and recyclable materials.
A return to Compostable Airframes of wood, bamboo, and natural fabrics like hemp. Folk craft production. Grown structures from trained plants, a copsed willow fueselage frame, for example. Airframe life is protected by appropriate biological protocols ("organic" preservatives (nicotene, pyrethroids, etc.), seal out moisture and UV), decommissioned upon derating below flight spec. grounded as a sweet and handy shanty before final composting.
Sky Repair- Carbon harvesting from atmospheric CO2 surplus to build flying cities and other structures. Stratospheric Ozone repair with tailored catalytics ion propulsion.
Gourmet Edible Aircraft deliver themselves self-cooked to the hungry. Chitin (from fungus) for tensile fibers and membranes, calcium and chitin for compression tubes, lipid (linseed, walnut, or hemp oil) for moisture barriers, frozen sauce nose ballast, spice paint job, the recipe needs work.
Let us begin Tropospheric Skysteading, on the cheap in a tiny "flying homes" with galley, berths, head, etc., and spacious wing tents for land camping. New aviations of vertical pastoralism and autonomous station keeping near select fixed geophysical lift sources, below ~5000 m. As evolution allows there will be less ground-time waiting or servicing the lifestyle until true living in the sky is born. Check out a stratospheric communities page.
Aeronomadics is a dream of autonomous migration in self-sufficient Skybikes with ultralight amenities. It is a soaring of light spirits; dematerialized, floating, etherial, gently intense.
Geophysical and Biotic Energy generated sustainably on-the-spot or on-the-fly - syncretic energy from many tiny sources mostly natural power like solar wings, regenerative turbine diving, thermal hopping, slope soaring, thermo-inertial, etc.), mountain waves, convergence zones (sea breeze, squall lines, drylines, etc.), human power (food; gardening, edible salvage and invasive species). Ecologists are awed by the energy maximisation strategies of life. We nomads live them directly.
MountainTip-Hopping layovers store lift while waiting on weather between migration legs. Camp high above populations in free-space. Search on Vol Bivouac; a New Alpinism.
Integrated Microavionics and Autonomous Flight Control for endurance and off tasking. Esp. net/sat weather, etc.
Harvest Cloud Water even over deserts by chilling at high altitude (mountain wave lift would work, true Mt. Dew to harvest from wave cloud) then XC to circular soaring within misty convection cells. Use night chill to cool collection surfaces below dew point. Boundary Layer Rivulet Capture on upper low pressure surfaces.
Harvest Mountain Snow/Ice- Soar up, light and empty, to nival zone and gather. Glide laden down to tierra caliente.
Cargo Gliders- Daily pattern fliers, towed flying barges, Launch at altitude for loaded "sleigh-rides", empty dead-head back up.
Question Wing- Native Australians perfected a minimal material culture around the boomerang, which served many roles, digging, fire stick, musical instrument, and hunting airfoil. A small modern wing set might also do "everything", say 3 wings; a small water wing/rudder/digging stick, etc., ~human scaled wing used as aircraft elevator, sail board, table, bed, etc., and a large flying wing or boat sail/ shelter/ etc.. Why not one long tapered wing that flexed like a snake. Properly controlled, couldn't this sailing/flying question mark, small end as hydrofoil, large end twisted around to the wind, sail along amazingly? As a flyer, such a wing could morph over many forms, a flying wing, flying s, swoosh, etc..
Aerospace Quality Salvage, recycled aviation plus mil-spec, medical and hi-end bike parts. We pick up litter from "space ships".
Rafted Airframes- multiple aircraft lashed together as a single flying unit. Existing aircraft would raft at a modest drag penalty, custom design could reduce drag by nesting and blending. By rafting the tribe is able to keep together for social or operational factors. Keep largest upper wing surfaces clear for best lift. Wingtip to wingtip rafting maximizes aspect ratio, a nacelle shuttle might exchange people and materiel.
An efficient flapping wing or sweeping kite, by increasing wing loading and apparent wind, approximates the lift of a solid wing of the entire swept area. All manner of airplane and sailboat will someday incorporate fast sweep. Such wings will be much smaller and relatively lighter. I once made a small flapping wing “windmill” which proved quite effective and outputted reciprocating power. A novel glider could be built with similar flappers. In backpack form it could fold very compactly and be a sort of solid parachute, as little as a couple square meters, if swept, area enough to land safely. The same concept could be applied widely to boat paddles, keels, rudders, etc. The rub is relative mechanical complexity and subtle optimization engineering. In some applications the turbine will prevail.
Elastic pendulum bungee parachute could be much smaller than convention, but timing critical (land at max recoil).
Station keeping over Mountain Waves. Elevator Tether, hi-volt tether minimised by surfing wave
Single Track Skybike mt. touring bike and trailer.
Desirables- ballistic chute, emergency rocket- a few seconds of high thrust in a small light unit for failed approaches, obstacle clearence, stall avoidance, etc.
Geophysical Energy Many weather phenomena create lift for nomadic soaring. Mountain range winds offer ridge soaring the globe. There are stratospheric mountain waves world wide to use as elevators for the sort of stratospheric colonies earlier proposed.
A wild phenomenon of our migration region is the strong convections and southerlies along the Texas summer "dry line", a steep humidity gradient marking the unstable convergence of cyclonic and anticyclonic continental air masses, where cheap obsolete hang gliders set, almost accidentally, world distance records. They are towed into the air in Zapata on the TxMx border, and over several hours, in a strong tail wind strung with storms, can cover hundreds of miles to end up around Abeline. Politics hampers the easy mountain launches from the Sierra just across the border. Cross at midnight in a supercell storm ;^)..
A Radical Aeronomadic Flight Plan- Pedal your skybike up the east face of the Sierra Madre Oriental, camp, jump into morning slope thermal, ridge soar gulf trades north, hop valleys and coastal plains on thermals, ridge cross early afternoon, late west side lee rotor thermal ridge soar, near-summit land, camp, repeat. Summer trades promise to soar nomadic skybikes north along the Sierra Madre to South Texas, then dry line soaring all the way up the central great plains. Look forward to autonomously migrating robotic house gliders over a thousand miles in 24 hours, from Biosquat 5 at El Cielo biopreserve, leaving at night and catching morning dry line convection, to arrive in late dying lift and light for Lubbock music incubating for Austin. Dry line aeronauts use dust devils as the lift of last resort. You kamikaze into them, treetop high, and hope to rise enough to catch a big convection cell, which can explode in minutes. Too big, you dement into a winged blue popsicle at ~7000m or more.
Natural Technology is post-oppositional contrary to the contentive activist robots described by Kurtz, Vegbot- The world needs natural veggiebots to replace monstrous tractors.
STOLhop- impact energy regeneration: crunch landing => takeoff jump
ShooCopter- Sky Liberation- weapon-free zone, notBombs movement. As Panamarenko denies his creations flight, can't we ground demonic aircraft?
Jet setting is resource/capital/pollution intensive, best for humanitarian emergencies rather than short tourist larks.
triphibious bivouac- fly, bike, hike, climb, swim, or sail with food, water, shelter, and tools to thus go anywhere, unrestrained. How? By being a transformer a paragliding biker with floatation fairing and ultraligero camp gear. Why? This is the foundation of wilderness hackivismo, a remote post-oppositionalism based on a quantum physics of knowledge where beautiful ideas are born in a seeming void..
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