I've been thinking about how an aircraft would be converted to fusion based.

Taking the MD500/MD530 series of helicopter, the engine is an Allison/Rolls-Royce Model 250-C20B or C20R Turbo Shaft Engine.

To keep the helicopter in balance the fusion source should not exceed the following specs (C20R Replacement);

Overall Length: 1038 mm
Overall Width: 527 mm
Overall Height: 589 mm

Total Weight: 78.5 kg

Everything else should stay the same as originally installed.

Something this size, it wouldn't be out of character to have a limited operating timeframe, say 3 to 6 months, before the engine has to be pulled and then refurbished (this would nicely simulate a real world maintenance cycle for the gas counterpart).

Anything that is converted to fusion should be a 1 for 1 swap, if the airframe has 4 engines then 4 fusion engines are changed that are similar in details.

This is where things can get a little off. There is an electric motor that can be stacked to provide 300 kW continuous to the rotor in place of the C20R. It would have a length of 540 mm, diameter of about 245 mm and a total mass of 129 kg. Add in the (3rd edition) manportable 20MW reactor at 15kg and you have 145 kg give or take fully fueled. The non-fusion MD500/520 carries 183kg of fuel in addition to the 78.5 kg of the engine for about 260 kg. The two fuel cells of the MD500 are under the floor more or less centered around the rotor. Assuming the reactor can fit inside the space as the fuel cells, we will still have to add more weights to the front of the MD500 for load and balance.

This is doable in the MD500 case, but the electric motors will tend to be heavier and smaller than the ones they replace and the reactor, assuming 20MW sufficient, will be lighter than the fuel. This will be a problem with planes with engines mounted far out on the wings. This will increase the moment of inertia and will impact handling.

So the takeaway is that center line drive trains should be easy to convert with little impact to the flight characteristics. Anything with the engine further out on the wing and you will have some slower turn and roll.

This might work for something that needs to be placed only approximately, but blimps see a lot of shear and aren't good for precision placement, especially when there are other structures nearby.

I haven't even seen a blimp design that can carry more than 40 tons and that never even got past the design phase. I know there are people extolling the virtues of blimps for this, but are any actually flying?

Less strict than airplanes but more strict than helicopters.

Fuel is a non-issue for the Project, and unless there are big single cargos around that I missed this would seem to be at best a minor advantage.

I've always liked LTA craft but they tend to be niche players, and the combination of fusion power and propellors seems to offer much more versatile systems. You also have to assume that any Morrow asset could come under fire at any time. Air vehicles that can be taken down by the smallest of arms are a pretty big risk.

If they are Zeppelins, you really do need to use hydrogen (hence my earlier comment), but even with blimps getting the most lift requires the explosive option...

@mmartin798 beat me to a lot of this, but really the combination of engine/transmission/fuel system/fuel gets replaced by electric motor/transmission*/reactor/fuel system/fuel, and there is no inherent need for the form factor to remain identical or for the number of engines to remain the same or anything like that. Even balancing within the aircraft is manageable with relatively little work, especially given that there is a decent chance that the fusion system will offer more power than the comparable gas system, which in turn allows for the placement of ballast. Or just tweak the design.

*: Electric motors don't need transmissions at low speeds (like what a V-150 would do) but do need them at high speeds. But it would not be the same transmission as the gas motor regardless, it would be much simpler and smaller.

I can see something like this needing to be refueled more often if fuel capacity is sacrificed to make weight, but I don't see why refurbishment would be necessary. I am honestly not sure if there is much in there to be refurbished in the first place!

Electric systems are a lot more modular than gas systems, systems can be decentralized to spread things out more. In a worst case, you can pull the motor itself inboard and then just run a drive shaft out to the propellers - so long as you have the airframe and the wings, you can do a lot to an aircraft and keep it flyable, it's getting that airframe and wings that is the hard part!

Oh, and is there a reason to think that the Project couldn't/wouldn't/didn't develop an electric motor with a better power to weight ratio?

The Graf Zeppelins*, arguably very successful pre-Hindenburg, only carried about 16 tons of cargo. A freighter only 20% the length of a Graf Zepplin can carry 10 times the cargo at about half the speed.

Plus having watched blimps landing at the airport near my home a number of times, they can't just land anywhere like a helicopter. This further limits their usefulness for cargo carrying.

*Lookup LZ 127 for details

Very familiar with the old Zepps, less familiar with new blimp developments. The only blimp developments I AM familiar with are designed to operate unmanned, at a relatively high altitude, with a light load. My best information agrees with you that they have relatively poor carrying capacity and maneuverability, especially in a wind.

And by wind, we are not talking much. The one that I remember had the ground crew with the mooring mast all set up and the blimp coming in to land. There was about a 5 MPH wind with 10 MPH gusts. It still took the pilot almost a dozen tries to get the job done. It was fun to see him take it almost vertical to finally get it down.

http://drawingdatabase.com/bell-222/

Just for fun....... Should I do some stats for Airwolf? Would Airwolf be a fun PC machine?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airwolf_(helicopter)

Why not Blue Thunder, to me these seem better options than then alot of CAS options listed here. I think the project could easly get there had on examples of both ;)

My thoughts
 

So some of you know me, some don't. I am Terry Sofian. I've been thrown off a couple of MP lists back in the old days of BBS. Kevin Dockery once wrote I made him sorry he ever wrote the game.

Other than that I'm a pretty nice guy.

I thought the Project had a general rule of taking gear from "failed" development programs and making it there own. For aircraft I included the AH-56A Cheyenne helicopter gunship, the AV-15 tilt rotor prototypes, the Canadian CL-84 Tilt wings and the XC-142A tilt wings. They gave all of them fusion packs and electrical motors. All of these craft are vertical take off.

I also think various production helicopters like the OH-6, CH-47 and possibly one of the coast guard amphibious helos would also be in the mix.

There were 12 AH-56's built and 4 or so of the XC-142A so that will limit the power of Morrow Air Force

Sounds fair, I figure anything in NATO is fair as is the chance of surreptitiously purchasing airframes and parts from aircraft abandoned or surplused.

I figure the Project can purchase from Viet Nam a slew of UH-1 Iroquois and some AH-1s even A-1 Skyraiders that are off anyone's attention.

Air Morrow
 

As a first principal I always had Morrow Project do its shopping in cancelled military procurement. During the period that the Project was active 1950 to TEOTWAWKI (1989 in original canon) there were a lot of projects that produced some exciting equipment that for one reason or another never entered full production. In my Project (YMMV) I had them scoop up a number of these sets of hardware, convert them to fusion/electric drive and otherwise Morrowize them.

For aircraft I chose Vertical Take off systems only but that gives a really nice choice of platforms. These are some I chose

XC-142 Tilt wing cargo aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTV_XC-142 5 build
CL-88 Tilt Wing light aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadair_CL-84 4 built
XV-15 Tiltrotor light aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_XV-15 2 built
AH-56A Cheyenne Compound helicopter Gunship 12 built

These I positioned as follows
XC-142s at Prime base replacing or supplementing the C-130s in canon
XV-15 at Prime Base
Four "aviation bases" each with either four Cheyennes or the four CL-84s. These would be scattered about but within range of supporting each other and Prime Base and possibly the Back Up Base as well

I don't agree with this approach.

First of all, many such early-stage aircraft have limited functional capacity. Consider the VX-15 - If you add fuel, crew, and basic provisions to the empty weight, you get an aircraft that only has about a thousand pounds of payload and even that would probably require adding hardpoints due to a lack of internal stores. Converting it to fusion only helps so much when you are starting with a technology demonstrator that was never meant to be used in a functional manner.

Second, if they never went into full production that also means that they were never extensively tested. Think of the recent debacle with the F-22's oxygen supply system, and ponder how many of these aircraft are lemons whose weaknesses were never realized during the relatively limited testing period they were allotted? For that matter, these vehicles, with massive technical efforts behind them, ALL had flaws that kept them out of production... so why would Morrow think they could make them work?

Third, if they were never in the field then that means that there is no real support base for them, either in terms of parts and tool inventory or in experienced maintenance and repair personnel. You lose a lot of advantage in these things if you are exclusively relying on Morrow-produced supplies and home-grown knowledge.

Finally, when there are only a handful of these things, it can be a lot harder to make them disappear. If the some Huey's bound for a South American customer get stolen by gun runners, or if some M113's are discovered to have had a fatal structural flaw and need to be scrapped, or if a CH-47 goes down over the ocean, then there are a few fervent memos passed and everyone moves on. If even one of only five very expensive test aircraft disappears from a military base then it becomes not only hard to conceal the disappearance but also the fact that someone on that base is a traitor!

I just don't see TMP realistically building an aviation program off of such things when you could get actual functional, proven, and supported military-grade (or upgradable) hardware with minimal subterfuge and little risk.

The XC-142 is poorly documented but at least 1 of the 5 crashed.

Of the CL-88, only 3 were very flyable, and 2 of those crashed.

Of the XV-15, 1 did eventually crash, but it did so as part of a long career as a demonstrator - these were in use as test vehicles for decades, I am not sure how Morrow would have gotten them!

Of the AH-56, only 7 were ever flyable, and only 1 was considered even moderately functional.

Again to each their own. A lot of these programs ran many hours on the equipment, It was rejected from military service because of expense, or political reasons or changes in specifications or because programs ran too long. Both the XC-142 and the AH-56A were very close to entering service when they got cancelled. The CL-84s did really well during test.

The Project fielded a lot of stand alone equipment such as Science 1 and Mars 1, Hamm suits, fusion packs, lasers, freeze tubes the silly computer system the holograms at Prime Base, the autodcocs, the three vehicles from Operation Lonestar, the autogyro, FACEME and that is just a quick list. Crap the Stoner system itself falls into the category of not ever really accepted for service.

Also remember the aircraft aren't carrying any fuel accept for a little bit of heavy hydrogen, so they can probably carry a bit more playload

As for making this equipment disappear that is the easy part-the prototypes would be bought as scrap and listed as destroyed.

The final decision comes down to the PD.

Electric Drive
 

There has been some discussion about electric drive vs turbines. If the project concentrated on fusion powered electric propulsion I think they probably would have been able to get their electric motors to a similar power to weight ration of a turbine engine. If the fusion/electric drive is weaker then the turbine drives the Project will be operating at a disadvantage. I feel that they would have been able to boost these systems to at least parity with conventional systems for them to deploy them so widely

If a ducted fan is not a true jet engine, could you make it one by adding heat the exhaust gasses with lasers or microwaves. My initial thought was lasers, but I came across a patent that suggested that water could be added to the air behind the compressor blades and then the air could be bombarded with microwaves.

This might allow jet engine like exhaust with fusion only (if lasers) or fusion plus water (if lasers and microwaves). Either way your logistical tail is reduced significantly.

I would not rush to statements like that. I've worked professionally with experimental and production aircraft and their systems, test vehicles often have significant differences from production, and the tests they go through represent a tiny fraction of what a production model goes through. Going into production is always a gamble because of all the things you can't know from the limited testing time available, as well as all the small changes from test to production. Those gambles are relatively small when you have alternatives, but TMP won't have backups if these aircraft turn out to have fatal flaws.

The XC-142 was never more than a prototype, the CL-84 was much the same, and the AH-56 was still being developed and lacked a true final design. Those vehicles in production would have had some very important differences, and I doubt that the vehicles actually produced would have been fully functional - there is simply no reason for that functionality on these test beds, that is not the engineering process works.

FWIW, the CL-84 was an excellent design that could have been developed into an excellent vehicle. The demonstrated performance was good enough that it probably would have required only minimal changes for production... but it still never got there.

So? Those items where developed entirely within the Project for their own purposes. Most of the issues I mentioned would not be a problem for something developed entirely in-house - they could presumably developed all the way to production, they could be tested discretely for decades (with the exception of the gyro), and since they did all the engineering and production they could ensure the knowledge and part base without having to make entire government programs disappear.

And for what it is worth, the vast majority of the items you mentioned were either narrative necessities (like fusion) and/or stupid ideas that should not be referenced (like MARS 1). A great many of them were little used in game or never at all, and if/when they WERE used they were generally shown to be bad ideas.

"Limited production" is a lot different than "not ever really accepted for service". Thousands were made and they were used for decades. But the Stoner wasn't that great of an inclusion for Morrow either.

We don't have any real engineering comparison on the fusion plants other than that they can be used as a more-or-less 1-to-1 replacement for the conventional power systems. Morrow vehicles don't seem to outperform their conventional predecessors, I am not sure why you would assume that you could do that with these vehicles. Remember that your "little bit of heavy hydrogen" has to last a very long time and comes with a lot of shielding.

That is not my experience with experimental aircraft. They are rarely scrapped, there is almost always more to be learned from them, especially after you have invested so much. Experimental aircraft listed as destroyed were almost always destroyed in testing, not just left to rust into scrap or sold for parts. When they are no longer viable they are stripped down and sent to museums, but relatively few make it that far.

Sure, that doesn't mean that the arguments against should not be considered.

For clarity, are you talking about jet engines or the types of turbine engines used in modern tanks? The former is doubtful to be replaced by a fusion engine even with the hypothetical systems @kato13 mentioned, the latter is no different than replacing any other gas engine.

[QUOTE=cosmicfish;66816]I would not rush to statements like that.

Why do you feel I have "rushed" to this? I've been involved with Morrow Project since the 1980s. I've worked closely with engineers from Boeing (it was actually McDonnell Douglas back then) to look over these systems. The weapon systems for the AH-56A were to be built by Emerson Electric. They were designed and developed in St. Louis and would have been built here. I was lucky enough to get a large amount of information on them before Emerson closed their weapons divisions.

As for the disposition of experimental platforms think what happened to the Avro Arrow (every bit of it that wasn't hidden against specific orders was destroyed) The TSR2-two air-frames saved everything else scrapped or used as range targets. Sometimes parts are saved or reused in other cases everything gets scrapped. Sometimes things get donated to museums or sold off. I saw an AH-56A at an Army surplus yard in Times Beach, Missouri in the early 1980s. It was for sale, but sadly no one was available to ask the price and then Times Beach ceased to exist because of dioxin contamination.

If the Project uses hot fusion there will be need for a lot of thermal shielding, but if they are using cold fusion not so much. If you are worried about the heavy water then almost no shielding is needed. Tritium is a very weak Beta emitter. In fact exit signs have used Tritium for years. The weak Beta could be stopped by nothing more than a 3/4 inch thickness of plexiglass.

Because you are suggesting scavenging an air force out of the remains of experimental programs without really giving any reason why it would be worth the effort.

I've worked for two different defense contractors and with several more, first on archaic systems and then on research and development. I have seen what goes into these programs, I've seen what happens in the middle, and I've seen what is left at the end. I have never laid hands on these specific aircraft but it would not surprise me if I had laid hands on things that came out of them.

And my point is that what you can buy discretely is only a fraction of what is needed to make them work. Once you have invested millions of dollars in a prototype it is amazing how many uses you can find for the whole or for the parts. So how do you (Morrow) sneak in and grab this stuff without it being noticed? Remembering that there is probably no greater level of scrutiny and oversight than with these kinds of prototype systems?

If it was flyable, then that is one airframe with no logistical support. Why is that better than just buying a couple of perfectly legal hueys?

I am aware, but as I mentioned before the Project seems to insert fusion in place of conventional power systems without noticeably improving or degrading performance, I was just positing a reason why. Perhaps they are on hot fusion, perhaps they are cold but the reactor itself is huge. All I know is that assuming improved performance would seem to contradict canon.

I beg to differ on this. A D-D reaction produces fast neutrons that would be fatal without shielding at power levels of just 1 Watt. It does not matter if we are talking hot or cold fusion. All that means it the temperatures needed to start the reaction. The products are still the same. Tritium decay is not my major problem about the shielding needed.

In this case there is no way that fusion packs will be workable. The amount of shielding needed to deal with fast neutrons is generally fairly heavy. There is also an issue with that material becoming activated by neutron absorption.

http://www.academia.edu/3311242/Calc...ding_Materials

http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1122/ML11229A721.pdf

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlet...7/16291147.pdf

The final document states "To reduce the
neutron flux from a generator producing 1O to the 10th
neutrons per second to acceptable levels for
limited operation, 12 feet of distance that
included 27 inches of water and 16 inches of
solid concrete block were used."

This is a fairly serious amount of mass. I am not certain what the neutron production rate of the fusion packs would be. Does someone haave an estimate of that available?

I suggest them because provide capabilities that few other aircraft provide. The AH-56A is still the most capable compound helicopter ever built. Even in prototype form it far out performed the AH-64. The XV-15 and the XC-142 have not been equaled until the V-22 became operational. And I will admit I just have a soft spot for the CL-84s.

Even 5 years after the war ends I believe that the ONLY source of spare parts the Project can count on it what it has stored or what it can make on its own. To count on anything else is folly. To my mind (and the minds of my Project's planners) this means that every piece of equipment has to be provided with sufficient spare parts to operate it until an infrastructure can be rebuilt that can produce the needed parts from scratch.

Hueys are wonderful, Chinooks are very capable. That being said the Project will need to lay in the exact same amount of spares for these two craft as they would for stand alone machines because they simply can't count on getting the parts after the war. Any place that has Chinooks is likely to catch a nuke. There are lots of private and non military Huey's but even those might be near nuclear targets. Additionally the parts represent the same high value to the post war survivors in the 5 year scenario as they do for the Project and they will have been claimed early on if that was remotely possible. This also doesn't mention that sitting out in the weather for five years won't do most of this material a whole lot of good and it will need to be inspected and possibly remanufactured before it can be life safety rated for use in manned aircraft.

You don't sneak, you publicly buy. Morrow is a huge defense contractor. Hell maybe they bought LTV's VSTOL division and Lockheed's Helicopter Division and just got everything as part of the deal. It is never stated in canon exactly what companies are part of the huge conglomerate that Bruce owns. For all we know they may have been rolling extra air-frames off the prototype production lines and boxing them up as spares for the development process.

For me it comes down to a couple of things, one is equipment that is very capable (at least on paper) All these aircraft are around before 1989. They are all at least as capable if not more so than front line military equipment available at that time. They provide a "signature" Morrow Project feel that enhances story telling. I have found them to be "fun" items that intrigue players and spark their interest in the gaming universe.

1 watt should produce 10 to the 12th neutrons per second for D-D reaction. This is why I have proposed a few hidden underground D-D fusion reactors that capture the He3 from the reaction and use that as fuel for the portable reactors in my game. That does limit the amount of time the portable reactors can used to the rate of He3 production. But since He3 is produced from half of the reactions, it seems somewhat reasonable. He3-He3 produces no neutrons and it is just (relatively) easy to capture power from protons and the heat.

How do they meaningfully outperform the other aircraft available in a world where there really are no other aircraft expected to be flying? And what role do you see for the XV-15, when it seats two and can carry perhaps 1500 pounds?

I agree. Where I disagree is where you can (pre-war!) get a worthwhile supply of parts and personnel experienced in maintaining and operating the vehicle for prototypes! Even at the time these aircraft were flying, parts were essentially being made on the fly and there were only a handful of people capable of doing real work on them. Is the Project going to create a special factory to churn out parts for these things? Are they going to recruit that crew, bearing mind that most of them are probably poor choices for the Project anyway?

Compare that to a production platform, where stocking the Project's shelves takes up little resources and you can recruit flight crews who are the people you want and not just "the only show in town."

And in case it was not obvious, I agree that post-war you cannot count on supplies, my point is that getting everything pre-war is already hard enough without making it harder.

And yet we still have V-150's and Stoners and flamethrowers in the official list of gear? They can roll off all the extra airframes they want, but doesn't that seem like a big expenditure of Morrow resources for a handful of marginally (on paper) superior aircraft? And how are they going to continue all the developmental work on these aircraft to get them to the point where they can be used for continuous operations? The US government has Area 51, but Morrow doesn't, and it won't take long before unauthorized eyes are going to take note of these aircraft being test-flown.

And that is a big chunk of the point. On paper. Most of these aircraft had only a handful of flights, there were a huge number of unanswered questions and each one is a gamble. If you are going to take those gambles, there better be a pretty big advantage, and considering that the assumption is that Morrow is the only real functioning air power anyway ANY aircraft is going to be a massive asset. To me it's like buying 30-round magazines from a questionable manufacturer for $200 when you can get 27-round magazines from a reliable supplier for $20 - the small advantage is not worth the cost or risk.

I have always had an opposite reaction from players with the more "fun" items. I have never seen anyone look at MARS 1 or the Airscout and not say "that's stupid". There are some unique items that are essential to the game or are an abstraction for dealing with stuff no one wanted to spend time on anyway, but a lot of the weapon and vehicle selections are pretty impractical and some are outright dumb, and I don't see a new reason to add new items to that list.

And what role do you see for the XV-15, when it seats two and can carry perhaps 1500 pounds?

Liaison air ambulance

And in case it was not obvious, I agree that post-war you cannot count on supplies, my point is that getting everything pre-war is already hard enough without making it harder.


And yet we still have V-150's and Stoners and flamethrowers in the official list of gear? They can roll off all the extra airframes they want, but doesn't that seem like a big expenditure of Morrow resources for a handful of marginally (on paper) superior aircraft?

EVERYTHING IS ON PAPER. If in my fictional world my fictional project planners go a different way than your fictional project planners because my fictional morrow industries had fictional resourses that your fictional one did not I really think it's ok. Your fictional planners are conservative. For the most part mine are as well. That being said mine also decided that if possible they would get some riskier more cutting edge gear as well.

They don't have to keep the flight test programs secret. Sikorsky ran the S-67 Blackhawk program in the open for years. Heck morrow might be under a NASA contract or a Darpa one.



I have always had an oppositloope reaction from players with the more "fun" items. I have never seen anyone look at MARS 1 or the Airscout and not say "that's stupid". There are some unique items that are essential to the game or are an abstraction for dealing with stuff no one wanted to spend time on anyway, but a lot of the weapon and vehicle selections are pretty impractical and some are outright dumb, and I don't see a new reason to add new items to that list.[/QUOTE]

I have had good luck with airscouts. We had a team of four scouts and eight hummers to tow and support them and it worked very well.

As I started off ymmv