
Goodyear Inflatoplane - prostoalex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane
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cameldrv
I love these wild sorts of aircraft. This one from a practical standpoint
reminds me a lot of the Hiller ROE-1 Rotorcycle. It was a 300 pound folding
helicopter that you could drop to a downed crewman, and James Bond style, they
could unfold it and fly off into the sunset for 150 miles.

[http://users.skynet.be/fa401913/article_american_helicoter_s...](http://users.skynet.be/fa401913/article_american_helicoter_socie.htm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiller_ROE_Rotorcycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiller_ROE_Rotorcycle)

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jaredwiener
This is an ingenious idea, and one I wonder if could be used for more personal
modes of transit.

I live in NYC, where one of the biggest obstacles to owning a car comes down
to parking. Even a bike would take up precious living space. I would love a
vehicle that I could deflate and store in a closet of sorts -- all of a sudden
my building would be able to offer "parking" to all of the tenants if the
parking were stackable.

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jpm_sd
If you've ever owned an inflatable kayak - or even an inflatable mattress -
you'll already know that:

Inflation takes a long time. Deflation takes a long time. Folding it back up
neatly is impossible. Leaks appear out of nowhere and are tough to patch
reliably. It's really heavy and floppy to carry around.

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evanriley
> Folding it back up neatly is impossible. Leaks appear out of nowhere and are
> tough to patch reliably.

Easily my biggest issues with any inflatable item I've ever purchased.

You'll never get it back into the box it came in, and you're folding is almost
always going to be awful. Like trying to fold a fitted sheet before watching
that one youtube video/someone who knows how to do it. If a leak appears I
just consider it a lost cause, I don't think I've ever fixed a leak in an
inflatable item that I was sure would allow me to use it confidently.

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quakeguy
Having fixed bike tires for years, i can say that once a leak is there, it is
due to material exhaustion. You'll end up in a carpet of patches.

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fit2rule
I love to build flying things, it has been a passion for decades. No greater
nerdjoy can be found than to see a pile of nicely refined junk launch itself
into the sky, fly around, and land again. I say that as an RC hobbyist - real
pilots know it from a different angle.

Personally, I think there is a big opportunity for
inflatable/dynamic/pressurized airfoils. I'd love to have a blow-up glider
that would stay aloft for days, just to have a way to communicate with the
home base .. Until then, I remain convinced that the real shit is the Klein-
Fogelmann realm, i.e. rigid planforms, adjustable.

Plus, _gargantuan power_ systems of course .. which is something the
Inflatoplane also exploited, it has to be said ..

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nexuist
I made a website about this! No longer available, but maybe one day...

In the mean time, I've found /r/weirdwings to satiate my "crazy airplane
prototypes" addiction.

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Fnoord
Have you attempted to find it via Wayback Machine (Archive.org)?

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nexuist
Nah, I still have the original directory so I can always put it back up. It's
just not that impressive of a project and I don't think anyone else would
really care.

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yan
This is essentially how a wingsuit works, although inflation happens in flight
through inlets. That is in general how nylon wings (e.g. paragliders) work as
well.

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raquo
I would say ram-air inflation of parafoil wings is very different – it's
dynamic, not static like a bladder pre-inflated with a pump.

This Inflatoplane is more of a precursor to modern "tensairity" designs (e.g.
some of Prospective Concepts designs). While certainly interesting,
pressurized bladders in aircraft have so far been a dead end due to practical
limitations (catastrophic modes of failure, wear, altitude pressure
differences IIRC). The only flying wings where inflatable bladders are
successfully used are kitesurfing kites. But those don't normally carry people
up high.

Parafoil based designs on the other hand are now everywhere. Paragliders,
parachutes, parafoil kitesurfing kites, even parafoil sails (SkySails).

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makerofspoons
Ingenious- I wonder if this would be a good avenue for an open-design
ultralight aircraft. You could publish the vector files so that anyone could
send them to a laser cutter.

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Sysreq1
I told my wife about this. Her response: Isn’t that just a balloon?

Yes, babe. Yes, I guess it is.

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jagged-chisel
But it's a balloon shaped so that it functions like an airplane. It's not a
balloon that will take on enough helium to lift, nor a balloon to fill with
hot gas to provide lift.

