X Planes

Doesnt anyone have any ideas on how many X Planes there are? I tried searching but everything is out of date. I cant stand all these out of date sites

We will never know, since X planes are top secret projects. Sure 1 or 2 might leak out into the public.

What is the last one know to exist? X-50? X-49? Thats what I mean. The top secret ones I dont care about.

The latest one I'm aware of is the X-47 series of UCAV demonstrators.

Anyone else noticed the apparent explosion in X-planes over the last few years? The X-1 flew in 1947 and the X-31 in about 1994, 47 apart, yet in the ten years since we have rocketed up to the X-47 and almost certainly beyond.

[edit on 19-9-2004 by waynos]

Here's something that might help....

www.dfrc.nasa.gov...

yeah the highest I know of is the X-50 by Boeing.

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lol that x-50 is something else. i wonder what it could be practically used for???

I really like this site. All about X-planes!

Everything.

There trying to combine a plane with a helicopter.

It takes of verticaly like a helicopter then its starts picking up speed then around 150 mph - 200 mph it would change the jet engines thrust from the rotor blade to be a normal jet aircraft, and the rotor blade would stop spinning and lock into place to become the wing. The propulsion for the rotor blade is the vectored thrust coming out of the ends of the blade. If they can get this down right with it working good it would put other private jet companies out of business, and there are countless ways the military could use it.

Heres a pic of the civilian version



[edit on 20-9-2004 by Murcielago]

That X-50 and those designs based on it look interesting. This may be the result of a project called the X-wing from 1982 which was the same except it was a four blade rotor that when stopped for horizontal flight acted like the 'X-wing' from which it got its name. It was never built as far as I know and the X-50 looks like a far more practical solution.

Isnt that kind of small? How big is it?

MooMix3 - Theres 2 of them and there 17 feet 8 inches. Height is 6 in a half feet tall.

other pics
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It first flew in December 2003 but they havn't yet did the conversion of thrust in flight.

Waynos - I see why you think that, but there VERY different.

The Boeing X-50 is trying to do something revolutionary, while the X-Wing had normal wings and normal jet engines.

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The X-Wing was a Sikorsky Aircraft project also known as RSRA.

I will see if I have any official Sikorsky pics or literature around..

Theres about 60 or so. Alot are very secret.

I believe that test bed represented only an interim stage with the wings providing a 'safety net' but the intended final design had no wings as it was to work in excatly the same way as the X-50, with the rotor stopped to act as a wing instead. Wasn't that test bed made out of a converted S-72?

Here is an image of what the X-wing was intended to lead to.
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I'm sure the X-50 was a spin off of the X-Wing, But They are very different, other then just the number or blades, the main thing is the thrust, its just wouldn't be economicaly feasible to have 2 totaly different means of propulsion.

The X-wing took off verticaly then once it got speed it kicked on the two jet engines then the X rotar blades slowed down and locked into there "two wings look".

While the X-50 takes of vertical also but it doesn't do it the normal way, It uses the 1 jet engine inside of it to vector the thrust into tubes in the blades, the holes in the blades are on opposite sides to they make the blades move, then once its in the air moving forward around 100 - 150 mph, the thrust gets moved so it comes out the back of the aircraft instead of the blades, then the blades slow down quickly and lock in place to then be a wing. Which enables it to reach high sub sonic speeds.

Yes, but aren't you describing flight method the S-72 derived demonstrator, whos real function was the basic first step of proving that the idea of stopping the rotor in flight was sound, rather than the design in the drawing?

This drawing shows a single jet pipe to the rear which sounds the same as X-50 to me. Don't get me wrong, I know they are very different in final execution as you say, but I reckon that what we see in the X-50 is where the X-wing designers realised they were going wrong

Well if you also have jet engines straped on to it also of course when you shut off the rotors it will still fly, I really hope that Nasa didn't put money into this for that reason alone.

That drawing looks like the rotors cant move, unless I guess that after there shut down they lower to make it more aerodynamic.



Agreed.

There was a S-72 was Sikorsky's internal indentification for the RSRA project. The first couple of flights did not have the 'final' configuration for the rotor system.

The envisioned revised rotor almost looked like an 'X" on its side. The rotos were thicker...

Here is a link to a page about the S-72.