How to make a cargo container aerodynamic...

[botsapper]

...by wrapping an aerodynamic plane around it. Boeing submitted a patent for a giant 'pink eraser' design powered by four double-propped engines on top of the wings. The plane's landing gear allows it to be lowered on the cargo containers lined up transverse to the plane's body. Like everyone here agree, it must also have a belly cover.
Boeing Just Patented This Weird Cargo-Grabbing Plane | Popular Science

[Frank Lee]

I LOVE IT!!!

Especially if it would take some of those $*%$&$*# trucks off the roads.

I'd imagine they put a panel on the ground first, park the containers in a row on top of it, then position the fuselage above, lower it, and connect the bottom panel to the fuselage even though there's no mention of a bottom panel in the text or image. They didn't mention the means of attachment/capture for those containers at all.

Too bad, those containers have got to be fracking heavy, way heavier built than a purpose-built aviation container. What might be perfect are containers built like some of the latest over-the-road tractor trailers: a conventional sturdy floor and I think roof too with canvas sides. I'd think the key for these would be loads palletized such that there is near zero chance of them tipping over en-route.

[freebeard]

Ree-diculious.

There is 10ft of travel in the landing gear? The payload is perched over a trap door????

I posit a better strategy: one 8x8.5 hatch in the side and rollers in the floor so it can be loaded like an 18-round magazine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swap_body These have an unstackable van and are lifted by the lower corners.

Also, airplanes are sensitive to weight distribution. The containers are a standard shape, but the weight could vary. They would have to be ordered correctly.

[kach22i]

Wow, width wise, was not expecting that.

I've seen the schemes for giant triangular delta shaped blimps as cargo carriers. Sort of disappointed by the semi-conventional look of this patent.

I would have thought considering Boeing's experience with lifting bodies and blended wings they would have went that direction.

X-48B
Little X-Plane Pushes Bottom Edge of the Envelope | WIRED



This direction below would have been cool too:

Aerostat: Global Near Space Aerostat Systems
Desert Wolf - Aerostat: Global Near Space Aerostat Systems

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by botsapper

...by wrapping an aerodynamic plane around it. Boeing submitted a patent for a giant 'pink eraser' design powered by four double-propped engines on top of the wings. The plane's landing gear allows it to be lowered on the cargo containers lined up transverse to the plane's body. Like everyone here agree, it must also have a belly cover.
Boeing Just Patented This Weird Cargo-Grabbing Plane | Popular Science

I've got some Popular Science articles from the 1950s depicting a similar concept for battlefield materiel logistics.They had VTOL capabilities.

[botsapper]

Recently, the transport industry is evolving quite fast; aerodynamic, lightweight aluminum & composite structures, efficient hybrid engines and autonomous tractors. Most likely, intermodal cargo container designs would be specialized; transoceanic (saltwater exposure, strong but heavy designed for multiple-level stacking), efficient long road (more lightweight) travel and for air-borne (ultra-lightweight fabric covered palletized flatbeds) transport. Air cargo integration ; just integrate pallets' (ultra-lightweight) structures with the plane's frame, smooth out the pallets' bottom and seal a plane around it.

Not really a new idea...

http://images.fineartamerica.com/ima...rek-images.jpg

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviatio.../6/0141605.jpg

http://www.sikorskyarchives.com/imag...64%204edit.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjgxiXxu3nY

A few years back, Northrop Grumman had a stealth blended wing cargo concept. http://defensetech.org/wp-content/up...g1-490x371.jpg

[aerohead]

Too bad Fairchild didn't go into the automobile business.Their fuselage would have made a great car body.

[Lowell.B.Campbell]

You should look at another one of my Patents:
US8608109 - Payload use of wing to body volume in an elliptical fuselage - Google Patents
It was styled after the X48C

[freebeard]

Well, since you made your way to Ecomodder to press your case—welcome—and I take back anything bad I might have said.

So... Your airframe seems to be sized for 40ft containers. Can it accommodate two 20ft containers? Another aircraft half the width for those?

What airport will be available for these? Will there be infrastructure to weigh and sort the containers to provide optimized weight distribution and polar moment? Can it accept partial loads? Fly empty?

If your going to cover the bottom with a 40x144ft tarp or something shouldn't that be part of the patent claims? The top and sides of the airframe will have to be stiffened to allow that size a hole in the fuselage. One would think.

[markweatherill]

Co-pilot: Hey, what's this red button do?
Pilot: DON'T TOUCH THAT..... Oh no, not again! Bombs away!