They are not con tails. Chem trails and I know some will say I am crazy but look it up how many National weather service people have been let go for talking about it.
Here is one page http://topinfopost.com/2014/09/17/the-united-nations-exposes-chemtrails-100-proof-we-are-being-poisonedhttps://youtu.be/L5is16A8pfw
ROLMAO! LL~
I can probably explain the first three. People use water ballast tanks to do flight testing at different weights and CGs. It's a quick way to change weight or CG. I tried to zoom in on the people to see if there was anybody I recognized. Resolution wasn't good enough.
Emergency fuel dump. Could be a flight test deal. We op's check them on the ground, but for certification purposes a manufacturer would have to do flight testing. And I'm 100% certain Howard is correct about the tanks, notice how they are oriented where the passengers sit. If they were for chemicals, they could put ALOT more in aux tanks in the cargo compartments below
Those are for deicing tests, among other things.
Sparky I think you need some higher quality tinfoil for your hat. Maybe Howard has some aerospace grade floating around.
Well if I am wrong why do the CON trails hang around all day now and they use to disappear in a 1/2 hour or so. I can see this with my own eyes and don't need a hat for that but of coarse I am not sleeping.
My question is, what is the most contributing factor as to how long they will be.
Will a heavily laden cargo 747 using more fuel than a passenger 747 leave a longer trail, or does it have more to do with air temp?
Also what effect does a head wind or tail wind have.
I don't know, but I can cipher part of it.
Cargo and passenger versions operate at about the same gross weights, so which version shouldn't matter. I figure that the amount of water vapor that an airplane in cruise leaves behind per foot traveled is proportional to the square root of its gross weight. Its cruise speed is also proportional to the square root of gross weight. That's just the water vapor due to thrust to keep the airplane in level flight. Climbing airplanes, which are heavier because they are at the start of the trip, require extra thrust to go uphill, so they'd put out lots more water vapor than descending airplanes at the end of the trip, which are usually operating near idle thrust. How persistent a condensation trail is would depend on temperature and turbulence, but I don't know how.
None. The airplane moves relative to the air mass. The contrail would move with the air mass.
We looked at hydrogen-powered airplanes, a dumb idea that got more attention than it deserved. I remember seeing a picture of a hydrogen-powered engine on a test flight. It made a whopper contrail.
Phtttttt! To you Roselind. AFAIC this is a huge pile of horse dung. ???
In case she doesn't know it CA is in a massive drought! y1 That's why the trees are dying...........there's no water to absorb. (or wasn't before the latest storms)
My hedge was just about gone (I watered it just enough to keep it alive) but now it is looking (almost) normal again.
There's an old saying "Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see".
That's more true now days than ever before AFAIC.
Politics suck, Jerry
If contrails do, in fact last longer today, that may have something to do with it....or it could be those tanks filled with thousands of gallons of globally warmed and fermented bovine flatulation that airlines spray from secret cargo compartments to create holes in the ozone...who really knows?
Steve
Also, newer airplanes burn less fuel than older airplanes, so I'd reckon that a new airplane would make less of a trail than an old one at the same flight condition. There a lot of big airplane operating now, and they're bigger than ever, so I'd expect that to cause bigger trails.
We looked at hydrogen-powered airplanes, a dumb idea that got more attention than it deserved. I remember seeing a picture of a hydrogen-powered engine on a test flight. It made a whopper contrail.
What was dumb (besides the difficulty of cryogenic fuel)? Is it the volume of the tanks required to carry enough LH2 vs much denser hydrocarbon fuel vs the size of the plane?
Essentially, yes. It's the same reason that it's a dumb idea for first stages of rockets. The advantage you gain from better ISP is offset by the size/mass of the tanks. They kept making Suntan larger and larger, and never got the required range. Look at an internal view of the shuttle tank- there's a teeny little oxygen tank at the top, on top of a gigantic hydrogen tank. It only worked at all because of the equally gigantic, heavy, and extremely inefficient, solid boosters. Calculate the effective ISP of the shuttle stack including the solids, and it's lower than kerosene.
Otherwise, LH2/Lox is pretty good. If nothing else, it's chemically pretty neutral. The engines tend to last and last. People tell me that they had dozens of missions worth of on-time on several different RL-10s, and they showed *no* detectable wear, same with the SSMEs and J-2. Chemical corrosion is the killer. That's why the Russians and their copper-lined steam engine tech engines leave a green streak in the exhaust. Copper transfers the heat out of the combustion chamber very well, but it also chemically corrodes. They make it thick enough to make the mission, but it's running on borrowed time.
Brett
Brett, The knowledge you possess is mind boggling.
W.W.
What was dumb (besides the difficulty of cryogenic fuel)? Is it the volume of the tanks required to carry enough LH2 vs much denser hydrocarbon fuel vs the size of the plane?
speaking of dumb aircraft propulsion
"The first operation of a nuclear aircraft engine occurred on January 31, 1956 using a modified General Electric J47 turbojet engine.[1] The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program was terminated after the President's annual budget message to Congress in 1961"
Look up Project Pluto. It was essentially a nuclear-powered cruise missile with a nuclear ramjet. It could cruise around at low altitudes at Mach 2.5. They resolved the issue of the weight of the reactor shielding by not using any. It would toss a bomb, then just cruise around the USSR at low altitudes for weeks/months, destroying everything near the flight path with a combination of shock waves and radiation. Eventually it would either run down due to reactor poisoning, or some failure, then crash and spew the core around the crash site, irradiating it.
It got as far as some tests of the engine on the ground, successful for the few minutes they could keep the necessary ram air flowing to it.
Brett
Now that's some scary stuff. Abandoned because if we built one, the Russians would build one, and there was no known defense. ~^
Brett, The knowledge you possess is mind boggling.
W.W.
On the other hand, if your existence is sufficiently threatened, the only morality is winning.
Brett
I was discussing Project Pluto with my daughter. Apparently, because of the high specific impulse, nuclear engines are again being considered. With some degree of shielding, the exposure to radiation from the critical mass would be more then offset by the reduction in exposure to radiation in space. Sufficient velocity can obtained to reach a destination, such as Mars, within days.
Sitting on my deck this morning having a cup of coffee, I saw many airliners off in the distance leaving con trails.Hi Warren,
My question is, what is the most contributing factor as to how long they will be.
Will a heavily laden cargo 747 using more fuel than a passenger 747 leave a longer trail, or does it have more to
do with air temp?
Also what effect does a head wind or tail wind have.
W.W.
Hi Warren,
Air mass stability in a condition conducive to forming them. Smooth air, big air mass that's the same.
As for "chemtrails";
I figured that if the airline can't get the bags on in time, the fuel on in a timely manner, schedule enough pilots for the daily operation, etc. there is no way they can get the chemicals on board properly either. Plus, how do they hide those tanks and weight computations from the mechanics and pilots? We're a pretty curious bunch and highly critical of what's going on around the very airplane in which we're going to be strapping our butts.
BTW, the small size of the military inventory of airplanes compared to civilian gives no credence to some massive fleet of military airplanes flying around chemically altering our weather for nefarious reasons or manipulating our minds. We have the international political scene for the former and the national news services for the latter!
Chris...
I have been told those are strategic bombers traveling halfway around the world... I don't know for sure though. I can say that the planes forming those trails cannot be identified with the naked eye, and a common pair of binoculars isn't very helpful either.Maybe the skies in Australia are clearer than in America but I took this photo of a Qantus plane flying over my city with the camera obviously zoomed in. Qantus is easy to pick out by eye because of the red tail. Notice how the exhaust doesn't condense behind each engine until roughly a plane's length behind.
a hydrogen-powered airplane (or an electric car) is, for environmental purposes, powered by coal. [/quote
Only a few percent of the hydrogen produced in the world is from electrolysis. 95% is produced from natural gas via a process called steam methane reforming. Howard's point is spot on but the energy source is a different fossil fuel.
Maybe the skies in Australia are clearer than in America but I took this photo of a Qantus plane flying over my city with the camera obviously zoomed in. Qantus is easy to pick out by eye because of the red tail. Notice how the exhaust doesn't condense behind each engine until roughly a plane's length behind.
Look up Project Pluto. It was essentially a nuclear-powered cruise missile with a nuclear ramjet. It could cruise around at low altitudes at Mach 2.5. They resolved the issue of the weight of the reactor shielding by not using any. It would toss a bomb, then just cruise around the USSR at low altitudes for weeks/months, destroying everything near the flight path with a combination of shock waves and radiation. Eventually it would either run down due to reactor poisoning, or some failure, then crash and spew the core around the crash site, irradiating it.
It got as far as some tests of the engine on the ground, successful for the few minutes they could keep the necessary ram air flowing to it.
Brett
Hi Brett, I had always kicked around a theory of how a nuclear powered aircraft would work. I used my theory to generate some discussion among my aviation students. Using Boyle's Law, a small core reactor would heat O2 contained in a vessel, expand and regulate its expulsion to turn a free turbine attached to a gearbox driving a propeller. Some of my students suggested using liquid instead of O2. We all concluded that a conventional propeller was most practical. We also all concluded there was one major hurdle...How to replenish the O2 or liquid? It was a very stimulating conversation to say the least...and kept a few of them awake. ;)
Norm
95% is produced from natural gas via a process called steam methane reforming.
My understanding is the military flight pattern is considerably higher than the commercial flight pattern.
What about the reptilians!
For space applications," conventional" engines (like NERVA) would be very good, and the technology is well in hand since the 60's. IT was planned for use in the mid-70's as the upper stages of the Saturn V for Mars missions and other high-performance requirements. And it's not like you are going to contaminate space, what with the billions of unshielded fusion reactors we already have. The big problem will be the nuclear chicken littles that will prevent you from launching it. They are still terrified of launching even RTGs, and this is an order of magnitude more risky. You only have to use a small shield between the spacecraft and the engine.
The other, potentially far more capable, technology is something like ORION, which amounts to dropping mini-bombs out the back of the spacecraft and detonating them, once a second or so, and letting them push on a huge "pusher plate" with a shock absorber to isolate the crew compartment(s). The interesting thing is that idea is that the larger it is, the better it works. Some of the studies have spacecraft the size of a city block with hundreds of crew. That is far from being a practical, implementable, technology and poses legitimate concerns for where you launch such a thing. It quickly became clear that you couldn't launch it from the ground, for obvious reasons, so you are then looking at many conventional launches to assemble the thing in lunar orbit, or something like that.
Brett
It worked with a conventional jet engine with the burners replaced with the reactor, taking air out of the compressor section, and put back into the turbine section. Sucks in air with the compressor, heats it, allows it to expand and go out the turbine. They had two versions, one that ran the air directly over the reactor core, and one that used a closed-cycle reactor cooling system and a heat exchanger.
Same with Pluto/Tory II, - they just rammed the air in, heated it, and shot it back out.
You *could* create a turboprop for low-speed applications using the same principle, or even a piston engine using standard steam technology. But as they found before and during WWII, with a turbo-supercharged engine, the pistons and crankshaft were just slowing it all down, and all you really needed was the supercharger/compressor and the turbocharger/turbine, and some heat source in between.
Brett
Isn't this close to being "perpetual energy / propusion?"
Norm
Isn't this close to being "perpetual energy / propusion?"
No. The energy was stored when the elements were formed, so no magic involved. In this case, it would eventually run down as the nuclear materials are consumed, boiled away, or are altered to non-reactive or even anti-reactive forms. The latter is the likely case, where in the course of running, the elements are transformed into material that absorbs neutrons, and effectively reduces the reactivity until it doesn't have enough power to keep going. This is called "poisoning" the reaction. This is an issue in other reactors as well. Of course, many other failures might come into play in a mission that could last weeks or months. It wouldn't take much of a problem in the control system to cause a crash when you are blasting around at Mach 2.5 at treetop level.
Brett
I guess I took the endurance factor of the Pluto project, "weeks or months," as almost being "perpetual," in as much that it's amazing that something could run that long without being replenished. So in essence, "when it runs out of gas," what you have left is is "nuclear waste?"
Pretty much, the issue of storage having been solved very neatly by flying it to the USSR, where dumping it not only allowed, but a good idea.
Brett