Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to EKIP aviation.

First impressions

Low aspect ratio (ratio of wing span to wing chord) means high drag at low speeds, resulting in a relatively poor rate of climb and a glide ratio little better than a crow bar. You'd need to accelerate to a fairly high speed to get a good climb rate, especially in an engine-out situation (see Concorde). At least the engines are very close on the centerline, so yaw caused by an engine out would be fairly low.

Large wing area means the stall speed would be low, so your takeoff and landing speed would be relatively low. Low wing loading means the plane would be more "responsive" to turbulence.

Looks like a high drag vehicle, especially around the rear of the fuselage. The fuselage is a very thick airfoil, but it looks prone to flow separation and high drag. The thing would probably fly pretty slow for a given amount of power.

Terrific visibility. Need bird resistant windows.

Could have lateral loading issues due to the distance of the seats from the centerline, especially if the people sitting one side of the plane are heavier than those on the other side. Having a Weight Watchers group on one side and an Eating Disorders Support Group on the other could make the thing uncontrollable.

Appears close-coupled (distance from wings to tail surfaces is small), resulting in the need for larger tail surfaces to maintain reasonable stability. V tail could be prone to wallowing in turbulence (see Beech Bonanza) unless yaw dampeners are available. This might be a candidate for a fly-by-wire system. It looks like the size of the control surfaces might be too small to support the center of gravity range you could get from that many rows of seats.

Air cushion landing gear was tested by the US Army back in the 1960s. It worked pretty well on water and level surfaces but appeared difficult to handle on an actual runway. Without wheels, an air cushion vehicle is harder to keep aligned with the runway in a crosswind.

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