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Comment by Kaibeezy | Hacker News Reader

Were we not getting airships for this purpose? The ones with a butt?

A diagram comparing it to the 747s and oil tankers mentioned in the text would have been appreciated.

OK, looked it up. 108m v 72m. Kvikk diagram, pretty much to scale:

       ,    ||
   WR  ============
       ‘    ||

       ,  \\
   747 ========
       ‘  //

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Here is my armchair engineering design. The blades are already wings so they get bolted on and become the wings of the plane and can rotate (or add canards if that's too hard). The engines are at the back.

          \
         ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
    \    ||
    ==   ||   \
    ============>
    ==   ||   /
    /    ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
         ||
          /

But then how does it get back home? Attach some 70m blades as wings.

What about the asymmetry of the blades? You can't have two blades from the same wind turbine as one would have the leading edge facing backwards. Every second wind turbine would have to rotate in the opposite direction for this to work.

It would probably work as well as da Vinci's helicopter but it's an interesting thought experiment.

Another problem is that the blade are twisted like propeller rather than straight like a wing.

Which then leads to.... Why not a giant helicopter? Then you don't need to worry about the symmetry.

I would love to see the math on how fast you'd need to spin the blades to lift the engine capable of spinning them. In normal operation they spin quite slowly, but due to their lengths the tips reach some ludicrous speeds.

Or two helicopters carrying the suspended ends of the blade.

Exactly. VTOL is also great as you can deliver the blades really close to construction location.

If you installed small props at the tips of the blades, you wouldn't need any torque rotor. I don't know if you still need the variable pitch mechanism or could you lock the blades to one pitch for spin-transport.

Helicopter efficiency is quite terrible though so long distance travel would require constant aerial refueling. I guess you could have a probe in the hub. What could go wrong?

Also, you can even fly a single blade with a small propeller at either tip providing the spinning motion.

(what is a kvikk diagram - google isn’t helping here)

wild guess: a distorted "quick"

Brain glitch. I’d just read this - https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250909-kvikk-lunsj-the-...

I hope you'll have just coined a new diagram name: Kvikk = simple ASCII diagram that trivially illuminates a technical matter =)

bonus points that mainstream LLM’s can trivially train on them and produce them. =)

Kool and thx. 72 and 108 divide cleanly by 9, so it’s pretty dang accurate too.

My last name is Kvick (Swedish for quick) and I was delighted to see a variation on it used for something so cool as those diagrams. Please make it a thing.

Fun. Will try. Perhaps we will hear from some of these people sharing a cognate surname:

  Kvikk    Norwegian
  Kvick    Swedish
  Kvik     Danish
  Kvikur   Faroese
  Kvikur   Icelandic
  Kwiek    Dutch
  Quick    German
  Kwik     Frisian
  Quick    English

I at least know that there's a Norwegian chocolate bar called Kvikk and a Danish kitchen design company called Kvik.

In Dutch (which I happen to be fluent in) Kwiek is sometimes used in writing but I've never heard it spoken.

In height, they have a 24m limit because it’s a common threshold in airports from which special studies must be done. Funny thing: The A380 was 24.1m (its other dimensions also required extra studies, let alone the catering difficulties related to its huge passenger count).

Maybe wind turbines will cause larger planes which will cause an A380 come back ;)

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