Zoot Suit

The Besler Steam Powered Airplane (1933)

hotshot

How did it heat the boiler? Fire probably wouldve been a bad idea.

TPROP4ever

From the video it looks like it was succesful, and was very viable, so it begs the question, why did it not make its way into small private aircraft in the 30's and 40's? There had to be a reason. Anyone ever do any research into this. I'd be curious to learn much more about this whole concept and flight...I'll have to do some research on my own

joel payne

While you're at it, might look up a place to store the fuel[coal?] and what about freezing at altitude? Seems like it should have an application somewhere.

Kilgore Trout

That is pretty cool. Had no idea that steam engines powered planes, but it makes sense that the technology was tried. I'm guessing there were lots of people around in those days who could build and operate steam systems.

The 40 miles per gallon of water claim is kind of strange, because the water in this setup is turned to steam by burning oil- so that would have to factor into a true representation of mpg, but still neat.

I'm guessing maybe this is a representation of propulsive technology which would not scale up well for higher power requirements? Don't know, but thinking about the boiler size requirements for steam locomotives in the old railroad days leads me to believe the required apparatus would be too large for aviation use?

Twin Wasp

It says they used fuel oil instead of petrol, isn't #2 just about kerosene?

At 2 minute there's a view from the rear, not much forward vis.

Cubdriver

You're close, Sarge. The problem with these engines is the thrust to weight ratio. An internal combustion engine such as a turbine or a gasoline-driven piston engine has a superior work-to-weight ratio than any external combustion (steam) engine does, because the latter must use an extra transfer fluid to get heat to the output side where it is used to do the work. This adds a lot of extra weight. Note the airplane in this example does not make a cross country demo flight, only a short flight because it needs water fairly often. Although theoretically you could make a steam engine that loses little or no water it is not an economical proposition. Steam locomotives have to carry large quantities of water onboard and even so they have to stop every so often and reload the water tanks. Internal combustion does away with this extra stage and the combustion mass itself acts as the heat transfer medium. The advantage of steam engine lies in its higher efficiency in terms of waste heat energy and entropy increase, but they are heavier and the tradeoff is not worth it for weight-sensitive machines like airplanes. They are also slower to wind up and spool down because of the additional heat transfer medium involved in the system. For an airplane, train, or an electric plant it's not that crucial and if you plan ahead enough you can work around the delay. Generally steam engines are not ideal for transportation machinery and this is why they are seldom used for anything that travels.

Kilgore Trout

Cubdriver, thanks for the explanation, I understood most of it!

Pretty cool idea for propulsion technology, on a small scale though, right?

I have filed it away in the "Things to tinker around with after Zombie Apocalypse" part of my rather limited brain.

Did you ever think maybe if you'd lived back in those days you'd have ended up working on a steam train? Sometimes I get a strange feeling whenever I hear this song.

YouTube - Arlo Guthrie /City of New Orleans

Cubdriver

These days its diesel trucks and diesel trains, and I drove trucks for years BC (before college). City of New Orleans is a classic road song, here's some others that come to mind:

Janis Joplin- Me and Bobby McGee

Gordon LightFoot- me and Bobby McGee

Peter Paul and Mary- Early Morning Rain


High mach number aircraft (>0.5M) can't make practical use of steam technology because the poor thrust-to-weight ratio as mentioned earlier. It's not just that steam is bad, any reciprocating engine has a poor T/W ratio compared to turbines. If you wanted to make a modern transport category reciprocating airplane to use steam power, you could make a Lockheed Connie sort of thing but it will be limited to about M=0.45. Turbines have excellent T/W ratios even though they waste a lot of energy.