Author Topic: Win 2$ Million USAF for new turbine design  (Read 3258 times)

Offline Prober

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Win 2$ Million USAF for new turbine design
« on: 08/14/2015 10:38 pm »
The US Air Force is offering $2 million to anyone who can build a revolutionary turbine engine

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-air-force-is-offering-2-million-to-anyone-who-can-build-a-revolutionary-turbine-engine-2015-8#ixzz3ipcJfCPL

"The turbine engine must be in the 100 horsepower class, with a 2.0 brake-horsepower per pound (bhp/lb) or better power to weight ratio. It is also required to have a brake-horsepower specific fuel consumption of 0.55 pounds per brake-horsepower per hour (lb/bhp/hr) or less at maximum continuous power. Those standards would double the fuel efficiency of existing turbine engines of that class.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-air-force-is-offering-2-million-to-anyone-who-can-build-a-revolutionary-turbine-engine-2015-8#ixzz3ipcsODnh"

A spokesman for Pratt & Whitney said the company has no plans to participate in the contest because the award value is so low.

"Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-air-force-is-offering-2-million-to-anyone-who-can-build-a-revolutionary-turbine-engine-2015-8#ixzz3ipdKEvfJ"

"Maybe Elon Musk and Spacex would like to throw their hats in the ring?"

Edit: add quotes
« Last Edit: 08/14/2015 10:40 pm by Prober »
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Offline Hog

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Re: Win 2$ Million USAF for new turbine design
« Reply #1 on: 08/15/2015 10:56 am »
I wonder if the end usage has any effect on who "throws their hat in the ring"?

Bombardier Canada owns a company in Europe that makes Rotax piston engines for certain UAV's.
Paul

Offline Prober

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Re: Win 2$ Million USAF for new turbine design
« Reply #2 on: 08/15/2015 02:36 pm »
I wonder if the end usage has any effect on who "throws their hat in the ring"?

Bombardier Canada owns a company in Europe that makes Rotax piston engines for certain UAV's.

looks to be an exercise in design atm from what's on the site.  Only 4 players atm with one being a LM engineer.
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Offline a_langwich

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Re: Win 2$ Million USAF for new turbine design
« Reply #3 on: 08/15/2015 10:25 pm »
In my opinion, pretty misguided prize.  A prize is great if the payoff would otherwise be uncertain, nonexistent, or too far off to motivate people to work on it.  In other words, it works great as a motivator when the market is not operating as a motivator. 

But prizes like these, where anybody who could come up with the prize-winning design could instantly turn around and sell the rights for far more than the paltry prize sum...how is that really adding any additional motivation?  Guaranteed, anybody who could offer an order of magnitude improvement in fuel consumption alone could make far more than $2 million.  Just about instantly, too, because a P&W or Boeing or LM would buy the design and produce it and make far more.

Likely they will get crackpot entries and perhaps a few earnest attempts which may do a little better than the state of the art.  Perhaps a lot better on one of the metrics, by sacrificing a bit on the others, and perhaps the sponsors will be able to hold that up as a success.

Perhaps someone will prove me wrong.  That would be great--it's like all these years we've been suffering with cars that get 25-35 MPG, when if only someone had offered a million dollar prize, we could have been driving cars with 250 MPG carburetors!  Cue the conspiracy theories about how The Man has been holding us down...    ::)

Offline Lee Jay

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Re: Win 2$ Million USAF for new turbine design
« Reply #4 on: 08/15/2015 10:41 pm »
Guaranteed, anybody who could offer an order of magnitude improvement in fuel consumption alone could make far more than $2 million.

The call was for a factor of 2, not an order of magnitude.  And the efficiency result still wouldn't be all that great (25%, if I did my calculations right).

Offline Paul Howard

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Re: Win 2$ Million USAF for new turbine design
« Reply #5 on: 08/17/2015 01:33 pm »
I'm confused why only $2m. Seems pointless.

Offline kevin-rf

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Re: Win 2$ Million USAF for new turbine design
« Reply #6 on: 08/17/2015 02:12 pm »
It's a tiny engine, has less output than your typical car engine.

Also, since they are using Hp it sounds like they want it to drive a shaft/prop.

To give you a sense of scale, that's less than half the horse power of a typical general aviation aircraft like, say a Cessna 172. We are talking small drones.

 
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