so, what engines did planes use? and vertibirds.

M

Martin

It Wandered In From the Wastes
in fallout we see many planes. crashed or just left alone like in F:NV. i am interested in how they are propelled, what type of engine they use, how effective it is and so on.

and whats with vertibirds. are they like V-22 osprey? and all above questions.

and fuel. what type of fuel all these use. cant imagine its fuel from oil.
 
cmon people. i dont want to pull new shit out of my ass. we have seen in tactics that BoS had airships AND planes with piston based properels, what seemed to look like ww2 planes. i need answers or i will just comeup with some mumbo jumbo.
 
I don't think it was ever specifically stated in canon. The Navarro base in FO2 had a number of oil drums and a tanker truck nearby, but supposedly vertibirds blow up like the cars do in FO3 (dunno, never tried to shoot one myself in FO3). Fossil fuel was running out, but it wasn't completely gone when the war went nuclear. I would personally go with JP8 as the fuel for anything that appears to use a jet turbine like the vertibirds do and avgas for propeller prop. I suppose you could say that the vertibirds use a reactor and power the propellers electrically, but I think that would kill any cargo capacity you might otherwise have due to the radiation shielding required. I would also rule that fossil fuel was restricted to military use only (but the rich and powerful would be able to make exceptions for themselves).
 
yea. i was looking into renewable fuels and came over sustainable plane fuels that are aparently in production since like 2007, so it can be plant based? because really, there must have been some facility making fuel, because no fuel can stick around for 100-200 years. vertis blow up differently from cars, cars go nuclear, vertis go just regular explosion, but bigger. maybe enclave oil rig was still on active oil reserve? also, in FNV boomers mentioned they made fuel from crops they farm. and that shack full of flamable gas is a pretty big giveaway in this manner. so maybe some eco fuels could be present.
 
I think that making hydrocarbon fuel synthetically doesn't fit with canon. If it was possible to make a fuel replacement that was anywhere close to economical then there would have been no reason for the resource wars. Even in the real world, the renewable fuels are significantly more expensive than the real thing, even when oil was over $100 a barrel. The plant-based fuels are probably ethanol or something close. I doubt the developers really spent that much time thinking about it.

That doesn't explain where normally oil-based stuff like lubricants and tires come from, but I guess there could be a small factory that didn't get nuked cranking them out somewhere. It's probably hard to get natural rubber in the FO world, and I doubt brahmin fat would be useful as axle grease.


ETA: Getting oil to refine would be the hard part. Refining is a relatively simple technology from the late 1800s. Standard Oil was throwing out the stuff we call gasoline because it was too volatile and they had no use for it.
 
yeah so you've probably missed that electrical engine in navarro that was sepose to be a vertibird engine replacement??
Since evrything works off microfusion cells than it most likely works on electricity.. so i guess that settles it, if it's not an obvious jet engine than in fallout world it most likely works off electricity just like the highwayman car (look at the description of fuel cell controller [Fo2], it says it's for electrical car engine - it works on microfusion cells ).
 
well, if oil was 100$ dollars eco fuels were on steep rise. imagine if it was 500$, its would be hella important. but still. tech didnt advanced to same levels as we have today.
and so vertis were on micros? seems weird as in FNV that you guys consider canon is verti refueling station. so there must be some big liquid thingy needed for vertis. there was bigass tank in verti refueling station right next to verti.
 
I don't recall a replacement motor for the vertibirds in FO2. Dang it... Now I gotta play through again to see if that what it was. Twist my arm, why don't you.
 
I'm not sure eighther if it was "for vertibird" however there was a electrical motor engine hidden somwhere in navarro if i remember right.. And in that world evrything works off microfusion cells, so electricity..
 
The one motor I recall was used for the robo-dog. It had to be acquired so his legs would work. If I remember correctly, the doctor had removed it as punishment for some infraction.
 
so vertis are then on micro cells. what about BoS planes? if we can use F4 as canon, airship that weights 40k tons is lifted by several motors using old nuclear reactor from carrier. what about first airships sent by BoS after supermutants? they seemed to use some normal fuel, given shape of the motors. and few planes around them. maybe BoS did used some form bio avgas. since old one wont survive. will evaporate.
 
The only references of fuel for planes or vertibirds is in Fallout New Vegas with the Biodiesel Refinery in the Boomers compound and I think (I can't remember properly) that the Enclave Remnants also in Fallout New Vegas hint about some fuel for vertibirds, but I think they never say anything in concrete.

I forgot to mention that Navarro was also used to refuel vertibirds but again no mention of what fuel they use.
 
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if it was fusion based, maybe it was coolant? prywden or how its called needed some kind of coolant too no?
 
I don't think you could reasonably power a vertibird with microfusion cells. Take a couple real-world examples, the HMHVV and V-22 Osprey. The HMHVVs weigh up to almost 3 tons and are powered by a 190hp/ 142 kW engine. V-22s weigh about 15 tons empty, can carry 10 tons of cargo, and are powered by two 6,150 hp/ 4,590 kW (each) engines.
 
well we do know that first PAs were eating micros really fast. did authors ever gave away some info about actuall power from these?
 
To my knowledge nothing was ever specified about the actual power capacity of the MFCs. A very rough estimate can be made from the damage inflicted by the different weapons and comparisons to the real-world cartridges. Even then, it's still a bit of a faulty comparison because most of the 5.56x45 weapons do more damage than the 7.62x51 weapons in FO1/2.

Even so, here goes.....

5.56 ~1767J
7.62 ~3304J

in Watts, P=E/t, so kW is P=E/1000t

So assuming all the energy is transferred over one second,
5.56 ~1.8kW
7.62 ~3.3kW

The 5.56 hunting rifles do about 20 points of damage, while the 7.62 FALs do about 18. Laser rifles will do up 50 points of damage per shot; so they are roughly 2 1/2 times as powerful as their powder-burning predecessors.

2.5 (1.8kW)= 4.05kW
2.5 (3.3kW)= 8.25kW

The laser rifle gets 12 shots out of an MFC, so 12 times the above figures gives us 48.6kW to 99kW. According to the Wiki, the Highwayman is recharged 50% on one full MFC.

After running the numbers, I don't think there would actually be enough energy stored in an MFC to run a vehicle larger than a bicycle for any significant length of time. If I goofed in the calculations somewhere, feel free to point it out. I wasn't a math/ physics major.


ETA: Since I'm playing through again, I realized (again) that the game specifically states that the Highwayman uses a fuel cell for power. That kinda begs the question of what the MFCs are for, except as a balance mechanism, since a power-producing fuel cell shouldn't use up MFCs while it's running.
 
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if you could throw a few more calculations at me, that would be great, maybe i could come with some semi sciencific explanation. you can meet me in my new thread, about robots and how do they work. and main differences in timeline.
 
BairdEC said:
To my knowledge nothing was ever specified about the actual power capacity of the MFCs. A very rough estimate can be made from the damage inflicted by the different weapons and comparisons to the real-world cartridges. Even then, it's still a bit of a faulty comparison because most of the 5.56x45 weapons do more damage than the 7.62x51 weapons in FO1/2.

Even so, here goes.....

5.56 ~1767J
7.62 ~3304J

in Watts, P=E/t, so kW is P=E/1000t

So assuming all the energy is transferred over one second,
5.56 ~1.8kW
7.62 ~3.3kW

The 5.56 hunting rifles do about 20 points of damage, while the 7.62 FALs do about 18. Laser rifles will do up 50 points of damage per shot; so they are roughly 2 1/2 times as powerful as their powder-burning predecessors.

2.5 (1.8kW)= 4.05kW
2.5 (3.3kW)= 8.25kW

The laser rifle gets 12 shots out of an MFC, so 12 times the above figures gives us 48.6kW to 99kW. According to the Wiki, the Highwayman is recharged 50% on one full MFC.

After running the numbers, I don't think there would actually be enough energy stored in an MFC to run a vehicle larger than a bicycle for any significant length of time. If I goofed in the calculations somewhere, feel free to point it out. I wasn't a math/ physics major.


ETA: Since I'm playing through again, I realized (again) that the game specifically states that the Highwayman uses a fuel cell for power. That kinda begs the question of what the MFCs are for, except as a balance mechanism, since a power-producing fuel cell shouldn't use up MFCs while it's running.
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It's actually even simpler than that. You don't have to make any assumptions about how quickly the energy is deposited, you can just work out the energy contained in an MFC, so 20 shots * 3.3kJ * 2.5 = 165kJ.

In New Vegas hardcore mode, they have a mass of 0.1 pounds (so 0.05kg). 165kJ per 0.05kg gives an energy density of 3.3 MJ/kg. This is actually similar to that of gunpowder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

However, even our best lasers today only have an efficiency of about 50%. Half the energy goes into the laser beam ,the rest is wasted as heat, so to get that amount of energy in the laser beams, we're probably talking an energy density of maybe 6 or 7 MJ/kg for our MFCs. To put that in perspective, the energy density of ordinary gasoline is about 44MJ/kg.

Especially for aircraft, weight is key. A fossil-fuel powered aircraft is going to have maybe 4 times the endurance of a similar one powered using MF cells, even if you account for the fact that fossil fuel engines can reach about 50% efficiency, and electric motors can surpass 90%. It will probably be far more worthwhile to refine some sort of biodiesel for military applications. For civilian stuff like cars, MF cells will give you reduced range, but weight isn't nearly so much of a consideration, so they would probably be ideal for that.
 
peadar87 said:
It's actually even simpler than that. You don't have to make any assumptions about how quickly the energy is deposited, you can just work out the energy contained in an MFC, so 20 shots * 3.3kJ * 2.5 = 165kJ.

In New Vegas hardcore mode, they have a mass of 0.1 pounds (so 0.05kg). 165kJ per 0.05kg gives an energy density of 3.3 MJ/kg. This is actually similar to that of gunpowder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

However, even our best lasers today only have an efficiency of about 50%. Half the energy goes into the laser beam ,the rest is wasted as heat, so to get that amount of energy in the laser beams, we're probably talking an energy density of maybe 6 or 7 MJ/kg for our MFCs. To put that in perspective, the energy density of ordinary gasoline is about 44MJ/kg.

Especially for aircraft, weight is key. A fossil-fuel powered aircraft is going to have maybe 4 times the endurance of a similar one powered using MF cells, even if you account for the fact that fossil fuel engines can reach about 50% efficiency, and electric motors can surpass 90%. It will probably be far more worthwhile to refine some sort of biodiesel for military applications. For civilian stuff like cars, MF cells will give you reduced range, but weight isn't nearly so much of a consideration, so they would probably be ideal for that.
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thank you for the insight, might as well use some of your techno blable in technology description.
 
Martin said:
in fallout we see many planes. crashed or just left alone like in F:NV. i am interested in how they are propelled, what type of engine they use, how effective it is and so on.

and whats with vertibirds. are they like V-22 osprey? and all above questions.

and fuel. what type of fuel all these use. cant imagine its fuel from oil.
Click to expand...

In 'Fallout New Vegas' the Mysterious Stranger mentioned working in a coal mine. Coal gassification makes oil from coal, both the Nazis and apartheid-era South Africans did this, too. That's my vote.
 
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