Why are Sci-fi Aircraft so Weird?

[Music] hello everybody and welcome back to space dog I'm huji Wana and today we're asking the question why are sci-fi aircraft so weird and possibly even answering it as well first though we're going to demonstrate what I mean by weird with some examples to start with we have the advanced fighters from stealth the fa 37 Talon and the even more high-tech extreme deep Invader the first of those is a perfect example because it has all the wacky fictional plane stuff it's got funky aerospike engines fed by air intakes on the top of the fuselage forward swept wings that also fold forward for Hypersonic flight and even lift jets for low velocity flight which it naturally doesn't use for Carrier Landings or takeoffs as we can see it has so many features it ends up working at odds with reality and even itself like having old-fashioned sweeping wings for low- Speed flight when it has guided weapons and vetal jets that render those unnecessary and we know that are unnecessary because Eddie the AI flown jet works just fine with no sweeping wings at all but Eddie has his own issues like the downward curving Blended B and wings like a death glider from Stargate and just like the f302 from that franchise those heavily drooping wing tips are really close to the ground one hard Landing that pushes the suspension up and Bam no more wing tips oh and both aircraft are naturally invisible to radar as the name of the film suggests just like the Mig 31 Firefox but that thing has the distinction of predating real stealth the F-117 Nighthawk hadn't even flown when the book the film was based on was written let alone being made public but there were rumors swirling about the possibility of stealth leading to the famous and fictitious f119 stealth fighter a speculative version of what the US Air Force might have been coming up with the Firefox having stealth a word that might not have even been attached to low radar observability yet was kind of crazy I can't talk about fictional aircraft without bringing up Ace Combat which has many fictional Fighters known for four things missile spam canopy lless cockpits canards and forward swept Wings the first one is a gameplay thing so whatever hand W that away but the other three are very much deliberate style choices and let's talk about them canopus or fully enclosed cockpits replace the transparent canopy with screens and cameras and other sensors it's a very cool and clearly futuristic concept though I don't know if this or the F35 helmet display thing is better in terms of practicality at least the F35 has a lowtech backup the other two canards and forward swept Wings go hand inhand with one another as they are both features that increase the maneuverability of aircraft Wing sweep has all sorts of impacts on stability and control and canards just extra control services so their impact is fairly obvious they've been used on many real world inservice fighter aircraft for that reason as for forward swept Wings they've been the subject of a number of experimental aircraft notably the x29 and su47 but thrust vectoring and a general shift away from dog fights to longrange missile combat meant to this was a bit of an evolutionary dead end super cool in Ace Combat though these features have really become a bit of a staple of the series and now for an outlier top gun's Dark Star which isn't weird at all this is thanks to being made in collaboration with Lockheed Martin's skunkworks and being based on the really real SR71 and conceptually real Sr 72 skunkworks even made a full scale mockup with some real instruments and controls in the cockpit this makes it one of the more I don't want to say realistic but authentic fictional aircraft out there so much so that its full-sized mockup famously caused a Chinese spy satellite to change its orbit to get photos of it presumably because they thought it might have been real when it was just a prop or was the whole thing an elaborate misdirect either way it's a really cool craft and one that's definitely had an influence as we can see from this Lego spaceship now we Lurch unceremoniously to Capra the offshoot prequel for Battle Star Galactica which featured propeller and jet engine powered predecessors to the Viper these took the idea of recognizable vehicle Evolution a little bit too far forcing The Familiar shape of the Viper on aircraft styles that don't really work with it propeller aircraft are very different to Jets and jets are going to be different to Future Tech space capable Fighters something else that the show did is include a lot of vetle jet aircraft which is another very common design Trope but it doesn't just happen to purely fictional craft though real aircraft get made fictional when vetto capability gets added to them like the Agents of Shield C130 the C5 from Team Night Rider or the SR71 from X-Men first Class and VL capability takes us to helicopters which are also very subject to being made weird possibly even more so than fixed Wing aircraft think of a Sci-Fi helicopter and I bet it's not a normal configuration for a rotocraft it's surprisingly rare to see just a helicopter with one main rotor and an anti-torque system instead fiction goes for something different depending on how close to reality it wants to be if it wants to be near future then it will pick coaxial rotors two sets of counter rotating main rotors that eliminate the need for an anti-torque system which is a real thing it's just rare the crisis sequels have these as do the modern DSX games and cyberpunk 2077 only rotocraft is the valgus which you only ever see while landed on its extremely bizarre landing gear other common things seen are having the rotors on the sides and tilting them to transition to forward flight which is another real thing a related case is having tilt Jets rather than tilt rotors which has been experimented with and maybe you could count harriers and f-35s with their swiving nozzles rotors on the sze but they don't tilt or having them be ducted fans or something also happens a lot most famously with the various aircraft seen in Avatar but Halo's Falcon counts here too to some degree this is also what of the MCU quinjets are normal Choppers end up being fairly rare there's a few in Ghost in the Shell and uh the hunter Chopper in halflife 2o and even that has the weird extra anti-alk rotor in the middle of it you could argue for things like blue thunder and Airwolf but those are just body kits on otherwise real helicopters after helicopters we get to the aircraft that make use of entirely different methods of flight things like orops these flap their wings for Locomotion and the only real example are those from June and even then the only good interpretation in my opinion are the ones from the v no movies that switch to using vibrating insect Wings rather than Flappy Bird ones was a stroke of Genius I'd be remiss if I didn't mention all the more exotic methods of flight too mainly the ones that just to generate a floating force of some kind think of the hovercraft from The Matrix or the repuls tech from Star Wars or just the general ubiquity of flying cars but there's also the entire other end of the genre the one that looks back and imagines an age where airships were actually useful typically this is the realm of Steampunk and Alternate history or alternate reality but airships do have their real world uses just not ones that sci-fi like to pretend they do they're there to set a Vibe just like how flying cars set a Vibe they meant to be weird and wonderful but why do other fictional aircraft end up that way I think it's a similar deal to sci-fi cars or tanks there are certain design elements that show up repeatedly to indicate that this plane or helicopter is different or futury forward swept Wings Hypersonic speed tilt Jets ducted fans they're not common in real life if they exist at all but they're so often there in the inspiration for these fictional Vehicles the real prototypes the experimental craft the near future supposition about what's coming next and that gets applied to a great many of these fictional aircraft as well there are also often experimental prototype one-off super planes stuffed with all the crazy tech for cool features in the movie or game or whatever this isn't always the case of course but it does happen a fair bit this particular bit of the Trope seems to apply more to fixed Wing aircraft rather than rotary wings or equivalents what I find interesting is that some real life experimental Concepts didn't end up with a fictional counterpart part like the cruciform rotor Wing this works like a helicopter main rotor for VTOL stuff but locks into place mid-flight to become a wing the oblique Wing is a different take on the swing Wing idea where the whole Wing as one piece changes its angle for low speed or high speed fight maybe these are just too specific or not known about or a bit goofy feeling to end up in fiction or the idea is so new it simply hasn't percolated down to fiction creators yet like Bell's highp speed vers iCal takeoff and Landing idea combining a tilt rotor and tilt jet engine into one thing there's definitely some amazing potential for future sci-fi aircraft to be weird and wonderful but there's already some very firm design Trends throughout the genre what are some of your favorite ones let me know in the comments below you can support space dock by joining our patreon where you can get our Space Fighter design reference book alternatively you can support us directly through YouTube by giving a super thanks or by becoming a channel member thanks to our supporters and thank you for [Music] [Applause] [Music] watching

Channel: Spacedock

Views: 285,681

Keywords: Spacedock, space dock, sci-fi, aircraft, spacedock, ace combat, ace combat 6, plane, air, aerospace, jet, jet engine, jet fighter, military, design, helicopter, vtol, sf, space, warship, ship, lore, history, analysis, review, breakdown, summary, retrospective, specifications, news, update, reveal, scene, trailer, teaser, gameplay, new, science, realistic, thought piece, physics, realism, best

Id: 9DOuBIH_B5Y

Length: 9min 42sec (582 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024