Making a podracer

Would it be possible to make a podracer? If so how do I do it?

Yes... however it would be a terrible idea. And you would need to understand a lot about either turbine engine design or rocket engines. Pod racers are basically 2 or more engines tied to a sled. What that means is you either have 2 rockets pulling a sled with high strength cables or you have turbines that run off of ? to pull you. I'm no rocket doctor, but sitting behind a powerful exhaust seems like the first issue, the second issue being that it needs to hover. You could look into ground-effect aircraft design, or use rollerons of flaperons to try to stabilize your propulsion, but the fuel would likely be provided by your sled. tl:dr you are sitting on a bunch of fuel going to some rockets pulling you at high speeds. I would like to discount it, but if you are a crazy enough fuarrrk, I would be interested in seeing if it is indeed working. anakin With sufficient gyroscopic stabilization, a swoop bike or speeder bike might be doable, but you would be relying on lift to fly less than 10m over the ground on a rocket. But may the force be with you...

keep dreamin'

Drone racing is alot like pod racing and they have leagues for that. https://youtu.be/GTifvVZBNWs

>>5469 People have made hovering vehicles in the past such as the avrocar so if you really want to it might be possible for you to make one.

>>5469 Well, first of all, forget about not having the engines rigidly connected to each other. VTOL propulsion puts a rigid body into a state of unstable equilibrium. Look at a harrier jump jet for example. Any propulsion to keep the engine and cockpit afloat means that you now have multiple "loose" components in their own unstable equilibria. This means that the propulsion not only has to keep the rigid bodies it is attached to stable from rolling, spinning or drifting, it has to take into account multiple tethered bodies with position and acceleration dependent tensions creating torques all over the place. All of these effects become exaggerated with speed. Now consider the fact these these components will not be perfectly rigid bodies and consider the following https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroelasticity

>>5469 This is probably what you're looking for. It even does "hover" off of the ground, but only when its going fast enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect_vehicle Now, having two jet engine tow you along with cables is probably a really bad idea for a few thousand different reasons, mostly that it would be hard to control and you would be getting a face full of super heated exhaust. You're probably better off just mounting engines on the sides. Turbine engines are pretty complex and require a lot of very precise engineering, but plenty of hobbyists have made small ones in the past so I see no reason why you couldn't just scale that up. Basically, it is theoretically possible to make one, but...good luck trying.

Sadly, repursorlifts capable of cancelling the forces of gravity with minimal energy consumption haven't been invented yet. Your best chance is some kind of ground effect vehicle that rides on a cushion of air, capable or reaching really high speeds but with very poor maneuverability.

IMO you should focus on making something that handles like a podracer without worrying about whether it looks like a podracer. Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wing_configurations I'd suggest this design as a starting point due to its STOL capability/low minimum takeoff speed. It was found to be suboptimal for a plane by NASA because of its high drag, but it can achieve full VTOL with modifications, and the drag can be mitigated with modern airframe design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_wing Ideally the combination of the air brakes and the channel wing assemblies will yield VTOL that will not translate into horizontal motion until service altitude is reached and the air brakes are deactivated, at which point the vehicle begins using ground effect. This makes it act like a podracer hovering in place until the race starts. The channel wing assemblies will be much smaller than the picture in the Wiki article because otherwise they'd cause considerable drag and this vehicle is only meant to hover slightly above the ground. You'll probably need 4 engines to achieve service altitude in VTOL and get up to podracer speeds. The final design of this channel winged ground effect vehicle will look like a mashup of an airspeeder and >>5607. >>5470 Hoverbikes have already been made, but they aren't nearly as fast as swoops or speeder bikes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soxxPyaAT1k

>>5607 MUH WIPEOUT RACING WHEN?

>>5469 Its easy, first you figure out anti-grav technology, then, you attach some jet engines to a sled, duct tape the repulso device to the bottom, et voila: podracer. (^:

>>5709 Smoking PCP will achieve the same feeling and is cheaper and probably safer. Sorry for the derailment, as you were Lains.

I was going to say you should use F-Zero cars as a base for your design instead of podracers. There are some that could pass for an aircraft. But there may be an alternative if you want something that looks like a podracer instead of just something that acts like it. I don't have my N64 hooked up, but I consulted the Episode I Racer strategy guide and the only podracer that's actually designed somewhat sensibly (i.e. cockpit fused to the engines with no tethers and situated in front of the engines rather than behind) is Neva Kee's, meaning he's your best bet. He was my favorite racer aside from the Chosen One himself when I played the game. His pod's design and good handling (3rd best of any off-the-shelf pod) makes it able to negotiate obstacles and turns that the other racers can't, and its flaws can easily be remedied with only a handful of upgrades, mostly to speed. Pic related, it's his entry from the guide. For the purposes of making an actual podracer I'd use much smaller engines than Kee's because that's the only way you're ever going to achieve any significant maneuverability. Large engines will get you a high top speed but will struggle to go in any direction other than straight due to their weight, and even if you did attempt to turn, the stresses induced by having the engines be so much larger than the cockpit would probably end up tearing them off of the podracer. The engine columns you see on a podracer can be only partly taken up by the actual engine with the rest of them serving as the channel wing assemblies. This sleek design lets you put airfoils in various places on the body for extra control and gives a relatively even weight distribution, which is important for stability and even more important when you're going at over 500 mph.

>>5469 Is there a real world equivalent to this? I tried >>5473 and it was thrilling but it isn't the same when the worst thing that could happen is crashing the drone (which happened quite often to be honest)

>>5710 Hey continuing on the derailment, you get that traveling without moving effect too on PCP(analogues)? I've spent many a moment just laying in my chair or bed seeing scenery pass by really fast at the edges of my vision.

>>5709 >emoticon >doing it backwards works