Talk:Frost Airship Glider

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Could anyone speculate what the "gas" was which is mentioned in the patent, and how it was kept sealed in the craft? Perhaps the patent makes this clear. Was the glider really heavier than air? Wittlessgenstein (talk) 21:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The patent, a direct link to which I have now added as a reference, does not make the nature of "the gas" any clearer. It seems remarkable that a carpenter and builder, in Saudersfoot, in 1894, could have access to any quantity of ligher-than-air gas. In fact, all construction details are a bit sketchy! Wittlessgenstein (talk) 23:13, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I have an interest in this craft (I want to make a scale model of it) - but information is VERY scarce.

The only available information about the size/design/appearance of any kind is from the patent. Even in "A Pembrokeshire Pioneer" (which is an exceedingly awful book BTW) there is zero information about the design that's not taken directly from the patent - and more or less zero information about the actual flight. The whole book is devoted to microscopic details of Frost's life, life of the village and general whining from the author about everything from the youth of today to the horrors of decimal currency. To my mind, the evidence he presents in the book suggests to me that it never did fly. Several newspaper articles have subsequently discussed it - but their artists drew their pictures from the patent also. As far as I can tell, the patent is the only information we have. Frost was a carpenter, so I imagine he drew the plans in the patents rather carefully.

I've scaled that drawing and taken measurements. The gas envelope is 8 feet tall, 9.3 feet wide (at the widest point) and 31.6 feet long. The most the gas volume could have been would be 2,160 cubic feet - 61 cubic meters. Lifting gas says that hydrogen can lift 1.2kg per cubic meter - so the airship would fly if total airframe plus pilot weighed in under 73.2kg...which seems...difficult. Helium wasn't isolated until 1895 - so that's utterly impossible. Hot air would have been difficult to maintain - but not impossible, but even if he could maintain it at 100 degC, he'd only be able to lift 18kg. Coal gas (which would certainly have been available) could have lifted 37kg...which seems too little to lift a grown man...let alone the airship.

So if he flew with the design in the patent...he used hydrogen. In the 1890's, hydrogen would have been made from an iron/acid reaction. It wasn't liquified until 2 years after Frost's airship supposedly flew so he couldn't possibly have purchased it. He'd have to have made it on-site somehow. It would have been incredibly hard for Frost to have made it himself...but without it, there is literally no possibility that this story is true. Trouble is there are no contemporary accounts of the construction or pre-flight preparations - so we don't know.

With hydrogen, he could lift 73kg...160 lbs. We don't know how much Frost weighed...but even if he was 100lb, 60lb isn't enough to all of the stuff you can see in the patent.

Conclusion: He couldn't possibly have flown in the machine showed in the patent as a 'vertical take-off' craft (as claimed in the patent). Either his craft was at least twice the size and using hydrogen or ten or twenty times the size on coal gas. It's not credible. Perhaps he could get enough forward speed to get lift from the wings - but the drag on that huge balloon would prevent him getting up enough speed to get measurable lift.

I also don't see the hero-worship "he flew before the Wright Brothers" thing. Powered airships had been around for nearly 50 years before Frost's alleged flight. The Wright brothers were the first heavier-than-air aviators.

SteveBaker (talk) 00:22, 6 August 2014 (UTC)