Original Prototype Did NOT Meet Design Specs... Now A Whole New Design Could Disappoint Many More
Within days of the much forecast but surprisingly survivable accident that befell the one and only prototype of Peter Muller's much maligned (for good reason) Raptor Aircraft Proof of Concept test vehicle, Muller has.... unveiled a whole new design with precious little in common with the original airframe... called (you guessed it) the Raptor NG.
While the original bird promised the moon and never succeeded in doing much more than getting off the ground, the Raptor NG goes WAY beyond the original hype and bluster of the elder, recently corn-fed, Raptor. The new bird is... get this... a multi-electric ducted fan airframe (an electric-hybrid propulsion system) with a fairly unique 'box-wing' configuration that departs dramatically from the previous bird.
If you thought this whole thing couldn't have gotten much worse... well, it now has.
Claiming that he has been working on the new design for 'quite some time now' he apparently hasn't studied the pitfalls and difficulties of other platforms using just one or two of the same features.
He details only that the aircraft will have 24 inch ducted fans, but that the rest of the details are all 'still secret.' It will have a 'power generation unit' in it where the engine used to reside on Raptor-OldGen -- along with a small battery to provide some backup power in the event of the a power interruption... which we feel is smart to plan for based on the previous history of this program.
There is an exotic box-wing structure that he claims will offer lighter weight, accompanied by a similar canard/foreplane that was used on R-OG. The platform will be shorter, simplifying landing gear size and stature (NOW, he wants to simplify?), while larger windows for additional visibility have been incorporated.
He also claims that the CFD that he has run (computational fluid dynamics) promises much more thrust than the Audi engine he is abandoning (and that he once spoke so highly of). And, finally, he has abandoned the offering of pressurization that was such a huge selling point for the elder concept -- but it will have oxygen for operation 'in the flight levels.'
Muller's debut video follows a number of details about the R-OG's crash landing in a corn field, promises some detail in the future about the NG but is otherwise bereft of any specifics about what is to come, but still asserting that this is an active project that is now underway... which we have a hard time believing.
We'll have more info as it may or may not become available... but after spending years on a project that did not meet any of its primary goals, ignoring advice/critique from dozens of legitimate experts in the field, issuing more excuses for various problems than we can count, and all manner of other concerns, we have no confidence in the potential existence (or success) of a Raptor-NG and urge ALL to exercise extreme caution in entertaining thoughts of involvement in this program. The deplorable history of it all is simply too damning to ignore.
Flyer beware...
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