On Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:51:27 GMT, "Neil Gould"
wrote in
:

Recently, Larry Dighera posted:
[...]
I'm thinking there would be necessity for some means of conducting the
heat from the engine to a remote heat exchanger, and the resulting
complexity and weight increase would negatively impact the potential
advantages of a Stirling aviation engine. In any event, in addition
to the Stirling engine and its fuel, a heat exchanger of some type
needs to factored into the weight, cost, performance, and efficiency
equations.

Of course, but I don't see a lot of reason why that couldn't be
incorporated into the overall design. My point is that heat exchangers
need not be heavy, and could probably double as structural and/or
aerodynamic components, further reducing (and possibly enhancing) their
impact.

How would you get the heat from the Stirling engine to the heat sink?
If you use liquid coolant, it would be heavy and prone to leaks.

There might be one advantage to using Sterling external combustion
engines for aviation: the use of atomic energy as a fuel source if
the weight of the lead shielding were not too great. Imagine an
aircraft that effectively never runs out of fuel! There'd be no
more fuel exhaustion mishaps.

One downside would be the hazardous materials that could be
dispersed in a crash.

There are a lot of down sides to atomic power, but NASA uses it to
power Stirling engines in space.

Understandable, but their expectation is that catastrophic destruction
would disperse the nuclear material harmlessly. That can't be presumed for
light aircraft.

If the rocket detonated in the atmosphere, it might not be so
harmless. I would guess the reactor is jacketed with sufficient
strength to preclude its destruction. Presumably, that could be done
for a Stirling aircraft engine also.