Details of Liquid Air Plane

I would like to detail the liquid air powered plane I proposed earlier. After thinking further on the idea, I made some changes. Due to VTOL design of the plane, it requires maximum thrust on takeoff when it is the heaviest. In order to achieve maximum thrust from the liquid air propulsion, the liquid air in the propulsion reservoir should be heated quickly to the ambient temperature. I thought of using the aluminum fuselage of the plane as a giant thermal coupler to heat the reservoir fast.

In order to keep the weight of the plane low and still have high thermal conductive fuselage, I thought of using highly insulated liquid air tanks strengthened by the aluminum shell of the plane. Insulator layers would thermally shield the liquid air and the aluminum shell would strengthen the tank under pressure. Normally stainless-steel outer shell is used for cryogenic tanks while steel has poor heat conductivity. However, using steel would reduce the thermal coupling capacity of the plane. So, it’s a tradeoff.

The plane would have 4 gas thrusters used for propulsion instead of 16 I had proposed earlier. These thrusters will rotate up to 90 degrees with the wings around them. This would yield a lighter and more robust rotatable propulsion system. The wings and the thruster will not be connected to each other and they will be independently supported. The thrusters will have a pneumatically controlled aperture to control the thrust. The exhaust nozzle diameter will also be adjustable to match outside air pressure to achieve maximum thrust. The cold gas propulsion allows such mechanics compared to the hot nozzles of a rocket.

There will be two liquid air tanks on the plane. The front one will supply air to the front thrusters and will occupy the front lower section of the fuselage. The rear tank will supply air to the rear thrusters. The passenger cabin will be at the front top and the cargo bay will be at the middle bottom section of the plane.