Aviation in Agents of SHIELD - Season 1 - THE BUS, Lola, and Docking - Long Version

This video contains all the clips from season 1 that involve the team's aerial vehicles including The Bus, Lola, and a handful of other SHIELD craft. The circumstances around each clip have also been included in this video in order to better appreciate the utility that these vehicles bring to this chapter of the MCU. As far as I can tell, no one has done this comprehensive of an edit for a given season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (AoS).

I personally found the attention to detail, and amazing effort towards futuristic aircraft like these in AoS to be deserving of much credit for the designers, artists, and writers that put this show together. It has always been one of my favorite aspects of the early MCU that it was grounded in reality, but took everything a few steps further in terms of technology.

The Bus specifically is modeled off of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, with an additional smaller pair of wings and engines mounted in a traditional tail location. Along with the 90 plus degree thrust vectoring on all 6 of the engines, the internal modifications, and tremendous power (some sort of fusion / nuclear power like you see with Iron Man) the Bus is a very cool machine. The VTOL capability alone is interesting in and of itself. If you do some rough math, you can find that with 6 engines you would need roughly 2.5 to 3 times the thrust of the C-17 PW2000 engine in order to have any hope of having enough thrust to pull off the kinds of maneuvers displayed in AoS. Not necessarily out of the realm of possibilities if an important enough need for such an aircraft were to arise. Although non jet-fuel based propulsion is another question entirely.

Lola on the other hand is definitely more into the realm of science fiction as it appears to have some kind of hover capability apart from its wheel thrusters.

The last thing first showed on this season of AoS was in flight docking to the Bus by another shield aircraft. The idea and mechanism shown for this is a very cool idea and has no doubt been seriously thought about by aerospace engineers in days past. The idea certainly seems feasible given how we do arial refueling in modern military jets, but there are many more factors to be considered for such an idea as docking. One of the biggest being limitations on maneuvering and control when a rather large aircraft is docked to you, as well as the strength of the docking mechanism and failure modes. Control specifically is an interesting one, because it would be likely better to integrate the flight controls of the docked aircraft into the main aircraft control as opposed to just have the deadweight attached to the aircraft. However this would get very complicated. Especially when considering the airflow interaction between the two vehicles. This is another one of those very interesting concepts in aviation that, while technically possible and demonstrated to one degree or another in the past, the need for such capability has never presented itself to any substantial level to warrant serious technical study or testing.

This is one thing that simulation and film afford us which I believe is of underrated value -- the ability to see what such advanced technologies would actually be like in practical use. Especially in an operational context like AoS, I think it's really fun to think about how such vehicles, or ones like them, might offer a capability we need one day. This of course applies to other kinds of technology in film and simulation, but something about the practical nature grounded in our familiar world that AoS has to offer helps open the imagination to new possibilities.

This video is simply intended for die hard fans of AoS to experience all the amazing aviation ideas packed into Season 1. All the clips belong to Marvel / Disney, and this video is not monetized in any way. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is available with a DisneyPlus subscription, and is also available for purchase through Amazon. Enjoy!

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