Earlier quoted context omitted.
s/China/URSS/
s/URSS/USSR/
The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
201–210 of 265 posts
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#202The B-2 pictured says "Spirit of Pennsylvania" on its gear flap. Are all of fleet named in similar spirit (pun)? Would seem kind of reminiscent of WWII battleships named after states of each is named "Spirit of a State".
Yes. Spirit of (Something) is how the B-2s are named.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reminds me of the following: “In my view, shared by many blue-suiters, this marvelous airplane should still be operational but, alas, that was not to be. One of the most depressing moments in the history of the Skunk Works occurred on February 5, 1970, when we received a telegram from the Pentagon ordering us to destroy all the tooling for the Blackbird. All the molds, jigs, and forty thousand detail tools were…
The same was done the Canadian Avro Arrow plane, and the British Black Knight rocket. What happens once you join government, they take away your brains?
The government doesn't have consistent communication between and even within departments, that's all really. There is no holistic understanding of things, it's just a conglomerate of BoundedContexts without good interfaces to talk to each other.
I mean if instead of discussing a topic freely on HN you were supposed to share your information using some I-1969 standard form with sections of one word answers, how many compelling and sensible posts would we usually see.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#204Tangentially reminds me of this video by Jonathan Blow [0], "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization". The eye-opening moment, for me, was the importance (and neglect) of the inter-generational transfer of knowledge in maintaining technological complexity.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#205Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#206I can't be certain, but I suspect the real problem was that the original contract was signed without requiring the technical data rights and/or delivery of the technical data. This is a common mistake made by the DoD, and can lead to extraordinarily high costs later. Just look at the notice: "The deliverables will include all technical data related to the heat exchanger disassembly, all technical data related to the…
It's also possible the government did get all the technical data and then lost it. It has to be somebody's job to archive and catalog that stuff, and the cost of archiving comes out of somebody's budget. The pressure to just toss old dusty paper files to cut costs can be enormous. It might have happened because "Joe Smith was the archivist and he retired 10 years ago and we needed the space." If the data was classifi…
This is extremely implausible. Files (the non descript name for official records) are extremely hard to destroy even if you want to. Everything about the B2 is in a special TS compartment and will likely be retained until long after we are dust.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reminds me of the following: “In my view, shared by many blue-suiters, this marvelous airplane should still be operational but, alas, that was not to be. One of the most depressing moments in the history of the Skunk Works occurred on February 5, 1970, when we received a telegram from the Pentagon ordering us to destroy all the tooling for the Blackbird. All the molds, jigs, and forty thousand detail tools were…
The same was done the Canadian Avro Arrow plane, and the British Black Knight rocket. What happens once you join government, they take away your brains?
Probably someone was bribed by KGB to do it.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#208Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
787 should have been a straight forward simple twin engine jet. Yet, it had Billions of dollars in cost overruns and still has major manufacturing safety issues. https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/09/09/boeings-woes-mount... This country built Saturn 5 rocket, 50 years ago. Landed astronauts on the moon, with moon buggy and golf clubs. Now we can barely launch basic satellites. How is this progress?
There’s a reasonable chance you typed this on a pocket computer/communicator with an armful of MRNA vaccine in an electric car.
Which country built the pocket computer/communicator? Which country built the electronics, circuit boards, cables, batteries, housing and fastening screws?
Which country built the components and systems and subsystems that go into manufacturing an electric car?
Which country has lithium, rare earth metal processing capabilities critical in manufacturing all modern electronic systems?
Which country built the components and subsystems in the vaccine manufacturing plants?
Decades ago, US had the education system to move millions of people through manufacturing and engineering pipeline to build all above things.
Now, that US education system does not exist. The manufacturing base does not exist. The engineering pipeline does not exist.
We produce more dropout Tik Tok stars than Professional Engineers that develop critical cooling cores, that can withstand heat and stress thresholds in modern military aircraft, and master welders with 20 years of experience that can weld specialty metal alloys in compact designs.
It’s not just aircraft. Do you know who works on water treatment plants that provide clean drinking water to millions of people in US? These guys will be retiring in few years. Who are going to replace them? Who are going to do the hard and difficult job of maintaining these critical systems?
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#210When you read the Skunk Works book you stumble upon passages where the government has to pay for tools maintenance and storage after the project is complete.
Some bureaucrat entity always decides at some moment that paying for storage of an arbitrarily old project tooling is not worth it.