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The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

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Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#111

Post by cs702 »

runjake wrote: post #3

The first prototype of the B-52 may have been designed in a weekend. The B-52 of today was iteratively designed over decades and the current H models are entirely different planes than earlier models (although structurally very close to the G model). Another HN commenter mentioned GPS being designed over a holiday. But we spent years and years in the military debugging GPS and making it functional. Claiming that some…

The OP is emblematic of the "cocktail-party level of understanding" that leads people to discount how hard it is, and how much blood, sweat, and tears it takes, to build anything complicated, like a plane: https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#112

Post by mikece »

selectodude wrote: post #64
hef19898 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a post appocalyptic world great-great-grandsons of B-52 pilots will inherit those planes, the same airframes their ancestors flew in the 50s. Impressive service life time, especially that since then nobody came up with something better then the B-52.

Necessity is the mother of invention and the US Military hasn’t had the necessity for anything newer.

I think a modified and militarized Boeing 777 (or 767) would be the ideal replacement for the B-52, though I realize a lot more goes into bomber design than just selecting a successful airframe.

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#113

Post by noneeeed »

runjake wrote: post #3

The first prototype of the B-52 may have been designed in a weekend. The B-52 of today was iteratively designed over decades and the current H models are entirely different planes than earlier models (although structurally very close to the G model). Another HN commenter mentioned GPS being designed over a holiday. But we spent years and years in the military debugging GPS and making it functional. Claiming that some…

An overnight success that was years in the making...

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#114

Post by georgeecollins »

On one hand this implies that the B-52 has been useful all this time-- and to some extent it has in different roles. But on the other hand, when the U-2 was shot down in 1960 it could never perform the role it was designed for. Since then the Air Force has sought different planes to fill that role and different roles for the B-52.

In that sense B-52 is like the battleship designs of WW1 that fought in WW2 and onward. Not sticking around because they are so effective but instead sticking around because they are dead ends.

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#115

Post by BitwiseFool »

Someone wrote: post #104
acidburnNSA wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, the Archos Jukebox was doing that well before Steve Jobs. Steve's genius concept was "I want all my music to fit in the palm of my hand, but with a way better UI than Archos Jukebox" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series

The iPod also fitted easier in the typical hand (and, probably more important, in the typical pocket). Dimensions of that Archos: 3.1 in x 4.4 in x 1.2 in = 16.4 in³ Dimensions of the first iPod: 4.02 in x 2.43 in x 0.78 in = 7.62 in³. That’s less than half the volume. (Weight-wise, the difference is smaller (10.2 vs 6.5 oz)

I invite people to look at a photo of the thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series#/media/F...

It looks so quintessentially late 90's, yet hideous at the same time.

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#116

Post by JohnBooty »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #71
Forgeties79 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I want all my music to fit in the palm of my hand.” Steve Jobs created the iPod in just one day

Meh, the Archos Jukebox was doing that well before Steve Jobs. Steve's genius concept was "I want all my music to fit in the palm of my hand, but with a way better UI than Archos Jukebox" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series

As an owner of an Archos Jukebox, the differences went way beyond the software interface.

The Archos was way larger and heavier than the iPod, and the build quality was abysmal. Mine essentially fell apart despite seeing only desktop use. Battery life was inferior as well. Headphone output was also much louder and cleaner on the iPod.

Literally everything about the iPod was better than literally everything about the Archos.

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#117

Post by kingkawn »

lelandfe wrote: post #92
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conceptualized is a perfect word. The claim that it was designed in a weekend is like those “overnight success” stories that ignore the decade of work that someone put in to get to that point.

This was genuinely an overnight success, though. They got approval on the strength of this design. And the broad strokes design of the aircraft seemingly stayed intact through the subsequent processes. This entire comment chain is bewildering, we're attacking strawmen. Did anyone read this article and leave assuming no further work was done after approval? Was this HN comment chain enlightening to anyone ? Who are we…

Thank you ffs

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#118

Post by NoFactualActual »

runjake wrote: post #3

The first prototype of the B-52 may have been designed in a weekend. The B-52 of today was iteratively designed over decades and the current H models are entirely different planes than earlier models (although structurally very close to the G model). Another HN commenter mentioned GPS being designed over a holiday. But we spent years and years in the military debugging GPS and making it functional. Claiming that some…

Seems like a language thing—I'd distinguish the initial "design" from the iterative "engineering". Of course, you could describe the latter as design, too, but it's an ambiguous word (like most words). The people taken by this clickbait aren't going to care which word is used.

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#119

Post by edgyquant »

froidpink wrote: post #100
lelandfe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was genuinely an overnight success, though. They got approval on the strength of this design. And the broad strokes design of the aircraft seemingly stayed intact through the subsequent processes. This entire comment chain is bewildering, we're attacking strawmen. Did anyone read this article and leave assuming no further work was done after approval? Was this HN comment chain enlightening to anyone ? Who are we…

It was a strong conceptual design, yes. For my aerospace engineering undergrad we also had to create a conceptual design for a new aircraft. And of course, as university projects go, we basically did it in five days. But I won't tell you how many iterations we would've had to go through until we had an optimum configuration ready to be sent to detail design The headline makes it look like their design was a definite…

Okay and the point here is that this wasn’t a college project thrown together in 5 days this was a military grade design outputted over a weekend.

Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

#120

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

nradov wrote: post #50
tyingq wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's unusual at all for any jet aircraft that's around for decades. They almost all get new engines, avionics, etc. That the B-52 still has 8 engines is somewhat surprising...that's not terribly desirable.

The Air Force considered replacing the 8 engines with 4 more powerful ones. However, they determined that the loss of one of those engines on take-off would cause a dangerous thrust asymmetry. Dealing with that would have required more extensive changes like moving the engine mounts, so they dropped the idea. But they are going to replace the engines with newer models. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42517/roll…

I had seen/heard/read that the thrust asymmetry was a design feature to help with yaw, and that fewer engines would overpower the design limits of other parts of the airplane, to the extent that everything else would need to be redesigned to handle them (mounts, tail, rudder, etc.)

edit: I believe this is the original video where I saw the above https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02_geGISTLg

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