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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

#141

Post by jeffdn »

hef19898 wrote: post #61
ofrzeta wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platonic question: is it still a B-52 then? cf. the Ship of Theseus

Yes, it is. The current H generation has very little to do with the first build airframes so. Including certification. EDIT: Those upgrade programs, e.g. the F-15 is currently at "X", are complete development programs and involve a certain amount of certification and re-certification. That in the case of the B-52 those upgrades have been applied to existing, tremendously old, airframes, doesn't change that. It does m…

That's a little disingenuous, regarding the F-15 -- there is the A/B series, with A being single-seat and B being the two-seat trainer, and the C/D series, with the same distinction between the two models. Both the F-15A and the F-15C are air superiority fighters, with an exclusively air-to-air role. The F-15E is a multirole fighter-bomber, not an air superiority fighter. The F-15X is an F-15E repurposed as a beyond visual range (BVR) missile truck, with data links to AEWC planes that can provide targeting solutions for those missiles. All of the letters between E and X have not been used.

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

#142

Post by spaetzleesser »

daveslash wrote: post #62
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

Heh, exactly. Succinctly put. Here's a longer-winded version: I'm an R&D Software Engineer. In a workplace setting years ago we had a Software Architect who would advise management and the implementation engineers. Me and my team were really struggling with a difficult implementation problem relating to some federated identity stuff. Management told us to go to the architect. We explained our problems and he waved th…

I always tell people that I could probably "architect" the infrastructure of my whole company (Fortune 500) in a few days if you ignored the little pesky implementation details.

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

#143

Post by qbrass »

bee_rider wrote: post #85
yabones wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honestly a fantastic case for incremental improvements over time. There's practically no single part on a modern B-52 that's original to the 1960s since everything has been overhauled and modernized decade by decade. Every attempt to replace it has been (or will be) retired before its EOL.

Wonder what a from-scratch B-52 equivalent would look like nowadays. I don't think they could resist the urge to give it a gimmick. Who wants to design a bomb truck?!?

You mean like a giant, tailless, stealth, flying wing? Or would that would be too gimmicky?

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

hajile wrote: post #130
digdugdirk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations for an overview resource that better explains your statements? Both about the YF-23 design being better, and about why the B-52 design is so good.

YF-23 had faster supercruise, a much bigger range, and had a way larger internal ordinance bay (external ordinance kills stealth). They intentionally skipped the sexy vectored thrusters for B-2 style inset exhausts which make infrared signature much smaller (especially to ground-based attackers). This meant the YF-23 could have delivered more ordinance faster and farther while having higher rates of mission success d…

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by aerostable_slug »

p_l wrote: post #39
justsomehnguy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the new plane is not Tu-144 or Buran. Then it's not a new plane, but a stolen one. /s

Buran was made to look like Shuttle (despite opposition of engineers on the project), but was completely local design.

How does one separate the outer mold line of the spacecraft from its performance?

Isn't Buran's appearance driven by similar requirements vs. aesthetics? What else would it have looked like — if you want lots of crossrange capability, you're not going to get something that looked like Faget's designs, would you?

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

#146

Post by dylan604 »

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…

Designed in a weekend is the perfect HN trope.

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

#147

Post by coredog64 »

hajile wrote: post #106
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.

The current F-22 looks and acts nothing like the YF-22 that won the competition (despite the YF-23 being much better, but that's another story). The fact that the B-52 production was not just similar to the prototype, but similar to a complete mockup is a testament to the accuracy of their initial vision. The fact that the US continues to use that design after so many decades is even more amazing.

Boeing already had experience and credibility with the USAF from the earlier B-47. In some respects, the B-52 is “the B-47 but bigger”. You can see it in the similar fighter canopy cockpit on the XB-52.

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

#148

Post by GartzenDeHaes »

yabones wrote: post #7
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…

It's honestly a fantastic case for incremental improvements over time. There's practically no single part on a modern B-52 that's original to the 1960s since everything has been overhauled and modernized decade by decade. Every attempt to replace it has been (or will be) retired before its EOL.

I don't think you would say that if you had ever been inside one. They are ancient -- and very greasy.

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

#149

Post by palunon »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #120
nradov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can use thrust asymmetry to help with yaw, yes.

But here we're talking about unplanned sudden thrust asymmetry, causing a massive yaw force at a critical phase of flight, takeoff, where you're engines are likely to be near their full power and you're close to/on the ground.

If you go from 8 engines to 4, loosing one engine goes from causing 25% thrust loss on the wing to 50%.

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

#150

Post by coredog64 »

jeffdn wrote: post #141
hef19898 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is. The current H generation has very little to do with the first build airframes so. Including certification. EDIT: Those upgrade programs, e.g. the F-15 is currently at "X", are complete development programs and involve a certain amount of certification and re-certification. That in the case of the B-52 those upgrades have been applied to existing, tremendously old, airframes, doesn't change that. It does m…

That's a little disingenuous, regarding the F-15 -- there is the A/B series, with A being single-seat and B being the two-seat trainer, and the C/D series, with the same distinction between the two models. Both the F-15A and the F-15C are air superiority fighters, with an exclusively air-to-air role. The F-15E is a multirole fighter-bomber, not an air superiority fighter. The F-15X is an F-15E repurposed as a beyond…

The more useful identifier is the block number which identifies production changes.
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