41–50 of 137 posts
I remember seeing this beast at the Air Force 25th anniversary in '72 at wright pat. Pretty sure the one I saw didn't ever fly again.
That era of aviation was nuts. I wish I was around for it. Men with slide rules working out the limits of material science, aerodynamics, and everything else, all at once. Because it wasn't enough to just push one limit, you had to push half a dozen others to get things to that first limit. And the rate of advance was just staggering. The XB70 flew in late 1964. Concorde was doing revenue flights in 1976, cruising at…
My favorite bit of design from this era went something like this: "ooohhh, we need something that can handle high heat. How about if we made it radioactive?" and so Mag-Thor was born ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mag-Thor ): Magnesium plus Thorium. It's creep resistant up to 350C! And it's only mildly radioactive! That's not a problem, right? Actually used on the BOMARC and D-21's ramjet engines- which is why you d…
I have a love/hate relationship with this plane. In 2014 I got to visit the AF Museum in Dayton, OH. With all the exceptional exhibits there it is completely obvious the XB-70 is THE crown jewel in that museum. And it snowed while we were visiting and they shut down the hangar with the XB-70 because it required a shuttle ride. So now I still have on my bucket list to see it.
I have a love/hate relationship as well, mostly because I grew up within bicycling distance and spent way too much time at the museum. The XB-70 used to be parked outside right in front of the main entrance. The cool thing is they also have the X-3, which seems like the same design family so you can see the test article then the attempt at a usable aircraft. It was also the location of one of the most bonkers thing I…
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I agree with you, but the issue afaik is that B-52 was more flexible whereas the B-70 was basically single purpose and basically obsoleted by ICBMs. B-52s were able to pivot to new roles so have stayed around. I'm humbled for us laughing at the one guy assigned to B-52 maintenance role when was in USAF training over 30 years ago "That old thing? Ha!". Who would have guessed..
What killed the xb-70 was the advent of better air to air missiles that nullified its high-altitude high-speed flight advantage. ICBMs also render other kinds of bombers obsolete and yet b52 and tu-95 are still around.
The B-52 survived by becoming a low altitude bomber and an excellent, cheap nuclear-capable cruise missile delivery platform that was comparatively cheap to operate at the same level of effectiveness as the B1-B and B-2A for similar roles.
Russia more or less mirrored this with the Tu-95.
The Cold War era was the dream of engineers of all participant countries, I figured. Are we close to another one? Just wanna make sure it doesn't turn into a hot one.
As someone who once worked on B-52s, I find it amusing how many "successors" it has outlasted. And I know why, because I worked on many of those, too. It has taught me to be skeptical of unproven claims and promises, especially when someone is particularly passionate about them. Also that simplicity is king. Complexity is the enemy. I have great respect for the XB-70. It's the only strategic bomber I haven't worked o…
I always wondered why the B-52 didn’t get replaced by converted airliners (787 has quite similar dimensions I believe). Would be much cheaper to run and could do practically the same thing, no?
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Yep, up until January 1993 or so. "SRAM Howell" ring a bell?
Ah I got there 1/93 so may have missed. I remember going to "fundies", getting called "pinger", etc. Good times.
As someone who once worked on B-52s, I find it amusing how many "successors" it has outlasted. And I know why, because I worked on many of those, too. It has taught me to be skeptical of unproven claims and promises, especially when someone is particularly passionate about them. Also that simplicity is king. Complexity is the enemy. I have great respect for the XB-70. It's the only strategic bomber I haven't worked o…
> Also that simplicity is king. Complexity is the enemy. As someone that has managed engineering teams for large projects, I 100% agree. One of the issues with computers IMO is that it has made bad engineering easier. Back when you had to check everything with a slide-rule, you had a real appreciation for the skill and engineering prowess and experience to make things absolutely dead simple.
As someone who once worked on B-52s, I find it amusing how many "successors" it has outlasted. And I know why, because I worked on many of those, too. It has taught me to be skeptical of unproven claims and promises, especially when someone is particularly passionate about them. Also that simplicity is king. Complexity is the enemy. I have great respect for the XB-70. It's the only strategic bomber I haven't worked o…
https://www.generalstaff.org/CDA/Air/B-70/XB-70_Escape_Syste...