The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
1–10 of 209 posts
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#2Some of the most successful programs are designed either by one person or a small group of designers who were given the autonomy to do their job. This story reminds me of the origin story of the American GPS system which was designed over a holiday weekend by three engineers. If you want projects to work then give a small, qualified group the room to make decisions and turn them loose. If you want to give the appearance of doing something for years on end then assemble endless committees and design reviews (like the F-35, Ford Class carrier, DDX-21, etc).
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#3The 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 something was designed in a day is good clickbait, but it completely discounts the years of blood, sweat, and tears it took to get to the product that people have in their head.
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#4[deleted]
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#5Some of the most successful programs are designed either by one person or a small group of designers who were given the autonomy to do their job. This story reminds me of the origin story of the American GPS system which was designed over a holiday weekend by three engineers. If you want projects to work then give a small, qualified group the room to make decisions and turn them loose. If you want to give the appeara…
More like the initial design concept was defined over a weekend. The actual detailed design, even for highly successful programs like the F-117, took much longer. Nobody ever designed an aircraft for serial production over a weekend, not even back when planes were build out of canvas and wood.
EDIT: After reading the article, what Boeing did back then was the same thing as Boom coming up with a rendering and a high level design concept over the weekend. Also, back then times, and technology, were different.
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#6Some of the most successful programs are designed either by one person or a small group of designers who were given the autonomy to do their job. This story reminds me of the origin story of the American GPS system which was designed over a holiday weekend by three engineers. If you want projects to work then give a small, qualified group the room to make decisions and turn them loose. If you want to give the appeara…
Alledgedly a Bugatti W12 and W18 engine was sketched during a train ride on the Shinkansen on an envelope.
https://de.hoffmann-speedster.com/media/image/e0/14/3f/Ferdi...
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#7The 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.
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#8The B-52 design proposal was done in a hotel room over one weekend, the actual engineering took at least 3 years, including "670 days in the wind tunnel". That is not to say the weekend hotel proposal was not an impressive accomplishment in itself, it was. But there's a difference between laying out a software architecture and writing code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress#Des...
> On Thursday, 21 October 1948, Boeing engineers George S. Schairer, Art Carlsen, and Vaughn Blumenthal presented the design of a four-engine turboprop bomber to the chief of bomber development, Colonel Pete Warden. Warden was disappointed by the projected aircraft and asked if the Boeing team could come up with a proposal for a four-engine turbojet bomber [...] By late Friday night, they had laid out what was essentially a new airplane.
> [...] On Monday, Schairer presented Colonel Warden with a neatly bound 33-page proposal and a 14-inch (36 cm) scale model. The aircraft was projected to exceed all design specifications.
> [...] During ground testing on 29 November 1951, the XB-52's pneumatic system failed during a full-pressure test; the resulting explosion severely damaged the trailing edge of the wing, necessitating considerable repairs. [...] The XB-52 followed on 2 October 1952. The thorough development, including 670 days in the wind tunnel and 130 days of aerodynamic and aeroelastic testing, paid off with smooth flight testing. Encouraged, the USAF increased its order to 282 B-52s.
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#9I knew it wasn’t. I’ve seen the engineering plat drawings.
Surely was not overnight but a cumulative effort of many engineers of many disciplines over many decades.
Most notably the airframe framework which makes its longevity more than possible.
Will not stoop to a simplistic clickbait.
Re: The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend
#10Great article, despite the painful spelling of "bona fide" as "bonified". I guess they don't have a copy editor.