Is That Really News?

One of the news reports about the Palm Beach Learjet crash made a point to tell us that one of the passengers was wealthy.

Um...

Us poors don't charter Learjets.

That's wealthy people stuff.

File under "duh!" 

We'll Do Better Next Time

Somewhere, Blue Angel #1 is looking at themselves in the mirror and saying, "I knew I should have shifted left just a tiny bit."

Pic flagrantly stolen from this tweet.

Something To Consider

How would Spain, France or Germany know we'd overflown their countries with our B-2's?

Think about it. 

While I Get It

I understand that sending Artemis up and around the moon was something that needed to be done to confirm that the equipment worked...

It's the same mission that Apollo 8 did.

All the "ground breaking" is 58 years old.

We're retracing our old steps, and I'm OK with doing it, but I refuse to act like it's never been done before.

We have done it before.

Do we even have a vehicle for the Apollo 9 and 10 analogs?

Do we have a lander for those mission analogs?

Are we even going to use this same capsule past the next Artemis launch?

There's only one more SLS stack, right?

I am excited we're going back to the moon, but...

There's only one instance of Kitty Hawk.  There's just one Blériot flight that matters.  There's just one Spirit of St Louis flight that crossed the Atlantic.  There's just one Apollo 8...

The firsts matter.

Who made the second powered flight?

Who was the second person to cross the English channel in the air?

Who was the second person to make a trans-Atlantic flight?

Hell, who was the crew of Apollo 8?  Because their absolutely essential mission to prove the gear pales to insignificance against the Apollo 11 mission.

Nobody was watching the Apollo 13 mission until everything went wrong.

I have the newspaper clippings for Apollo 17...  It's not first page news.

I want to participate in the hype, but I worry that if we don't get back to the Moon before Trump leaves office, we're not getting there until SpaceX ignores the FAA and launches his mission that doesn't come back; but establishes a base.

So, goody for the crew of Artemis II and I wish the program all the luck in the world.

But we need to get on with it and stop with dead ends like SLS.

Speaking Of Air Forces

One of the constant concerns that our allies have had about the F-35 was the online maintenance portion of the plane.

They point out that it's a vulnerability should someone hack in and be malicious.

Lockmart doesn't even need to hack in to disable who knows how much on the thing should we decide that we're upset with them...

Everything Old Is New Again

I was just reading about how the USMC is adding the capability to fire the new laser guided APKWS II rockets to their F/A-18C/D fleet.

Rocket?  No, rockets aren't guided.

The AGR-20A is guided, therefore, missile.

The neat thing is it's a standard 2.75" rocket in format, so it can be fired from any 2.75"/70mm launcher in the inventory.  Just need a laser designator to guide it with.

That's a 7-shot launcher for the Marines.  Up to 8 such launchers can be carried on a legacy Hornet.

It makes me wonder where the old LAU-3/A's go.  Those hold 19 rounds each.

The more modern, and probably more compatible LAU-69D/A also holds 19 rounds.

The bigger launchers have more drag, of course, but it'd mean 152 shots instead of 56 if 8 launchers were carried.

I know the USMC and Navy don't like triple ejector racks any more, but that'd add four more launchers to the plane and 28 more missiles in the 7-shot launchers.

But the part that tickled my fancy is how many planes used to have 2.75" unguided folding fin rockets built into them.  The  FFAR becomes the Hydra...

And an F-8 Crusader gets 32 laser guided missiles fired from the belly tray...  If we had any Crusaders that still had the tray and were flyable.

But laser guidance would have made the concept viable in a way that the unguided mighty mouse wasn't. 

Challenger

40 Years Ago some engineers put on their manager hats and seven Astronauts died.

I was in the lunch line at school buying my breakfast.

They announced it over the PA.

Not more than 10 seconds later someone made the "what's this button do?" joke.

Just after I'd finished eating I joked that the student liberation organization claimed credit for the bombing and no teacher would be safe until our demands were met.

Just after that I was waiting for my mom to come pick me up for my three day out of school suspension.

Apparently a teacher was right behind me when I made my joke.

Zero appreciation, or tolerance, for gallows humor at Ames High School.

I've long supported manned spaceflight.

I've long been critical of the shuttle program.

I've loved planes as long as I can remember and from reading about military programs I gleaned that the time to start the replacement is during the first flight.

If NASA had used that rule of thumb then Challenger wouldn't have been on the pad that morning 40 years ago.  She would have been in a museum.

But I remember what the original plan for the orbiters was and we never even once flew them that way.  Hauling modules for the ISS is as close as we got.

So a replacement never got made, we killed 14 astronauts with it, and the jobs program it had become finally died.

The replacement for the replacement would probably have been flying before Columbia's accident too...  But we were never serious about it.

We made a jobs program and science research toy out of a cargo truck and were surprised it was expensive.  So we cut funding for follow-on programs. 

Damn Just Damn

Gyroscopic forces are amazing.

When the plane rotates on take-off the engine, whose fan is basically a big gyroscope, doesn't want to go with.  That puts tremendous force on the mounts that are forcing the fan to change plane with the aircraft.

Those same spinning forces send the engine off over to the right.

Also of note is there's enough fuel and fuel pressure in the feed lines to run the engine after it has separated from the wing.  That's why it got so far above the wing when it broke free.  Frame 5 shows the smoke of it flaming out.

Damn.

I think that the only airport they could have brought it down safely once this happened is Edwards Air Force Base. 

Best Use Of 1980's Music In A Video Short Goes To...

 

Fair Winds

Randy "Duke' Cunningham has left the chat.

Naval Aviator

Congressman

Criminal (Repeating myself?)

Convicted Felon (Pardoned) 

None Of That Makes Sense

Love him or hate him (and we hate him) Robert MacNamara's reasoning for making a coherent designation system for our weaponry was sound.

And we're not using it for aircraft anymore.

F-35 should have been F-24.  With the F-35B becoming FV-24B.

B-21 should be B-3.

F-47 should be F-25.

Or the F-35 should be F-25 and F-47 should be F-26 because F/A-18E should have gotten a new number and be F-24A.  But Congress is stupid.

And now...

OA-1K Skyraider II

It's not the attack version of the O-1.  The O-1 was the Cessna Birddog.

It's not the observation version of the A-1 Skyraider.

But since the last version of the A-1 was the A-1J, if this WAS a version of the A-1 then K IS the next version designator. 

But the OA-1K isn't a development of the Douglas AD.  It's a development of the L3 Harris Air Tractor AT-802!  The AT-802 is a further development of the plane that Dusty Crophopper was based on.

Since it's a totally different plane, it should be A-14A or OA-14A.

Cargo Flight

Passenger is a form of cargo that complains, but it's cargo.

The Blue Origin flights send up passengers, not crew.

The vehicle is a robot.

The people on board don't have a means to affect anything.

They're cargo.

Don't get me wrong, if I had the means to buy a ticket I'd be in line waiting for my turn to be on the manifest. 

But having the means and taking the flight grants me nothing.

It also does fuck-all to contribute to anything.

Which isn't bad.

Bezos gets to make some money.  Maybe...

But it's a sight seeing trip.  Like helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon.

It's not a vital contribution to Mankind.  It does not advance women's rights.  It does not suppress minority rights.

It simply is what it does.

Don't Throw Us In The Briar Patch B'rer Pooh

China just cancelled delivery for about 200 Boeing jets, blaming the tariff war.

Boeing will shortly be letting about 200 other customers in their over six thousand plane back-order their delivery date got moved up. 

When I took the plant tour in Seattle the guide explained how customers paid.

1/3 on order.  1/3 on first flight.  1/3 on delivery.

And pretty much unrefundable.

So Chairman Pooh just paid 2/3 the price of a plane that Boeing will repaint and deliver to someone else.

Boeing will almost definitely be pocketing the money and charging full price to the new owner.

Asking The Important Questions

Should Northrop-Grumman win the F/A-XX bid...

What cat name should be applied? 

I like Bobcat because the stealthy thing will almost certainly be tailless.

It Wasn't Like AAA Came And Got 'Em

 

Ooops!

This is just down the road from me!

Plane flips after emergency landing. 

No injuries, they say.

When I first saw the pics I thought it looked like a very survivable crash.

FB

I'm reading about how Boeing got the contract for the Air Force's F-47A.

Most of the press is saying that it's Boeing's first "clean sheet" fighter design.

That's not true.

The FB was not developed from another design.  Nor was the F2B.  Nor was the P-26A.

The first clean sheet design since the merger with McDonnell-Douglas?  Yes.

The first clean sheet design ever?  No.

I read the story and went looking for the P-26A as the first clean sheet design and was surprised that they'd made two fighters for the Navy before they made the Peashooter for the Army.

Evolution Of F-4 Phantom In Combat Flight Simulators (1989 - 2025)

I've played a few of these games and they never seemed as bad as they clearly are now.

Willing suspension of disbelief is real!  I was more willing then than now.

The Important Question

While watching Boom Supersonic conclude it's flight test regime with their XB-1 a thought occurred:

If Boom can do this, why can't Boeing?

Why can't Airbus?

Northup-Grumman?

LockMart?

Bueller?  Bueller?

Listening to the founder talk about how long between new designs we are and slow iteration has gotten.

Maybe their way is the future.  I hope so.

Fall By Wire

I noticed something in this vid of the F-35A crash in Alaska:

The control surfaces are not moving.  Even if the pilot ejects, the flight control computer will still try to keep flying and those surfaces should have been moving all about in the attempt.

But they're fixed here.

Next year when the report comes out, I think we're going to hear about a flight control failure.