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The B-52 has some life left in her after all.
The Air Force has decided to allow Boeing to continue to perform maintenance and upgrades to its fleet of Stratofortress H-model heavy bombers. By continuing to support the BUFF fleet, the Air Force is guaranteeing that they will remain in a front-line role for at least another decade, if not two. The other message being sent is that the acquisition of a new front-line heavy bomber has taken a back seat for the time being.
There are a couple of points to be made here. First is that proper initial design and simplicity will last for the long haul. I think we so often become enamored of new technology and whiz-bang features that we forget to keep things simple. The fact that the B-52 has been in active service for over 50 years really speaks to the skill and competence of the designers at Boeing. Any attempt at a replacement should heed the same general principles.
Second, in a post-Cold War world, it's okay to be "good enough" when it comes to our military. We aren't going head to head with the best that the talented Soviet designers could muster. We are, however, often called to fight irregular and guerrilla conflicts against adversaries armed with Kalashnikovs and Semtex. A gazillion-dollar B-2 is not the right tool for this conflict. On the other hand, it's relatively simple to "bomb back to the stone age" with an unbroken stream of B-52s dropping a hundred 500 pound iron bombs at a time. In the B-52, we have a bomber that's good enough to handle the tasks that we need to handle right now. We can utilize the money that would have been spent trying to get a new whiz-bang out the door on research and development. When the time comes, we'll be able to make a better weapons system, because the research will be there and the major problems will have been overcome.
Now, China is the wild card. What comes out of Beijing will serve to drive our weapons development for the next fifty years. ABM, anyone?
Cheers,
-- Zach
Showing posts with label Boeing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boeing. Show all posts
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
MLP - 21 February 2011
Today is my youngest ex-utero child's second birthday! Woo-hoo! She decided to start the day with a nice round of screaming. Once we made it to day care, she decided to continue the theme and scream until I was all the way out of earshot. Hopefully, she'll be better after her nap.
I'm going to do some mindless link propagation today, primarily because I'm swamped with schoolwork. Here goes.
The Wall Street Journal is running a story about how NASA's funding is in limbo. Apparently, NASA's buget is a partisan fight. The White House is trying to scale back the amount of funding the agency would receive for support of private rockets. This means that commercial space taxi services might be making shots on their own dime. Congress was understandably skittish last year about outsourcing core NASA functions to private firms.
I'm torn about this. On one hand, I think that NASA and science in general ought to have a nearly blank check to do whatever they need or want. It is a fact that a dollar invested into science and technology research and development returns much more than a dollar once the tech hits the private sector. On the other hand, NASA does need to be frugal (just like the rest of us) and not waste money on things that detract from its core purpose. What do you guys think the right answer is?
Florida Today is running an internal NASA assessment about how they (the agency) mis-calculated the risk of the shuttle flights. They were apparently off by an order of magnitude (1 in 10 instead of 1 in 100). The fact that we only lost two orbiters and their crews speaks large volumes about the skill and dedication of the people associated with the program. It also shows how lucky NASA was. "We were lucky" notes the report. Lucky indeed. How do we go forward and make the next project better and safer?
United Space Alliance is trying desperately to stay in business. They are seeking funding to proceed with a second-phase study on the potential of flying another twelve to fourteen shuttle missions. The United Space Alliance is a joint Boeing/Lockheed-Martin venture; they handle the production of the eternal tank and do other assorted work for the Shuttle Program.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has predicted that China will take a long time to begin to match the United States in terms of low-observable air superiority aircraft. Gates' comments are in response to industry buzz about the unveiling of the first Chinese stealth aircraft, the J-20. Timed to coincide with the Defense Secretary's visit to China last month, the test flights of the J-20 proceeded smoothly. Many pundits feel that this was nothing more than hollow saber-rattling, noting that China has a much more effective arsenal of surface-to-ship ballistic missiles for projecting power in the Pacific.
Time will tell if this is where WWIII would start...
One of my professors is giving a talk on Friday about the Mars Phoenix Lander mission. Dr. John Hoffman will be speaking on behalf of the Texas Astronomical Society Friday, February 25, from 19:00 to 22:00 in one of the lecture halls in the Science and Learning Center.
That's all for today, folks. Happy Monday!
Cheers,
-- Zach
I'm going to do some mindless link propagation today, primarily because I'm swamped with schoolwork. Here goes.
The Wall Street Journal is running a story about how NASA's funding is in limbo. Apparently, NASA's buget is a partisan fight. The White House is trying to scale back the amount of funding the agency would receive for support of private rockets. This means that commercial space taxi services might be making shots on their own dime. Congress was understandably skittish last year about outsourcing core NASA functions to private firms.
I'm torn about this. On one hand, I think that NASA and science in general ought to have a nearly blank check to do whatever they need or want. It is a fact that a dollar invested into science and technology research and development returns much more than a dollar once the tech hits the private sector. On the other hand, NASA does need to be frugal (just like the rest of us) and not waste money on things that detract from its core purpose. What do you guys think the right answer is?
Florida Today is running an internal NASA assessment about how they (the agency) mis-calculated the risk of the shuttle flights. They were apparently off by an order of magnitude (1 in 10 instead of 1 in 100). The fact that we only lost two orbiters and their crews speaks large volumes about the skill and dedication of the people associated with the program. It also shows how lucky NASA was. "We were lucky" notes the report. Lucky indeed. How do we go forward and make the next project better and safer?
United Space Alliance is trying desperately to stay in business. They are seeking funding to proceed with a second-phase study on the potential of flying another twelve to fourteen shuttle missions. The United Space Alliance is a joint Boeing/Lockheed-Martin venture; they handle the production of the eternal tank and do other assorted work for the Shuttle Program.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has predicted that China will take a long time to begin to match the United States in terms of low-observable air superiority aircraft. Gates' comments are in response to industry buzz about the unveiling of the first Chinese stealth aircraft, the J-20. Timed to coincide with the Defense Secretary's visit to China last month, the test flights of the J-20 proceeded smoothly. Many pundits feel that this was nothing more than hollow saber-rattling, noting that China has a much more effective arsenal of surface-to-ship ballistic missiles for projecting power in the Pacific.
Time will tell if this is where WWIII would start...
One of my professors is giving a talk on Friday about the Mars Phoenix Lander mission. Dr. John Hoffman will be speaking on behalf of the Texas Astronomical Society Friday, February 25, from 19:00 to 22:00 in one of the lecture halls in the Science and Learning Center.
That's all for today, folks. Happy Monday!
Cheers,
-- Zach
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
NASA's Environmentally Responsible Airliner results...
The Seattle pi recently ran an article on the finalists for the NASA Environmentally Responsible Airliner Concept competition. Included are artist's renderings and the companies that produced the designs. I remember having seen a RFP for this last year. At the time, I didn't have the spare mental capacity to take on such a challenge. I really wish that I could have participated in this.
The designs shown on the website are all blended lifting bodies with rear-mounted engines. I like the rear engine layout for airliners, because it reduces noise and vibration levels in the passenger cabin. One drawback to this configuration is the potential for a deep stall. The designs appear to be slippery enough to allow clean air into the intakes, hopefully reducing or eliminating that problem.
While blended lifting bodies offer exceptional payload and relatively short takeoff and landing rolls, I'm really not crazy about them. My first love is the Lockheed Constellation, an achingly beautiful aircraft. Blended lifting bodies look like pregnant guppy-whale-things. They aren't especially pretty, and that may be their undoing in the air passenger industry.
I would posit that airlines acquire aircraft that fit their need, as the budget allows. Generally, airliners are a temperamental bunch, displaying faults and quirks like any human. Air crews develop personal relationships with individual aircraft, and passengers will travel the globe, change flights, and pay extra to fly a specific airframe (witness the popularity of Airliners.net.) It is therefore in the best interest of the industry to push the design and development of pretty aircraft.
These designs aren't pretty.
Beauty issues aside, I have to wonder if current airports will require modification for these new designs. They appear to have very long wingspans. Could the wings fold like those of a carrier-based aircraft? If they fold up, could they also fold down to take even greater advantage of the massive lift generated by their shapes? Is there any potential for trans- or supersonic performance?
Anyway, I leave the article to you, dear reader. Tomorrow, I'll talk about what kinds of wacky projects I might be doing with Team UTD.
Cheers,
-- Zach
The designs shown on the website are all blended lifting bodies with rear-mounted engines. I like the rear engine layout for airliners, because it reduces noise and vibration levels in the passenger cabin. One drawback to this configuration is the potential for a deep stall. The designs appear to be slippery enough to allow clean air into the intakes, hopefully reducing or eliminating that problem.
While blended lifting bodies offer exceptional payload and relatively short takeoff and landing rolls, I'm really not crazy about them. My first love is the Lockheed Constellation, an achingly beautiful aircraft. Blended lifting bodies look like pregnant guppy-whale-things. They aren't especially pretty, and that may be their undoing in the air passenger industry.
I would posit that airlines acquire aircraft that fit their need, as the budget allows. Generally, airliners are a temperamental bunch, displaying faults and quirks like any human. Air crews develop personal relationships with individual aircraft, and passengers will travel the globe, change flights, and pay extra to fly a specific airframe (witness the popularity of Airliners.net.) It is therefore in the best interest of the industry to push the design and development of pretty aircraft.
These designs aren't pretty.
Beauty issues aside, I have to wonder if current airports will require modification for these new designs. They appear to have very long wingspans. Could the wings fold like those of a carrier-based aircraft? If they fold up, could they also fold down to take even greater advantage of the massive lift generated by their shapes? Is there any potential for trans- or supersonic performance?
Anyway, I leave the article to you, dear reader. Tomorrow, I'll talk about what kinds of wacky projects I might be doing with Team UTD.
Cheers,
-- Zach
Friday, January 14, 2011
New Drones for the Military
I am completely unprepared to write about air or space today. I'll do the best I can.
The LA Times has an article about the next generation of unmanned aerial vehicles slated for use in the military. Three vehicles are discussed, briefly; the Global Observer, the the X-47B, and the Phantom Ray.
The Global Observer is a massive aircraft with four almost comical-looking propeller engines, each having two blades. It looks like a single-winged Dornier creation out of the early Twenties. Powered by liquid hydrogen (just like the Shuttle) and boasting a wingspan comparable to that of an early model Boeing 747, the Global Observer is designed to loiter at 65,000 feet for periods of up to a week. On-board cameras can take a single image that's larger than Afghanistan (though there's no information of the resolution of this image). This functionality will allow military commanders and political leaders to essentially see what's going on in the world's hot spots at a given time, in real time (or near-real time), on one big image.
The X-47B looks like something Batman would fly. Stealthy, angular at the leading edge, with an air intake where you would expect the cockpit, and able to carry two JDAM weapons for use against transient targets of opportunity. The X-47B's claim to fame is that it can conduct operations from an aircraft carrier, giving it a very quick strike capability and essentially unlimited in-theater endurance. This is what the failed A-12 Flying Dorito would have done for the Navy.
Finally, we come to the Boeing Phantom Ray, which is an outgrowth of the X-45 Program (itself the child of the Bird of Prey stealth demonstrator). Though not designed for any one role, the Phantom Ray could conceivably be adapted to nearly any function short of air superiority. The Ray is about the same size as the X-47B, but carries more payload (up to 8 JDAM weapons) and cruises faster (0.8 Mach vs 0.45 Mach, about the same speed as an airliner). This would seem to make the Phantom Ray the better aircraft from an all-around perspective.
One marked advantage of the latter to aircraft mentioned is the fact that they are turbofan powered instead of propeller-driven. This means that the X-47B and the Phantom Ray can go faster and climb higher than the Predator and Reaper drones in use today. I think it will be interesting to see how quickly these aircraft are brought into the fold and deployed. They *could* save many US lives.
Cheers,
-- Zach
The LA Times has an article about the next generation of unmanned aerial vehicles slated for use in the military. Three vehicles are discussed, briefly; the Global Observer, the the X-47B, and the Phantom Ray.
The Global Observer is a massive aircraft with four almost comical-looking propeller engines, each having two blades. It looks like a single-winged Dornier creation out of the early Twenties. Powered by liquid hydrogen (just like the Shuttle) and boasting a wingspan comparable to that of an early model Boeing 747, the Global Observer is designed to loiter at 65,000 feet for periods of up to a week. On-board cameras can take a single image that's larger than Afghanistan (though there's no information of the resolution of this image). This functionality will allow military commanders and political leaders to essentially see what's going on in the world's hot spots at a given time, in real time (or near-real time), on one big image.
The X-47B looks like something Batman would fly. Stealthy, angular at the leading edge, with an air intake where you would expect the cockpit, and able to carry two JDAM weapons for use against transient targets of opportunity. The X-47B's claim to fame is that it can conduct operations from an aircraft carrier, giving it a very quick strike capability and essentially unlimited in-theater endurance. This is what the failed A-12 Flying Dorito would have done for the Navy.
Finally, we come to the Boeing Phantom Ray, which is an outgrowth of the X-45 Program (itself the child of the Bird of Prey stealth demonstrator). Though not designed for any one role, the Phantom Ray could conceivably be adapted to nearly any function short of air superiority. The Ray is about the same size as the X-47B, but carries more payload (up to 8 JDAM weapons) and cruises faster (0.8 Mach vs 0.45 Mach, about the same speed as an airliner). This would seem to make the Phantom Ray the better aircraft from an all-around perspective.
One marked advantage of the latter to aircraft mentioned is the fact that they are turbofan powered instead of propeller-driven. This means that the X-47B and the Phantom Ray can go faster and climb higher than the Predator and Reaper drones in use today. I think it will be interesting to see how quickly these aircraft are brought into the fold and deployed. They *could* save many US lives.
Cheers,
-- Zach
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