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Planning For 80-Year Old B-52s
Merry_B.Buck writes "The B-52 Stratofortress, famous for its carpet bombing (or, as
the Pentagon prefers, "long sticking") was designed in the 1940s to carry boxcar-sized atomic bombs. This Fast Company analysis describes how the US plans to keep these planes -- the youngest of which was built in 1962 -- flying until 2040. "
I believe there was a plan at one point to extend their operational life by replacing their dual engine pods with the recently introduced engines used on the 777. As some of you may know, that engine is huge (it's intake diameter is the same as the diameter of a 737s fuselage!), so, I'm not quite sure how they planned to do that.
But if you add up the total thrust that would be produced for 4 777 engines, it would be enough to acclerate the B-52 vertically!
Hooyah!
I was a Bomb/Nav tech on the B-52's and can definitely attest to their resilience. While the airframe is old, they are running early 80's era technology throughout many areas.
The bombing systems run off of 3 computing units, each with as I remember four Z-80A processors. Data is loaded from harden (and sloooow) tape drives.
The Nav/bombardier compartment is on the first floor, but it does sit quite a ways back from the pilot. Underneath the pilot's is the main radar antenna.
The FLIR and STV systems were top. The FLIR was especially handy in the blizzard-ridden hellhole I was stationed at. We could use them to discern the sex of people from far away (different hotspots), and we could also located our boss driving the trick in a whiteout. He was a chain smoker, so we would just aim it out on the flightline, and wait for the telltale thin white heat line of a man driving a work truck with his cigarette hanging out the window....
Sgt. Barker if you're out there, give me a ring at:
greygent [at] absent [dot] org
I loved working on B-52's, they were excellent, quality planes...and I actually do miss the flightline life...
Working on B-1s...was another story. Nothing scares a pilot thats about to take off, more, than when an advanced avionics tech rushes up into the plane to fix a problem with a rubber mallet (sticky relays). when I was in the military, I read a report that stated as things stand, even though the B-1 is 20 years newer, the B-52 airframe will still far outlast the B-1.
A company I once developed software for was running their production systems on old Wang computers. It was kept in an air-conditioned room and employees were told to stay out of it. The box was about the size of a tall washing machine. It even looked like one, with dials in the front. I think they used telnet on their Windows machine to access it. As far as I know, the software has remained intact, with some slight updating to accomodate more products.
because the sr71 was an engineering nightmare,
it leaked fuel like mad when on the tarmac, it's design was such that there was NO payload space except for the camera, and it's engines are a maintaince and reliability nightmare.
be glad that the sr71 is no longer needed. it was a nightmare, a sexy nightmare.
Besides, sattelites do a ton better, a f117 can perform the same missions without having to fly at the edge of space. (the sr71 had to to keep away from missles and planes. that the only reason)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yes. The have (had?) the Tu-95 /142, NATO codename Bear heavy bomber. They used to be intercepted over the northsea all the time by aircraft from the squadron where I served.
a propeller plane that could go stratospheric and insanely fast.
It also was insanely loud :-)
karma capped