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NightGyr posted:He said "hey, how about I'm flying the helicopter for real?" And they paid for four months of helicopter lessons out of the movie budget. And it was loving amazing
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Apr 17, 2020 09:21
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Midjack posted:Frequently an activity or location will be assigned a letter or word that gets reused. “Have” seems to be associated with things that happen at Groom Lake. For a while, the first word (HAVE, TACIT, etc) indicated which bit of the Air Force that program was created by. Also, those are apparently just nicknames, they have different code names. http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/codenames.html
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Apr 17, 2020 11:38
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All the "Have" codenames should be completed with "Will Travel".
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Apr 17, 2020 11:40
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Check out this marvel of 1910s technology https://twitter.com/PikeGrey1418/status/1251091808970473472
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Apr 17, 2020 12:31
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aphid_licker posted:Check out this marvel of 1910s technology You can't without: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPgS26ZhqZs
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Apr 17, 2020 12:45
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Godholio posted:It's all of the above, basically. Sometimes they mean things, sometimes they're completely random, sometimes a term is intentionally used because it usually means a thing but in this case it's a misdirection. This. And it can go several levels deep with 'public' (not public but used in a certain community) code names and internal code names for the same activities. Who is doing the work can be as secret as what work is being done.
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Apr 17, 2020 14:08
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As much as I want to hate Tom Cruise for his batshit crazy Scientology beliefs, I just can't. He's just so god drat good in almost everything he does.
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Apr 17, 2020 15:12
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slidebite posted:As much as I want to hate Tom Cruise for his batshit crazy Scientology beliefs, I just can't. He's just so god drat good in almost everything he does. I'd wager a huge amount of money that Scientology for Tom is a lot different than Scientology for not Tom.
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Apr 17, 2020 15:32
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A religion that teaches that you can have superpowers if you just unleash the power of your mind is well aligned with being a movie star.
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Apr 17, 2020 16:30
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Another approach for the Amerika bomber could be to use a tow plane. The Me 321 shows that giant things can be towed, but just because it's towed doesn't mean it can't have engines of its own. So build a bomber with just enough engine power to keep itself airborne with full load. Use the tanker plane to help it get airborne and tow it for the start of the trip. When the tow plane has maybe 1/3 fuel left disengage and the bomber continues with the mission. At this point it should still have most of the fuel left.
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Apr 17, 2020 17:42
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Murgos posted:I'd wager a huge amount of money that Scientology for Tom is a lot different than Scientology for not Tom. Life was great for young Thomas, who spent summers laughing and playing on grandfather’s plantation.
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Apr 17, 2020 18:58
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the me 321 has always given me some weird "this is a fantasy plane / it was never built" vibes, i love it. maybe it's the name. maybe it's the whole "carrying APCs and poo poo on a really big unpowered glider" aspect. it's just cool.
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Apr 17, 2020 19:00
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I think the most practical amerika bomber approach they had was to build a big flying boat which would be refueled at sea by uboats. Not sure how they figured on locating the uboats without making glaring 'I AM HERE' radio signals, but I only said 'most practical'
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Apr 17, 2020 20:10
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Nebakenezzer posted:Given that engine power can be expressed in kilowatts, as well as the weight of engines and fuel, is there a point where a properly shielded, weapons grade nuclear reactor makes sense over conventional propulsion? I think about this a lot, as aircraft are the only means of transportation that isn't easily directly or indirectly powered by clean, environmentally friendly atomics, in my vision of the world that has virtually no pollution based on this incomparable, but vilified green energy source. It's difficult to answer with a lot of data, since air-going reactor experiments were shut down in the 60's for being "stupid loving wastes of money" had the program continued I'm sure we'd see better aircraft-optimised reactors. Current water-cooled thermal (neutron, as opposed to fast neutron) propulsion reactors are infeasible due to weight, they can easily be fitted to things such as ships, submarines and trains, due to an abundance of water (from the ocean for nautical reactors, from the far-reaching network of refueling and water filling stations for modern coal-fired trains) which not only provides cooling water for the reactor and its steam plant, but shielding as well. So to make a lightweight reactor we need to use a gas cooled reactor, so we don't need as massive a reactor vessel and piping to contain high-pressure water. That means a CO2 or Hellium cooled reactor, with high-pressure air from a conventional turbine engine as the secondary cooling fluid (directly air-cooled reactors like the type GE designed for the Air Force are the best, but they produce unacceptable levels of radionucleides for modern operations) and we'll want to use highly-enriched Uranium or Plutonium as fuel for higher energy density. This is all doable. What really fucks this concept over though is the need for radiation shielding, shielding requires a hydrogen-rich, dense substance (water or plastic, typically) to attenuate neutrons, backed by a dense metal (lead or steel) to attenuate gamma radiation, I think best case to get radiation down to acceptable levels would be ~4' of water and 3' of steel. Obviously we'll mount the reactors as far back in the plane as possible, so that we only need to shield one side (ground crew will have to stand well clear of the plane once the reactor's brought critical) a circular shield of that size in a 747 would weigh about 600,000lbs, or about twice the 747's payload, I doubt that would scale well to a larger plane you could try wingtip mounting to add to distance, but I don't think that'd be good for aerodynamics. If you just want a nuclear reactor so you can blow poo poo up in other countries ramjet-powered missiles are the way to go, and have a pretty solid development history, the US's SLAM project was well on it's way to viability before cancellation, and Russia has a cruise missile that's probably ramjet powered, and probably fails and explodes and kills scientists pretty frequently, and is generally frightening as all gently caress that it exists at all. If you want a heavy-lift aircraft that doesn't burn fuel, it's airship all the way, mount it high up on the envelope and away from the gondola, and you need much less shielding, because radiation fields decrease in strength with the square of distance.
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Apr 17, 2020 23:28
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EvenWorseOpinions posted:I think the most practical amerika bomber approach they had was to build a big flying boat which would be refueled at sea by uboats. Not sure how they figured on locating the uboats without making glaring 'I AM HERE' radio signals, but I only said 'most practical' They used U-boats to resupply other U-boats, so presumably they could make it work with aircraft as well. You just have to coordinate well ahead of time, "go to these coordinates at this time". And they have this completely unbreakable cipher machine so they can communicate all that securely.
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Apr 17, 2020 23:38
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Wingnut Ninja posted:They used U-boats to resupply other U-boats, so presumably they could make it work with aircraft as well. You just have to coordinate well ahead of time, "go to these coordinates at this time". And they have this completely unbreakable cipher machine so they can communicate all that securely. Operation Schwarzbär 
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Apr 17, 2020 23:42
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Elviscat posted:I think about this a lot, as aircraft are the only means of transportation that isn't easily directly or indirectly powered by clean, environmentally friendly atomics, in my vision of the world that has virtually no pollution based on this incomparable, but vilified green energy source. Hydrocarbons are really good at what they do. Why not use the Fischer–Tropsch process to make them with the power of the atom?
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Apr 18, 2020 00:02
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Inacio posted:the me 321 has always given me some weird "this is a fantasy plane / it was never built" vibes, i love it. maybe it's the name. maybe it's the whole "carrying APCs and poo poo on a really big unpowered glider" aspect. it's just cool. And that whole design tree was remarkably efficacious at killing Nazis, which is always a big plus for an airframe. There's a lot of footage of the 321 and an extensive account of flying it from Hanna Reitsch in this episode of the excellent Secret War documentary. Just, y'know, do your best to keep in mind that this tiny enthusiastic old lady once personally championed a Luftwaffe suicide squadron to Hitler. HookedOnChthonics fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Apr 18, 2020 |
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Apr 18, 2020 00:45
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Platystemon posted:Hydrocarbons are really good at what they do. A lot of people are hard at work trying to discover a method for turning CO2 and H2 into hydrocarbons, if they discover such a method, 4th generation gas cooled reactors and a process for turning CO2 into a viable fuel could make hydrocarbon fuels carbon neutral. But lol NIMBYS.
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Apr 18, 2020 01:10
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Wingnut Ninja posted:They used U-boats to resupply other U-boats, so presumably they could make it work with aircraft as well. You just have to coordinate well ahead of time, "go to these coordinates at this time". And they have this completely unbreakable cipher machine so they can communicate all that securely. I am skeptical of the capacity of any WWII era aircraft to navigate to a specific place in the ocean by dead reckoning, but I've done all of my navigating with Garmin so maybe I'm just soft. A major issue with radio signals though is that even if you can't decrypt a signal you can figure out the source location if more than one person can hear it.
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Apr 18, 2020 06:30
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Nebakenezzer posted:Given that engine power can be expressed in kilowatts, as well as the weight of engines and fuel, is there a point where a properly shielded, weapons grade nuclear reactor makes sense over conventional propulsion? It can be expressed in kW, but for large aircraft, quite a lot of kW. Conservative guesstimating has a 747 needing way over 100kN in cruise at a speed of ~250 m/s. That's 25,000 kW. This is helped by the fact that jet engines get more efficient with speed, having a thrust that drops off much less than linearly with speed, even if the plane as a system gets less efficient, since drag power increases with the cube of speed, even without the nonlinearity of supersonic. A nuclear powered plane would have the same efficiency advantage as a jet, since it almost certainly would be the heat source in a jet engine, but still. Megawatts are a reasonable unit for planes, especially when you go supersonic.
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Apr 18, 2020 06:34
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Most plans for aircraft nuclear propulsion were essentially substituting the tractor's heat for the combustion section in a conventional engine. That could be in a ramjet (ala SLAM) or a turbojet core (in the HTRE experiments). So your analysis should probably be about the heat energy released by the combustion inside the engine rather than the thrust emitted.
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Apr 18, 2020 08:35
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Has this salt shake robot with rocketknees just finished a marathon?
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Apr 18, 2020 09:17
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Actually, a salt shaker only has one hole, doesn't it? Pepperpot rocket bot
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Apr 18, 2020 09:18
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I see a robot bartender serving two jet cocktails.
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Apr 18, 2020 10:17
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Ola posted:I see a robot bartender serving two jet cocktails. Would you like some more?
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Apr 18, 2020 13:18
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EvenWorseOpinions posted:I am skeptical of the capacity of any WWII era aircraft to navigate to a specific place in the ocean by dead reckoning, but I've done all of my navigating with Garmin so maybe I'm just soft. A major issue with radio signals though is that even if you can't decrypt a signal you can figure out the source location if more than one person can hear it. They wouldn't use dead reckoning; they'd use astro-nav. Obviously that is dependent on the weather to an extent, but good enough to produce a fix with an accuracy of about 10 miles (about three minutes flying time for something like a Lockheed Hudson). RAF Bomber Command required its navigators to be able to determine a position to within five miles by a single celestial sight taken on the ground. In the air 10 miles was acceptable for a single sighting, and multiple sights from different astronomical bodies, a running DR plot and (if applicable) radio navigation could allow an aircraft to be fairly sure of its position to within a couple of miles without any reference to the ground... assuming wind and weather didn't throw things off. And remember that an aircraft flying at 2000ft can theoretically see over 50 miles to the horizon in any direction. Obviously visibility in the North Atlantic is never going to be that good, but you don't have to navigate to single-digit mile accuracy to find a ship/sub at a pre-agreed position.
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Apr 18, 2020 15:17
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Plus, if you’re trying to find a U-boat for a fuel stop, homing on a beacon was standard practice for other U-boats. That’s one of the ways wolfpacks were supposed to assemble around convoys - and, of course, one of the ways convoy escorts knew where the U-boats were congregating. I don’t think navigation would have been the major hangup for that Amerika bomber plan. I suspect the ability to land, refuel, and take off from open ocean would have been more trouble. U-boats sometimes couldn’t refuel from each other due to weather (and would occasionally just run out of fuel and drift for a few days until a fueler could find them and paddle a hose over), and that’s without the added issue of getting a large aircraft down safely.
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Apr 18, 2020 15:58
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I just realized something  If Germany would -actually- have needed an Amerika-bomber, (for instance to deliver a barely functional and badly designed heavy-water moderated nuclear device) they could have used another Hindenburg. A Zeppelin. Going over Canada. Attacking Chicago. I know I'm missing something but... tell me how.
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Apr 18, 2020 18:40
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How do you prevent the slow-moving airship from being shot down?
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Apr 18, 2020 18:55
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It could have been shot down by a canadian crop duster pilot in an open cockpit cloth biplane left over from WWI as long as he had a flare gun?
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Apr 18, 2020 18:55
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Clearly a submarine deployed seaplane/strategic bomber would have been the logical way to bomb the East coast
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Apr 18, 2020 19:10
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Zeppelin's weren't that easy to shoot down, I think Neb has made some convincing post sabout that? And in any case, if you aren't expecting this zeppelin nor have any radar coverage or patrols active, then maybe the thing can actually get there before you habe time to react... And is it entirely impossible to have some manner of effective defensive armament on a Hindenburg-sized airship? I mean if it worked on B-29s or a -36s...?
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Apr 18, 2020 19:18
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They did have a second Hindenburg class zeppelin, the Graf Zeppelin II. They used it for some propaganda flights and some light spying before scrapping it in 1940.
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Apr 18, 2020 19:28
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Lou Takki posted:Clearly a submarine deployed seaplane/strategic bomber would have been the logical way to bomb the East coast If you had to deliver a nuke under those circumstances, I'd imagine a short range rocket would be fine to lob the warhead into New York / DC from a few miles offshore.
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Apr 18, 2020 19:30
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NightGyr posted:If you had to deliver a nuke under those circumstances, I'd imagine a short range rocket would be fine to lob the warhead into New York / DC from a few miles offshore. As described in the smash best-seller My Tank Is Fight!
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Apr 18, 2020 19:43
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Neb had a huge and amazing effortpost or series of effortposts about I think the WW1 German naval Zeppelin arm and my overall impression was not one of great survivability. Five tons would be kinda out there as far as payload weight goes for rockets of the time, but I'm sure a rocket designed to lob a payload of five tons over five kilometres would have looked amazing. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Apr 18, 2020 |
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Apr 18, 2020 20:24
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for unlimited bomber range without all those pesky nuclear radiation problems why don't we just use a microwave solar system where a giant satellite beams power to the airplane continuously you'd need at least three or four satellites to ensure constant global coverage but flying at higher altitudes would mean less atmospheric losses so it's win-win
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Apr 18, 2020 20:48
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Zeppelin's weren't that easy to shoot down, I think Neb has made some convincing post sabout that? And in any case, if you aren't expecting this zeppelin nor have any radar coverage or patrols active, then maybe the thing can actually get there before you habe time to react... And is it entirely impossible to have some manner of effective defensive armament on a Hindenburg-sized airship? I mean if it worked on B-29s or a -36s...? I suspect the US of 1945 would have been more effective at dealing with Zeppelin bombers than the British in 1915.
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Apr 18, 2020 20:55
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Sagebrush posted:for unlimited bomber range without all those pesky nuclear radiation problems why don't we just use a microwave solar system where a giant satellite beams power to the airplane continuously No I've played SimCity this is a bad idea. Fusion or bust.
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Apr 19, 2020 03:10
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