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I think Moonraker is unfairly impugned by Bondphiles, it has two of the best baddies in Jaws (back from The Spy Who Loved Me) and Drax with the golden one liners. Those glide tests from the back of the 747 were pretty kick rear end. Great pic.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:45
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Fucknag posted:Ah yes, Moonraker, the movie that somehow managed to gently caress up "James Bond and a platoon of Marines fly to the big bad's space station in a shuttle cargo bay, where they engage the big bad's army in spacesuit combat with lasers". I can't imagine how nerve racking this must have been for the carrier pilots, having to get out from under the shuttle (which has all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick) while dealing with a massive shift in center of gravity.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:50
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Safety Dance posted:I can't imagine how nerve racking this must have been for the carrier pilots, having to get out from under the shuttle (which has all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick) while dealing with a massive shift in center of gravity. It might not be that huge a shift, in that shot it looks like the shuttle is mounted further forward than it is when it's used as a simple carrier.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:54
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Why are the wings on the drones so straight and narrow, rather than more like those of normal aircraft?
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Aug 20, 2014 19:08
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Tevery Best posted:Why are the wings on the drones so straight and narrow, rather than more like those of normal aircraft? In that picture theres 3 aircraft that have striking high aspect ratio wings; the two drones and the U-2. A high aspect ratio gives higher lift at the cost of drag. This is a good trade off for high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, though it comes at the cost of speed. hobbesmaster fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 19:11
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Tevery Best posted:Why are the wings on the drones so straight and narrow, rather than more like those of normal aircraft? They're slow, and in the case of the Global Hawk, high-altitude.
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Aug 20, 2014 19:11
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priznat posted:I think Moonraker is unfairly impugned by Bondphiles, it has two of the best baddies in Jaws (back from The Spy Who Loved Me) and Drax with the golden one liners. I watched it a few years ago and the first half was pretty good, but it suddenly turned into a ridiculous laser gun battle or something. Still fun enough.
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Aug 20, 2014 19:14
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Safety Dance posted:I can't imagine how nerve racking this must have been for the carrier pilots, having to get out from under the shuttle (which has all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick) while dealing with a massive shift in center of gravity. Tevery Best posted:Why are the wings on the drones so straight and narrow, rather than more like those of normal aircraft?
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Aug 20, 2014 19:24
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hobbesmaster posted:In that picture theres 3 aircraft that have striking high aspect ratio wings; the two drones and the U-2. Luneshot posted:They're slow, and in the case of the Global Hawk, high-altitude. Or to put it more bluntly, all three of those are basically sailplanes. The U-2 has a glide ratio of 28:1 (meaning with the engines off it will fall 1 foot over a forward distance of 28 feet -- compare to, say, a Cessna 172 at 9:1), so it takes very little fuel to keep it in the air, which is good when you have a subsonic plane that needs to cruise over thousands of miles of hostile territory for many hours. Drones that are intended to loiter over a target area for a long time providing support or surveillance have a similar mission profile. Fun fact: at operating altitude, the low air density raises the U-2's stall speed to only five knots below its full-throttle maximum speed. That must be a fun razor's edge to ride. Also fun how the U-2 and SR-71 performed basically the same mission but in entirely opposite ways. Slowly climb up to altitude and sip fuel as you glide for hours and hours vs. blast up to altitude on a solid pillar of flame and dash across the target area in minutes while refueling at every chance you get. Does the U-2 have aerial refueling capability? Would it even be possible to do with such a bizarre airplane? Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 19:28
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Sagebrush posted:Or to put it more bluntly, all three of those are basically sailplanes. The U-2 has a glide ratio of 28:1 (meaning with the engines off it will fall 1 foot over a forward distance of 28 feet -- compare to, say, a Cessna 172 at 9:1), so it takes very little fuel to keep it in the air, which is good when you have a subsonic plane that needs to cruise over thousands of miles of hostile territory for many hours. Drones that are intended to loiter over a target area for a long time providing support or surveillance have a similar mission profile. The U-2F was reciever-capable.  As to the bolded part... The U-2 has a very narrow coffin corner at operating altitude, but it has nothing to do with its maximum speed, or the power of the engine. Coffin corner is the difference between stall speed, and critical mach for the airfoil.
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Aug 20, 2014 19:35
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Tsuru posted:The main problem is probably the fact that the shuttle has a massively different lift/drag ratio than the 747 that carries it at the moment of separation, so the biggest risk is the shuttle drifting backwards into the vertical tail of the carrier once it starts to generate enough lift to carry its own weight and it can separate. Hence all of the spoilers (including, I think, the ground spoilers) of the 747 being out. I would make sense that the entire sequence was also flown with the engines of the 747 in flight idle all the way, to get the 747 as close to the aerodynamic properties of the shuttle as possible. This was not quite as dangerous as it seems. The shuttle was a flying brick, not a brick wall; the drag was pretty low in subsonic flight, so the few seconds the 2 aircraft are close isn't enough for it to decelerate and hit the 747. That picture is a bit deceiving, this video shows what's going on pretty well; they get clear almost instantly. http://youtu.be/dijD4J3vX5Y?t=4m17s
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Aug 20, 2014 20:32
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Top comment on that video: Idiot youtube viewer posted:... and if it wasn't for Obamacare, this shuttle program would still be running!! 
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Aug 20, 2014 21:30
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Geoj posted:Top comment on that video: Very low effort trolling. But seriously though Obama seems to have absolutely 0 interest in space which is kinda disappointing.
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Aug 20, 2014 21:33
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Another fun fact about U-2's up at operating altitude. The engine (at least some earlier versions) actually had no range to make any changes, and there was only one power setting, i.e., min and max were the same. So, to begin a descent, it would have to put out drag in the form of airbrake and landing gear. (The nose couldn't be lowered because that would of course increase the airspeed, with which they also had no range to play with.)
vessbot fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 21:42
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hobbesmaster posted:But seriously though Obama seems to have absolutely 0 interest in space which is kinda disappointing. What does Obama do for fun, anyway? Dubya was a good ol' boy who liked baseball and coke, Clinton had his saxophone and interns, etc. What does The Islamic Shock do when he's not presidenting? vessbot posted:The engine (at least some earlier versions) actually had no range to make any changes, and there was only one power setting, i.e., min and max were the same. I find this hard to believe, or maybe I'm just misunderstanding. How would you get the engine spooled up without setting it on fire? How would you ever land? Or do you just mean that the engine only had one power setting (presumably somewhere up at the top of the throttle range) that would work at high altitude? It's not like it had a special engine in it or anything -- early versions had a J57, the same as in zillions of other planes from the B-52 to the Super Sabre. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 22:08
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I can't imagine nosing it over would be an issue either. The indicated airspeed up at altitude is so incredibly low due to the lack of air density. There should be plenty of airspeed overhead for acceleration unless I'm misunderstanding something.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:15
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hobbesmaster posted:Very low effort trolling. ...or Congress in, y'know, funding them Duke Chin fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 22:19
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What happens when the U2 stalls? Does it potentially slide sideways so the air isn't rushing over the wings properly so it becomes unflyable? Have there been losses from that?
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Aug 20, 2014 22:19
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According to this manual, the U-2 had a vernier wheel for fine adjustment of throttle, so not so much. It did have a gate you had to release for maximum thrust, but that's the closest I can find to a non-continuous throttle.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:21
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This story has everything; aeronautical insanity, a rude man in a Tomcat and mentions of the Crusader. quote:Look at the picture above. The story of a legendary F-14 pilot and the gun kill on an F-15 that could sell Tomcats to Japan “Credibility is DOWN, kill ratio is UP!”
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Aug 20, 2014 22:35
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Sagebrush posted:I find this hard to believe, or maybe I'm just misunderstanding. How would you get the engine spooled up without setting it on fire? How would you ever land? Or do you just mean that the engine only had one power setting (presumably somewhere up at the top of the throttle range) that would work at high altitude? It operated normally at low altitudes, what I'm talking about is just at high altitudes unique to the U-2 (that's what I meant by "operating altitude") Jet engines have all sorts of parameters, RPM, EGT, EPR, etc. (incl. torque if it's a turboprop/shaft) Usually you manipulate one to achieve a desired power setting and monitor the rest to make sure they stay within limits. Sometimes you'll have to closely watch 2 of them, like cases in shaft engines where depending on the environmentals you might either torque out or temp out first. Well, the procedure in the U-2 was to fly at the max EGT, and at that EGT, the higher you went, the lower the EPR goes. At some altitude you reach a point where the EPR you're at is the minimum allowed. Now you can't reduce power since you're at the minimum EPR, and you can't increase since you're at the max EGT. You have one power setting.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:35
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The Ferret King posted:I can't imagine nosing it over would be an issue either. The indicated airspeed up at altitude is so incredibly low due to the lack of air density. There should be plenty of airspeed overhead for acceleration unless I'm misunderstanding something. There was no overhead for acceleration, as the airspeed window of the U-2 at high altitude was literally a few knots. A few knots slower got you to a conventional high-AOA stall, and a few knots faster got you to the mach limit of the wing. Down low this is a huge window for subsonic planes, but the higher you go, the higher the stall speed becomes (in terms of TAS) and the lower the mach limit becomes (due to temperature). The window between those speeds shrinks to almost nothing, and this is known as coffin corner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_corner_(aerodynamics) (Ignore the graph though, it's wrong.) It doesn't matter if you look at IAS (about 100 knots) or TAS (about 400), the flyable window is tiny just the same.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:41
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Duke Chin posted:♫ one of these things is not like the other ♫ (and is way sexier) Two years? They discovered that in the winter washed welds would fail due to chlorination of the water supply. MrChips posted:...which was then beat the next week by a literal mile by a Starfighter with half the engine power. And with "SOP" being a windmill restart of a J-79. And praying that the thing pointed the right way on re-entry. At those altitudes control surfaces are "a mere suggestion." The Ferret King posted:I can't imagine nosing it over would be an issue either. The indicated airspeed up at altitude is so incredibly low due to the lack of air density. There should be plenty of airspeed overhead for acceleration unless I'm misunderstanding something. Now I don't know if the U2 is limited due to flutter, or Mach, so I'll address both. So, flutter is a nasty thing. And is related to absolute airspeed. Mach is weird, floaty, barrier, that happens at different speeds dependent on air density, and temperature. Crossing mach while not prepared for it, causes massive changes in center of lift, and center of pressure, frequently leading to loss of airframe. Stall is also a nasty thing, and is related to the mass of air passing over the wing. As you go higher, the mass passing by a wing goes down, because the pressure goes down. This makes your stall speed go up. Stall speed is the lower limit of the speed you can fly at. The speed at which you encounter flutter, is related to "how fast air is passing over the wing." It doesn't care what the density is. While you might be at 90,000', and be showing an airspeed of 75kts, the actual air speed passing over the wings might be 300kts. (I'd need to look that up for real numbers.. To use another weird plane, even at mach 3, the SR-71 was operating at an indicated airspeed of something like 350kts) Flutter is an upper limit to how fast you can fly. at some altitude, both your stall speed, and your flutter speed will be the same. Mach is another concern. Mach, like airspeed, changes with density and temperature. As you go higher, mach 1 becomes slower, and slower. This too eventually meets with the stall speed. When an airfoil goes supersonic, it's center of lift moves back on the wing. from the "usual" 30% chord to something like 60% chord. This makes the plane suddenly very nose heavy. It also makes trailing edge control surfaces ineffective. This is a very bad combination. And it puts a very firm limit on the maximum speed of an airplane. I don't believe that the U-2's engine was at such a critical point that it couldn't be throttled at maximum altitude. IIRC, it was only operating at something like 60-70% thrust up there. There may be some restrictions to keep the compressor speeds high enough to provide pressurization... That said, the U2 does have nice airbrakes.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:49
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Sagebrush posted:
Some U-2's were fitted with refueling receivers, but after it was discovered that the pilots weren't physically capable of flying the airplane that long (unrefueled missions can exceed nine hours), the idea was never expanded beyond some test flights.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:52
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Sagebrush posted:What does Obama do for fun, anyway? Dubya was a good ol' boy who liked baseball and coke, Clinton had his saxophone and interns, etc. What does The Islamic Shock do when he's not presidenting? Golf. It's a bitch to get a tee time on Martha's Vineyard right now if you can't pass a background check.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:52
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A Handed Missus posted:
umm, what the gently caress is going on with the plane in the second row on the left??
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Aug 20, 2014 23:24
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Linedance posted:umm, what the gently caress is going on with the plane in the second row on the left?? AD-1 Oblique Wing Demonstrator.
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Aug 20, 2014 23:26
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Nerobro posted:
 And I'm sure the thrust was a lot less than 60% of that at sea level max. Off the cuff I'd throw out 20% if not less. vessbot fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 23:32
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A Handed Missus posted:This story has everything; aeronautical insanity, a rude man in a Tomcat and mentions of the Crusader. Hey, I know that book. quote:As explained by George Hall in his book Top Gun – The Navy’ s Fighter Weapons School, .... it's actually on my coffee table right now!
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Aug 21, 2014 01:10
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Bob A Feet posted:Yeah I'd like to be a fly on the wall of that cockpit Especially since they were hauling Gen Mattis (Centcom Commander at the time). Greataval posted:The C-17 that landed with the gear down at BAF was that in 05? If that's the one I'm thinking about I was working the line A-10 side of the runway. 09. 05 was the one where the plane ran off the end of the runway. I got my wires crossed earlier, that overrun incident was the one where the tail probably should've been totaled and it was only after a month+ effort by a bunch of Boeing engineers at BAF to get it airworthy and over a year at depot before it was returned to service. The gear-up incident did some damage but I don't think it was bad enough that anyone seriously considered writing the airframe off. movax posted:Man, never realized just how big the Predator was, thing's loving huge (that is a Pred, right?) As others have pointed out that's a Reaper...Preds have about 10' less wingspan (55' vs 66'), are a bit shorter, sit quite a bit lower to the ground, and are a helluva lot lighter. I can tilt an empty Pred back off the nose gear with one finger, two guys can shove a fully loaded one around...good luck doing that with a Reaper. Someone already answered the "why are the wings long and thin" question, but just in case someone was wondering why the Pred and Reaper have unusual tail assemblies, they help with stability. The aircraft are designed to be as inherently stable as possible. A Handed Missus posted:“Credibility is DOWN, kill ratio is UP!” lol...saw that story yesterday and actually started chuckling out loud when I read that.
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Aug 21, 2014 02:11
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Who needs X-planes and fancy-shmancy jet engines? It's like the kid's never seen anyone fly an airplane before  I don't know if it's the odd canard arrangement or the big landing skids, but I can never get over how miraculous the Wright Flyer looks in flight. Through sheer engineering willpower the Wrights got an oversized kite with a glorified lawnmower engine to defy gravity and just go swooping all over the place.
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Aug 21, 2014 03:13
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iyaayas01 posted:As others have pointed out that's a Reaper...Preds have about 10' less wingspan (55' vs 66'), are a bit shorter, sit quite a bit lower to the ground, and are a helluva lot lighter. I can tilt an empty Pred back off the nose gear with one finger, two guys can shove a fully loaded one around...good luck doing that with a Reaper. Yeah but they both look scary big when you have to hold so one can taxi right in front of you. Or when they're cleared to land number two behind you...hope that dude is watching what's goin on!
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Aug 21, 2014 03:19
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I wonder what the latency is on those things. Especially in the comms. I'm guessing when they are talking to ATC it goes from Satellite>aircraft>transmit?
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Aug 21, 2014 03:37
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Bob A Feet posted:I wonder what the latency is on those things. Especially in the comms. I'm guessing when they are talking to ATC it goes from Satellite>aircraft>transmit? Regarding the SATCOM latency, it's a couple of seconds round trip. Regarding how VHF/UHF works, they've got ARC-210 on the plane...however, it only works in SATCOM due to bandwidth limitations in the LOS (Line of Sight) connection's ability to transport voice. So when they're being flown BLOS/RSO (Beyond Line of Sight/Remote Split Operations) by the MCE (Mission Control Element) GCS (Ground Control Station) from the other side of the world, they talk to whoever (ATC, other planes, dudes on the ground) GCS-SATCOM connection-ARC-210 on the plane. When they're being flown LOS for taxi/take-off/landing at the Launch and Recovery Element (LRE), like I said there's a bandwidth limitation in the C-band connection. Since the aircraft is being flown LOS it's within LOS of the runway where the LRE GCS is located, so they just utilize an ARC-210 in the GCS (antennas are on top) for communicating VHF/UHF with whoever (usually just ATC at that point).
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Aug 21, 2014 03:48
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Nerobro posted:
Quibble: Speed of sound in an ideal gas is unrelated to pressure or density, it is solely related to temperature, adiabatic index, and molecular mass. The real atmosphere isn't quite an ideal gas, but it's pretty close, and speed of sound in it is therefore only very weakly dependent on either value.
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Aug 21, 2014 03:57
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Phanatic posted:Quibble: Speed of sound in an ideal gas is unrelated to pressure or density, it is solely related to temperature, adiabatic index, and molecular mass. The real atmosphere isn't quite an ideal gas, but it's pretty close, and speed of sound in it is therefore only very weakly dependent on either value. Only nerds care about this
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Aug 21, 2014 04:01
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Bob A Feet posted:Only nerds care about this Non nerds in this thread?! 
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Aug 21, 2014 04:03
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Checks out in my book. I'll take it. Turbine operation limits are weird. Notice that it says that the EGT goes UP as the throttle goes down. Phanatic posted:Quibble: Speed of sound in an ideal gas is unrelated to pressure or density, it is solely related to temperature, adiabatic index, and molecular mass. The real atmosphere isn't quite an ideal gas, but it's pretty close, and speed of sound in it is therefore only very weakly dependent on either value. Noted. Bob A Feet posted:Only nerds care about this Meaning, I care.
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Aug 21, 2014 04:44
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They're air-cooled, reduce the air coming in at load and they get hotter. It never says that the EGT goes up as power is reduced, just that you can't reduce power without causing worse problems. So, the only way to keep sufficient air moving into the engine is to level out and increase speed.
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Aug 21, 2014 05:45
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A Handed Missus posted:“Credibility is DOWN, kill ratio is UP!” In Bye-Bye Baby, the very same pilot asks a group of nuggets what's wrong with a picture of the planform of an F-15C with a crosshair planted dead-center on the fuselage. When no one spoke up, he answered for them... "THE PIPPER'S NOT ON THE GODDAMN CANOPY!" Fun Fact: "Hoser" Satrapa lost his thumb while he was still on active duty due to a shooting accident. Rather than let that take him off flight status, he had a loving *toe* removed and attached to the point of severance, which he's kept to this day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aILfg1KRcg Another choice quote from him (from the same aforementioned book): Many active pilots and RIOs well remember Hoser's delivery of manic harangues to fuzzy-cheeked newcomers from the RAG. In his patented Yosemite Sam voice he would whip the lads, and invariably himself, into a lethal frenzy: "Pull on the pole till the rivets pop and the RIO pukes! No kill like a guns kill! A Lima up the tailpipe is too good for any Gomer! Close with the miserable Commie [deleted] and put a few rounds of twenty-twenty-mike-mike through his canopy! If he hits the silk, gun his rear end while he swings!" Definitions: Lima - shorter term for an AIM-9L all-aspect missile (predates the 'Mike' model). Gomer - a relatively *nice* term used for VC/NVA personnel in Vietnam RAG - Replacement Air Group, a dumping ground for new pilots/backseaters where veterans decide if they belong or not. The new term is Fleet Replacement Squadron, but people still call it 'the RAG.' BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Aug 21, 2014 06:50
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