Nothus posted:

B-1B's I think. Didn't the B-1A have a more pronounced dorsal spine? It makes sense that they're being scrapped. They weren't that all that great for what they were designed for, and we wasted quite a lot of money building them. The B-52 holds more bombs and the B-2 is better at penetration.

Frosty- posted:

Which is a thing no shuttle has.

PurpleFender posted:

Quoting from a while back... That top row are P-3 Orions. I used to live on a Navy base where they still flew those. Bonus content, that base was home for this beast, the USS Macon. And Hangar One in the background is absolutely retardedly huge. Mythbusters uses it a lot. I believe Lead Balloon was tested in that Hangar.

jandrese posted:

That goes beyond balls of steel to outright insanity. Who in the world thought this was a good idea?

Boomerjinks posted:

Er, sorry. That is actually a 3/4 scale model originally built for promo purposes in Japan (get it because they are short?), but was bought and is currently being "rebuilt" by the local 501st Star Wars Costume Club.

AnimalChin posted:

quote:

47 Ships Sunk by Kamikaze Aircraft

Godholio posted:

quote:

On February 25, 1991, during the first Gulf War, the Phalanx-equipped USS Jarrett (FFG-33) was a few miles from the USS Missouri (BB-63) and the destroyer HMS Gloucester (D96). The ships were attacked by an Iraqi Silkworm missile (often referred to as the Seersucker), at which Missouri fired its SRBOC chaff. The Phalanx system on Jarrett, operating in the automatic target-acquisition mode, fixed upon Missouri's chaff, releasing a burst of rounds. From this burst, four rounds hit Missouri which was two to three miles (about 5 km) from Jarrett at the time. There were no injuries.[14] A Sea Dart missile was then launched from the Gloucester, which destroyed the Iraqi missile, achieving the first successful engagement of a missile by a missile during combat at sea.

quote:

The X-1 was in principle a "bullet with wings", its shape closely resembled the Browning .50-caliber (12.7 mm) machine gun bullet that was known to be stable in supersonic flight.[2] The pattern shape was followed to the point of seating the pilot behind a sloped, framed window inside a confined cockpit in the nose, with no ejection seat.

On 14 October 1947, just under a month after the United States Air Force had been created as a separate service, the tests culminated in the first manned supersonic flight, piloted by Air Force Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager in aircraft #46-062, which he had christened Glamorous Glennis after his wife. The rocket-powered aircraft was launched from the bomb bay of a specially modified B-29 and glided to a landing on a runway. XS-1 flight number 50 is the first one where the X-1 recorded supersonic flight, at Mach 1.06 (361 m/s, 1,299 km/h, 807.2 mph) peak speed; however, Yeager and many other personnel believe Flight #49 (also with Yeager piloting), which reached a top recorded speed of Mach 0.997 (339 m/s, 1,221 km/h), may have, in fact, exceeded Mach 1.

On 5 January 1949, Yeager used Aircraft #46-062 to carry out the only conventional (runway) take off performed during the X-1 program, reaching 23,000 ft in 90 seconds.

quote:

he Bell X-2 was developed to provide a vehicle for researching flight characteristics in excess of the limits of the Bell X-1 and D-558 II, while investigating aerodynamic heating problems in what was then called the 'thermal thicket.'

Not only did the X-2 push the envelope of manned flight to speeds, altitudes and temperatures beyond any other aircraft at the time, it pioneered throttleable rocket motors and digital flight simulation.

Lt. Col. Frank K. "Pete" Everest completed the first powered flight in the #1 airplane (46-674) on 18 November 1955. By the time of his ninth and final flight in late July 1956, he had established a new speed record of Mach 2.87 (1,900 mph, 3050 km/h). The X-2 was living up to its promise, but not without difficulties. At high speeds, Everest reported its flight controls were only marginally effective.

quote:

Inertia coupling was essentially unknown before the introduction of high-speed jet aircraft. Prior to this time aircraft tended to be wider than long, and their mass was generally distributed closer to the center of mass. This was especially true for propeller aircraft, but equally true for early jet fighters as well. It was only when the aircraft began to sacrifice aerodynamic surface area in order to lower drag, and use longer fineness ratios that lowered supersonic drag, that the effect became obvious. In these cases the aircraft was generally much more tail-heavy, allowing its gyroscopic effect to overwhelm the small control surfaces.

Inertia coupling killed pilot Mel Apt in the Bell X-2 and nearly killed Chuck Yeager in the X-1A.[2] It was also extremely obvious in the X-3 Stiletto, and flight tests on this aircraft were used to examine the problem. The first two production aircraft to overtly experience this phenomenon, the F-100 Super Sabre and F-102 Delta Dagger, were modified to increase wing and tail area and were fitted with augmented control systems. To enable pilot control during dynamic motion maneuvers, for instance, the tail area of the F-102A was increased 40%.

quote:

The X-15 set speed and altitude records in the early 1960s, reaching the edge of outer space and returning with valuable data used in aircraft and spacecraft design. It currently holds the official world record for the fastest speed ever reached by a manned rocket powered aircraft.[1]
During the X-15 program, 13 of the flights (by eight pilots) met the USAF spaceflight criteria by exceeding the altitude of 50 miles (80.47 km, 264,000 ft), thus qualifying the pilots for astronaut status. The USAF pilots qualified for USAF astronaut wings, while the civilian pilots were later awarded NASA astronaut wings.

The idle thrust of the XLR-99 was 15,000 lbf (67 kN).

In July and August 1963, pilot Joe Walker crossed the 100 km altitude mark, joining the NASA astronauts and Soviet Cosmonauts as the only humans to have crossed the barrier into outer space and becoming the first to exceed this threshold twice.

quote:

Adams' seventh X-15 flight, flight 3-65-97, took place on 15 November 1967. He reached a peak altitude of 266,000 feet; the nose of the aircraft was off heading by 15 degrees to the right. While descending, at 230,000 feet the aircraft encountered rapidly increasing aerodynamic pressure which impinged on the airframe, causing the X-15 to enter a violent Mach 5 spin. As the X-15 neared 65,000 feet, it was diving at Mach 3.93 and experiencing more than 15-g vertically (positive and negative), and 8-g laterally, which inevitably exceeded the design limits of the aircraft. The aircraft broke up 10 minutes and 35 seconds after launch, killing Adams. The United States Air Force posthumously awarded him the Purple Heart and astronaut Wings for his last flight.

grover posted:

The F-35B looked like it was working pretty well when the marines conducted shipboard flight tests last month.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVj4vC81Ea4

Tubesock posted:

I just came across the goofiest looking plane I've ever seen. It's a Transavia PL-12 Airtruk. Apparently it was designed for crop dusting or whatever but drat is it ugly. It looks like it came out of a cartoon. http://youtu.be/v-asgD0s5Ss

http://news.usni.org/2015/02/04/cno-greenert-navys-next-fighter-might-not-need-stealth-high-speed posted:

“You know that stealth maybe overrated,” Greenert said during a keynote at the Office of Naval Research Naval Future Force Science and Technology Expo.
“I don’t want to necessarily say that it’s over but let’s face it, if something moves fast through the air and disrupts molecules in the air and puts out heat – I don’t care how cool the engine can be – it’s going to be detectable.”