• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Aviation Geeks unite?! Anybody else care about planes here?

What's your level of interest in aviation?!


  • Total voters
    50
I want the B-1R
When Boeing was bolder: The RC-1 on you tube...can’t get the link to work

There is a new book coming called Project Terminated by Eric Simonsen
 
Last edited:
There was a triple lifting body LV stack by the same name.
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
Last edited:
@publiusr and I were discussing this elsewhere, so i thought, I would post a link

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Roton ATV, the tallest flying traffic cone, I mean helicopter, ever made.

I would explain more about it, but if you've never read the story, its entertaining, if a little sad. It was the thing that got me really rehyped about nuspace back in the late nineties. Before there was SpaceX, there was.. er.. this thing.
 
@publiusr and I were discussing this elsewhere, so i thought, I would post a link

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Roton ATV, the tallest flying traffic cone, I mean helicopter, ever made.

I would explain more about it, but if you've never read the story, its entertaining, if a little sad. It was the thing that got me really rehyped about nuspace back in the late nineties. Before there was SpaceX, there was.. er.. this thing.


That certainly was a thing....
 
It was the thing that got me really rehyped about nuspace back in the late nineties.
For me, it was the McDonnell Douglas DC-X (Delta Clipper.) Note the date and the similarities in flight profile to this week's Starship land-and-boom.
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
Could a smaller version of Venture Star be put ontop of Space-X rocket and sent into space and then return to Earth as a plane.
 
There's no point. SpaceX starship returns on its own, so taking a mini-VentureStar (which is what X-33 was), making no sense.

X-33 was powered, or would have been powered by linear aerospike motors derived from the J-2 motors of the Apollo program. Once Venture Star and X-33 were nixed, the engines were again tested, this time back with regular nozzles (edit: by this i mean tube wall, ablatively cooled) into what would have been the J2-X motor for use in the Ares V and Ares I rockets for the Constellation program.

But they never could provide enough thrust. NASA vacillated on going to some kind of SSME based upper stage instead, though that was even more problematic as there had never been a method to start the SSME's without a great deal of bulky ground support equipment. I'm not sure if they had even made their mind up before the entire Constellation program ended after the Obama administration scrapped everything but Orion.

some of the variants were weird. The standard Ares V was supposed to have, if memory serves, a lower stage with two shuttle derived solid rocket boosters and five SSME's. The upper stage would have had a single J2-X. But there was also a variant nicknamed Longfellow, much taller. Using 5 RS-68's from the Delta IV rocket on the first stage,, long upper stage with a J2X, 8.4m diameter. The SRBs were five segments. There was also the side-mount variants, harkening back to the old Shuttle-C concept (ones I favored and still do). Anyway, this is an aircraft discussion and i am corrupting it with rockets.

The Venture Star was always going to be a commercial program if it happened. Lockmart had a lot of troubles with the odd shaped tanks the vehicle required and it just didn't work out. X-33 probably just attempted to do too many things at once. If Delta Clipper X had been followed on instead we might be where we are now but a lot earlier without all these relentless false starts over the last 20 years.
 
There's no point. SpaceX starship returns on its own, so taking a mini-VentureStar (which is what X-33 was), making no sense.

X-33 was powered, or would have been powered by linear aerospike motors derived from the J-2 motors of the Apollo program. Once Venture Star and X-33 were nixed, the engines were again tested, this time back with regular nozzles (edit: by this i mean tube wall, ablatively cooled) into what would have been the J2-X motor for use in the Ares V and Ares I rockets for the Constellation program.

But they never could provide enough thrust. NASA vacillated on going to some kind of SSME based upper stage instead, though that was even more problematic as there had never been a method to start the SSME's without a great deal of bulky ground support equipment. I'm not sure if they had even made their mind up before the entire Constellation program ended after the Obama administration scrapped everything but Orion.

some of the variants were weird. The standard Ares V was supposed to have, if memory serves, a lower stage with two shuttle derived solid rocket boosters and five SSME's. The upper stage would have had a single J2-X. But there was also a variant nicknamed Longfellow, much taller. Using 5 RS-68's from the Delta IV rocket on the first stage,, long upper stage with a J2X, 8.4m diameter. The SRBs were five segments. There was also the side-mount variants, harkening back to the old Shuttle-C concept (ones I favored and still do). Anyway, this is an aircraft discussion and i am corrupting it with rockets.

The Venture Star was always going to be a commercial program if it happened. Lockmart had a lot of troubles with the odd shaped tanks the vehicle required and it just didn't work out. X-33 probably just attempted to do too many things at once. If Delta Clipper X had been followed on instead we might be where we are now but a lot earlier without all these relentless false starts over the last 20 years.


I found this interesting video about aerospike engines

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
couple of articles relating the B-2 bombers.

In the first, they're having to use reverse engineering to replace parts for the aircraft as the original information is no longer available (whether it was destroyed for secyrutty reason or lost in the passage of time nobody seems to know).

They also need to do the same for the B-52s though that's definitely due to the passage of time.

The other talks about the maintenance requirements for the B-2s, upgrades and the B-21 Raider which is the successor albeit very classified but expected to make it's first flight later this year.

Been over 30 years since the first fligth of a B-2 and they've been in service almost as long but the airframes have only 7000 flight hours which is not many hours per year.

Part of that is the $120,000 per flight hour cost and the multi-month (used to be close on a year) refurb the aircraft undergo every 9 years (used to be 7).

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...s-own-stealth-bomber?utm_source=pocket-newtab

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...changing-upgrades-as-focus-shifts-to-the-b-21
 
Last edited:
Best ATIS ever. :D

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
Last edited:
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top