Comments on: B-2 Crash Report

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:04:50 +0000

Welllllllll, that sort of depends on whose district it is being built in and how much pull they have.

In the unlamented days of “the Newt” the Air Force was running out of space to park them, but C-130s were being bought because they were built in his district.

Les Aspin kept the bloody tilt-rotor Osprey from being killed off multiple times.

These days where an aircraft is built depends on which Congresscritters have the most pull on the Armed Services Appropriations committee.

This garbage started during the “the War of Northern Aggression” [as they say down here] and hasn’t let up.

You are absolutely correct in your reading that airplanes really should be able to fly before we spend $1.4 Gigabucks per unit on them.

They were designed for an attack on the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, but no one has the strength of character to just put them down.

By: mapaghimagsik

mapaghimagsik — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:49:11 +0000

Shouldn’t “as designed” mean “it flies“?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 18:21:27 +0000

I was totally floored by this quote: “the aircraft actually performed as it was designed. In other words, all the systems were functioning normally.”

We have an aircraft that is “designed” to kill pilots by going into a stall and sideslip on take-off‽ The thing is almost all wing, so just hitting the throttles and steering a straight line should result in a take-off as soon as it is moving through the air fast enough. Air flow will pull it into the air. As long as you don’t have engine power problems, take-offs are easier than straight and level flight.

I’m going to write an update later on a little research I did after reading about the “moisture” problem. This isn’t something that was discovered two years ago. This is something that was known about for over a decade.

By: distributorcap

distributorcap — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:33:31 +0000

$1.2 billion and they dont deal with moisture
then again hundreds of billions in iraq and the troops dont have proper armor

but those repubs – strong on defense
hrumph!

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:42:11 +0000

yikes. glad they got out in time.

missouri is populated with $1.4 billion land-dwelling manta rays then?

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:44:10 +0000

*sigh* I should clarify what I said… what I meant was that there should NEVER have even been a moisture sensor problem to find a *work around* for in the first place! The fact that the morons-in-charge there couldn’t be bothered to tell anyone how to fix the problem (that should never have existed in the first place), is a whole separate (and highly unsurprising) problem. I think I can safely say that people would be right to assume that at a cost of $1.4bln each, moisture should not be any problem at all, anywhere! What next? They can’t fly them if the sun is shining? Geez.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:37:54 +0000

That’s simply insane Bryan! You know as well as I do that ever since WW2 moisture has been a notorious problem for any aircraft! JHC, every engineer worth a damn knows how that moisture effects sensitive instruments and sensors! Hell, I was designing moisture-proof sensors in the 80’s just so the damned things would work properly in the sub-tropics and winter here! It’s *NOT* rocket science or even difficult!

Bah! stupidity and corner-cutting greed is it’s own reward!

I guess the USA never heard of QA or risk-analysis. Well, of course not… silly me… that would cost money and might lower short-term profits. Of course, long term is something else, but nobody gives a damn about *long term* there obviously.