Post amazingly cool pictures of aircraft (Volume 2)

[LotusOmega375D]

Pre-empting their switch to driving on the right, I see.

[MartG]

SNC's Dreamchaser passing the HL-10 as it arrives at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center for testing

Edited by MartG on Friday 27th January 01:58

[Eric Mc]

When are they planning to fly the Dreamchaser again?

[LotusOmega375D]

Is that the Steve Austin aircraft in the foreground? If so they rebuilt it just as well as the pilot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoLs0V8T5AA

[MartG]

LotusOmega375D said:

Is that the Steve Austin aircraft in the foreground? If so they rebuilt it just as well as the pilot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoLs0V8T5AA

The shots of it dropping away from the B-52 are of the HL-10, the actual crash was the M2-F2

[Trevatanus]

MartG said:

SNC's Dreamchaser passing the HL-10 as it arrives at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center for testing

Edited by MartG on Friday 27th January 01:58

Did Steve Austin (astronaut, a man barely alive) crash an HL-10?

[MartG]

Trevatanus said:

MartG said:

SNC's Dreamchaser passing the HL-10 as it arrives at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center for testing

Edited by MartG on Friday 27th January 01:58

Did Steve Austin (astronaut, a man barely alive) crash an HL-10?

See previous post

[MartG]

[IroningMan]

perdu said:

hidetheelephants said:

perdu said:

I'm not surprised

The vibration of a bang seat going off would have shaken the little wooden fuselage apart

At the risk of a parrot, once you're pulling the big yellow handle do you care if the aircraft falls to bits afterwards?

I do have this nice blue one

From Norway I understand

That nice Mr Palin left it in the cupboard at Broadcasting House and it's been homeless ever since

Is it still pining? That would be appropriate in the context of a conversation about wooden aeroplanes.

[Trevatanus]

MartG said:

Trevatanus said:

MartG said:

SNC's Dreamchaser passing the HL-10 as it arrives at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center for testing

Edited by MartG on Friday 27th January 01:58

Did Steve Austin (astronaut, a man barely alive) crash an HL-10?

See previous post

[Eric Mc]

Various shapes were tried -

[Stickyfinger]

Just need to add buck teeth, the most deformed hill-billy looking collection of aircraft ever

[FourWheelDrift]

Stickyfinger said:

Just need to add buck teeth, the most deformed hill-billy looking collection of aircraft ever

Plus one.

[Stickyfinger]

Nailed it Bubbu

Armed with twin 30mm Banjos ?

Edited by Stickyfinger on Friday 27th January 17:48

[Eric Mc]

Don't laugh at them thar lifting bodies.

If NASA had built their Space Shuttle along those lines it would have been a far better spacecraft.

[Eric Mc]

It'll be 40 years in June since I first saw an A-10 do its stuff (Greenham Common Air Tattoo 1977).

[Escapegoat]

"amazingly cool pictures"?

meh. Unless there's a story behind them?

[hidetheelephants]

Eric Mc said:

Don't laugh at them thar lifting bodies.

If NASA had built their Space Shuttle along those lines it would have been a far better spacecraft.

Did NASA ever do design studies of a lifting body shuttle?

[Tango13]

MartG said:

LotusOmega375D said:

Is that the Steve Austin aircraft in the foreground? If so they rebuilt it just as well as the pilot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoLs0V8T5AA

The shots of it dropping away from the B-52 are of the HL-10, the actual crash was the M2-F2

By rights Bruce Peterson should've been killed in that crash but was saved by an unknown Northrop engineer.

There was a slight problem with the centre of gravity being a bit too far aft. Something easily corrected with a bit of lead weight but the unknown engineer didn't like this solution and suggested the canopy and surrounding structure was made from steel instead of aluminium to bring the CofG forward.

[Eric Mc]

hidetheelephants said:

Eric Mc said:

Don't laugh at them thar lifting bodies.

If NASA had built their Space Shuttle along those lines it would have been a far better spacecraft.

Did NASA ever do design studies of a lifting body shuttle?

Yes and no. They did a lot of wind tunnel testing of models but when it came to design of the ACTUAL Shuttle, all of the designs had wings of some sort or other. The main argument among the different concepts was how much "cross range" the Orbiter would have once it had started to re-enter. NASA envisaged a fairly low cross range of around 500 miles. The US military wanted it to be at least 1,000.

It was because of the Air Force's 1,000 mile cross range requirement that a delta wing design was chosen over NASA's favoured stubby wing concepts -



The lifting bodies had very low cross range and were pretty unstable. The crash depicted in the images above was down to such instability. Modern fly by wire would go a long way to cure that. Cross range issues would also be a lot less of an issue because the accuracy of re-entry would now be very precise with no need to refine the approach to landing by gliding left or right of the initial re-entry trajectory.