From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #136 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Saturday, 16 July 1994 Volume 05 : Number 136 In this issue: Re: Moon Shot Strategic Air Command Our hobby at Beale SAC and P.R.I.D.E. PRIDE and oops! Re: Blackbird- The Movie. (Fwd) Black Horse & Lunar missions (fwd) Re: NIGHTHAWK! Re: VINDICATOR Thank you Mary for trinkets! Re: NIGHTHAWK! Re: Two new recon. vehicles announced in Newsweek See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: mangan@Kodak.COM (Paul Mangan) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 07:29:45 EDT Subject: Re: Moon Shot I also enjoyed parts of it. It will be rebroadcast in its entirety from 8:05 to 12:05 Saturday night. Paul > From skunk-works-owner@gaia.ucs.orst.edu Thu Jul 14 13:17:26 1994 > To: skunk-works@gaia.ucs.orst.edu > Subject: Moon Shot > Cc: brosen@ames > Reply-To: brosen@ames.arc.nasa.gov > Sender: skunk-works-owner@gaia.ucs.orst.edu > Content-Length: 819 > X-Lines: 16 > > Last Monday night and last night TBS broadcast "Moon Shot," a four hour > look at the early space program. The movie is from the newly published > book of the same name (by Alan Shepherd and Deke Slayton) and is > told by Deke through the voice of Barry Corbin (Northern Exposure). > > It has its own unique perspective and biases, but it's a good show. It > will be repeated on TBS this Saturday at 5:05PM EASTERN time. Set your > VCR's accordingly. > > Bernie > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > brosen@ames.arc.nasa.gov NASA Ames AIS Office 233-7 > (415) 604-6558 Moffett Field, CA 94035 > / Disclaimer: It would be inappropriate to assume views I express \ > \ are those of anyone directly or indirectly employing my services / > ------------------------------ From: ron@habu.stortek.com (Ron Schweikert) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 08:44:15 MDT Subject: Strategic Air Command I've seen a couple of these go by, but I have to respond: >> {} The Strategic Air Command. ``Peace is Our Profession, War is Just >> {}a Hobby''. > Actually in the pictures we had around our SAC base that were labeled the motto was: "Peace is our Profession, War is our Hobby." but then again, who really knows, that's just what we always said. >From: "S.K. Whiteman" > > IMHO SAC sucked with PRIDE ? Well sure there was a lot of pride in SAC, but there also was in TAC, MAC and every other group that I knew anyone in. >I don't know what KC-135s these folks are referring to but the ones I flew >in were quite comfortable; airline seats, cots, hot coffee, and all of >comforts of home. The EC-135s were even better, higher level officers. >Now the truly uncomfortable A/C are B-52s or C-119s. Try a x-country in >a C-124 sometime. On our overseas flights there were seats, yes...about 8 of them. They were for the officers. The rest of the plane was totally empty, which we then filled within 18" of the ceiling with cargo. Us enlisted folks were stuck along the side with our knees in our faces. Once we got up cruising we climbed on top of the baggage to stretch out, or if you could, laid down on the webbed seats (if someone else had vacated them.) There were also fold-down beds but were used *exclusively* by the tanker crew. We were just human cargo. Cheers! Ron ------------------------------ From: ron@habu.stortek.com (Ron Schweikert) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 09:41:51 MDT Subject: Our hobby at Beale I meant to include this in my last posting, but spaced it. As you might know, the 9th Strategic Reconnaisance Wing at Beale was in SAC. SAC's motto (unofficially!) was: "Peace is our Profession, War is our Hobby." At Beale though it was: "Peace is our Profession, Photography is our Hobby." Cheers! Ron ------------------------------ From: "S.K. Whiteman" Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 11:00:17 EST Subject: SAC and P.R.I.D.E. >ron@habu.stortek.com (Ron Schweikert) >> IMHO SAC sucked with PRIDE > >Well sure there was a lot of pride in SAC, but there also was in TAC, >MAC and every other group that I knew anyone in. I meant the acronym PRIDE, Professional Results In Daily Effort, not inordinate self-esteem. BTW PRIDE also has other meanings: People/Pilots Remain Ignorant Dispite Education, P***y Remains In Demand Everywhere and Personal Revenge In Destroying Equipment...... >vacated them.) There were also fold-down beds but were used >*exclusively* by the tanker crew. We were just human cargo. A 424X1 is an inflight refueling systems repairman. Eventhough I was FMS (Field Maintenance Squadron, the specialists) when I flew, once a month or so, I was generally consided 'tanker crew' by OMS (Organizational Maintenance Squadron, the A/C owners) and flight crew types. Except on B-52s I didn't have an ejection seat, but I had choice of jump seat..:) Geees the things one does for $55..... Sam Late of Barksdale and Loring AFBs ------------------------------ From: ron@habu.stortek.com (Ron Schweikert) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 11:04:02 MDT Subject: PRIDE and oops! >>ron@habu.stortek.com (Ron Schweikert) >> IMHO SAC sucked with PRIDE > >>Well sure there was a lot of pride in SAC, but there also was in TAC, >>MAC and every other group that I knew anyone in. and Sam said: >I meant the acronym PRIDE, Professional Results In Daily Effort, not >inordinate self-esteem. BTW PRIDE also has other meanings: People/Pilots >Remain Ignorant Dispite Education, P***y Remains In Demand Everywhere >and Personal Revenge In Destroying Equipment...... Oops, please accept my apology. I did take it wrong. And now that you reminded me of what PRIDE was, you're absolutely correct, it reeked with it! Maybe my subconcious was suppressing some of that stuff shoved down our throats ! :-) Hmm, is that anything like "Quality Training" now!? (oh boy, now I'm in *real* trouble! :-)). There were lots of other acronyms along that line, yours hit on a few I now remember. If I think of others perhaps I'll post. Ron ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 13:46:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Blackbird- The Movie. It wasn't me who actually wrote that--I just reposted it. I'm just a research engineer and I'm not allowed to do anything around the airplane, especially when it's running. We got our SR's in 1990, well after the film was made. On the other hand, I waved at the crew as they came out of the chocks on Wednesday and they did wave back. Regards, Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end.... On Thu, 14 Jul 1994, Doug Tiffany wrote: > I was watching the video of Blackbird- The Movie last night (for the > umpteenth time) and I couln't help but wonder if Mary Shafer was in > any of the footage. In one of her postings, she said how she would > have to stand at attention and salute as it turned out of the hangar. > The segment in mind is at either dusk or dawn, and one of the ground > crew did just that with their flashlight. > > Any comments Mary? In the segment of "A letter to Kelly Johnson", he > mentions filming this in 1987. > > > -- > Douglas J. Tiffany (dougt@u011.oh.vp.com) > Varco-Pruden Buildings Northern Division > Van Wert OH. (419) 238-9533 ------------------------------ From: Frank Markus Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 16:40:41 -0400 Subject: (Fwd) Black Horse & Lunar missions (fwd) Forwarding message by MLINDROOS@FINABO.ABO.FI - -------------------- From: MLINDROOS@FINABO.ABO.FI (Marcus Lindroos INF) Subject: Black Horse & Lunar missions (fwd) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 14:42:01 GMT Organization: ABO AKADEMI UNIVERSITY, FINLAND Mitch's comments on launching Black Horse on an expendable launcher... From: IN%"clappm@smtpgw1.plk.af.mil" 12-JUL-1994 22:02:26.66 To: IN%"MLINDROOS@finabo.abo.fi" CC: Subj: Black Horse and Usenet >Have you considered launching Black Horse on an expendable booster such >as the Titan IV to reach extremely high altitudes (geostationary orbit, >Moon)...? Sure, refueling BH in orbit is one option but you still need >to lift lots of fuel to LEO (for example, ~30t for an Apollo 8 type >lunar orbit mission). But replacing the 3rd or 4th stage with a Black >Horse would be enough to go to orbit around the Moon and back. >--- >I guess the huge wing area might cause problems during ascent and atmospheric >entry at ~11km/s...could it survive a "Dyna Soar" type launch on a Titan? Right now, based on SR-71 costing methodology and market prices for fuel and oxidizer, a single Black Horse sortie costs in the neighborhood of $250,000 US. Payload for an upgraded version of the vehicle, with composite structure, would be 5000 pounds. The full propellant load for the vehicle is just under 170,000 pounds, so 34 flights, costing $8.5M dollars would be required to refuel a Black Horse on orbit. A Titan IV would cost $250M for the same mission. As a result, you should prefer to just fly a lot of tanker sorties. The more you fly, the cheaper each one gets anyway. The wing having a large area is a good thing. The vehicle has a low ballistic coefficient, or wing loading if you prefer, and thus decelerates high in the atmosphere. Wing loading is 20 Lb/ft 2, about 1/7th that of the Space Shuttle's. Another work-around is to make two passes through the atmosphere -- one to capture a low orbit, the other to reenter. One additional trick lets you get greater payloads up: refueling in ballistic trajectories. Consider two Black Horse vehicles. One has the payload, the other carries extra propellant. Neither can achieve orbit alone. Launch the pair of them in formation flight along the same suborbital trajectory. Shut doen the engines on both craft, transfer the propellant from one to the other, and then fly the dry airplane home and the wet airplane to orbit. You pay for two sorties, but you get four times the payload into orbit. Tanking is an enabling technology. If you already have a good aircraft, and it contains all the receiver hardware for in-flight refueling, you might as well use it on orbit, at Mars, or wherever. Mitchell Burnside Clapp ------------------------------ From: megazone@world.std.com (MegaZone) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 17:00:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: NIGHTHAWK! Once upon a time John Regus shaped the electrons to say... >I think the AF spin doctors would have done just about anything to get >away from the "Wobblin' Goblin" handle. Well, all the popular press I've seen in recent years has been using Nighthawk, the crews I've seen at airshows called it that, as did the signs around the aircraft. Only a few clueless press types used the 'Wobblin' Gobblin'' nickname, and then because it 'looked' unstable. All the aircrew reports state that it is a rather stable aircraft. Looks don't mean much these days, FBW doesn't care that much if the software is good. ;-) (Which is spooky, having done a fair amount of coding on my own, and knowing so many CS types, I'm not so sure I'd feel that safe. ;-) Flying effectively on Mountain Dew (or Jolt), pizza, and vending machine food.) - -- megazone@wpi.wpi.edu megazone@world.std.com megazone@hotblack.gweep.net "I have one prejudice, and that is against stupidity. Use your mind, think!" Moderator: WPI anime FTP site, 130.215.24.1 /anime, the anime FanFic archive; rec.arts.anime.stories, questions to anime-dojinshi-request@wpi.wpi.edu GTW/HU d-- -p+ c++(++++) l u+ e+ m+(*)@ s++/+ !n h- f+ !g w+ t+@ r+@ y+(*) ------------------------------ From: megazone@world.std.com (MegaZone) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 17:19:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: VINDICATOR Once upon a time larry@ichips.intel.com shaped the electrons to say... >Kind of like a bad-to-the-bone F-111! Hmmm. >... Nah, can't be. Remember the F-111H proposal? The stretched F-111 on steroids? I haven't seen a lot on that beyond footnote style metions. Does anyone have more data on that? - -- megazone@wpi.wpi.edu megazone@world.std.com megazone@hotblack.gweep.net "I have one prejudice, and that is against stupidity. Use your mind, think!" Moderator: WPI anime FTP site, 130.215.24.1 /anime, the anime FanFic archive; rec.arts.anime.stories, questions to anime-dojinshi-request@wpi.wpi.edu GTW/HU d-- -p+ c++(++++) l u+ e+ m+(*)@ s++/+ !n h- f+ !g w+ t+@ r+@ y+(*) ------------------------------ From: rakoczynskij@agcs.com (Jurek Rakoczynski) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 14:01:24 -0700 (MST) Subject: Thank you Mary for trinkets! Mary, A great big *** THANK YOU *** for all your effort and time in getting the trinkets flown in the SR71. Also, please thank Stephen, Marta and anyone else who helped you. There were some excited people here when I said "it's in"! Let's see now. I can frame the patch and note on a red velvet background and ... :-) - -- Jerzy (Jurek) Rakoczynski Voice: +1 602 581 4867 Fax: +1 602 581 4022 AG Communication Systems Internet: rakoczynskij@agcs.com POB 52179 Internet: jurek.rakoczynski@gte.sprint.com Phoenix AZ 85072-2179 GTEMail: j.rakoczynski ------------------------------ From: John Regus Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 23:23:34 -0500 (CST) Subject: Re: NIGHTHAWK! I don't think that is right about the pilots thinking the 117 is all that stable of an aircraft... not that it is unsafe, rather it has weird performance characteristics... I'll have to dig through my grab bag of comments on the plane's performance characteristics and the comments made about it by its pilots... But I think I am right on this one... it was the pilots who gave it the name "Wobblin' Goblin." Regards, John F. Regus | (713) 960-0045 | SYS/370/390 SYSTEM SOFTWARE ENGINEERING WUI:REGUSHOU | On Fri, 15 Jul 1994, MegaZone wrote: > Once upon a time John Regus shaped the electrons to say... > >I think the AF spin doctors would have done just about anything to get > >away from the "Wobblin' Goblin" handle. > > Well, all the popular press I've seen in recent years has been using > Nighthawk, the crews I've seen at airshows called it that, as did the > signs around the aircraft. Only a few clueless press types used the > 'Wobblin' Gobblin'' nickname, and then because it 'looked' unstable. > All the aircrew reports state that it is a rather stable aircraft. > > Looks don't mean much these days, FBW doesn't care that much if the > software is good. ;-) > > (Which is spooky, having done a fair amount of coding on my own, and > knowing so many CS types, I'm not so sure I'd feel that safe. ;-) Flying > effectively on Mountain Dew (or Jolt), pizza, and vending machine food.) > > -- > megazone@wpi.wpi.edu megazone@world.std.com megazone@hotblack.gweep.net > "I have one prejudice, and that is against stupidity. Use your mind, think!" > Moderator: WPI anime FTP site, 130.215.24.1 /anime, the anime FanFic archive; > rec.arts.anime.stories, questions to anime-dojinshi-request@wpi.wpi.edu > GTW/HU d-- -p+ c++(++++) l u+ e+ m+(*)@ s++/+ !n h- f+ !g w+ t+@ r+@ y+(*) ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 23:11:36 -0700 Subject: Re: Two new recon. vehicles announced in Newsweek Jeff Flamm wrote: >... The July 4th issue of Newsweek (page 6) had a >short article about the Pentagon procuring two new unmanned recon aircraft. >It is a 1 billion dollar program. The first aircraft will be an unmanned >stealth vehicle designated Tier three-minus. It is to be operational in 18 >months. The second aircraft will be an unmanned U2 designated Tier two-plus >and is to be operational shortly after the stealth vehicle. The U2 is to >have a 7000 mile range, fly at 65k feet, at 400 mph, and have a loiter time >of 24h. No performance criteria were given for the stealth vehicle. Both >vehicles will provide real-time photos via satellite. The vehicles will be >able to fly via a preprogrammed mission plan or using a ground based >controller. The Pentagon said it will waive all procurement regulations to >speed development and reduce cost. Since this is fairly important, and since additional information on this was in this week's AW&ST, I though I would summarize the new information, from the 7/11/94 AW&ST, pgs 20-22, since nobody else has. And refs. in the AURORA bib. have indicated for years that there was something like this out there. The big announcement of course was about the stealthy UAVs. There were two. One was announced as cancelled and the other is currently a paper study with some technology handed down from the larger cancelled project. The cancelled project was known as Tier 3. The vehicle was a very large, expensive and stealthy Lockheed UAV design. It has been described as resembling the B-2 bomber in size, radar low observability and expense. Cost estimates per UAV, reported by those familiar with the project, were around $400 million. The project was abandoned as being too expensive and time consuming. The newer stealthy UAV proposal, as Jeff Flamm indicated, is known as Tier 3-minus. It is a Boeing, Lockheed, and DARO (Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office) project. A Boeing/Lockheed team was awarded a $100 million sole-source contract to begin the project. The design exists currently only as Lockheed drawings. It has been described by officials 3 ways: as a "Frisbee with wings," a "semi-boomerang," and a "modified flying wing." AW&ST described it as follows: "The design consists of a circular center section with a pointed nose. The straight lines of the nose extend backwards into widely seperated wings to produce an overall flattened chevron shape when viewed from above. The circular main body contains the sensor and communications equipment". "The wings which make up about 80% of the aircraft's tip-to-tip width, provide the lift needed for economical, long endurance flight at altitudes over 50,000 ft, with a payload of 800 lbs., officials said. The basic shape has several variations - including both pointed and rounded wingtips - and has undergone redesign as the size, scope and funding of the project have constricted, they said. The air intakes are located on the bottom of the UAV, and the current engine candidate is a single Williams FJ44". DARO chief Maj. General Kenneth Israel indicated the flyaway cost of the Tier 3-minus UAV would be limited to $10 million per UAV. Skeptics within and outside the UAV community indicate the task is probably impossible for less than $20 million per UAV. ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #136 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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