Comments by "Helium Road" (@RCAvhstape) on "Found And Explained" channel.

  1. That fighter jet with the engines out on the wingtips looks like a nightmare in a situation where an engine flames out at supersonic speeds. Looks cool though.
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  2. The B-2 is a Northrop design and descended from Jack Northrop's earlier flying wing experiments in the 1940s-1950s, including the YB-49 jet bomber. Right before he died he was read into the then-classified B-2 program and brought in in a wheelchair to see what his old company was building. There is video of him holding a model of the B-2. He developed the flying wing tech independent of the Horton brothers.
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  3.  @steverobbins4274  NERVA is a fairly conventional design that was tested in the 70s and works, but its specific impulse and thrust are limited by the melting temperature of the reactor core, so they are about 2 or 3 times as efficient as chemical rockets. A nuclear saltwater rocket is a whole different animal: its fuel is fission fuel dissolved in water (hence saltwater) which is at weapons grade enrichment levels, so you have to store it in long tubes just to keep your ship from detonating. The fuel is sprayed into a reaction chamber where it immediately goes supercritical like an atom bomb, and then rushes out the nozzle behind the ship, taking all the fission products with it. It gives you super high thrust and specific impulse, while also destroying any nearby real estate by making it radioactive for a few thousand years. NERVA, if built right, is almost completely clean and only hot hydrogen gas comes out the nozzle.
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  4. @tst ccnt It only works with nukes. That's the whole point of the design. We use chemical explosive right now, called rocket engines. Nuclear explosives have a much higher specific impulse (efficiency), along with very high thrust, something no other type of propulsion system can do with current technology. That's why this scheme was thought of in the first place.
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  5.  @alexanderg-p3z  Yeah, you have no idea what you're talking about.
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  6.  @Commanderziff  Didn't Maneo get sponsored for his crazy antics before meeting his fate at the Ring? I think that was how he was making a living.
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  7. And every load would have a different drag profile than the last. Try planning that flight.
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  8. For roll control in the hover it would likely have used bleed air jets on the wingtips a la the Harrier, which has proven to work well. I assume the lift fans are driven by bleed air from the engine compressors as well? Or my mechanical linkage like the F-35B? Either way that would be a huge engineering challenge. One thing we've learned from decades of Harrier experience is that when things fail in a hover you have no time to decide what to do: you eject immediately and write off a very expensive aircraft, possibly loaded with a nuke. And with 6 early 60s technology jet engines, you're going to experience a lot of flameouts in day to day ops.
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  9. Supply chain problems are due to politics, a giant airplane isn't going to fix that. Still is cool though.
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  10. Those low slung engines look like a nice FOD hazard.
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  11. 10:50 in the video
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  12. Right, and maybe the B-2 was copied from alien UFO tech, too. I'm not saying the Hortons were aliens, but they were aliens.
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  13. Refueling a supersonic super jet from a submarine? Mitchell Gant can do it with Firefox. But remember, you must think in Russian!
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  14. Looks like Wallace got together with a couple of chimpanzees and a bowl of crack to hash this idea out.
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  15. Is this a real human or is it a computer-generated voice with an Australian accent?
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  16. I call dibs on "Supersonic Bears" as my next rock band name.
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  17.  @remcolangbroek656  Northrop and the Horton Brothers developed it, not invented. Since we're being pedantic ;-)
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  18. There is a B-58 in the USAF museum in Dayton. Amazing to just stand in front of it and look at that awesome thing of beauty. It hails from the era with the coolest-looking cars where high tech meant high speed and high power and this aircraft screams all of that just sitting still.
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  19.  @the_babbleboom  Put them in the dumpster where they belong.
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  20. Like a airplane version of a Chevy El Camino. "Hey Jimmy, looks like one of the tie-down straps came loose. Better suit up, walk out there, and secure it. Make sure you dress warm and hold on to the deck clamps!"
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  21. I disagree that a military 747 means all 747's are at risk from the Soviets. The USAF did and still does operate multiple members of the 707 family, including the KC-135, E-3, and various radar and reconnaissance versions based on the same basic airframe design, and they have done so since the 1950s. This did not result in multiple Soviet attacks on 707 jetliners.
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  22. "We all agree should've been built." I don't agree. Reagan administration made the right call.
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  23.  @lukewarmwater6412  Flex Tape!
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  24. Boeing did this in the past with the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, which is a development of the B-29. It's worth noting that in order to make a passenger version they had to make the fuselage a lot wider for cabin space and comfort, and even after all the changes it was still basically a commercial flop. It was a maintenance hog and expensive to operate compared to other dedicated passenger propliners of the era, such as the more famous (and way better-looking) Lockheed Constellation. In addition, the 377 was built when the B-29/B-50 production line was still open and the tech was still fairly young. The last B-52 was built in the mid-1960s, the production line is all gone, and the guys who built it are all retired or passed on, so building brand new airframes would cost a fortune, in addition to shoehorning passenger requirements into it and getting it certified for service. Operating it would cost a fortune, too, since passenger plane tech has advanced so far since the 60s, nobody wants to buy 4-engine ultramodern jets anymore, why would they want to buy a jet with 8 old school low-bypass engines?
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  25. Wider gauge railroads had been built before, way back in the mid 19th century. They are problematic as they require wider turns, wider rights of way, and make it harder to doubletrack. Transferring freight between cars of different gauges was inefficient and time consuming. Some freight cars could be lifted off their trucks with a crane and laid onto another set of trucks, which is another problem, and dual-gauge railways were also an imperfect solution. When you look at the enormous size of trains and rail equipment used in North America today, it seems that sticking to standard gauge was a good compromise that has lasted well over a century.
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  26. 14:08 What is that thing landing in the background supposed to be? Looks like some sort of variant of the XB-70 Valkyrie.
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  27. ​ @LastGoatKnight It's not a bomber, it's an attack plane, hence the cannons.
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  28. You keep saying the passengers are surrounded by the engines, but the diagrams and models clearly show that the engines were well aft of the cabin. As far as being noisy, I can't imagine it would be any noisier than sitting in the back of a Boeing 727, where you actually are surrounded by three engines. I did so many times and while it was louder in the back row than it was up front, it wasn't unbearable by any means.
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  29. I think the biggest flaw in the design was in the accessibility of the engines for maintenance and the limitations on engine upgrades imposed by their placement. To swap out an engine it looks like you might have to remove the entire tail section, and to access the upper units you'd need to climb to the top. And because the air inlet is fixed in size and there is little room for bigger engines, upgrades would be difficult, which is why the 727 and other tail-mounted jetliners are phasing out of service: no way to install a high bypass turbofan.
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