[AR] Re: B-58 \ was Ozone etc.
- From: Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2016 14:31:08 +0100
On 20/09/16 04:49, David Weinshenker wrote:
On 09/19/2016 08:39 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
Nobody's yet built
a VTVL rocket that can do really fast turnaround, but then, nobody's yet
built a 100km Mach 6 airplane that can do that either. All too
plausibly, it could end up being less like a 747 and more like a B-58
(the plane whose operating costs were too high, and dispatch reliability
too low, for even the USAF). "This *isn't* just like an airplane." --
Jeff Greason.
So what was the problem with the B-58... was it
a flawed concept, or just implemented badly?
It was perhaps a step into the unknown, and could have been designed and
implemented better, but its real problem was that the mission changed.
It was designed as a Mach 2 high-altitude strategic nuclear-only bomber;
but in 1960 the Russians shot down Gary Powers in a U2 using a SA-2
missile, and after a while the US realised that the Russians could use
the SA-2 to shoot down B-58s at high-altitude just as easily.
There was a brief attempt to convert it to a low-level penetration
mission, but it had never been designed for that, and it couldn't go
supersonic at low level.
They did get it working, and crews came to like it, but it was a high
maintenance item and it's main mission to justify the high expense,
high-altitude high-speed dash, was no longer tenable.
--Peter Fairbrother
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