Here’s another input from DT’s publisher emeritus Chris Michel. This video shows a couple of B-2s launching, the second one not so well. Fortunately, the pilots punch out in time.
What’s a couple billion among friends and taxpayers?
– Ward
The Sunday Paper
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
This is on the AFs website with other info related to the accident, sans flippancy of course.
That’s painful to watch. the main concern is for the pilots. The 2 billion going up in flames…. The Government has done worse things with that kind of money.
also, enough with comments on the cost of the B2. for the advance in technology required to make this thing at the time it was made you got what you paid for and then some. those same technologies went on to revolutionize the high precision manufacturing sector. incidentally this is one of the only industries where the US still leads. the 400 billion dollar cost has long since been repaid by the resultant economic boost.
technology however has continued to advance. and the B2 should have been upgraded in the name of saftey.
Evangeline… I agree with you comment on the cost has been repaid by US industry advances. I believe this is the case for state funded education etc. I doubt many people would turn around and say they wouldn’t pay extra for their kids education! It’s the same principle, just on a different level. Look at the Nuclear industry, the world has already lost it’s experts and is having to re-learn the subject!
However, Evangeline, I disagree with your comment on the rate sensor and how the wii controller is better!
Airspeed indicator is not a acceleration or rate indicator! It is an air data indicator! The outside air doesn’t stand still! You could be sitting on the tarmac and it will state a velocity due to the wind.
Aerodynamics is not due to the velocity you travel in reference to the ground, it’s in reference to the airflow over the wing!
Also, on another note, the laser ring gyroscope (gyroscopes measure rates and acceleration) is stronger and incrediably more accurate than the wii will ever be! FYI the laser ring gyro is so accurate you need to take into account the earths rotation! A strain gauge will never be that accurate!
On the flip of 2 billion dollars spent. How much does it cost to safely insert a special forces team with the enough C4 to demolish their objective and safely leave the area without detection or capture.
2 billion well spent? Probably.
Evangeline, slow down. What is a Wii accelorometer (or is it just called “Wii”)?? Strange name for a quasi military item.
Looks like the pilot climbed out to hard, stalled the bird and came back down, entered into ground effect and appears to have recovered, but ended up veering off to the left for some reason and crashed.
Shame….
Now that they are able to reverse the casimir effect the next step is to develop a technique to amplify it.
Buckwheat:
That’s what it LOOKS like, but the flight control systems in that bird are probably automated and incredibly complex-who knows what happened. I highly doubt a trained and well experienced B2 pilot would stall on takeoff. Who knows though, I’m sure we’ll find out later.
Trial Lawyer:
The keyword in your phrase is safely-its rarely done safely. A B2 makes a hell of a lot more sense than risking a “highly trained SF team.” An SF team has decades of training and experience, and there’s no point to risking our nation’s best if an airplane can do the job with little to no risk at 50,000 feet. This isn’t the movies. These are real men, and I wouldn’t risk any of mine if I didn’t have to.
I forgot to add…
2 Billion dollars well spent-absolutely.
Geez. All this guessing going on when the answers to questions are readily available:
The accident:http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123101727
Here’s something to think about. There was about 5000 plus hours on the bird that went down. It was a ‘middle of the pack’ production item. I would expect half to have more hours and half to have fewer hours. If the standard spec of one aircraft loss for every 100,000 fleet flight hours applies, it sounds like the loss occurred very near the spec average(remarkable given the small number of aircraft involved). Now, before some overreacting emoter interprets this point as callous or implying there shouldn’t be concern, my point is that if it flies it will crash. In setting the number of aircraft to be bought, somebody, sometime, decided that the US could live with losing a B-2 every now and then at the spec rate — even if it represented $2B of sunk cost.
Of course, if the AF had bought the original number planned, it would have represented only about a quarter of that cost…..and probably would have happened sooner ;-)
Trial Lawyer (I am aware of the fact that you were being joking, but I figured I would clarify more):
The Wii (yes the console) accelerometer stated by Angeline is a collection of strain gauges shaped in a petal arrangement. By measuring the strains produced (on the material the strain gauges are mounted on) due to the force created by the acceleration, one can determine the rates and accelerations experience by the controller.
It is a very robust way of measuring the acceleration. Though, when talking of accuracy, I don’t know why she ever thought it was more accurate than what is on the B-2 (maybe it was using her knowledge whilst working on the B-2 or related aerospace product – “laughs”).
@SMSgt Mac…great post.
and whoever shot this is the worst camera man that ever existed in my history of watching horrible home movies. its like some five stars kid was there that day and was playing with his MY FIRST SONY cam.
Too bad though, i bet that pilot is flying c-130′s to the Sudan now.
******CAUTION********
“Boogeyman’s” link is not work or child safe. Geez, I hate that little trick. I am sitting in a family restaurant with WiFi and almost gave the kiddies and their Mom in the next booth an unexpected treat. Suspect my security system blocked some Malware as well.
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Doug, yes you are correct!
I had only seen images of the device and assumed that this was what it was… essentially it operates in a similar manner. Obviously though the mathematics are completely different for capacitance as they are for resistance.
Thanks for pointing it out!