Marko Dash
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8 pages and nobody has brought up the B-70 yet!
Marko Dash said:8 pages and nobody has brought up the B-70 yet!
Hammer Birchgrove said:Forgot to add:
*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.
Sounds promising, and quite reasonable - after all, the Yanks did build the Canberra under licence; and what was the TSR.2 but a supersonic Canberra successor? I can't help but think, though, that it was politically impossible or the Yanks would have stepped in to save it from the axe. IIRC TFX was meant to be the basis for an all-singing, all-dancing fighter, interceptor, strike and attack aircraft (with minimal changes between variants, at least as originally planned) whereas TSR.2's role was AFAIK (nuclear) strike, (conventional) attack and recon with no thought given to an air-to-air role (at least in the initial contract - though it's easy to imagine an ADV with Red Top or some developed SARH variant thereof. American acceptance of TSR.2 as a contender for the TFX contract would have meant either dropping the interception requirement or modifying TSR.2's electronics suite to accept AAMs - which amounts to adding an illuminator for Sparrow (or possibly AIM-4 Falcon). Adding to the specification without the certainty of acceptance is a good recipe for cancellation-itis.CFE said:2) Not only should the RAF TSR.2 program have continued, but the USAF should have evaluated it as an alternative to TFX.
SOC said:Hammer Birchgrove said:Forgot to add:
*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.
That's because the N-1, their lunar booster, had this spectacularly awesome habit of detonating at or shortly after liftoff. That was one example of a project that wasn't just dropped, but rather cancelled in part because it was a failure.
Hammer Birchgrove said:SOC said:Hammer Birchgrove said:Forgot to add:
*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.
That's because the N-1, their lunar booster, had this spectacularly awesome habit of detonating at or shortly after liftoff. That was one example of a project that wasn't just dropped, but rather cancelled in part because it was a failure.
IMO it wouldn't have become a failure if Sergey Korolyov had gotten the proper funding and attention from the Politburo, the assistance from Valentyn Hlushko, and the time to test the rocket engines before assembling them into the rocket. There is also the possibility of having used Volodymyr Chelomey's Proton rocket instead, or having a lunar program with several smaller rockets which sends parts that will dock around Earth's orbit until being sent to the Moon (like some proposed Mars programs).
Perhaps I could have written "USSR should have planned and funded their lunar program better, so it could have competed with USA"?
Hammer Birchgrove said:Those images reminds me of something I've wondered for some time: why didn't the original Canberra get swept wings from the beginning? ???
Indeed.CFE said:Hammer Birchgrove said:SOC said:Hammer Birchgrove said:Forgot to add:
*That USSR didn't do manned lunar missions.
That's because the N-1, their lunar booster, had this spectacularly awesome habit of detonating at or shortly after liftoff. That was one example of a project that wasn't just dropped, but rather cancelled in part because it was a failure.
IMO it wouldn't have become a failure if Sergey Korolyov had gotten the proper funding and attention from the Politburo, the assistance from Valentyn Hlushko, and the time to test the rocket engines before assembling them into the rocket. There is also the possibility of having used Volodymyr Chelomey's Proton rocket instead, or having a lunar program with several smaller rockets which sends parts that will dock around Earth's orbit until being sent to the Moon (like some proposed Mars programs).
Perhaps I could have written "USSR should have planned and funded their lunar program better, so it could have competed with USA"?
The late start for the Soviet moon effort was a major factor in its failure. Saturn's engines had been in development before Kennedy's moon commitment, whereas the Soviet effort didn't officially start until 3 years after Apollo was authorized. Perhaps UR-700 would have been a more reliable approach than N-1, and the personal conflicts between Korolov & Glushko were certainly a factor too. But Glushko also deserves blame for side-stepping the combustion stability problems with big kerosene-burning engines, and moving to toxic, storable propellants instead. The efforts of the F-1 team at Rocketdyne and NASA should never be forgotten for being the unheralded technical achievement that they were.
pathology_doc said:Hammer Birchgrove said:Those images reminds me of something I've wondered for some time: why didn't the original Canberra get swept wings from the beginning? ???
I suspect it had something to do with the basic design dating back to late 1945!
pathology_doc said:There's no doubt that Britain fumbled the ball when it came to using swept-wing data after the war.
If that's not fumbling the ball, what is?
pathology_doc said:Respectfully speaking, what Petter did or did not do with the Canberra is irrelevant: the issue I am getting at is the failure of Britain to have a swept-wing jet fighter in service at the time of the Korean War when it was more than capable of doing so, and when both the US and the USSR had managed to do so. If that's not fumbling the ball, what is?
pathology_doc said:Hammer, I recall reading somewhere that the Sabre started with straight wings (as the naval Fury) and was redesigned when the German swept-wing research became available.
Abraham Gubler said:pathology_doc said:Respectfully speaking, what Petter did or did not do with the Canberra is irrelevant: the issue I am getting at is the failure of Britain to have a swept-wing jet fighter in service at the time of the Korean War when it was more than capable of doing so, and when both the US and the USSR had managed to do so. If that's not fumbling the ball, what is?
So why didn't the RAF have a swept wing fighter in service for the Korean War? Because they were the only Air Force after the end of WW2 with a jet fighter in mass service. Two of them: Meteor and Vampire. By being ahead of everyone else their procurement cycle was out of sync with the new technology.
red admiral said:It helps to have money available...
(snip)
There are many things that could have been done better, but it's easy to forget the government's point of view in favour of a bunch of cool planes. It was simply unaffordable to have top notch armed services any more.
The Rat said:Canadair C-102 Jetliner. I shudder when I think of what we gave up, years before the Avro Arrow got all the glamour and tears.
Why oh why doesn't somebody make a kit? :'(