Corporate Jets off Aircraft Carriers

 aircraft, blather, Hmm..., My Fiction  78 Responses »
Jan 042018
 

Some months ago I pondered the possibility of launching and landing C-17s’s from aircraft carriers (result: no). But how about corporate jets such as the Gulfstream G650? The takeoff run of the G650 is a bit over a mile, so obviously a standard takeoff run would not be possible. I’m dubious that performance would be improved enough through stripping weight so that the plane could self-launch from the deck of a Nimitz-class carrier. And corporate jets aren’t equipped with either arrester gear nor catapult attachments on a properly strengthened nosegear.

The purpose of my curiosity is a piece of fiction I’ve been noodling around with. The requirement is to be able to fly passengers (as many as possible) to and from an aircraft carrier, non-stop, a distance of at least 3,400 miles, up to 4,700 miles, without inflight refueling. So… how difficult would it be to make the required modifications? Is there a chance in hell that corporate jet landing gear could take the beating a carrier landing would give it? Could such a jet successfully get away with using, repeatedly, the emergency “nets” that aircraft carriers can deploy in the event that the arrester cables don’t work? Can the nose gear be relatively easily modified for the catapult  system, or would it have to be completely replaced, with structural reinforcement to the aircraft structure?

And… how long would this take? Assume that bean counters and red-tape aficionado bureaucrats can be defenestrated if they cause a ruckus. The Skunk Works is given the task to modify X number of corporate jets for this role, told to work day and night, waste anything but time, nobody cares if it’s pretty, if the glue is carcinogenic, if the workplace is properly diverse, and to hell with the union. Is this the sort of thing that could be hacked together in days? Weeks?

This being fiction, I can always cheat. Perhaps the responsible parties have already made these modifications and are just keeping the planes in reserve. That would be easiest, and it would fit the story, but I remain curious about the possibilities of a crash program.

 Posted by at 3:37 pm

A Facebook reminder

 APR, blather  No Responses »
Jan 032018
 

Yeah, yeah, I’m no fan of “social media” either, but just as a reminder I have a Facebook page for Aerospace Projects Review. Right now it’s basically playing catchup with the APR blog (which, FYI, typically runs my aerospace projects stuff a day or so before they run on the Unwanted Blog). Honestly I’m at a loss to explain what added value the FB page has over the blog, but it’s there. I suppose if the blogs ever crash, like they’ve done a few times in years past, the Fb page might be the place to check to see if it is indeed a blog crash as opposed to me being dead or on the lam or some such. If the blogs *and* the Fb page go down at the same time… unless there’s some system wide attack on the internet, then chances are that either I’ve been specifically targeted, or I’ve finally given up all this stuff and have shut everything down and joined a cult or something.

https://www.facebook.com/Aerospace-Projects-Review-159434240833823/

If’n yer big in social media and what to share the APR Fb page… hey, great.

 Posted by at 11:14 pm

Grunts In The Sky

 aircraft, blather, Hmm..., weapons, youtube  10 Responses »
Jan 032018
 

And now it can be seen:

The USAF Has Finally Released a Glowing Film About the A-10 It Tried to Suppress

The article discusses the USAFs numerous attempts to kill the A-10. Realistically, it’s days are numbered. yes, it would be awesoem to have more. Even more yes, it would be great for the Army and Marine Corps to ahve a bunch of their own. But the newest A-10 is decades old, the production lines and tooling are long gone. There won’t be any more. Spare parts are dwindling, expertise is going away.

The A-10 needs a replacement, but sadly nothing quite like the A-10 is in the offing. Hilariously, there are those who think the F-35 will do the job. More likely, the actual job of the A-10 of getting down in the weeds will be done by drones. An A-10 can get in low and slow and take a beating; an F-35 probably can’t really get low and slow, and it certainly can’t take a beating. A drone can get low and slow, and who cares if it gets blown out of the sky… it’s a drone.

It would be great if a direct replacement could be manufactured. it might even look like the A-10. But due to the fact that any new aircraft is necessarily going to be designed from the ground up with all-new components, it won’t *be* an A-10.

What would be great is if the US Army told the USAF to go piss up a rope, and the Army embarks on the development of a fixed-wing ground support platform of their own, perhaps in cahoots with the Marines. A modern “A-10” with the same or better capabilities, using modern materials (but still metals rather than composites, since metals are more flak-tolerant), modern electronics, modern engines. Heck, design it to be “optionally manned,” with a two-man version flying in the midst of a swarm of unmanned hunter-killers.

 

 

 Posted by at 10:37 pm

70’s Nostalgia

 AARRRGH, Antidote For Nostalgia, art, Gah., history, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  25 Responses »
Jan 022018
 

As a followup… y’all may have seen me disparage the 70’s from time to time. Now, there were a few good things to come from the 70’s… Star Wars probably being about the best. But apart from Star Wars, when I think back to pop culture from the 70’s, there is, for no readily perceivable reason, one thing above all else that comes to my mind:

Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck Of the Friggen Edmund Fitzgerald, a hit from late 1976, about a year after the sinking of the actual Edmund Fitzgerald. It is technically a good song. Probably technically a *very* good song. But Got Dayum is it gloomy and depressing. And for some reason… it just seems to encompass the mood of America at the time (even though it came from a flappy-headed Canadian). Even with Logan’s Run’s promise from only a few months earlier that one day you’d be able to download your very own Jenny Agutter, Edmund Fitzgerald just seemed to make it clear to the world that everything was terrible.

 

 Posted by at 10:28 pm

Drawbridge orbiter: orbital art

 aircraft, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Jan 022018
 

This piece of art depicts the McDonnell-Douglas “Drawbridge” orbiter in orbit delivering a satellite. Note that the wing are deployed, even though they would be folded up during entry. The geometry of the craft was such that in order to get the cargo bay door open and payloads safely in and out, the wing needed to fold down out of the way.

This points out one of the reasons why you don’t often see a whole lot of “cool” stuff in aerospace… everything has tradeoffs. And needing the wings to constantly go up and down is a bit of a headache. When it comes to spacecraft, mass is a primary priority; the mechanisms needed to deploy the wings weight a lot… never mind the mechanisms needed to retract the wing again. As an example, the real space shuttle orbiter had no landing gear retraction system. And why should it? The landing gear is hardly something the Orbiter would ever need to retract. That could be done by the ground crew without adding weight and complexity to the craft itself.

Note that the Orbiter and the payload here seem to have not NASA markings, but Red Cross markings. I suspect that a number of variants of this piece of art would have been produced with several different markings (NASA and Pan Am being the obvious ones), but why exactly Red Cross? Dunno.

Also note that this might not be an actual “Drawbridge” design, as no extension mechanism for the wing s in evidence. This might be an oversight on the part of the artist; it might be that this was a fixed-wing design. Given the RCS thrusters on the wingtips, this is most likely *not* a Drawbridge.

I’ve uploaded the high-rez version of this artwork (11.2 megabyte 6271×4763 pixel JPG) to the APR Extras Dropbox folder for 2018-01, available to all APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in accessing this and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

patreon-200

 

 

 Posted by at 2:59 pm
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