
The evolution of B-2s and pterosaurs - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/59/connections/bombers-and-dinosaurs-were-both-before-their-time
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CapitalistCartr
"Mysteriously, the U.S. Air Force ordered the flying-wing bombers on the
assembly line scrapped."

Nothing mysterious about it. The original YB-49 was a bear to control in
flight and prone to crashing. It appears to be the nature of flying wings. The
modern B-2 solves that by fly-by-wire, with computers between the pilot and
control surfaces, keeping the plane stable.

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dingaling
But why order them to be scrapped? That costs the Air Force more than just
striking them from inventory, recovering the GFE and letting Northrop deal
with them.

Both the UK and Canadian governments issued similar orders ( TSR2 and CF-105 )
but in those cases it was spiteful destruction to prevent a subsequent
government from reinstating the programmes.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Secrecy. The USAF routinely orders enough (?) spare parts for secret
equipment, then scraps all the tooling. They love shredding/burning amything
classified. Then the system gets extended to a longer life, and an expensive
new store of spare parts gets rolled into upgrades.

Full dosclosure: old guy who experienced enough of USAF to be a touch cynical
about procurement.

~~~
drharby
Former acquisitions officer, that government spending puts a smirk on my face

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matthewmcg
Back when Discovery Channel actually had more than just silly "reality" shows,
they aired a program called "the Wing will Fly" about exactly this. Someone
has put an old VHS copy on youtube[1]. If you are interested in this article,
you'll enjoy it.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkhziQF0AiI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkhziQF0AiI)

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Gravityloss
Dunne, Soldenhoff and Horten at least flew flying wings before Northrop. They
were even in magazines.

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21
Even a nautil.us article is not spared from making this classic mistake:

> Spinning in vortices, air could travel more quickly now above the long
> narrow wing than below it, creating the pressure difference that would lift
> them into the skies.

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mikeash
What mistake? The classic mistake is to assume air travels faster over the top
than the bottom because the top path is longer and they must take equal time.
In fact air does travel faster over the top, quite a bit faster than the equal
time fallacy would indicate.

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jordanb
I wonder if there's a word for this; where people learn that one bit of common
knowledge is a fallacy and then "overcorrect" by assuming related things are
also wrong. Perhaps "meta fallacy?"

~~~
theophrastus
The legal term, which presupposes the fallacy, is: Falsus in uno, Falsus in
omnibus[1]

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsus_in_uno,_falsus_in_omn...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsus_in_uno,_falsus_in_omnibus)

