Devices for avoiding VNE?

Moveable wings ?
No it wasn't. Not the model shown on the old magazines I have.

It was a nice, beautiful sexy delta not unlike it's competitors.

Actually, look at what I just found on the web:
http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/sst.html



"F.L. Whiteley" wrote in message
...
Boeing's design was a moveable wing, akin to the F-111 and F-14. This
would
have reduced the need to move fuel, at least as much, as it would shift
along with the wing. One thing about the old Boeing, they never bid or
offered an airframe that they didn't have the technology to build in hand.

Frank Whiteley

"Arnie" wrote in message
. com...
Denis, I hope you're just trying to make fun of the limited views some
people express here.

If you refer to the need to transfer fuel to stay in balance, the
Concorde
was neither the first, nor the last airplane with that need. Fuel
management
is an issue with most large airplanes, weather of not they are Delta
wings
or even Supersonic.

Boing was working on a similar design (although a few years behind) at
the
time the Concorde was launched, and it too would have the exact same
challenge to stay in balance, as a large delta-wing supersonic aircraft.

Or is it just that most people could never overcome the fact that the
europeans beat everyone else into the SST commercial world, and 40 years
later nobody could repeat that ?




Denis" wrote in message
...
Paul Repacholi wrote:

Concorde, when it was acelaring through transonic speeds had to do a
large fuel xfer to the aft tanks to conpensate for the strong nose
down trim shift.

It was rumoured to be certified

Surprisingly... but I'm confident that, had the soaring price of oil
in
the 70's not succeeded in killing commercially this beautiful bird,
the
FAA would not have been so kind to let it fly over the USA with such a
dangerous feature ;-)

--
Denis

R. Parce que ça rompt le cours normal de la conversation !!!
Q. Pourquoi ne faut-il pas répondre au-dessus de la question ?

Okay, that's the official history and finally contracted design, but the
much favored design was based on swing wing technology developed during the
TFX (F-111) competition. They went for fixed wing because they felt the
swing wing was so conceptually different that they wouldn't win the
contract, politicians being what they are (Jackson and Magnuson, despite
Senate status, had few electoral votes backing them up), and Boeing had a
long dry spell of winning government airplane contracts. It was a purely
pragmatic design. If you look at Boeing history, the company did not win a
federal airplane contract from the KC-135 (and it's variants, EC-135,
RC-135, E-6, C-135) until the E-4 (and that was an anomaly as there was no
real alternative plus only four were built for AF1 and NEACP). Although you
will find no attribution, this resulted from Boeing putting the government
(USAF) over a barrel in the production of the KC-135 after winning the
tanker contract, requiring that 10 707's be rolled off the line for every 15
KC-135's. That's NOT what Lemay and the USAF wanted, but Boeing won the bid
based on parallel production of the military and commercial airframes and
would go broke otherwise. The government unhappily capitulated on this, but
it stuck for a long time and Boeing started a string of bid losses. After
the C5, the company essentially focused on commercial airframe development
and gave up on chasing most government bids for a long time (note this is
the aircraft wing, not missiles). Boeing only really got back into military
aircraft by buying or partnering with established military production lines.
I can't attribute this either, but have heard it said that as much as 85% of
the B-2 was built under Boeing sub-contracts. True? I don't know, but it
might make an interesting 'follow the money' research project for some
graduate student.

The congressional hearings on McNamera's baby make interesting reading
despite all of the blacked out classified areas. It's was a four-volume set
IIRC. However, the Boeing TFX design was much superior in
design/performance to the General Dynamics implementation (not to say that
the GD result wasn't a neat airframe) and likely would have resulted in the
Navy staying in the contract. Remember Mac? He's the guy that's just
apologized for Vietnam. Anyway, after those Congressional hearings, the
feds go back and give Lockheed the nod for the C5, which, in the opinion of
many, they couldn't build at the time and the cost overruns that resulted
from developing the technology cost taxpayers several boatloads of money.

I grew up going to school with classmates with last names like Wilson,
Boullion, Stamper, and one of my best friend's father was a lead Boeing wing
engineer (from 50's until 80's). (I leave his name out as it is very unique
and googling only finds my friend, his wife, and children. His father's
work was pre-Internet, but he was published in AWST and elsewhere from time
to time). We had long, engaging discussions about this very topic and also
the C5 and the eventual cracking wing roots of the C5A (another lost Boeing
contract). He was very candide about politicians and aircraft and cost
overruns and why they happened (C5 especially, as it was timely).
Personally, he was fiscally conservative. OBTW, he had some soaring
experience in California in the early 1950's, just to keep this on track.
He was a fighter pilot instructor during WWII.

There's the 'official' Boeing history, but there are many things that
happened between Boeing and the federal government (and politicians) that
you won't find attributed to anyone. In addition to anecdotal stories, I
was part of a 100 student senior level course at the University of
Washington that studied the Boeing company in detail in 1970.

But that was the old Boeing. I hardly recognize the current corporation.

Frank Whiteley

PS: Never worked there. My mother did for six months and didn't like it
much. However, after WWII when the other aviation manufacturers were laying
off, Boeing was hiring the best engineers it could find. These were men
with talent and vision of how aviation would change the world. Most are now
gone, but what an era.

"Arnie" wrote in message
. com...
Moveable wings ?
No it wasn't. Not the model shown on the old magazines I have.

It was a nice, beautiful sexy delta not unlike it's competitors.

Actually, look at what I just found on the web:
http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/sst.html



"F.L. Whiteley" wrote in message
...
Boeing's design was a moveable wing, akin to the F-111 and F-14. This
would
have reduced the need to move fuel, at least as much, as it would shift
along with the wing. One thing about the old Boeing, they never bid or
offered an airframe that they didn't have the technology to build in
hand.

Frank Whiteley

"Arnie" wrote in message
. com...
Denis, I hope you're just trying to make fun of the limited views some
people express here.

If you refer to the need to transfer fuel to stay in balance, the
Concorde
was neither the first, nor the last airplane with that need. Fuel
management
is an issue with most large airplanes, weather of not they are Delta
wings
or even Supersonic.

Boing was working on a similar design (although a few years behind) at
the
time the Concorde was launched, and it too would have the exact same
challenge to stay in balance, as a large delta-wing supersonic
aircraft.

Or is it just that most people could never overcome the fact that the
europeans beat everyone else into the SST commercial world, and 40
years
later nobody could repeat that ?




Denis" wrote in message
...
Paul Repacholi wrote:

Concorde, when it was acelaring through transonic speeds had to do
a
large fuel xfer to the aft tanks to conpensate for the strong nose
down trim shift.

It was rumoured to be certified

Surprisingly... but I'm confident that, had the soaring price of oil
in
the 70's not succeeded in killing commercially this beautiful bird,
the
FAA would not have been so kind to let it fly over the USA with such
a
dangerous feature ;-)

--
Denis

R. Parce que ça rompt le cours normal de la conversation !!!
Q. Pourquoi ne faut-il pas répondre au-dessus de la question ?