Could Blackjack bombers reach USA?

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(Hey, how 'bout them Hokies? I see they are still able to snatch defeat
from
the jaws of victory... g; just kidding--I spent about five years in
Blacksburg after leaving active duty back in the late eighties)

Fortunately for me I have almost zero interest in football,
or spectator sports in general, so they can win a championship
or crash and burn and it's all the same to me. Well, except that
the stadium is between my office and my house, so every time they
decide to expand it I have to dodge construction equipment
every day for months. They're adding to it again now. Sigh.

LOL! I spent five years there and never went to the first game--actually, I
used to wait around my place until after kickoff time during home games and
*then* go out and run my errands, thus avoiding the crowds and traffic. If
you really want to avoid the traffic, you ought to try using that bikeway we
built around the athletic complex and through campus--our "construction
survey" for it consisted of myself with my old Army rucksack filled with
stakes, hammer, and marking tape, a 100' tape measure with which to lay in
curves, and two folks from the planning department accompanying me and
blathering about "scenic impact" and similar inconsequential items ( IIRC,
within one year of constructing that trail the university came in and tore a
chunk of it out over by the golf course due to another construction project
and had to relocate it--and it was not as if they had not approved the
initial construction themselves the previous year) . Thanks for bringing
back the memories!

Brooks


Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

wrote:

robert arndt wrote:

Tupolev Tu-160
First Designated: "Aircraft 70" in direct response to B-1A, 1973
First Flight: Dec 19, 1981
Initial Order: 100 aircraft; 30 produced before line closed in 1992
Remaining Aircraft: Russia- 15, Ukraine- 19 original, 8 transferred to
Russia in 99/00, 3 ex-Ukrainian aircraft sold to US as satellite
launchers in 1999, rest scrapped

"Satellite launchers"? Really? Is someone actually doing this,
or even working on it? Just curious because it seems to me that
piggy-back spacecraft on aircraft is an underexploited concept.
I'm sure there are all sorts of good reasons why, but if someone
is actually doing this I'd love to see pointers to articles, etc.

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

There are some photos of a development Tu-160 at Zhukovsky with a satellite
launcher on my website at :-
http://mysite.freeserve.com/aircraft_pages/tu-160.html

Scroll down towards the bottom.

The large launcher - similar to the Orbital Sciences 'Pegasus' - was
nicknamed 'Burlak' - an old Russian name for the men who hauled barges along
the canals in olden days.

The name 'Diana' is also painted on the side.

IIRC, the proposal came to nothing........

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Ken Duffey - Flanker Freak & Russian Aviation Enthusiast
Flankers Website - http://www.flankers.co.uk/
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