And here I thought it was alive because it was in Curt Weldon's district.

Only half, the other half is in Texas. ;)
From the Dallas Morning News;Those engines are $2million...each.

From the beginning the two biggest problems have been weight and materials.
The original development contract had rigid standards on the materials that could be used. They specified composite materials that DRPA had thoroughly tested, for 5 years. This was in the early 80s when the composite technology seemed to be making strides every month. Starting with "antique" material made the weight/strength balance very difficult.

All the hydraulic tubing is titanium to save weight. On the computer models it was way stronger than necessary, but in practice it had to be thicker when they actually flight tested it.

Unlike any other aircraft, every fastener must be installed perfectly. There isn't enough redundancy for a bunch of other fasteners to take up the slack if you have a few installed sloppily....weight again.

There has been so many threats to cancel this program, the Marine Corp wants so badly, they were pushing implementation to the max. Remember the marines are not flying Chinooks but the much smaller, older, Sea Knights, which puts them way behind the Army Rangers. Inconceivable.

I think they could have avoided half of the deaths by using sand bags instead of troops while the pilots were learning the flight envelope for this aircraft.
I'll stop now.

They could have avoided 19/27 (clearly more than half) of the deaths if the *one* pilot had stayed inside the already known flight envelope.

Speaking of lighter materials and composites, another aircraft flew at Farnborough

So, if they hadn't done that the shrieking would be about how much blood and treasure had squandered on "new, untested materials tech".

Bringing new tech into aviation is always an ugly struggle between innovation and safety, between a desire to used the newest, best stuff available and the competing desire to use only what is known and well-understood.

Avionics has been a prominent arena for this...and the Space Shuttle computers are an obvious case in point. Only now are we seeing glass cockpits seriously beginning to displace "steam gauge" panels. The same applies to materials--for example lightning protection has been a huge cause celebre where non-conducting composite materials are concerned. And how to successfully *repair* minor damage to composite parts is still a new field.

Geting a new technology to the point where lives can be trusted to it is nearly impossible to do without actually trusting lives to it. And as always, it's ever so much easier to criticise from an armchair on the sidelines after engineering decisions have been made. Of course, if someone's initial motivation is to find something to carp about, something can always be found. It's so unthinkable for the media to recognize that this mission was successful (which won't sell as well as "Military Procurement Scandal Wastes Lives!") that the story is somehow now all about compressor stalls and a precautionary landing.

Hey Maggie, what kind of job do you have? Regardless of our opinions, it's fun to talk aviation technology with folks that have an interest. Mine stems from my father's career at Lockheed. I spent much of my youth reading Aviation Week & Space Technology and looking through all the Janes' books I could get my hands on. And then there were the models; lots of model plane building. I think you can learn a lot about aviation just by building models (though I don't do that these days).

I'm really interested in the aesthetics of aircraft design, especially jets. The Korean War-era jets look so cool to me, and all Cold War-period technology fascinates me. I just finished working on a National Register Nomination for a Nike base, and in doing so I learned a lot. Do you have a favorite aircraft?

Well, by profession I'm a software engineer, currently working on Java-based control software for a high-performance blade cluster used in the insurance industry.

But I have a life-long interest in aviation and astronautics. My father was a clergyman, but he was also an elementary school science teacher during the Sputnik era, so that was a big influence on my interest in aviation, astronautics, computing and radio and electronics.

I've been active in space-based amateur radio at various times, and have logged contacts though amateur radio satellites and with the crew on board the International Space Station.

I can do no different than claim Cessna Cardinal N19762 as my favorite aircraft, because I own 10% of it and fly it on a semiregular basis.

More details at http://voicenet.com/~maggie

Well, I hope they have worked the bugs out, because Iraq will be one hell of a test bed.

Don't forget to write Bruce.;)

No shite, RL. I was thinkin about that. Desert landings with two major downwash vorticies, not to mention its vulnerability to enemy fire (noise, size, target value, etc.). As a taxpayer, I feel I have no say in the matter. Same with the F-22. I just hope they can separate the pork from the engineering and science on both of these craft.

Yes, the military is just starting to realize that off the shelf avionics, that commercial aviation have proved reliable for about a jillion air miles, might work as well as the ones they were having built.....at 100 time the price. Well duh.

I guess nobody was willing to tip the sacred cow of Mil Spec.:rolleyes:

If you took a little time out from bashing the military, you'd might realize that civil aviation has nearly as big a problem adopting new tech.

The advantage they have is their development cycle times tend to be shorter...largely because they don't have as big and motivated a journalistic peanut gallery to kibbitz and "mil-spec" oversight and procurment procedures to make sure the taxpayers largesse is "equitably and justly" distributed.

Allowing for that they're just as conservative.

I'm not military bashing by questioning the antique process of Mil Spec. It was devised to assure a quality product from lowest bidders by micro-managing every step and a paper trail a mile long. That's why we get $500 hammers and $800 toilet seats.

Once the avionics is being used commercially for a while and proven reliable, they know what they are getting. They don't have to reinvent the wheel, just because it's not Mil Spec. :rolleyes:

There's much more wrong with military procurment than MilSpec. MILitary SPECifications call for more durability and reliability than their commercial counterparts, and rightly so.

The $600 P-3 replacement toilet seat and "unidirectional impact generator" hammer of the 1980s were created by other parts of the procurement process...most especially the accounting rules that allowed burying additional "overhead" into the pricing of routine spare parts and tools associated with big-ticket projects. MilSpec isn't at fault there.

There *is* additional cost associated with any part used in civil aviation. It's partly due to meeting FAA certification rules...but mostly due to paying off trial lawyers who sue any deep pockets found in the aftermath of an any aircraft accident.

I'm just happy to see anything about this aircraft that is not about it killing someone.

In which it's comparable to the helo's its replacing...while in hover near the LZ. Where's it's expected to shine over the competition is flying faster/higher/farther while enroute, which reduces its vulnerability to ground fire. Having greater range keeps it away from the ground more also.

When you talk about "desert landings", remeber that this design is largely a result of lessons lerned at Desert One. Running *anything* mechanical in a sandbox is a challenge...but if it can be done this aircraft should be able to do it.

Actually, I'm glad we don't vote on these things. Would you fly in an aircraft designed by the same process that gave you the government? :-)

As Rocky said to Bullwinkle, "That trick never works." But we can hope for enough separation of dreck from tech that something is delivered that's comparable to the DC-3, the B-52 or the F-15.