Posted on 04/18/2012 11:35:33 PM PDT by neverdem
With no fanfare and little media notice, an extremely famous American will turn 60 years old this Sunday.
It was on Tax Day in 1952 that the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, hulking symbol of the Cold War, accident-prone target of the unkind acronym "B.U.F.F.," the bomber several generations believed would usher in the death of humanity, made its first flight.
Some interesting points about the B-52:
• It was considered old-fashioned even before its operational life began. In the late 1940s the Air Force almost shut down the plane’s development out of concerns that it would be obsolete by the time it entered service.
• It comes honestly by its status as a cultural icon. That first flight was made by storied test pilot Alvin M. "Tex" Johnston, who is widely believed to have been the model for Major T.J. "King" Kong, the colorful B-52 pilot played by Slim Pickens in the Stanley Kubrick movie Dr. Strangelove. Over the years the B-52 has lent its name to a cocktail, several motion pictures, countless nightclubs around the world, and a great dance band whose flamboyantly gay stylings now seem as quaint and dated as the bomber itself.
• Though it has a reputation as a nuclear-age terror weapon, it has never delivered nuclear ordnance. To this day, the only plane that has dropped atomic bombs in anger is the B-52’s propeller-driven predecessor B-29 Superfortress.
• Despite all the above, the B-52 is expected to remain in service until 2045. It performed shooting-war service this century over Afghanistan and Iraq. It will almost certainly outlast flashier successors like the Rockwell B-1 and the Northrop Grumman B-2. Given the vagaries of budget and the challenges of fully retiring any legacy system, it’s not impossible that the unloved B.U.F.F. could end up spending a full...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Mixed feelings....bump
Star Trek: A Taste of Armageddon
...war is essentially a war game, where each planet attacks the other in a computer simulation with the tabulated victims voluntarily surrendering themselves for execution after the fact.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKmUd0zHW4w
Driverless cars.
Love that idea.
Get in the passenger side each morning, and my car drives me to work.
Nap, read, work on the computer.
Just like the bus - but no wino's, no racial hatred, and no crazy people.
I never associated the band The B52s with fags. Queen, yes.
Close, but the only way war ever ends is by breaking the will of the enemy. That’s how we lost Vietnam despite massive military success: the American will faltered, largely due to Walter Cronkite and the LSM. (Yes, they have been that treasonous that long.)
Automated war machines can give us an even bigger edge, but without the will, we’re lost...
There. You don't mind my shortening it a little bit for clarity, do you?
We slaughtered a million Communist cadre on the battlefields of Vietnam, who never saw another country in consequence.
Yeah, yeah. People are always criticizing the B-52, saying it’s outdated, I’ve got a better idea, my plane is faster and smarter than your plane.
But somehow or other, the B-52 has done the job, while most of the intended replacements proved to be little more than money-gobblers.
so I guess all of our future airline pilots are going to come out of shady sounding tech schools which advertise on UHF television during the day...
Most computer forecasters predicted it would be used for 1984 type purposes. Some of it has, but the ability to unshackle information flow from the MSM has been one of the greatest promoters of individual freedom of our time.
Autonomous cars - no drivers license - tremendous increase in productivity - enormous opportunities.
Don’t forget our drone that was brought down intact over Iran. Imagine some hostile country capturing a drone bomber.
Especially Lawyers.
I give up....
Can someone tell me the meaning of B.U.F.F.?
I used to have similar thoughts about automated cars. Then I spent 24 hours in 15 days driving to and from Alamogordo NM because of a dieing father-in-law. All of a sudden I saw automated cars very differently. There’s a lot of potential to gain freedom with them, certainly it would ease transportation. I’d be fine losing the 10MPH or so I usually exceed the speed limit by to not have to put up with the overall boredom, part of the speeding is to try to get the trip done before the brain flatlines. Is there potential for abuse by the government? Of course, just like with everything else in the world. Does that mean it’s necessarily a bad idea? No.
Or some similar word ...
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