Posted on 07/17/2019 9:50:59 PM PDT by bitt
Pretty cool. Glad those missiles didn’t go to waste!
Fortunately, under Trump we are working on new nuclear warheads. The W-87 is ancient; during the Obama Administration, retirees of pensioner age had to be called back in to Pantex to instruct people on how to service and rebuild the W-87s and other warheads. Think about that.
Correct, they were steam launched. Nitrogen is something you can’t just pull out of your arse on a 10 minute launch warning and you can’t pull it back out of the launch apparatus if it turns out to be a drill.
Yeah, I’ve heard the constant exposure to the warhead degrades components.
I wish I could get called back for IBM (real mainframes) and Midrange (that last mess I was involved in was IBM Sys/36 code running on an AS/400 - one location stuck in the past).
I’m probably one of few guys not yet eligible for Social Security that actually developed software on an IBM Sys/36.
Yes, Ronald Reagan was President. And we never knew about no Bronco Bama. Those were good days.
Heh, I had figured it was some sort of quick-release.
Steam for the Ohio fleet launches too?
(not including the VLS packages (?) on 726-729 SSGN’s.
“manganese nodules”
I sure seem to recall the article calling them “nitrogen nodules” but hey, that was almost 50 years ago, so....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer
Several components in the warhead degrade with time by itself, nothing to do with the radiation.
IBM barely has anything to do with stuff like that now other than selling replacement solutions. However, go hang out a shingle on LinkedIn, InDeed, etc., and you might find yourself recruited - there’s more than a few of those left in some strange places in the US (some automakers come immediately to mind) and they’re often looking for people and will pay almost anything to get them.
I recently had to find an “old retired guy” myself to translate a custom program written for an industry consisting of a single company from an odd flavor of pre-ANSI C to something modern so it would run on something that wasn’t 30 years old - had some pointers given to me by a no-longer-active FR member and eventually found the classic old retired guy up in New England. He charged me (well, my client) accordingly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II
“Before the launch sequence is initiated, the on-board MARK 6 navigation system is activated. The specified mission trajectory is loaded onto the flight computer.[29]
Once the launch command is given, a steam generator system is activated, igniting a fixed solid-grain small rocket motor.[30] The exhaust is fed into cooling water, causing expanding gas within the launch tube to force the missile upward, and out of the submarine.[30] Within seconds, the missile breaches the surface of the water and the first-stage Thrust Vectoring Control (TVC) subsystem ignites. This enables hydraulic actuators attached to the first-stage nozzle. Soon after, the first-stage motor ignites and burns for approximately 65 seconds until the fuel is expended; in addition, an aerospike atop the missile deploys shortly after first-stage ignition to shape airflow. When the first-stage motor ceases operation, the second-stage TVC subsystem ignites. The first-stage motor is then ejected by ordnance within the interstage casing.[31][32] “
Nice. I almost applied for an ARAMCO position, though given my particular circumstances right now, that could turn out good or not-so-good.
The pay was not quite what I expected either. Pretty comparable to U.S. pay for similar work - my problem is that I’ve been out for awhile but it was just an analyst position so being a bit rusty wouldn’t matter much.
Clouds, variable height, and temporal predictability?
Try Ford and GM for positions. Unfortunately, that’s all I can say about that.
Nice. Yeah, I recall that about the extending aerospike, now that you mention it.
I thought I read that accelerometers (de-celerometers?) trigger the engine to fire as the missile reaches the surface but not really sure about that. Maybe I heard that rumor about the LGM-118A at the peak of the cold launch(?).
Google didn’t like my spelling on the de-cell, heh.
Maybe such a beast does not exist, LOL.
Well, I’m off to bed. Catch your comments tomorrow. Thanks for the discussion.
Yah, my recruiter friends all but abandoned me after the economy crashed. Got one lousy pay gig but it brought in some money (the drive was a killer - almost literally - fell asleep behind the wheel after my regular 12-hour shifts.
Nothing too serious but I could not stay awake a couple times. Really scared me.
Still should have pursued maybe another opportunity post-gig. Would have had to move out there but it might have been doable. Now, it’s all but impossible unless they put me up in a hotel 5 days a week (just tried for another contract gig there). It’s a bit out on the Kansas prairie for me. Not as far as that last (lousy) job but I had hotel arrangements (can’t pull that off without the client making it happen now).
I believe the hulls leading edges can be cooled.
From what little I can find, yes. The UGM-109’s transport canister is ejected by gas pressure (reasonably sure it’s steam, again), the missile booster fires to propel the missile out of the tube and then out of the water, with the missile discarding protective covers as it clears the surface.
“Should be on the air show circuit in a year or two.”
I sincerely doubt it, and I’d rather that the Air Force and Skunk Works keep it under their hats as much as possible, and that if they were to say “If we told you, we’d have to kill you”, they’d be saying it with all sincerity.
There are limitations to that, also well known within reason. Given a photo and information on what the hull is made of, engineers in the field will be able to give you a reasonably accurate ballpark on what it’s capable of.
This is nothing new - naval engineers in the London/Washington Naval Treaty era were able to tell who was significantly cheating on the displacement limits by simply looking up the publicly disseminated information, looking at the photos of the questionable ships and realizing that a ship of X ostensible size and Y ostensible displacement would have a freeboard of Z and the pictures weren’t adding up.
They’re accelerometers, and yes, that’s pretty much how the launch worked from the information I found.
Of course, accelerometers back then cost a ton of money. Now you can get units of better precision and reliability in kids’ toys of under $10. :P
Eliminate all the agencies and bureaus other than the initial four and do NOT fold any of the tasks of the erased agencies into those four.
Last time I'd seen one was while I was waiting on the first tee at the Kadena AFB golf course, in '72. It was fueling, and leaking, at the end of the runway. Few minutes later, it zipped down the runway, boom, straight up, into the bottom of the cloud deck, and GONE. Probably to Lop Noor, it was not my fate to know...
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