Predators and Prey

[Pygmepatl]

Tubes need heat to work. They have a heating wire inside. And they glow orange ^^

Interesting.

-1

 

[FlannelFox]

My grandad had a big HAM radio full of tubes but I never saw it glow
-1
-19

 

[Thrashy]

Not yet

+1

 

[Pygmepatl]

*Does more handstands*

-1

 

[FlannelFox]

Not yet

+1

Makin is work for this huh?
-1
Edit WAIT
-20

 

[Pygmepatl]

PREDATOR WIN!!!

 

[FlannelFox]

FOR THE GLORY OF THE HUNT,
VICTORY!!
*Empties the bag of critters*
Get on home now...

 

[Thrashy]

My grandad had a big HAM radio full of tubes but I never saw it glow
-1
-19

Of course these aren't light bulbs, as this isn't the purpose ^^

But you can see it:

 

[FlannelFox]

Of course these aren't light bulbs, as this isn't the purpose ^^

But you can see it:

Oh weird
That's fun , what does it do?

 

[Thrashy]

Here's a better image:

 

[Thrashy]

Oh weird
That's fun , what does it do?

Tubes are the ancestors of transistors. They serve different purposes. Some tubes are for amplifying, some for "management", etc.

Old TVs had a tube behind the monitor.

Some had some kind of simple display, usually in radios to show how good the signal is:

 

[FlannelFox]

Tubes are the ancestors of transistors. They serve different purposes. Some tubes are for amplifying, some for "management", etc.

Old TVs had a tube behind the monitor.

Some had some kind of simple display, usually in radios to show how good the signal is:

Is that the TARDIS? <3

Old TVs were tubes weren't they? Cathode Ray Tube monitors- I remember getting a pretty awesome breakdown of that science.
Wonder if I could build a cell signal amplifier with some of those amplifier tubes
°~°

 

[Thrashy]

Is that the TARDIS? <3

Tardis? ^^

The tube in the GIF is a EM84 (although I think they had different codes in the USA).

Old TVs were tubes weren't they? Cathode Ray Tube monitors-

Yes

Wonder if I could build a cell signal amplifier with some of those amplifier tubes

Hmm not sure. Then you could do that with "modern" electronics too, with less power usage ^^

 

[Thrashy]

@DRGN Juno since you're online:
This is actually one of the only GOOD reasons the soviet union was technologically a few years behind - their tube fabrics still exist and now while tubes have some kind of rebirth in the hifi audio community, most of them are being produced in Russia nowadays xD
As in the west most tube fabrics closed around the 70s ^^

 

[TR273]

I've got a nice gold tube thingy, I can't remember where I got it but I keep meaning to mount it on a block of wood when I get the time.

 

[FlannelFox]

Tardis? ^^

Doctor Who's space ship :3

Also modern electronics wouldn't look as cool, and I have too many solar panels for my batteries so I have energy to waste!

 

[Thrashy]

Doctor Who's space ship :3

Also modern electronics wouldn't look as cool, and I have too many solar panels for my batteries so I have energy to waste!

Haha ok

Oh Yes, old electronics has it's special magic, as the parts aren't as small as today

Also old consoles look nice

(This isn't with tubes though )

 

[FlannelFox]

Oh Yes, old electronics has it's special magic, as the parts aren't as small as today

I swear they work better too. I used to have an old Magnavox table radio/record player that got better reception in rural Tennessee in my basement than my car did in the driveway.

 

[Thrashy]

I swear they work better too. I used to have an old Magnavox table radio/record player that got better reception in rural Tennessee in my basement than my car did in the driveway.

Hmm, then it had probably just a better antenna. Tubes weren't used to receive the radio signal to my knowledge.

 

[FlannelFox]

Hmm, then it had probably just a better antenna. Tubes weren't used to receive the radio signal to my knowledge.

Guess they were just less stingy with the copper then :*

 

[FlannelFox]

Whoa, I've been gone 4 hours and nobody has made a post.. is that a record?

I went to the next town over to check out Fry's Electronics. I don't understand how such a big store can have absolutely nothing I needed.

 

[Ravofox]

Whoa, I've been gone 4 hours and nobody has made a post.. is that a record?

I went to the next town over to check out Fry's Electronics. I don't understand how such a big store can have absolutely nothing I needed.

Sounds like you need to visit LUPUS ELECTRICS!!! Run by totally legit male wolves

www.furaffinity.net: No nut... by Ravofox

(I think the record's actually been longer, lol!)

 

[WXYZ]

Whoa, I've been gone 4 hours and nobody has made a post.. is that a record?

I went to the next town over to check out Fry's Electronics. I don't understand how such a big store can have absolutely nothing I needed.

Ahh, that store with the big flying saucer...

 

[DRGN Juno]

Whoa, I've been gone 4 hours and nobody has made a post.. is that a record?

It might be. Let's fix that with episode two of Delta V. Yesterday, we looked at the Soviet answer to the Supersonic Transport (SST) in the Tupolev Tu-144. The SST competition was always a political standoff, with both sides of the iron curtain itching to be the leaders in what was promising to be the new face of commercial aviation. And of course, the Americans wanted a slice of the supersonic pie. This was the chance for the capitalist world to flex their engineering might against the communist regime, after all. Congress was interested, as were several companies like Lockheed and Convair. And with the combination of government backing and the engineering might that comes behind a name like Boeing, it was all but guaranteed to be a resounding success.

So why haven’t we heard of the Boeing 2707?

Well, it’s a story of intrigue, bureaucracy, ambition, and testing on unsuspecting civilians. Let’s look back to where it all began in 1952.

The full-scale Boeing 2707-100 mockup - current whereabouts or status unknown

Post World War 2 America was a land of both unbridled optimism and fear. Both the Eastern and Western blocs were out to prove the superiority of their respective regimes, and everyone got busy stocking nukes as the arms race raged on (and managing to lose a few nukes on the way). New methods of delivery and deterrence were in development each day, from ICBMs, to jets, to computers, to lasers. The list goes on and on.

But whatever development went into potential wartime instruments also came out in civilian technology. ICBMs preceded Sputnik and Apollo, while jets born out of WWII began propelling passengers across the globe in record time. All manners of electronics began shrinking as transistors gave rise to new digital computers. And since Chuck Yeager’s landmark flight in 1947, planes like the Avro Arrow, Saab Draken, and MiG-25 began to push performance boundaries. These planes were all built with a common goal – to respond to a threat as soon as possible, pushing past Mach 2 to do so.

Saturn V, the pinnacle of the 1960s aerospace tech race

And it’s in this context we saw the origins of the Boeing 2707. In 1952, Boeing, like other manufacturers, began to ponder the idea of using supersonic technology in a civilian application. It would be random sparks of passing interest here and there, with small studies culminating in the formation of a formal research committee in 1958. But it wasn’t until the announcement of the Concorde and the Tu-144 that America finally took a serious interest.

If we recall origins of the Airbus A300, it struggled to compete in a market dominated by US manufacturers. And those manufacturers that supplied 80% of the world’s aircraft didn’t like their market dominance being threatened. If they wanted to stay on top as kings of commercial aviation, they couldn’t lose. Even if it was to the friendly bloc. A few days after the Concorde was formally announced, FAA director Najeeb Halaby wrote to President Kennedy outlining the state of the competition, and what would happen if the Concorde were allowed to win.

Mr. Halaby painted a very dire picture for the American aviation industry if the Europeans got a head start on the SST market; Up to $3 Bn USD lost in exports, up to $4 Bn lost in potential income, and 50,000 jobs cut. Oh, and the US would “relinquish world civil transport leadership.” It wasn’t an entirely baseless fear (though perhaps blown a smidge out of proportion), since carriers like Pan Am and TWA were already showing interest. JFK took note, and in 1963, he announced the National Supersonic Transport Program.

The process for SST selection went out similar to any other contract bid. The FAA outlined in 1963 their expectations for an SST to rival the Concorde. And in typical American fashion, it had to be bigger and better in every way. Proposed designs had to be Mach 3 capable (vs the Concorde’s Mach 2), seat 227 (vs the Concorde’s 128), and be economically viable to replace subsonic medium range aircraft (vs the Concorde’s habit of burning money for fun).

The SST runner up, the Lockheed L-2000

Other manufacturers had already sketched designs prior to the announcement of the contract bid including Douglas and Convair. But after seeing the requirements, both determined that there was no way they could engineer a better Concorde from scratch before the Concorde was scheduled to enter service. But swayed by that sweet government money, Boeing, Lockheed, and North American Aviation submitted their proposals.

Even before a design was selected, airlines were already lining up for orders. The FAA had made lofty predictions that the winner would have a market for 500 SSTs by 1990, and it certainly seemed like the next logical progression after the leap from propellers to jets. The Lockheed CL-823 (later the Lockheed L-2000) was the more traditional offering, basically being the American version of the Tu-144 in that it copied the look of the Concorde to a suspicious degree. NAA’s NAC-60, meanwhile, was actually just a scaled up XB-70 Valkyrie.

But Boeing’s design was unique. It featured variable geometry wings (or swing wings), with outer segments that could sweep forwards or backwards to help the aircraft maintain control at both low and high speeds and tail mounted engines to help keep heat away from the plane itself. Boeing’s “Project 733” would ultimately win the competition, after the NAA entry failed to meet Mach 3, and the Lockheed was eliminated after several more stages of a tight competition that saw full scale mockups being built and high capacity variants sketched out from both competitors.

The Boeing 733 would’ve been advanced enough on its own even if it never broke the speed of sound. Of course, the swing wings were unheard of in commercial aviation, and it featured one of the earliest glass cockpits (fully digital instrumentation) ever made or conceptualized. It was even the first widebody proposal by Boeing, preceding their own 747. It even featured retractable TVs for every six rows – a necessity since the plane’s windows were only 6 inches across, which is about the size of an average <Redacted>. After winning the proposal in 1966, Boeing had promised that prototype construction would start by early 1967. They also said that it would start regular production in 1969, make first flight in 1970, and be certified by 1974. And they said they’d need to make the fuselage out of titanium instead of regular aluminum due to the heat generated by friction with the air, which if you’re paying attention, was a lot of Boeing just saying things because they sounded nice.

Artist's rendition of Project 733 - note the variable wing positions

Boeing’s target of being production ready in under a decade was lofty. Even their regular aircraft were taking about the same amount of time to develop. So when Boeing finally stopped talking about all the unicorn tears they’d be delivering, they found themselves looking at an engineering nightmare. For starters, titanium is an incredibly difficult material to work with and heavier than traditional aircraft aluminum, not to mention expensive. And Boeing had asserted that they needed the entire fuselage to be made of the stuff. But more importantly, the swing wing that Boeing wanted to build was far too heavy for the airframe, meaning they had to add an extra central landing gear bogey just to support the rear-concentrated weight.

 

[DRGN Juno]

By the time they were done adding reinforcements (and front canards similar to the Tu-144), the 2707-100 was too heavy and expensive to enter production. So Boeing scrapped it and started on the 2707-300. The simpler -300 variant was a much more traditional design, once again looking like a Concorde got lost in America. Seat capacity also took a hit, but the design appeared to be much more manageable. Satisfied, Boeing set about mocking up prototypes in 1969. And despite being two years behind schedule, the orders were pouring in, with 122 deliveries reserved by the time the prototypes were under construction.

Plan view of the 2707-300 - note the fixed wing setup

But building an aircraft is one thing. Seeing how it changes the world is another. Environmentalism in the United States had been picking up in popularity, and the opposition began to grow. Specifically, concerns were raised about widespread SST usage depleting the ozone layer due to the sheer volume of fuel you need to burn just to keep one SST in the air. But because our climate isn’t of concern to the average American, apparently, a more popular rallying cry was found in sonic booms and the disturbance that they caused.

This was a problem for the Concorde as well, and it severely limited the Concorde’s usage later in its life. But for Boeing, they had designed an aircraft specifically to cross the country from New York to LA in just two hours. Even at 65,000 feet, the 2707’s sonic boom was estimated to be audible at 22 miles away. Crossing the continental US like it was designed, it would affect an estimated 5 million people. But the FAA wasn’t convinced by such petty notions of inconvenience and launched Operation Bongo II to see exactly how tolerant the unsuspecting citizens of Oklahoma City really were to sonic booms.

It seemed like the perfect setup; Oklahoma City was home to the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center, as well as Tinker AFB. The FAA reasoned that the residents would be used to sonic booms, and that the trials wouldn’t even be noticed, and set about generating daily sonic booms by flying F-104s and B-58s on a set track at the same time every day. And at first, citizens did take it pretty well, with some even using the sonic booms to mark the beginning of their lunch breaks.

But two weeks in, 147 windows in the city’s two tallest buildings had shattered. Citizens eventually got frustrated enough to protest the testing with regular demonstrations. Even within the FAA, the project’s originators began getting glancing looks of ”what the hell, man?” The FAA was eventually forced to cease testing ahead of schedule after about 15,000 complaints, a third of which were seeking damages for broken property. Operation Bongo II would be just the first of many causes of the 2707’s downfall.

Boeing’s attempts to meet the FAA’s goals were continuing to fall flat. As it turned out, even the improved 2707-300 was harder to engineer than Boeing had anticipated. Between Boeing and the FAA, the requirements for the 2707 slowly began to decrease. Mach 3 was no longer an option, nor were 200+ seats. The program dragged on for years as costs spiraled unto oblivion, propped up under the premise of national pride and competitiveness. But eventually, nearly every aspect of the original specification had been compromised in some way, and an airworthy prototype still wasn't coming together.

When Nixon took office in 1969, public support for the program was at an all-time meh. Despite numerous reports recommending that the government cut funding for the SST program, Nixon announced that “the supersonic transport will be built.” It was easily one of the administration's most transparent lies, as a looming recession was killing off what little hope the increasingly expensive project had. In 1971, the US Senate refused all further funding to Boeing for the 2707, and the American SST was officially dead.

The final 2707-300 full-scale mockup, which currently appears to be undergoing restoration at Boeing Field, Everett, WA, according to sources

But even still, the Concorde was looming on the horizon, getting ready to enter service for 1976. But in 1973, the FAA took Operation Bongo’s lessons into consideration (for once) and banned all civil supersonic air travel in 1973. The world wasn’t the same as those early days of boundless optimism in technology, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that the 2707 was being built for an era that no longer existed. Even if funding had continued and supersonic civil travel hadn’t been banned, the world had changed around it. America no longer held the same kind of national pride in aviation anymore, and a supersonic flagship simply didn’t make sense.

For once, something we talk about here was killed in 1973 by something other than the oil crisis. The Concorde would still see limited success, being able to reach New York and operating unrestricted over water, but it wouldn’t sell anything near the hundreds of units needed to recoup costs. The Tu-144, meanwhile, was its own worst enemy and withdrawn from passenger service in less than eight months.

The threat of losing market dominance had been nothing more than a cheap scare. The 2707 had ultimately been born in the throes of immense political hysteria, for a time when anything was possible. It was the perfect essence of the 1960s drive, and the hope that was placed in technology and the future. But it had no place in a more cautious 1970s America. If built, it would have perhaps been the greatest symbol of American excess, a bigger, faster plane for the sake of being bigger and faster. It was the wrong plane at the wrong time, but perhaps a curious encapsulation what could have almost been. And despite never having flown, it’s a great showcase of what happens when ambitions fly too high, too fast.