F22 is more than 3 decades advanced over Concorde, which I was praising against its contemporaries. Even the B1B is a decade more advanced.
Actually the concept of supercruise is more contentious than I had believed. It turns out that a lot of older craft, including Concorde, could supercruise, but whether they did in practice isn't so clear. There seems to be a lot of historical revisionism at work, with claims and counterclaims at Wikipedia earning this discussion the label of a "dick swinging contest" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Supercruise FWIW documentaries I'd seen and books I'd read before today told me that Concorde cruised supersonic with afterburners. Wikipedia tells me that it went through transonic speeds with afterburners, then settled into supercruise at about mach 2. That's news to me, and surprising that such an astounding attribute, which is hyped so much for the F22, could have gone largely unheralded for almost 3 decades of Concorde service. The explanation could be in this quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Supercruise, ".... Concorde had enough thrust to go supersonic without reheat, but it took ages to push through the hi-drag transonic regime. Since drag is bad, you're just pissing away fuel. Net upshot was, Concorde used more fuel avoiding reheat, than with it, for distance over the ground, so they always used reheat in practice." I'll let the argument go at this point, as I'm already out of my depth. As for Motorhead and ZZTop, I was being hyperbolic. Of course the jets are louder. But jets don't stay in one place for 90 to 120 minutes plus 3 encores, relentlessly assailing your eardrums while you willingly submit to it. Regards, Anthony Farr > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Adam Maas > Sent: Friday, 18 April 2008 11:54 PM > To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List > Subject: Re: OT - Vulcan Bomber for the airheads > > Concorde was almost all gas tank and all low-drag go-fast, military > designs have to be much more flexible, and don't actually want to go > that fast except in sprints (which in some cases, like the B-1B, are a > lot longer than a few minutes). Going supersonic is loud and obvious > and drastically cuts maneuverability and range. And the current F22 > can 'supercruise', ie exceed mach 1 without lighting its burners. > > And Motorhead in a pub has nothing on a B-52 with the throttles > firewalled. Seen both close-up. The BUFF was louder. > > -Adam > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
