Morrow Aviation Assets

[stormlion1]

First, why would these be Morrow assets, and not part of the corporations that the CoT was drawn from Second, to the best of my knowledge the CoT were not frozen with the Project (if at all) so why would the Project have their planes Third, why would they all be the same, when each CoT member was likely to have different needs that they would need to justify to their corporations Last, even if they were commandeered, how do you justify the supply chain and personnel, like fuel, jet parts, and turbine technicians


Per region, are you going with the canonical ten regions


The only place I have seen that kind of ratio of aircraft to personnel is for experimental units where the expectation is that most days any given aircraft is under modification. Seriously, you have the expense of acquiring and supporting all those aircraft, and your best case scenario has 2/3 of them idle for lack of pilots What happens when one or more of your pilots gets killed

Ignoring all that, with ten regions, ignoring the Prime Base contingent, you have 520 pilots, 170 crew chiefs, an unknown number of non-flying technical and support staff, and 430 aircraft. In case you are wondering, that is about 1/13 of the USAF, an organization that has about 500,000 full-time personnel (and admittedly more duties than just operating aircraft, but that is their primary mission!). Heck, acquiring the aircraft alone is going to be well more than $10B, not counting parts, training, storage, or conversion!

How big do you see the Project as being, overall

Yeah god I hate all these quotes and unqoutes. I see it as the aircraft had to be somewhere and I said for simplicitys sake. That's why all the Lears were the same. I needed an example and used one type of aircraft.

Yes, I am going with the canon regions.

World war 2 Airstrips were sometimes run like this. Particulary Marine Corp ones in the Pacific and far out on the supply chain Army ones. That's what I based it off of. And I actually asked a crew chief who was there to help hammer out details. As for more pilots and crews and all that. Local recruitment. Remember the plan was to wake up after 5 years. There should still be pilots and ground crews running around from civil aviation who can be recruited. Once the planes start flying the secrecy is over for the project.

Yes its expensive. But so is everything else the Project is buying. In comparison to the armor, vehicles, weapons, training, and facilitys the aviation assets are a good chunk of change. But not insurmountable. especially if some of the CoT run those firms that make the aircraft.

As for the size of the project, well to have any affect on the future it would have to be large. And if its large to have a impact it will need a air mobility assets. Maybe this is way to large. But also note I said they would be hugely busy. In many ways its not large enough to take all the work that's coming to it.

It might actually be easier for the project not to invest in aircraft but in spare parts and electronics and putting crews in cryosleep. Then after five years waking up and moving on grounded aircraft and refitting them. At which point you take what you can get. The Project might end up with refitted news helicopters used as transports and 737's as supply planes and the Bush Planes doing all the light work.

[nuke11]

How is an aircraft converted to fusion We have a decent idea as to how a ground vehicle (and by extension boats/ships) can be done, but what is needed for an airplane

We have space and weight restrictions as well as power to weight ratios that would need to be somewhat maintained for the power plant.

[Askold]

How is an aircraft converted to fusion We have a decent idea as to how a ground vehicle (and by extension boats/ships) can be done, but what is needed for an airplane

We have space and weight restrictions as well as power to weight ratios that would need to be somewhat maintained for the power plant.

If you are talking about converting an existing plane into being fusion powered, the weight distribution would be a bigger issue than the weight limit. There simply might not be any place to set up the fusion plant that wouldn't also take up cargo/passenger space. At least with smaller planes. (I know a few things about electric cars and have been involved with converting one petrol powered car into an electric car and even then the weight distribution, was an issue and we actually had to sacrifice the back seats and the trunk in order to find a place where we could physically fit the batteries AND keep the weight distribution from getting messed up too much. It was a school project. Not quite the same as airplanes, I assume that with planes this will be even harder. With a large cargoplane this might not be such an issue, just like converting an electric bus is SO much easier than a smaller car.)

What you can do instead is design a plane that is powered by fusion, by starting from zero. (Kinda like the "joke" about how the A-10 Warthog started from "we have this huge gun, how can we make it fly" rather than "we have this plane, what are we going to arm it with")

And I still think that there isn't enough justification for jet planes. The only scenarios where rotor planes and helicopters aren't enough are so unlikely that they won't be worth all the trouble.

Meanwhile, Zeppelin's could have a place in Morrow project...

[cosmicfish]

Yeah god I hate all these quotes and unqoutes.

Sorry.

I see it as the aircraft had to be somewhere and I said for simplicitys sake. That's why all the Lears were the same. I needed an example and used one type of aircraft.

My point is that whether you are scrounging or simply pulling from diverse sources you lose the possibility of getting the same models. You won't have ten Lears, you'll have 3 different Lears and 4 different Gulfstreams and 2 Bombardiers and one CoT who could only convince his company to do a share of a Cessna!

World war 2 Airstrips were sometimes run like this. Particulary Marine Corp ones in the Pacific and far out on the supply chain Army ones. That's what I based it off of. And I actually asked a crew chief who was there to help hammer out details.

Different circumstances, different time, different needs. No one does this anymore, and for good reason.

As for more pilots and crews and all that. Local recruitment. Remember the plan was to wake up after 5 years. There should still be pilots and ground crews running around from civil aviation who can be recruited. Once the planes start flying the secrecy is over for the project.

The secrecy is over, but you think you have a realistic chance of salvaging useful pilots 5 years post-war Ignoring that they will likely die at a much higher rate than other occupations (what with being militarily desirable and also engaged in a dangerous occupation), how many will be willing or even desirable to work in the Project in these kinds of aircraft There are only about 30,000 helicopter pilots in the US anyway, the handful that survive are likely to be hard to get!

Yes its expensive. But so is everything else the Project is buying. In comparison to the armor, vehicles, weapons, training, and facilitys the aviation assets are a good chunk of change. But not insurmountable. especially if some of the CoT run those firms that make the aircraft.

My point is that this is money that can be used on other things, like boots on the ground. You need aircraft, absolutely, but you do not need an Air Force.

It might actually be easier for the project not to invest in aircraft but in spare parts and electronics and putting crews in cryosleep. Then after five years waking up and moving on grounded aircraft and refitting them. At which point you take what you can get. The Project might end up with refitted news helicopters used as transports and 737's as supply planes and the Bush Planes doing all the light work.

That is tremendously risky, but I figure your odds at finding salvageable aircraft is probably about the same as finding worthwhile crews, so I would suggest the Project plan on providing a functional minimum and anything else that can be found is a bonus.

[cosmicfish]

How is an aircraft converted to fusion We have a decent idea as to how a ground vehicle (and by extension boats/ships) can be done, but what is needed for an airplane

We have space and weight restrictions as well as power to weight ratios that would need to be somewhat maintained for the power plant.

We do not know enough about Project fusion reactors to say. I don't immediately see a reason why not.

[cosmicfish]

What you can do instead is design a plane that is powered by fusion, by starting from zero. (Kinda like the "joke" about how the A-10 Warthog started from "we have this huge gun, how can we make it fly" rather than "we have this plane, what are we going to arm it with")

I always liked this idea, but it would be far, far more expensive and harder to conceal, and therefore much harder to justify.

And I still think that there isn't enough justification for jet planes. The only scenarios where rotor planes and helicopters aren't enough are so unlikely that they won't be worth all the trouble.

Amen.

Meanwhile, Zeppelin's could have a place in Morrow project...

Yes... burning on the ground, like ALL Zeppelins!!

[Askold]

Meanwhile, Zeppelin's could have a place in Morrow project...

Yes... burning on the ground, like ALL Zeppelins!!

Lets put it like this...

Zeppelins and blimps offer unique advantages such as:

+Flying crane. These can be extremely valuable during the reconstruction process as regular cranes that are still functional are likely to be extremely rare. And with the infrastructure in shambles (at least in the first few years of the project) moving the cranes from one location to another will be extremely difficult. Besides, there are places where a Zeppelin/blimp or an helicopter are the only means of bringing a crane for construction work.

+Cargo transport. Even now blimps are cheaper than airplanes for cargo transport although they are slower. Unless speed is REALLY important blimps can compete with other aircraft particularly due to my next point...

+Like helicopters the airfield requirements are less strict than with airplanes.

+Although helicopters are able to compete with lighter-than-air-craft they use much more fuel and can't carry as much cargo.


In combat helicopters and planes are superior but for civilian, and particularly construction, work lighter-than-air-craft are great.

And you don't need to fill them with hydrogen if you are afraid of explosions.

[stormlion1]

Not Zeppelins but Blimps. And they are workable. The US Navy has one flying about in Lakehurst right now, they did excellent service during World War II. And they can be stored easier than a Zeppelin. And the best part The US is the manufacturer of Helium, so no burning.

Just have to keep from crashing the damn things or flying them in storms.

[kalos72]

Other then the T2K module where its stat'd out...does anyone know the stats on blimps

Love to see some numbers since I dont really like the ones in T2K as they seem really light.

[ArmySGT.]

Other then the T2K module where its stat'd out...does anyone know the stats on blimps

Love to see some numbers since I dont really like the ones in T2K as they seem really light.

Depends upon size, class, and rigid or non rigid. There is information on wikipedia but, I don't know what to believe. I think the U.S. Naval blimps information is probably the most accurate of the information available.

[kato13]

I started looking at lighter than air vehicles for my project, but hit a stumbling block early in my research regarding how much helium you would need to stockpile.

In an interview with a blimp pilot I heard him state the "We lose 10 percent of our volume of helium per week", but I have also seen a Military contractor pushing blimps claiming that 3% loss per year is what could be expected.

Those numbers (the only ones I could find) are so radically different that I pretty much gave up figuring out the logistics.

[stormlion1]

Assume 20%, that way you have more than you will ever need. wasn't one group in the Project you can encounter Balloon people

[kato13]

20% Annually might be feasible. 20% weekly would require a huge stockpile as you have to think that you are not going to be getting new supplies for decades.

Using the 10% weekly number I crunched the Airships mentioned in the T2k Module "Airlords of the Ozarks" and came up with something under 2 years of operations IIRC.

[mmartin798]

One reason for the differences in He and H loss is the permeability of the material used to make the gas bags. That alone can make a huge difference. I have also struggled with the idea of how to make Ballooners work.

The end of this thread makes an interesting argument for nuclear zeppelins: https://www.physicsforums.com/thread...pelins.595663/

[kato13]

A nuclear zeppelin is part of the back story of "Airlords of the Ozarks" from T2k.

(Going from memory so forgive mistakes on details)

The story being that a Military contracted zeppelin manufacturer sees the writing on the wall before the T2k nuclear attacks on the US. They take their huge SW5 reactor powered airship along with tons liquid of helium and their staff and familys into the air right before the attack. Their plan is to ride out the attack and land somewhere safe.

They crash in the area controlled by a warlord and the staff are forced to use the materials from the ship (masses of aluminum and durable skin) and the stored helium to make new smaller airships which the warlord uses to expand their domain.