NASA’s new WB-57F (high-altitude aircraft) flies for the first time in 41 years

http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/2013/08/10/nasas-new-wb-57-n927na-flies/

by curtis • 10 years ago

88 37 10 years ago

jws• 10 years ago

Article is from 2013. Is anyone familiar enough with flight trackers to see if it is still in use? The tail number is N927NA.

jstrate• 10 years ago

Looks like it flew yesterday https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n927na#988ff01

jonah2• 10 years ago

That's a strange flight pattern, any insight into it? Erratically gain altitude, make a long run and then a tight spiral back down before returning to land?

dingaling• 10 years ago

The tail number is N927NA.

As a European, the phrase 'tail number' was unfamiliar so I did a few searches.

It seems to have derived ( in the USA ) from original airline fleet-numbering practice, where the aircraft would have an arbitrary and unhelpful state- or even city-issued registration and a separate self-assigned fleet number painted on the tail, which was easier to handle for scheduling purposes.

Once national N-numbering for registrations was introduced this became less common because the FAA permitted reservation of blocks of sequential registrations, but some large airlines continue to use a parallel fleet numbering scheme. And the phrase 'tail number' stuck in parlance instead of 'registration'.

In Europe it is common to use to the last two or three letters of registrations repeated on the tail or nose-wheel doors as the fleet airframe identifier and 'tail number' is unknown.

Timshel• 10 years ago

There is a nice video of it flying in formation in December : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvmVTzN8exQ

Fuzzwah• 10 years ago

I got to see an English Electric Canberra flying at a Temora Air Museum flight day. Very impressive machine and it boggled my mind that it was originally introduced to service back in 1951.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8OwMQ3JXKU

Neil44• 10 years ago

Love it. I have only seen the static one at RAF Cosford, they are really nice looking planes. IIRC the one there is white and fitted out for reconnaissance.

arethuza2• 10 years ago

Presumably Anti-Flash White?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-flash_white

jonah2• 10 years ago

Such a cool looking plane. Great to see it has a new purpose in life.

Toenex• 10 years ago

As a child raised on Gerry Anderson's designs, this is how aircraft should look!

arethuza2• 10 years ago

The inevitable link to a pic of a TSR2 - which is what the future really looked like in the 1960s:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/UK---Air/BAC-TSR-2/0979919/L/

Theodores• 10 years ago

I got the restoration but I didn't get what this plane is actually to be used for. Why do they need this plane? How will it help open up the first tourist hotels on Mars? Seems going backwards to space exploration.

softrock• 10 years ago

NASA does much much more than just space exploration.

Sanddancer2• 10 years ago

Aeronautical research. The Aeronautics part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration isn't just a bygone relic. Their most visible projects are their space side, but they do a fuckton of research into making planes fly better/faster/safer. They do research on new control methods of planes, new geometries, how weather phenomena affect planes, etc.

cm2187• 10 years ago

Is it my browser or is this website disabling right clicks? Javascript needs to die...

zackp30• 10 years ago

Not just you, it's doing it for me also.

Probably caused by:

    (function($) {
        $(document).bind('contextmenu dragstart', function(event) {
            var target = event.target || event.srcElement;
            target = $(target);
            if (target.data('ngg-protect') || target.parent('a').data('ngg-protect') || target.attr('id') == 'fancybox-img' || target.attr('id') == 'TB_Image' || target.attr('id') == 'shTopImg' || target.attr('id') == 'lightbox-image' || target.hasClass('highslide-image') || target.parents('.ngg-albumoverview').length == 1 || target.parents('.ngg-pro-album').length == 1 || photocrati_image_protection_global.enabled == '1') {
                event.preventDefault()
            }
        })
    }(jQuery));

It's extremely annoying when sites do this...

gear54rus• 10 years ago

It's JS hate that needs to die. Maybe there's a name for a condition where people are so stuck up in their ways they can't accept objectively positive change (of The web platform).

As for this bs code, the people who wrote this will find other ways to discredit themselves, it's not a job of a platform's maker to babysit everyone and prevent their stupid decisions.

Be thankful that you can actually override this due to platform's (and JS's) openness, it could've been far worse, in many other cases you'd need disassembly to fix something like that.

Quequau2• 10 years ago

Maybe I missed it but where is the necessity for using such an old airplane for doing what they're doing?

JorgeGT3• 10 years ago

Companies do not build similar airplanes nowadays, as there is no tactical role for a high-altitude high-speed unarmed medium bomber. Yet NASA needs to do high-altitude high-speed research.

mozumder• 10 years ago

So why use this instead of U-2 or SR-71?

Quequau2• 10 years ago

So the key quality here is high-altitude performance? Like higher than the service ceilings of current civilian planes or military transports?

pjc50• 10 years ago

There's some discussion that it's for flying either the 'BACN' comms system or 'HALOE' lidar system.

https://warisboring.com/what-in-the-world-is-nasas-research-...

https://www.wired.com/2012/09/air-force-universal-translator... (caution anti-adblock)

Like the B-52, it's far cheaper to use an old plane that fits the role perfectly than it is to try to build a new one.

prplhaz4• 10 years ago

The comments on that article are great too:

> The ap-22s-2 Full Pressure Suits were my biggest immediate problem. The suits were ADC hand me downs, all going over age. New suits were finally procured after numerous equipment failures, but depot support managed to keep the suits going pending replacements. The suits did their job on at least seven occasions of cockpit pressurization loss at altitude and allowed the crew to return safely to base.

eternalban• 10 years ago

That plane is oddly attractive.

imglorp• 10 years ago

Beautifully functional.

Here's another purely functional ship, the Wilga, formed by its mission: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wilga+pzl&t=ffsb&iax=1&ia=images

noir_lord2• 10 years ago

Oddly attractive.

Pretty much sums up all british jet aircraft from the 40's to the 60's.

arprocter• 10 years ago

Does anyone know why the ends of the wings are missing in some of the photos?

jonnycowboy• 10 years ago

Runway clearance - the wing droop at the tips is low enough to possibly hit the runway lights (usually below 18" high). They remove them for high speed taxi tests, and for the actual flights they temporarily replace the "high" lights with mid-height ones and install the wingtips.

NASA’s new WB-57F (high-altitude aircraft) flies for the first time in 41 years

Related Stories