Cerebral Flatulence

Drones are big. Big news, big ups, and getting bigger.

How big can drones get? Well, if by drone one means “uncrewed remotely-piloted aerospace craft”, they can get reeeeally big. During the U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific, B-29’s were converted into giant drones and flown through the mushroom clouds on sampling and blast-effect missions:

“I’ll never forget seeing those B-29 bombers move up to the end of the runway by the Rawinsonde shack and go through warm-up of their four engines, without a soul inside of them! As you well know, these were drone aircraft that had a ground controller that taxied them out for takeoff, began their ground roll and lift off, and then a sister ship flew over and controlled the drone, steering it over the test site to collect samples of air to measure radiation. One time they used a B-36 as a drone. Talk about an awesome spectacle!”

– John A. Sapp, meteorological technician, USAF (ret.), quoted from The Wetokian

The biggest drone ever? How to top the crowning achievement of the Soviet space program, The Energia/Buran spaceplane system? Although outwardly resembling the American spacecraft enough to get tagged the “Shuttleski”, and borrowing its expensively-researched hypersonic form, the Buran was in some ways a more advanced vehicle:

“The completely automatic launch, orbital manoeuvre, deorbit, and precision landing of an airliner-sized spaceplane on its very first flight was an unprecedented accomplishment of which the Soviets were justifiably proud. It completely vindicated the years of exhaustive ground and flight test that had debugged the systems before they flew.”

– Mark Wade, Encyclopaedia Astronautica

Mark’s complete article on the Buran and its launch vehicle is in his rich and amazing reference work on spaceflight history.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 7:52 am and is filed under Blather, GroovyTech, Noise.
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