Morrow Aviation Assets

[stormlion1]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by Askold

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.

Originally Posted by Askold

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.

Originally Posted by Askold

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

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

[Askold]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

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.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Askold

+Flying crane.

This might work for something that needs to be placed only approximately, but blimps see a lot of shear and aren't good for precision placement, especially when there are other structures nearby.

Originally Posted by Askold

+Cargo transport.

I haven't even seen a blimp design that can carry more than 40 tons and that never even got past the design phase. I know there are people extolling the virtues of blimps for this, but are any actually flying?

Originally Posted by Askold

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

Less strict than airplanes but more strict than helicopters.

Originally Posted by Askold

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

Fuel is a non-issue for the Project, and unless there are big single cargos around that I missed this would seem to be at best a minor advantage.

Originally Posted by Askold

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

I've always liked LTA craft but they tend to be niche players, and the combination of fusion power and propellors seems to offer much more versatile systems. You also have to assume that any Morrow asset could come under fire at any time. Air vehicles that can be taken down by the smallest of arms are a pretty big risk.

Originally Posted by Askold

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

If they are Zeppelins, you really do need to use hydrogen (hence my earlier comment), but even with blimps getting the most lift requires the explosive option...

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I haven't even seen a blimp design that can carry more than 40 tons and that never even got past the design phase. I know there are people extolling the virtues of blimps for this, but are any actually flying?

The Graf Zeppelins*, arguably very successful pre-Hindenburg, only carried about 16 tons of cargo. A freighter only 20% the length of a Graf Zepplin can carry 10 times the cargo at about half the speed.

Plus having watched blimps landing at the airport near my home a number of times, they can't just land anywhere like a helicopter. This further limits their usefulness for cargo carrying.

*Lookup LZ 127 for details

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by 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.

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

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

Yeah god I hate all these quotes and unqoutes.

Sorry.

Originally Posted by stormlion1

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!

Originally Posted by stormlion1

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.

Originally Posted by stormlion1

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!

Originally Posted by stormlion1

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.

Originally Posted by stormlion1

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.