Real Tony Stark?

[Joe Shearer]

Howard Hughes?

Dear Sir,

Was that a joke?

Sincerely,

 

[M8R]

Of course it was Joe.

 

[Joe Shearer]

thanks for all your replies
you sure know how to crush someone's ambition

isn't there any chance if you are a mechatronic engineer

Dear Sir,

I hate to do this, but - No.

Sincerely,

 

[Joe Shearer]

Of course it was Joe.

Dear Sir,

I am not too sure! Some of the posts are making my head spin! And I don't know of anybody else actively participating who has had anything to do with avionics or systems design - forget about integration.

Sincerely,

 

[SpArK]

.


<------- Real Tony Stark

 

[Joe Shearer]

Those days are long gone.Now a days Fighter Jet's require plenty of things like Avionics, Radars, Ammo, Millions of Code (FCS )etc.

Dear Sir,

Actually, no, on two counts.

First, Dr. Tank's WWII exploits, the FW 190 in particular, were team exploits.

Dr. Tank's breakthrough was on using the radial engine in a fighter plane in Germany, imitating its use by the Americans. You will notice that he had nothing to do with engine design. Furthermore, his use of this radial design required 'cowling' the engine, not leaving it open like others using such engines did; that caused enormous heating problems in the cockpit which took a painful process of modification to eliminate.

Thereafter, its poor visibility from the cockpit led to a number of accidents, which needed further modifications to make the design a practical one. There were Luftwaffe engineers involved with these changes, whose names I can't remember offhand. Finally, the engine overheating problem was resolved by re-routing the exhaust system!! That too was done by others, not by Dr. Tank.

Dr. Tank was also known for his brilliant HAL Marut design, which was an excellent aerodynamic model, but which died because of lack of a suitable engine. Dr. Tank was an aerodynamicist, and an excellent engineer, who made some striking innovations in the instrumentation and ergonomics of cockpit design, but he was hardly a one-man band.

Incidentally, he was one of the figures in the intellectual and professional development of Abdul Kalam.

Second, on the question of millions of lines of code:

Code, even embedded code is used more or less in the following areas:

1. Flight computer;
2. Mission computer;
3. Weapon computer;
4. Navigation computer;
5. FADEC;

There are other areas; for instance, the fueling system has microprocessors for certain key tasks; the brakes, which originated the Anti-Brake Locking Systems beloved of motorists with more money to spare than good driving sense, are also born from jet planes (if I remember correctly, the first car to have this system was the Jensen Interceptor - I could be wrong).

However, taking just the five systems noted above, permit me to point out that none of them are really needed.

I am exaggerating hugely, of course, but if you are an aviator yourself, or if you consult an aviator friend, after an initial explosion of irritation, you will probably get a grudging acknowledgement that this is in some senses true. Of course one can't fly one of the modern super-safe passenger carriers or a fast jet without these, but strictly speaking, a plane can be built without a single one of these, without FADEC, without the ABLS, without any of the microprocessors poured in like confetti.

We will land up with a Piper Cub or a Tiger Moth, but hey, those were good flying machines in their day! Seriously, a fairly decent jet might result; it is technically possible.

You do realise that I am making an extreme point, and as a professional whose livelihood depended on managing the writing of Ada for embedded systems, including some of those mentioned above (including one system where eight computers talked to each other, came to a consensus and set the next course of action), I would advocate increased use of these systems. It is just to say that it can be done without computers, on brute force alone. ;-D

Sincerely, but with a big grin on,