Conceptualized is a perfect word.

The claim that it was designed in a weekend is like those “overnight success” stories that ignore the decade of work that someone put in to get to that point.

This was genuinely an overnight success, though. They got approval on the strength of this design. And the broad strokes design of the aircraft seemingly stayed intact through the subsequent processes.

This entire comment chain is bewildering, we're attacking strawmen. Did anyone read this article and leave assuming no further work was done after approval? Was this HN comment chain enlightening to anyone? Who are we writing this for?

It was a strong conceptual design, yes.

For my aerospace engineering undergrad we also had to create a conceptual design for a new aircraft. And of course, as university projects go, we basically did it in five days. But I won't tell you how many iterations we would've had to go through until we had an optimum configuration ready to be sent to detail design

The headline makes it look like their design was a definite one. Then you actually read the article and it says it took another four years before the first one would fly. Which is actually to me the more impressive part of the story, considering the amount of time it takes aircraft manufacturers to go from concept to production these days (e.g. the A380 was first conceptualised in the 1980s and its first flight was in 2005)

Exactly.

Ask yourself, how long does this normally take to go from A to B?

One day you've got top engineers with a contemporary concept, but the military says nah we've got to have something way better.

So they really go to work on it until they can confidently deliver a 33-page futuristic well-engineered proposal with a prototype scale model and then the military says yes right away.

What's normal here, weeks, months, even years?

That's what's impressive in 48 hours, nobody could expect a complete set of blueprints, they had to first determine if prints would even be realistically possible.

You know their slide rules were flying like few could do.

With engineers like this why would you use anyone else?

That doesn’t look abnormal for the time period. The first B-29 Super Fortress, for example, flew in September 1942, with the design started in 1938 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress)

Also, Nazi Germany had a few designs that took way shorter than that to go from idea to first flight. An extreme example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_162#Prototypes:

“The He 162 V1 first prototype flew within an astoundingly short period of time: the design was chosen on 25 September 1944 and first flew on 6 December, less than 90 days later”

They did have to cut ‘some’ corners to get there, though. That Wikipedia page mentions that it used a highly acidic glue that would disintegrate the wooden parts it was intended to be fastening, that that caused problems on the first flight and a deadly crash on the second, but that it wasn’t considered important enough to hold up the production schedule for even a day.

Okay and the point here is that this wasn’t a college project thrown together in 5 days this was a military grade design outputted over a weekend.

I'm pretty sure the point of this thread is that it wasn't a 'military grade' design over a weekend, and as GP notes took over four years. It's sort of like saying Microsoft Excel was designed over a weekend.

The problem people have is that designed is a very flexible word that can mean a great many different things, and because of that it's being used here in a way that means something akin to conceptualized, but also used in the title in this way specifically because it will suggest to people that all the design work was finalized in that period.

That's click-baity in that it plays with people expectations, and not in a way they generally enjoy, so they're annoyed. If you don't like click-bait, the appropriate thing to do is to complain or abstain, otherwise you're just reinforcing their decision to communicate in that way.

I'm actually finding this comment chain useful, because I see it as showing that we need better language to describe the stages of design. Or maybe that nomenclature does already exist but people aren't using it? In R&D we will often describe the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level of a new technology, and this is much more useful that just saying "it's in development". But I'm not aware of a similar shorthand for the design phase. There is this muddy space between concept and fully specified design which would be awesome to be able to talk about in more concrete terms.

For example, let's look at the concept/design of a helicopter:

DL1 (idea phase): a flying machine that can go straight up and hover

DL2 (concept with basic working principle): a vehicle with a rotor which acts like wings moving in a circle to move air down and by reaction push the vehicle up

DL3 (concept with important details attached): as DL2 but with a tail rotor to allow for axial control and differential tilting of the airfoils to allow forward thrust

DL4 (concept with specifications that drive requirements for other specs): as DL3 with rotor lengths of 3.3 m and a NACA 0018 cross section made of 6061-T6 aluminum

DL5 (concept with full specs): as DL4 but also etc.

Is anyone aware of better nomenclature like this for the concept/design phase? It would help for more important things than this discussion alone. Like when discussing which is more important, idea or execution: so which level idea are we talking about? Also, the root cause of a lot of software problems is in the spec. It would be nice to be able to go back and say, "this spec is only spec level 3, can I please have a spec level 5"?

This discussion is happening because "they designed it over a weekend" is really vague. It would be nice to have a quick way to make it not-vague.

you just summed up 100% of internet commenting

Thank you ffs

The current F-22 looks and acts nothing like the YF-22 that won the competition (despite the YF-23 being much better, but that's another story).

The fact that the B-52 production was not just similar to the prototype, but similar to a complete mockup is a testament to the accuracy of their initial vision. The fact that the US continues to use that design after so many decades is even more amazing.

The YF-23 was better in some ways, worse in others. Compared to the YF-22 it was faster, longer ranged, and (probably) more stealthy. But it had a smaller weapons bay and was less maneuverable. Both aircraft met the ATF program technical requirements. The final selection was based primarily on the Air Force having greater confidence in Lockheed over Northrop in being able to run the program on schedule and budget. The notional production F-23 would have been quite different from the prototype.

https://youtu.be/_MUK241uZHM

> The final selection was based primarily on the Air Force having greater confidence in Lockheed over Northrop in being able to run the program on schedule and budget

Unexpected. The Lockheed YF-23[1] looks like it would fall apart if you breathed on it wrong, while the Northrop YF-23 is such a slick design it looks like it's moving while standing still.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/YF-22.jp...

[2] http://www.diseno-art.com/images_10/Northrop-YF-23-8.jpg

Well the Lockheed YF-22 prototypes didn't fall apart through an extensive flight test program including multiple supersonic flights and weapon launches.

I thought the YF-23 had a larger weapon bay, but there was some debate at the time about the design of the delivery mechanism. On the flip side, having one, large bay allows for weapons configurations that aren't possible with multiple, shallow bays.

Maneuverability in a stealth plane is not of much use. Just like the F-35, the goal of the YF-23 was to use its vastly superior stealth capabilities take out the enemies before a dogfight happened. Given that drones can take G's that will turn a human's brain to mush, this is a much more sensible strategy in modern combat and renders the F-22 vectored thrusters as mostly an expensive and useless feature that sacrifices the much more important stealth of the YF-23's hidden engines.

I believe the claims of being worried about timetables were just making up excuses to choose a worse plane. The F-22 was 100% redesigned anyway (making a "competition" nothing but a formality). It was delivered years late and WAY over budget.

Any recommendations for an overview resource that better explains your statements?

Both about the YF-23 design being better, and about why the B-52 design is so good.

YF-23 had faster supercruise, a much bigger range, and had a way larger internal ordinance bay (external ordinance kills stealth). They intentionally skipped the sexy vectored thrusters for B-2 style inset exhausts which make infrared signature much smaller (especially to ground-based attackers). This meant the YF-23 could have delivered more ordinance faster and farther while having higher rates of mission success due to better stealth.

F-22 won the competition on two and a half points.

First and foremost, the YF-23 was going to be built in 10-11 states while the YF-22 was going to be built in almost 30 states, so something like 40 senators had their state's financial interests at stake with the jobs this would bring in (though nobody involved would ever openly admit this was one of the big reasons). Of course, spreading stuff out increases all kinds of costs and with so many small places, once the main run of planes was done, all these sub-contractors moved on too. As a result, the US can't get all the F-22 parts they need and the F-22 is going to be scrapped way before what would otherwise be necessary.

Second, is that the F-22 had vectored thrusters, so was theoretically more maneuverable. This is somewhat debated because making a YF-23 variant with vectored thrusters was possible and even without it was more than capable of turning a pilot's brains to mush (by far the biggest limiting factor for any manned fighter). Ironically, the big selling point of the F-35 is to be so stealthy that you can kill targets before they can see you due to stealth without the need to dogfight which was the exact YF-23 strategy too (and of course, vectored thrust seems to be a needless and cost-adding addition to the F-22 as the strategy for them is also to engage at ranges where maneuvering isn't a critical task). In every other category of consideration, the YF-23 was far ahead of requirements while the YF-22 was barely satisfactory.

The half point is the stated delivery concerns. The Air Force claimed they were worried that the planes wouldn't be delivered because the B-2 was already behind schedule. As EVERY plane is ALWAYS delivered behind schedule, this is very dumb reasoning. While the YF-23 team had worked for years to make a ready-to-ship plane in the YF-23, the YF-22 was a cobbled-together mess to the point that the entire airframe was redesigned multiple times. As a result of this and that spread-out construction crew, the F-22 was way behind schedule and way overbudget.

Northrop Grumman allegedly asked about using YF-23 designs in a bid for the next-gen Japanese fighter project, so maybe there's hope for it yet (I'd note that the profile of the Russian SU-57 has a strikingly similar look).

EDIT: As to the B-52, the real issue is that making a new plane would give marginal benefits to the airframe while the retraining and costs would be large (not to mention the usual teething problems of a new design). This is similar to how they tried so many times to replace the m4. Better systems exist, but they weren't worth the upgrade (lots of people suspect that their new rifle will be too heavy for most soldiers too).

The most profitable upgrades to the B-52 are the internals and electronics and this has been done several times.

The second best upgrade is more modern and efficient engines, but this has been a very slow to happen. They've announced plans to do this, but I suspect it will be longer than they think. They are claiming reduced maintenance time and a 30% increase in efficiency. Not a bad upgrade, but also not that huge when you consider that's basically 0.5% for each year since it was first designed.

> While the YF-23 team had worked for years to make a ready-to-ship plane in the YF-23, the YF-22 was a cobbled-together mess to the point that the entire airframe was redesigned multiple times.

The YF-23 team had to turn in their specs in the competition and you wonder if the referee was partial to the YF-22 team and gave them opposition research. That was the feeling I got from interviews & documentary.

Boeing already had experience and credibility with the USAF from the earlier B-47. In some respects, the B-52 is “the B-47 but bigger”. You can see it in the similar fighter canopy cockpit on the XB-52.

Conceptualized, but also pondered upon, and considered worthy of further effort. A conceptualization can be done as fast as a single second, but it can take ages to weigh it against alternatives.

You can apply the "conceptualization" criterion retroactively to any successful project. They all started as an idea that someone noodled around with for long enough to decide to pursue it further. You can draw the line where that initial noodling ended and serious work began pretty much anywhere you like.

“I want all my music to fit in the palm of my hand.”

Steve Jobs created the iPod in just one day

Heh, exactly. Succinctly put. Here's a longer-winded version: I'm an R&D Software Engineer. In a workplace setting years ago we had a Software Architect who would advise management and the implementation engineers. Me and my team were really struggling with a difficult implementation problem relating to some federated identity stuff. Management told us to go to the architect. We explained our problems and he waved them off as "that's implementation stuff, I don't do that, but the solution is very easy. Just get server X to communicate whatever token you need to server Y". It was off putting. He also told our management that our problem was an "easy one", without offering any helpful insight.

It's like saying "Traveling to The Moon is easy. You simply need enough thrust to overcome Earth's gravity well. Simple!"

Or perhaps more in-line with a favorite of mine:

The secret to mankind achieving unpowered flight is for someone to throw themselves at the ground and simply miss..

Whelp guess it’s time to bust out the guide

I always tell people that I could probably "architect" the infrastructure of my whole company (Fortune 500) in a few days if you ignored the little pesky implementation details.

Meh, the Archos Jukebox was doing that well before Steve Jobs. Steve's genius concept was "I want all my music to fit in the palm of my hand, but with a way better UI than Archos Jukebox"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series

As an owner of an Archos Jukebox, the differences went way beyond the software interface.

The Archos was way larger and heavier than the iPod, and the build quality was abysmal. Mine essentially fell apart despite seeing only desktop use. Battery life was inferior as well. Headphone output was also much louder and cleaner on the iPod.

Literally everything about the iPod was better than literally everything about the Archos.

Yes, but the 1.8” drive in the iPod was a true differentiator. It was the difference between “in the palm of my hand” and “it is possible to hold it, but not easy.”

The iPod also fitted easier in the typical hand (and, probably more important, in the typical pocket). Dimensions of that Archos: 3.1 in x 4.4 in x 1.2 in = 16.4 in³

Dimensions of the first iPod: 4.02 in x 2.43 in x 0.78 in = 7.62 in³. That’s less than half the volume.

(Weight-wise, the difference is smaller (10.2 vs 6.5 oz)

I invite people to look at a photo of the thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series#/media/F...

It looks so quintessentially late 90's, yet hideous at the same time.

Jesus wow. That is…yeah you nailed it.

I wonder how their ad spend compared to Apple's.

You jest, but the original iPod went from conceptualization to ship in an absurdly fast 10 months [0].

[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/01/13/first-ipod-went-f...