The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend

Re:The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend by nradov on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @10:20AM (#32837609)

The Air Force considered replacing the 8 engines with 4 more powerful ones. However, they determined that the loss of one of those engines on take-off would cause a dangerous thrust asymmetry. Dealing with that would have required more extensive changes like moving the engine mounts, so they dropped the idea. But they are going to replace the engines with newer models.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42517/rolls-royce-will...

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Re:The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend by LgWoodenBadger on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @12:08PM (#32839177)

I had seen/heard/read that the thrust asymmetry was a design feature to help with yaw, and that fewer engines would overpower the design limits of other parts of the airplane, to the extent that everything else would need to be redesigned to handle them (mounts, tail, rudder, etc.)

edit: I believe this is the original video where I saw the above https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02_geGISTLg

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Re:The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend by palunon on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @01:44PM (#32840621)

You can use thrust asymmetry to help with yaw, yes.

But here we're talking about unplanned sudden thrust asymmetry, causing a massive yaw force at a critical phase of flight, takeoff, where you're engines are likely to be near their full power and you're close to/on the ground.

If you go from 8 engines to 4, loosing one engine goes from causing 25% thrust loss on the wing to 50%.

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Re:The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend by tyingq on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @03:25PM (#32842064)

Makes sense, but must be also tied to something else unique about the B-52. There are certainly much larger aircraft with 4 engines.

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