> On Nov 23, 2021, at 2:22 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
> On 11/23/21 12:21 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
>> On 11/23/21 9:51 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
>> doubt that a single line of that survives.
>>> You would probably be wrong, it likely was archived before
>>> it stopped being used. But that won't do you any good as
>>> even if you could submit a FOIA request for it the cost of
>>> recovering it would be prohibitive and they would not have
>>> to honor it. :-)
>> I don't think so--the project I had in mind was a military project that
>> sunset some time in the late 1970s.
>
> Yup, A guy I know was in the aerospace fabrication business (now retired). A
> few years back, he showed us some horribly degraded mylar plots of some
> military aircraft drawings that were all the manufacturer could come up with.
> The Air Force was doing a major rebuild of those airframes, and needed some
> skins shaped to replace the tailplane airfoils. He knew where possibly the
> only airfoil bender was, and quickly bought it from a scrap dealer. They then
> had to scrutinize the plots and try to extract the original dimensions so
> they could bend the skin to the required shape. Lucky the original
> manufacturer at least had some form of document still available, or they
> would have had to do some 3D scanning of an existing part that was not too
> far gone.
Along those same lines, the designs for the Saturn rocket were supposedly
scrapped (some say for political reasons). A few years ago someone did a
detailed 3D scan of the F1 engine (first stage engine) and used that to develop
a compatible but more modern successor (called F2 I think).
paul
