johndunk@wpi.WPI.EDU (John Dunkelberg) (05/31/91)
From: johndunk@wpi.WPI.EDU (John Dunkelberg) I was working at Pratt & Whitney during the competition, and was interested enough to read PWA's news on the YF engines. The Northup plane (YF-23) carried PWA engines originally, while the first Lockheed carried GE. There was a second plane of both airframes, with the other engine. These second models were more than a week behind the first flights, and as such recieved much less publicity, but the tests were done on both. A big factor in the engine choice might be the maintenance systems. PWA did a lot of work on expert system software so that faults and damage could be found quickly and with a minimal of actual field tests. -- John S Dunkelberg Jr. johndunk@wpi.wpi.edu