Northrop B-21 Raider, airframe number 2, begins flight testing at Edwards Air Force Base, 11 September 2025

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yoweigh@reddit

Northrop Grumman, even if the heritage comes from Northrop. Northrop itself doesn't exist anymore.

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Urban_Meanie@reddit

So what does that mean? Northrop is just another enterprise that has investors to appease?

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In 1994, Northrup merged with Grumman to become Northrup Grumman. Northrup ceased existing as a corporate entity at that point. Therefore, anything in the last ~30 years was not a Northrup product. It's a Northrup Grumman product instead.

A lot of major American space and defense contractors have merged since the 80s. This is one such example.

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Urban_Meanie@reddit

It’s quite mind blowing to me that B2 was originally being designed back in the late 80s. That technology to many nations is still seen as advanced to this current day

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yoweigh@reddit

What's really crazy to me is that the space shuttle was a vehicle designed in the 60s, built in the 70s, and flown during the 80s. We were doing all sorts of wacky shit back then.

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Urban_Meanie@reddit

Absolutely.. personally for me I wasn’t around in the era of the US space program but the engineering of the space program played a big part into me getting into engineering.

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yoweigh@reddit

I was born in 1983, so the Shuttle was a huge part of my space nerd life for a loooooong time. Since its retirement I've learned a lot about how it came about. It was embarrassing to learn how much of a boondoggle that really was. The Shuttle met essentially none of its design objectives. It was supposed to be cheap and safe and fly frequently but it was actually expensive and dangerous and rarely flew. It barely even outpaced Apollo's cadence.

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Urban_Meanie@reddit

I was born 89 so didn’t get a real interest until like the late 90s when I reached an age where technical things started to peak my interest. As you’re pointing out, many of the original safety parameters were never achieved for the shuttle program and NASA knew this long before it was made public, even in comparison to the Apollo program. Yeah the shuttle had flown its missions and and achieved phenomenal advances even in putting in work on Hubble. but at the same time it also didn’t achieve its original true purpose

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yoweigh@reddit

I'm obviously biased because I'm an r/SpaceX mod, but I really do believe that Starship will achieve what the Shuttle set out to achieve. Two stage, no side mounted BS, full reuse instead of partial. They've already demonstrated reuse on the first stage and they're going to build a bajillion of them instead of just 5.

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Urban_Meanie@reddit

What do you mean by r/spaceX mod?

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yoweigh@reddit

I'm one of the moderators of the r/SpaceX subreddit. I was just trying to acknowledge my own bias.

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Urban_Meanie@reddit

Everyone has there own biases no matter what they are

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yoweigh@reddit

I do get some privileges from it. I have media access so I get pretty sweet launch viewing opportunities, and I can attend press conferences. I've been invited to tour the Hawthorne facility but haven't been able to swing it yet. It feels wrong to not admit that.

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Urban_Meanie@reddit

Whats mind blowing to me is by 1994 the B2 was in production ‘well at least in the test phase in 1994’