Scareforce by Charles Hough Read Free Book Online Page A

it was very costly and often impractical to try to demonstrate everything in an aircraft. There just weren’t enough
     air frames or instructor pilots available.
    To save money, and time, they came up with the idea of flight simulators. They could be flown and crashed without too great
     a cost in machines and lives. The first machines were rudimentary, but as the technology of flight improved the simulators
     improved accordingly.
    The WST was a sterling example of the advances of modern technology. Over two hundred software engineers had labored for years
     to write the reams of code necessary to give birth to the machine. The tasks of the simulator were so involved that fourteen
     mainframe computers labored in perfect unison to make it operate. Eleven monster disk drives fed the computer the code that
     took the place of jet fuel in the aircraft being simulated. More than two gigabytes of available memory were necessary to
     make the imitation of flight seem real. Designers had pored over maps and charts and satellite photos, reducing mountains
     and fields and streams and forests to ones and zeros arranged in particular computer language. When fed to the computers these
     ones and zeros were translated into a remarkably accurate picture of the land that the simulator flew over.
    Every system of the gigantic bomber was duplicated in the simulator. It had to be accurate; it had to feel right.
    Perched on six hydraulically driven legs, the flight station looked like a cross between a robot and a huge metal spider.
     The legs were articulated to allow for every twist and turn that the aircraft would make as it winged its way through the
     simulated sky. Immense pressure lines fed hydraulic blood to the beast. Computer-driven actuators snapped the station left
     and right, up and down in a frenzied mating dance that looked uncoordinated and strange to the outside observer.
    But step inside the flight station and you have stepped onto the flight deck of the Boeing B-52H Super Strato-fortress. All
     those computers and all those disks and all that hydraulic fluid and all that power combine to make the illusion real. Sit
     in the ejection seat confronted by the rows and rows of glowing, moving, accurate dials and gauges. Look at the switches and
     knobs that you know must control the craft Strap into the pilot’s position and run the multiple throttle levers slightly forward
     to give more fuel to the eight powerful engines and hear them roar their hunger. The huge metal boxes that rested so awkwardly
     on the forehead of the mechanical arachnid now provide a panoramic view out the cockpit windows of the earth rushing by hundreds
     of feet below the racing bomber. Move the column to the side and feel the airplane bank and your world tilt into the turn.
     The mirage is truly miraculous.
    The building that houses the WST is as complete and modern as the facility it was built to house. The bay where the flight
     station weaves and lurches and finally squats at rest on its silver legs is pristine. The walls shine with fresh earth tone
     paint and glow in the shadow-killing glare of halogen arc lights set into the three-story-high ceiling. Even the floors shine
     in their cleanliness. The miles of cable are hidden in tastefully appointed under-floor cable runs or wrapped neatly in bundles
     that attach like an umbilical cord to the belly of the monster.
    The control facility, full of computer keyboards, oversize glowing display terminals, and silently professional technicians,
     is as subdued as the flight station bay is bright. It looks like the launching room of a space facility.
    Even the offices of the technicians behind the control room are antiseptic and color coordinated.
    The technicians who service this modern marvel expect things to go as planned. That doesn’t mean that everything will work
     all the time. They expect things to weaken, circuits to short, diodes to die, chips to flare, and binary coupling to come