If you look at this picture, it seems the XB-70 had pretty tall landing gear. I don't know about the size of the bomb bay but suspect it was fairly long, but if something were carried semi-recessed (half in, half out of the bomb bay, then you might be able to carry a fairly sizeable object underneath the aircraft.
From the same article, "The aircraft was to be constructed mostly of lightweight stainless-steel honeycomb, with titanium used in certain heat-critical sections."
The XB-70 design began around 1957. At the time, working with titanium was extremely difficult. The Lockheed Skunk Works people had to invent a lot of the basic technology for working with titanium (for example, conventional cadnium-plated machine tools contaiminated titanium and made it brittle), but they started at least a couple years after work began on the XB-70 and had the advantage of being a small tightly focused organization.
There is some good XB-70 info available here, including some small video clips. I've seen the surviving XB-70 at the Air Force Museum. Fascinating machine.
Space/Science » in reply to It doesn't fit, or does it?
Hard to tell
The whole thread (37 posts)
- AWST: USAF ran top secret manned orbital missions in 1990's
- DONUTS on ROPE contrails??????
- Somebody's got some explaining to do
- It's hard to hide something that big and loud
- First take -- glaring implausibilities
- R.L., what do you think of the sodium-ion laser comment in the AWST story?
- Boron toothpaste?
- So what, we're talking about an "Aurora" plus "White Knight" type carrier system?