PS

@Moderator

"Civil engineering can be pretty cool."

I agree. Civil always used to be viewed as what engineers did if they couldn't make the cut for Mechanical or Electrical engineering. But that of course is unfair. Civil engineering encompasses some really impressive work.

If I had it to do all over again...........

But, of course, I don't.

PS: M, I agree with you that using the SPR tactically, rather than strategically, won't work for long.

Even if wasn't the Peacemaker or Stratojet, that's pretty cool, Alarmist. I saw a few of those BUFFs very recently. Thanks for the quick note about Erich Hartmann.

Mr. Anon, I had thought the same thing until I read more about these. The really neat engineering would be to design the method of water injection to make the caverns per spec - and, as per Alarmist, structurally sound. I guess when filled with oil the roofs would not be subject to collapse. Civil engineering can be pretty cool.

PS

Thanks for the tutorial on salt caverns. I am embarrassed to admit that I did not know that facilities were specifically built for the SPR. I had often heard the term "salt dome" and assumed they were just that - large hollow domes with salt walls, rather than densely packed plugs of salt that intruded upwards into overlying strata.

In short, I had assumed that the SPR oil was stored in natural formations, not man-made cavities. Thanks for setting me straight on that score.

PS

I’m old enough to have actually flown in SAC, though we had moved on to Buffs by that time. I flew RC-135s before transitioning to EC-135s, which were really pigs on hot days.

Fun fact: The worlds’ top scoring Ace, Erich Hartmann (352 kills) had his career killed by the F-104, not because it killed him, but because, as the head of the Bundesluftwaffe, he refused to buy it because he considered it a widow-maker, so the US leaned on Germany to sack him.

BTW, the problem with emptying the salt domes is that it takes a serious toll on their structural integrity, meaning that the continual emptying and refilling of them jeopardizes the future viability of the program as a whole. It’s certainly not strategic thinking to be doing this.

PS
The drawdown of the SPR is to give the Arabs more power.

One of the points of the SPR is to make market price hikes more difficult. But it's like a legion. You can threaten to flatten someone with it, and occasionally you have to (or people think you won't do it). But if you do it too often people discount it (or come up with countermeasures).

PS: "Two turning, two burning, two joking, two smoking and two not accounted for." Haha. Thanks, Fred. I'm not sure how many different engine-out procedures the crew had to learn. One engine out - do you even care?

PS “It’s kind of bad strategy to just empty it”. That depends on what your objective is.

PS Apparently the array of engines for the B-36 was not the most reliable collection of hardware ever assembled. So there was another version of the "6 turning and 4 burning" mantra:

"Two turning, two burning, two joking, two smoking and two not accounted for."

PS: PS: I don't remember the B-47 either, Mr. Blanc, but there's a really good book about the 747 called "Wide Body" that starts off with the development of the B-47 as that work was used for the B-707. (oops, I just fixed a mistake - the B-47 was a Boeing product, while the B-36 was made by Convair. There were still quite a few large and very productive aerospace companies back then.

I don't remember seeing the signs, but I did look back and see that price were around 30-35 cents in those days of the 1st oil crisis. However, we didn't live in no San Francisco, so my parents' memories and maybe mine are of lower than California pricing. I do remember that they would drive around quite a bit fo save 2 cent/s gallon. As I wrote about this stuff in those 2 posts I link to at the bottom here, I don't think that pays off very well, when drive a car that gets 15 mpg!

I agree with your point on government interference in general. This SPR is, well,strategic, so it's kind of bad strategy to just empty it. When you spend and extra $4,000,000,000,000 in a couple of years to fight a ginned up Black Death 2.0, I guess prudence has long gone out the window.

PS I’m old enough to remember SAC, but not the B-36. My earliest memory of the US’s principal strategic bomber was the B-47. I certainly remember 1973. In the spring, in far southwestern Connecticut, I was paying $.40 a gallon to gas up my VW microbus. $4.00 for a fill-up. I don’t remember what I was paying, after queueing up for a considerable time, in San Francisco that autumn, but it was a lot more than $.40. Probably two or three times as much. As far as the SPR goes, Da People, with a little help from fortification, made Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr, president in 2020, and the president has the authority to draw on the SPR. So, if Totally Legit Joe wants to keep gasoline prices down during an election year, and if he thinks that fiddling with the SPR will accomplish that, then fiddle he will. As far as the government interfering with the economy goes, as long as the government issues the money, the government is interfering with the economy.