Captain Crane
Note : I have Heard from Engineers from the Company I worked for
Nasa that a Soviet Pilot Defected from russia and the USA obtained
the Russian Plane and took it apart. What they found was this high
tech plane used Tube Types of Equipment to fly the plane and also
Air Vacumn tubes that would also control the plane - similar what is
found in older cars that use vacumn controls to control air
conditioning heat and even the windshield wipers.

The plane this post is talking about was the Mig-25. It was a
"Mach-3" plane that had the US scared for a while until they got hold
of one. They found that it was an interceptor, not a fighter (heavy
and poor maneuverability). It could also not maintain its Mach-3
speed because it would over-stress its engines. It was mostly used
for reconnaissance (as was the US's Mach-3 plane, the SR-72). It was
not a fly-by-wire plane and the vacuum tubes were not used to control
the plane (at least not in the sense of fly-by-wire). They were used
as part of a very powerful radar that could penetrate jamming. Since
the plane was so heavy, it didn't matter as much that it used vacuum
tubes. The technology was described as "surprisingly capable" if I
remember correctly.

This is in contrast to something like the F16, which is a fly-by-wire
plane. It was designed to be deliberately unstable so that it would
be extremely maneuverable. The plane is so unstable that a human
pilot cannot fly it. A computer control system is necessary. The
human pilot activates a pressure-sensitive joystick on the side.
That's to make it easier to deal with high G forces. The pilot just
rests his hand on the armrest and manipulates the control joystick
instead of having a control stick in front of him like most planes.
The F16 is called the "electric jet" because of this fly-by-wire
feature. A computer made with vacuum tubes would be too heavy to
control this plane.

--
Fred Gilham
All languages have Lisp syntax, of course, except that so many of them
insist on encrypting it using a mechanism called "grammar."
-- Drew McDermott