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Inacio posted:
A number of years ago (early-mid 90s), a bunch of cool guys built a few reproduction me262's, powered by modern engines. They fly. They're cool.
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Oct 29, 2014 06:30
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CommieGIR posted:Modern Rocketry: The explosion is a feature, not a bug Please crosspost these to the Spaceflight thread too: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3580990&pagenumber=1
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Oct 29, 2014 08:55
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VikingSkull posted:Jeb, get off of that! Jeb! JEB! Would you like to see this from a cessna a couple miles away? Of course you would! Well here ya go. "oh wow... uh oh... holy cow... HOLY crap! OMG..."
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Oct 29, 2014 13:13
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Duke Chin posted:Would you like to see this from a cessna a couple miles away? That's loving awesome. After showing that to a friend he asked why the plane was allowed to fly so close. For those interested here's the chart showing the restricted airspace around the space center. http://skyvector.com/?ll=28.64998188339826,-80.73481749871506&chart=301&zoom=3 edit - oh whoops, this launch was happening in Virginia. Here's the correct airspace at Wallops Island. http://skyvector.com/?ll=38.04356619346712,-75.328063696789&chart=23&zoom=3 Iridium fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Oct 29, 2014 13:53
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Crossposting from the Space Megathread...phongn posted:Hopefully I am not spoiling things to say that the Soviet Union did greatly improve on the basic A4 design to produce its ultimate child, the R-11 'SCUD'. Nope, you are dead on track, and there was a LOT more fun parts to their work with the A4 design. While the Americans were interested in the V-2 as an artillery piece, they were wholeheartedly sold on strategic bombers being the weapons of the future. Stalin had other ideas, and the V-2 confirmed what he believed: That missiles and ICBMs would be the key to weapons delivery, especially in the nuclear age. Not to mention that while the Soviets TRIED to build a decent bomber force, theirs was always considered second rate, so they were looking for any alternate delivery system they could manage. Behold, the A4 shows up. And that is where we begin: Wings versus Rockets: Late 1940s and Early 1950s Despite Operation Paperclips extreme success for the Americans, they failed to really utilize the advantage they had gained in Von Braun initially. While the Army Missile Corps tinkered with the V-2 and got some interesting results from it, the Air Force was sold on the idea that large bombers would be the key to holding the front against the Soviets should time come. Von Braun was stuck working minor rocketry for artillery pieces for the US Army. The Russians on the other hands were making vast advances in rocket tech under the initial guidance of Helmut Grottrup, Von Brauns Electrical Engineer and future inventor of chip and pin cards. Along with Soviet rocketeer Sergey Korolev leading the way, the Russians made massive advances in staging design with the R-2 and R-5 rockets, solving the issue of re-entry as the V-2 had to re-enter with its entire fuselage intacts, the R-2 and R-5 seperated the payload before re-entry, allowing a much smaller mass to survive without worry about the combined mass of the now empty fuel systems and fuselage. Behold the R-2  Shown here beside the R-1.  And the R-5 In the US.... Meanwhile in the US, Von Braun was working in what basically amounted to penny-less conditions. Every rocket he submitted was rejected, and his talents were largely regarded as 'Interesting, but of little value' However, after his existence in the US became public, and much begging on his part, his first major rocket was accepted; granted as a Surface to Surface missile for the US Army Redstone Rocket; the Army's Workhorse  Shown here with its standard packaging, its Explorer 1 package, and its Mercury Package The Redstone was almost entirely a V-2 copy, even utilizing the same thrust vectoring system and the same fuel system initially. It was still a long ways off from the work towards an actual ICBM as the Soviets were doing, but it was a step in the right direction for Von Braun's goals: Space. Much like the Nazis, however, the US was not interested in space as a goal, in many cases saying it was an impossible goal and entirely dismissing Von Braun and others insistence that it was within reach. The military, it seemed, would be Von Brauns only hope for a rocket development program. Things were about to shake up quickly however.... Next Up: Eisenhower and the Big No. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Oct 29, 2014 18:08
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I'm lovin' the rocket posts. I have a question: was the whole "we're all for bombers" thing on the US's part simply because they were so much better at it than everyone else? I find it a little strange that the Soviets were so quick to grasp the obvious - that Nuclear tipped rockets were a gamechanger, when the USA was seemingly resistant to the idea.
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Oct 29, 2014 19:56
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm lovin' the rocket posts. I have a question: was the whole "we're all for bombers" thing on the US's part simply because they were so much better at it than everyone else? I find it a little strange that the Soviets were so quick to grasp the obvious - that Nuclear tipped rockets were a gamechanger, when the USA was seemingly resistant to the idea. Partially because the USAF was not really willing to let go of its newly gained position as the Supreme Air Force for the United States, and was sure that rocket development would lead away from that, the other reason being that so many politicians were certain that rockets were just a one time thing and would lead nowhere. They had already invested so much time and money into upcoming heavy bombers and nuclear weapons designed around said bomber (and said bombers also designed around their payloads) that financially it just wouldn't be worth moving away from it. It was kind of silly too, as plenty of science was saying not only were space bound rockets feasible and within reach, that it could be done within the next decade. The Soviets on the other hands did not have that holding them back. Outside of the captured B-29s and their Soviet copies, they did not have a lot of fielded heavy bombers in large quantities, and their nuclear weapons test was not for a few more years (right around the year the USAF came into fruition out of the USAAC) so the last few years of rocket tests coincided with their nuclear development. So, much like the B-29 was developed with the Manhattan Project in mind, the Soviets developed their rockets with their nuclear weapons in mind. Ironically, the US Army was the one pushing rocket development, albeit with caveats that Von Braun hated and was frustrated with. Von Brauns dream was always space travel, even before the war. He had hoped all his research and work would culminate in it, and the Americans were beginning to look like a lost cause just like the Nazis were. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Oct 29, 2014 20:14
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FrozenVent posted:Better to just post it wherever the thread is to then, most people don't page back to see if you've edited your posts. Taking this a step further, some of us are mobile-only and use the Awful app. It only loads unread posts unless you scroll up/back.
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Oct 30, 2014 04:17
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A small scrap of aluminum found on Nikumaroro in 1991 has been positively identified as part of a field repair made to Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra just before it left Miami on her final attempt at an around-the-world flight. http://news.discovery.com/history/us-history/aluminum-fragment-appears-to-belong-to-earharts-plane-141028.htm Last time TIGHAR was at Nikumaroro, they found a metallic object in the water several hundred yards offshore. Combined with other circumstantial evidence, it looks like the crazy bastards have been right, all this time.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:21
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There is a ton of circumstantial evidence supporting (or at least fitting) their theory. I'm glad they've got something a bit more substantial finally.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:02
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If only someone would send a submersible down to the alleged wreck. C’mon, James Cameron.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:23
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Platystemon posted:If only someone would send a submersible down to the alleged wreck. June 2015, says the article.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:33
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King Air crashed into a building at ICT
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Oct 30, 2014 16:35
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Yeah, judging by the photos/video I've seen on the news no one in the plane survived. From the early reports coming out right now it was an engine failure.
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Oct 30, 2014 17:03
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Well, not just any building apparently. The FlightSafety International building to boot.
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Oct 30, 2014 17:03
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yeah a coworker's wife works in that building (she's ok), crazy poo poo
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Oct 30, 2014 17:35
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Loving the posts, but I would be leery to declare Von Braun was all that much of a pacifist. By an account I've read, he specifically ordered a film designed showing hundreds upon hundreds of rockets turning London to rubble in order to get Hitler to sponsor his research. I doubt he really gave much of a drat about what fruits it bore, he just wanted to make rockets and couldn't care less about the collateral damage.
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Oct 30, 2014 21:31
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A little Tom Lehrer is due every now and then in this thread. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio e: wow, I had no idea this was a Norwegian recording. Found out at the end of this song, which is also somewhat relevant to rocketry and global incineration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs Ola fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 22:23
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Tevery Best posted:he just wanted to make rockets and couldn't care less about the collateral damage.  Some men want to watch the world burn; some just like fighting (or in von Braun's case, designing things that can only get funded if they're used as weapons), and if the enemy has to die in droves, well, them's the breaks.
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Oct 30, 2014 22:24
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Tevery Best posted:Loving the posts, but I would be leery to declare Von Braun was all that much of a pacifist. By an account I've read, he specifically ordered a film designed showing hundreds upon hundreds of rockets turning London to rubble in order to get Hitler to sponsor his research. I doubt he really gave much of a drat about what fruits it bore, he just wanted to make rockets and couldn't care less about the collateral damage. I'm not sure how much truth there is in it, but my impression of Von Braun was that he was a total 'ends justify means' sorta guy. Like when the first V-2 was constructed, he turned to one of his fellow scientists and said "we have just built the first spaceship.'
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Oct 30, 2014 22:34
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Delivery McGee posted:What's a war crime or three if it allows you to do the job you love? "War crime" is a relative term when you go back more than a couple of decades. European warfare really isn't that far removed from slaughtering the family of anyone who refuses to let soldiers eat all their food and take their bed for a few days.
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Oct 30, 2014 22:53
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm not sure how much truth there is in it, but my impression of Von Braun was that he was a total 'ends justify means' sorta guy. Like when the first V-2 was constructed, he turned to one of his fellow scientists and said "we have just built the first spaceship.' Not to mention the quote they put into the last Iron Man movie, how von Braun claimed after the first successful wartime use of the V-2 that 'the rocket behaved perfectly - it just landed on the wrong planet.' And if anything, though I can fault his funding source, there are tons of extraordinarily-gifted scientists and engineers who don't give a drat how or who funds their research or what gets developed from it as long as there's a steady paycheck and/or the ability to keep publishing (one is usually exclusive of the other).
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Oct 31, 2014 00:05
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the dudes who invented the field of statistics as we know it were huge eugenicists so its not like being really loving smart and good at what you do precludes you from being a fuckhead
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Oct 31, 2014 00:26
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see also Linus Pauling and vitamin CGodholio posted:slaughtering the family of anyone who refuses to let soldiers eat all their food and take their bed for a few days. Not in America! Though the third amendment always gets forgotten about, what with all the noise about the second.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:16
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rscott posted:the dudes who invented the field of statistics as we know it were huge eugenicists so its not like being really loving smart and good at what you do precludes you from being a fuckhead Being really smart generally allows you to be an even bigger fuckhead.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:21
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So this happened yesterday afternoon: Pilot Killed in Military Plane Crash in Point Mugu Area (sorry, I can't seem to find any articles that aren't full of terrible reporting) A Hawker Hunter operated by ATAC, a contract company that flies red air for training, crashed just short of the runway. This is the second Hunter that's crashed here in the last two years. Knowledgeable hearsay is that their jets don't have ejection seats since they don't have a contract to keep them maintained. I see these guys flying all the time around here, and I've done a number of missions that used them as red air. It's pretty surreal to drive by and see the wreckage just a few hundred feet from the road. This has just been a lovely week overall for aerospace.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:22
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Wingnut Ninja posted:A Hawker Hunter operated by ATAC, a contract company that flies red air for training, crashed just short of the runway. This is the second Hunter that's crashed here in the last two years. Knowledgeable hearsay is that their jets don't have ejection seats since they don't have a contract to keep them maintained. I see these guys flying all the time around here, and I've done a number of missions that used them as red air. It's pretty surreal to drive by and see the wreckage just a few hundred feet from the road. Most of this is hearsay and rumor, and I cannot back it up and don't want to talk poo poo on a company without justification. That caveat said, I've heard some really rough stories about their maintenance and organizational attitude from a mix of military pilots/maintainers and red air private companies. At one exercise we thought the Hunter wasn't going to fly, because the ATAC crew wasn't out checking their aircraft at a reasonable time. They basically showed up right before takeoff time, did the most cursory of pre-flights and went and rolled the mission. But a lot of these agencies do some kind of questionable things. A different company was bingo fuel and decided to drop below 500 feet AGL (with range clearance of course) to make a hollywood run on the way back to the airport. One of the L-39s flames out during descent, so now all the other pilots have no fuel to really serve as on-scene commander and the guy has precious little altitude (3K feet or less IIRC) to land in scrubland filled to the brim with mesquite mounds. Luckily, there was an abandoned strip out there within range and he landed without issue. The pilot seemed pretty pumped about the whole endeavor. The civilian electronic attack operator looked like he was going to puke even 2 hours after the landing. We didn't even know they had landed successfully until we'd already lost all eyeballs on the aircraft, lost track, and were 3/4 of the way there, going over 100 mph down the highway and got a text message selfie of the pilot in front of the L-39.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:50
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MagnumHB posted:Well, not just any building apparently. The FlightSafety International building to boot. poo poo just got real when you can die in the sim.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:58
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What does "red air" mean?
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Oct 31, 2014 03:01
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poo poo. I worked an ATAC Hunter just a few days ago. 
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Oct 31, 2014 03:04
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The Ferret King posted:What does "red air" mean? They're contracted aggressors for military training.
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Oct 31, 2014 03:06
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rscott posted:the dudes who invented the field of statistics as we know it were huge eugenicists so its not like being really loving smart and good at what you do precludes you from being a fuckhead Well, Eugenics as a field has only been repugnant for a few decades. It was a celebrated liberal cause in the '30s. There are still mentally disabled people suing the government over their forced sterilization. (Some are not very deficient at all!) actually I mis-remembered. It was worse than that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leilani_Muir http://canadianawareness.org/2012/10/famous-eugenicists-celebrated-in-canada/ But that's a derail. I need help.  Can anyone tell me more about this beauty? I'd like to get more photos if possible hannibal posted:They're contracted aggressors for military training. US military? Jonny Nox fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 03:11
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 Hah that looks like a paintjob from an Ace Combat game.
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Oct 31, 2014 03:16
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Duke Chin posted:
I like it...
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Oct 31, 2014 03:23
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Jonny Nox posted:I like it... Oh, no no no, don't get me wrong - I'm down, too. Better than the usual boring USAF gray-on-gray with some more gray.
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Oct 31, 2014 03:35
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The Ferret King posted:What does "red air" mean? Red air is anyone flying opposition forces, whether military or private. The best is when military aircraft are supposed to run red air, but load blue air codes and show up on our datalinks, shooting at blue air while appearing to be blue themselves. On the other hand, we can see them self-report while they try to be sneaky 
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Oct 31, 2014 03:44
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Yeah, like folks have said, red air is what you call the guys playing the bad guys when you're training. Good guys are blue air, while neutral/non-players like commercial aircraft are white air. I haven't really heard anything about ATAC maintenance practices, but I do sometimes wonder how hard it is to maintain and fix a 1950's British jet fighter enough to keep it flying regularly. Seems like it would be a lot harder to get spare parts than, say, a Lear jet (which ATAC also flies). (Not that I'm in any way trying to point fingers in this case; there's still no indication at all on what might have caused the crash.)
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Oct 31, 2014 05:25
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Jonny Nox posted:Can anyone tell me more about this beauty? I'd like to get more photos if possible Look up "Tiger Meet" photos on GIS - I'd bet money this is one from the past decade. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Tiger_Association Same plane from a different angle:  The thread should also prepare for an onslaught of magnificent loving tiger-themed paint job pictures that make this F-16's look like poo poo. Like this one: 
BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 07:05
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Tevery Best posted:Loving the posts, but I would be leery to declare Von Braun was all that much of a pacifist. By an account I've read, he specifically ordered a film designed showing hundreds upon hundreds of rockets turning London to rubble in order to get Hitler to sponsor his research. I doubt he really gave much of a drat about what fruits it bore, he just wanted to make rockets and couldn't care less about the collateral damage. There are a couple issues: Von Braun was always hoping to build rockets for the purpose of going to space, but the Nazis had (even before Von Braun proposed his idea to Hitler) made it perfectly clear that all scientific research and development HAD to be oriented towards a military goal, or it would never get funding. Like, not even considered for funding, and it was possible even if he DID make the presentation about a space destined rocket with explorationary goal, he would have been arrested for squandering national assets in wartime. The VfR was not even allowed to launch home made rockets for that very reason. Even then, when he was asked to join the party, he was basically told he HAD to join the party, no questions allowed. I don't know how much he objected to the use of slave labor to build the V-2s, but regardless if he objected or not, I doubt he had much choice in the matter, as the SS were pretty keen on keeping the V-2 under their thumb, as it was Hitler's personal weapons project. He was arrested a couple times during the V-2s development and use for that very reason, because they suspected that he was wasting national assets. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 15:26
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If anything, this makes the situation worse. If you know that your discovery will be used by a totalitarian regime as a weapon against civilians, and you still not only agree to make it, but actively lobby for it to be made, you are a culprit. It doesn't matter whether or not you ultimately just want to go to space, or that there's no other way. You can live without making rockets, it's not like you can't just stop researching that poo poo nobody besides you cares about.
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Oct 31, 2014 15:41
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