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One would doubt the pilot's skill, but presumably they were able to safely land the frogfoots (frogfeet?). I can't even land the A-10C warthog on my janky desktop PC with a terrible plastic $20 unweighted joystick, but I can still hit a slow moving blackhawk without the aid of the targeting computer. This event seems to be nothing more than a firm political swat to tell the US to back off on it's blatant intelligence gathering without actually prompting a "proportional response" from the US military. Occam's razor, etc etc
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Nov 9, 2012 15:16
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It only generates http://www.ulalaunch.com/site/pages/Webcast.shtml edit: spelling :facepalm: Hadlock fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Dec 11, 2012 |
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Dec 11, 2012 18:40
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This thing is under development, called the Dream Chaser and NASA threw them a bone for ~$350 million in additional funding back in July. We'll probably never see another side-mounted space shuttle ever again, we proved that design is fundamentally flawed. The Dragon Capsule and Orion Capsule are the future of US manned spaceflight for the foreseeable future (through 2030 at least).   
Hadlock fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Dec 11, 2012 |
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Dec 11, 2012 19:38
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Why don't aerospace companies use Robertson drive screws? Supposedly the driver will strip before the screw does in most cases.
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Dec 14, 2012 19:47
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Ten Super Tucanos at $10mm each, loaded with the sensor/weapons payload of an F-35 would be interesting. The F-35 is basically a sensor and missile/guided bomb platform with dogfight capability, right? Dog fighting seems like it would make up less than 1% of it's actual operating functionality.
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Dec 15, 2012 06:00
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Jobs program. Having the defence industry spooled up ready to go is a major benefit if you end up in a land war with Russia or China... or India or Brazil. You can't train 20,000 aerospace engineers with twenty years of defence experience in three months like you can infantry, and if they run out of work here they can easily go to France, Germany or anywhere in the world really for the same pay. Having a continuous stream of projects here helps keep them from looking abroad. When you need to downsize your infantry on the other hand, the infantry just goes back to being domestic gas station attendants and grocery store cashiers. I mean, do you really think NASA is going to reactivate the F1 engine program?, no; this is just unemployment insurance for the aerospace industry. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Dec 21, 2012 |
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Dec 21, 2012 13:31
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Just a thought, but when you're crabbing in an airplane whose fuselage is longer than the runway is wide by a decent margin, it would be good to know if both your front and rear landing gear are going to touch tarmac when you land. Also, for checking to see if there are gremlins sitting out on the wing.
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Dec 29, 2012 04:50
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vulturesrow posted:I posted this in the Navy thread but I thought you guys would appreciate it as well. The air wing of the future as envisioned by my son: To this day I think retiring the F-14 was a colossal mistake. During recess, nobody wanted to play with the F-15, F-16, F-18 -- gently caress that, the coolest toy plane at school was the F-14, it had moving wings. By all elementary school standards, it was the most modern and evolved airplane.
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Aug 6, 2013 03:05
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I'm headed towards Hungary/Czech Rep, and possibly Poland, old soviet-bloc countries; are there any particularly interesting aerospace museums (or better! boneyards) full of strange cold-war relics I can't see anywhere else in the world? Something like this: http://englishrussia.com/2010/12/03/aircraft-graveyard-not-far-from-moscow/ I would settle for a bunch of MIG-21s or whatever, or a Tupolev Tu-95. Anything crazy worth seeing?
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May 31, 2014 13:13
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Fucknag posted:Agreed. It's like an adolecent A-10a  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IBj2ibN-4M&t=33s
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Jun 1, 2014 08:06
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MrChips posted:E: If you want to talk about overwing refueling hell, well there's this... What was the rationale for that monstrosity? Ability to reuse the cockpit section 41/fuselage manufacturing process from another jet? Did Boeing ever propose to convert the venerable 737 in to a double-size V-22?
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Jun 12, 2014 04:30
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Kilonum posted:tbh Amtrak outside of the Northeast Corridor and the Empire Builder is pretty terrible. There is an Amtrak train that comes through Dallas once a day, but since it has Lowest Priority that means it can be furloughed on a side track for up to 4 hours to make way for a coal train or even a single engine. This happens about six times from Chicago to Dallas so the Train is usually 1.5 days late. Your best option to get to Austin via train (4 hr car ride, 8 hr train, 35 minute flight) is to walk up and buy a ticket at the counter for whatever train is expected next. That train arrives in Austin just after midnight. There is a "greyhound express" from Dallas to Houston, has free 3G wifi and normal 120v plugs to charge your laptop, it's about $40 and is about the same price as driving (5 hrs or $32 gas vs 5 hrs & $40 ticket), it's setup like one of those touring buses and are generally a lot more clean. Interstate greyhounds are disgusting and sketchy as gently caress but still cheap.
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Jun 15, 2014 07:09
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Did American change their livery due to Boeing not being able to offer the 787 in "polished aluminum" in part because it has a composite fuselage?
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Jun 18, 2014 09:42
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Barnsy posted:Someone made a big booboo Shaheen Air apparently: http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=167085
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Jun 21, 2014 06:34
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Browsing through the F-1* wikipedia pages either I'm noticing a strong bias or an incomplete story about the F-14 It sounds like the F-14 has a higher max takeoff weight + greater fuel + munitions takeoff weight than the F-18 super-variant, and was getting major avionics upgrades as recent as 2005 before Cheney killed it Did it have to die to create a need for the F-35 or what
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Nov 29, 2014 21:22
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That live feed is pretty cool, was not expecting a ground control audio loop. I have two long haul flights booked for April, SFO to HKG on a 747-400 and then PVG (Shanghai) to LAX on a 787-9, I think the last time I flew on a widebody Boeing airplane I was 7 years old. Is there anything of interest I should look at when boarding/flying? I've been on Airbus a350/a320 transatlantic and it was a pretty boring plane from what I remember. The 787 scares the hell out of me, stretched version of a brand new carbon fiber plane. Yikes. I fly on 737s all the time and that doesn't bother me, but it's also made of aluminum with a 100+ year flight heritage. Also, I'm a stomach sleeper and can't sleep fully upright using one of those U-shaped pillows, has anyone seen/tried the Skyrest pillow? It looks ridiculous but I've attempted similar things with my carry on and a combination of pillows and a jacket. SFO to HKG is supposed to be a 14 hour red eye, as is the trip home so I imagine I'd get a lot of use out of this thing.
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Mar 10, 2015 11:29
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Yeah, united economy class, I am planning on bringing my e-reader and one of those 5000mAh usb batteries for my phone + laptop for "in flight movie". Does united really not have avod in economy in 2015? My transatlantic flight on American last summer did. I took a 21 hour bus ride in Argentina (turns out, South America is huge) and they have large array of questionably legal over the counter options to knock you out during the trip and that definitely made the trip shorter/more pleasant. Do you just book an appt with the doctor and ask for a prescription here in the US? I've never done that before. Ambien sounds like a great solution though, at least on a bus they let you out every 4 hours or so to walk around.
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Mar 10, 2015 12:01
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Psion posted:17 inch seat width for transatlantic flights. Are you loving kidding me, Air Canada? Pretty sure that's the seat width on my 14 hour transpacific SFO HKG flight 
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Mar 11, 2015 02:50
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hobbesmaster posted:You're right the real problem is knee room not leg room. Most of the ceiling space in a 747 is wasted empty space; is there any reason why they couldn't make the chairs 3" taller? It's like they designed the chairs to be comfortable for a person of 5'4" despite the average American being 5'10, and I think it's even taller in western Europe. I forget the study but it basically said every vertical inch of seat height you add, gives the occupant an effective additional 3" of leg room. I think Ryan Air took this to it's logical extreme in a study; personally I would prefer this, so long as I can fit a small laptop between me and the seat in front of me on that fold down tray  edit: apparently this doesn't work so well when your passenger is a fat american 
Hadlock fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 19:06
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I am sitting on the taxiway 2nd in line to take off here at ORD, the captain said something to the effect that the plane in front of us doesn't have a flight plan, or the FAA's system broke? Does that sound at all plausible?
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Apr 2, 2015 20:09
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To be fair we are 2nd in line on the taxiway behind another small metal tube. It is a little disconcerting that the fuel budget is tight enough that they had to shut down the engines to conserve fuel. Then again these engines weren't designed to idle for long periods of time. Edit, as I hit send they spooled up the engines. Off to hong Kong in a 777 over the North Pole... Hadlock fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 20:19
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They just scrape near pure lithium off the top of a dry lakebed in Bolivia. Bolivia basically dictates the world price of lithium because they have something like 95% of the world's reserves just sitting there ready to go.
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Apr 5, 2015 12:36
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Generation Internet posted:I don't think anyone's actually posted the picture of the Asiana plane yet; it looks oddly neat. Is there a formula they use to determine safe apron width, or did the pilot just get spectacularly lucky that they didn't slide off the edge? A quick glance at google earth shows that the concrete past the apron is at about a 45 degree angle and leads in to some pretty steep mountainous terrain as the airport is basically on top of a mountain. Asiana's going to have to order some new seats for the starboard window passengers, you won't be able to get the brown stain out of them very easily.
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Apr 16, 2015 09:15
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This has been beaten to death, and I've trolled google for an answer, lots of results on airliners.net, but no good answer(s) that I've seen -- What benefit does the 787 have over the 777? As near as I can tell, the 777 is designed as a drop in replacement for the 747. And the 787 is an 80% scale carbon fiber version of the 777. The 787 I rode home on, besides the giant window with no manual override on the electronic window shade, felt exactly like a 777. I guess the 777 is 6.2m while the 787 is 5.8m which is about 1.3 ft difference. Is the 787 due for another upgrade, the 787-11 that would replace the 777? Wikipedia says the 787-10 would replace the 777-200 which seems to be pretty common in China and trans-pacific between North America and eastern China. 
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Apr 17, 2015 03:30
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Is the value of the air strip so little that they would build the only permanent struture directly on the runway? That seems kind of silly when they could just move it 40' to the left or right and still have a functional emergency airstrip. I doubt we'll get invaded anytime soon, but someone in 20 years is going to seriously facepalm that decision.
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Apr 19, 2015 18:49
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:You realize that airlines fly different sized planes, right? This is extremely simplified, but at a high level the 777 costs more to operate than a 787, and if you can't fill the 777 (say, San Francisco to Chengdu or something like that), you use a smaller aircraft on the route. The 787 is mostly replacing 767s. Actually, I didn't, I live here in Dallas where the whole world revolves around 737's (Southwest Airlines HQ). Every time there's more demand at a city, they just throw more 737's at it, and if a route is overserved, they just make up for the difference in maintenance efficency (or so I've been told). The Ryanair planes I've flown on in Europe seem to do the same thing. Spirit also flies out of Dallas on almost exclusively A320's and A321's (domestic and international) which seem like euro-737s. Based on my environment I sort of assumed that they would just fly all 777's + whatever legacy aircraft until the legacy aircraft aged out. I guess if you're flying 7000 miles @ $400 in fuel per seat, and your flight is 20% empty that's a big deal? Coming from an all low-cost carrier environment, on the surface anyways, it would seem to make sense to just standardize on one type of plane for long hauls. Which is why I'm confused about so much overlap between the 777 and 787.
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Apr 20, 2015 03:40
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As a child I had a couple of die cast metal fighter jets (as did all kids my age, I lived in Washington State and my dad worked for Boeing..), they were about 3-4" long I think. What "scale" are these? 1/72 scale seems to be too big, are they about 1/114 scale? That seems to be the next size "down" from what I can tell. I found this 1:100 scale X-47B which looks like a close competitor http://www.flyingmule.com/products/IT-48165 Also looking for a baseball sized Dragon cargo spaceflight capsule, I have not been able to find one of those. Googling "dragon die cast model" does not turn up any... good search results, ahem,  I did find the X-37B from "dragon models" however http://www.flyingmule.com/products/DM-50377
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Apr 26, 2015 19:52
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Is that F-22 a permanent museum piece already? Didn't it just have it's first combat flight in September of last year?
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May 11, 2015 02:52
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Good one  . No, seriously, is this a rebuilt airframe from one of the two that crashed due to the computer glitch or something? Google-pedia says these things run about $336 million a pop after you factor in program costs.
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May 11, 2015 03:01
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Is civilian radar really that bad, or is stealth technology really that good? I had always assumed jet stealth technology was just good enough to keep third world weapons from locking on to them at a distance of > 3 miles. I would have figured that civilian air radar in 2015 would be good enough to pick up 1980s era stealth jets.
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May 12, 2015 01:44
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Cat Mattress posted:Obviously, detecting an enemy plane at 200 km is very useful, while detecting an enemy plane at 20 km is well, probably a little bit too late. How long does it take to scramble a fighter? At Mach 1.2 that's 15 miles a second which is what, about 8 seconds to cover 200km? I am completely  about radar range but what's the max distance air to air radar can pick up something porky like a C-130 transport? Probably greater than the distance viewable due to the curvature of the earth at that altitude (which is what, 215 miles for ground based radar to 30,000 ft?)It seems like between when the on-call scramble pilot puts down his coffee and when he leaves the ready room the agressor fighter would have already arrived, blown a big hole in the middle of their runway, and be halfway back to base, radar be damned.
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May 14, 2015 19:21
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The Locator posted:I had no idea that mach 1.2 was 54,000 miles per hour. Wooo...... The space station flies at 16,000mph, closer to the ground at 30,000ft, orbital speed is 54,000mph, right? How do planes work
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May 14, 2015 20:30
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How do two-body dynamics work if the load shifts (i.e. that orange strap slides back to the wing root), do the helicopter and load become semi-independent pendulums around an unstable barycenter? I can't see a helicopter recovering from that event fast enough before crashing in to the ground. In that picture, I'm imagining the strap sliding left, the nose swinging down and clockwise towards the right, causing the helicopter to pitch 30+ degrees to starboard and the rotor stalling out.
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May 20, 2015 00:31
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Hadlock fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Jun 14, 2015 |
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Jun 14, 2015 01:04
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Why aren't there wheel well motion sensors? Once the gear is stowed there shouldn't be any motion in there. People hanging on to the landing gear doesn't seem like it will be a problem that's going away any time soon, if ever. Motion sensors are like, $3, probably less than $100 even for an aerospace grade sensor.
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Jun 19, 2015 20:02
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Looks like everything was going according to plan, until the landing gear malfunctioned
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Jun 26, 2015 01:46
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If we're doing animal airplanes, I saw this in Brussels earlier this month, from the jetway: Tintin was a French language, Belgian comic of some sort edit: modeled after this shark-submarine, I suppose: 
Hadlock fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 04:38
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Solar Impulse is making it's second attempt to fly from Japan to Hawaii on only solar power http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33244912 BBC posted:"Andre Borschberg has passed the point of no return and must now see this 5 days 5 nights flight through to the end...He will only be allowed to take 20-minute cat-naps," I did some offshore sailing with just my buddy for four days and by day three we were pretty loopy, and we had originally started off with 4 hour "nap shifts" starting around day 2. Which slowly decreased to 3 hour, then 2 hour, then 30 minute shifts, as the person steering the boat could only stay awake that long. I'm honestly a little concerned for this guy. Maybe he's going to wake up for 5 minutes to scan through a checklist and look for red lights, then resume sleeping for 20 more minutes if everything is green? Hadlock fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 07:23
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Jun 29, 2015 07:31
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Solar impulse crossed the point of no return leaving Japan about 6 hours ago, so he's either on his way to Hawaii, or will crash land somewhere in the Pacific, unless he's able to divert North to Midway Island! Four more days left on his solo flight attempt.
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Jun 30, 2015 04:40
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