Comments by "Helium Road" (@RCAvhstape) on "Curious Droid" channel.

  1. Somewhere I remember a documentary about Vietnam, and there was audio of a wild weasel pilot talking over the radio. Somebody asked him if he knew where the enemy SAM site was, and he replied in a calm, cool voice, "Not yet. I'm trying to get him to shoot at me." Crazy and fearless indeed.
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  2. And the winner is: Fisher! They still sell those pens today.
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  3. That Energia II looks really cool. NASA had messed with the idea of flyback boosters before, too. There was a plan for a flyback F1 booster stage and also plan to replace the shuttle's SRBs with Liquid Rocket Boosters (LRBs) that would have wings and fly back to a runway using jets. Ultimately we had to wait for the Falcon 9 to see anything that cool.
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  4. It seems Britain has a history of optimistic assumptions about new technology as an excuse to cancel programs. Their aerospace sector suffered from the assumption that surface-to-air missiles would make fighters obsolete, full size aircraft carriers no longer needed because the future is all Harriers and Harrier-wannabes, and now that we have ballistic missiles, who needs bombers? All these new technologies turned out to be useful, but there were serious tradeoffs made. Britain seemed to have to strain hard to project power in the Falklands, for example. Bet the Royal Navy would've liked to have had a ship full of F-4 Phantoms and A-6 Intruders along with those Harriers...
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  5. I grew up not too far away from Bell Labs. It was the kind of place I dreamed of working at some day. And they weren't the only one, lots of big companies used to have laboratories and did lots of in-house research decades ago.
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  6. 8:30 Theory: the real reason Skylab was allowed to burn up was to make sure they got the spiders.
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  7. The fact that the fusing mechanism can withstand all that and still function has always amazed me. The earliest proximity fuses for antiaircraft shells used vacuum tube tech and had to survive the shock of firing and spinning, and that was in the 1940s, which amazes me.
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  8. I remember when the M1 Abrams tank was heavily criticized. Too expensive, too heavy, too fuel inefficient, the turbine engine would surely clog, on and on. All of the detractors shut right up when the US Army took them to war for the first time and monkey-stomped an entire army of Soviet quipped and trained Iraqi tankers.
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  9. Ever since I was a little kid I have loved the F-104 Starfighter. Everything about that jet is cool, even the name. Speed, power, futuristic 1950s space age looks. Pure Kelly Johnson badassery, the hell with utility, just make it fast as hell.
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  10. That guy at 00:31 is crazy!
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  11. The Soviets would use vodka bottles.
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  12. Let's try to keep the discussion focused on UK power projection and defense programs and V-bombers and leave the current politics bullshit for some other video, please.
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  13. 6:22 This is actually a camouflaged internet cat video.
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  14. "We here at Flying School try to avoid phrases such as 'Dead Reckoning' and 'Crash Course'."
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  15. I was unaware that there was a plan to boost Skylab without using the Shuttle. Now I'm kind of angry they blew that chance. Skylab could still be in orbit today if they had done that, so how much money did they really save by letting it fall? One thing you didn't mention was the incompatibility of Skylab's Apollo-type life support system with the Shuttle's. Skylab used a low-pressure pure O2 atmosphere, while Shuttle (and ISS) use ordinary air at human-normal pressure. A special airlock module was built to allow Shuttle crew to transfer back and forth between the orbiter and the space station.
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  16. You win the internet for today, sir! (Now get your coat)
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  17. The Falcon missile is an interesting animal. According to F-106 pilot Bruce Gordon (check out his channel), the Falcon is a fine enough weapon when paired up with the correct radar and fire control system on the F-106. The missile and aircraft were specifically designed to work together. Putting the missile on an F-4 Phantom sets it up for failure since the F-4's avionics was built more for the Sparrow. Since the F-106 never saw combat, we'll never know if the Falcon was actually a good missile or not. Similar tale for the Falcon's successor, the Phoenix, which was specifically built to work with the F-14. Only a small number of those were known to been fired in combat and their record was not good, but with a sample size of 2 or 3 it's hard to draw a conclusion. Both the Falcon and the Phoenix performed very well in training shots with their complimentary aircraft. Gordon shot down a BOMARC missile in a head-on supersonic pass with his F-106/Falcon.
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  18. Shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane survived an ejection from an F-111 earlier in his career. He called that his "first" rocket ride.
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  19. When I was little I had an SRN-4 Matchbox car toy. Too bad I never got to ride on a real one.
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  20. He should've proposed using a flux capacitor instead. That would've cut the power draw down to 1.21 GW.
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  21. TMI resulted in zero deaths, but is often called the "worst nuclear accident in US history". Why is that? The SL-1 accident, for example, killed three people directly, yet a lot of people have never heard of it, and there have been other nasty accidents as well. TMI was very public and very scary (I was living not too far from it at the time as a child and it was BIG news), but in the end turned out to be little more than an expensive mess.
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  22.  @nathanfisher6925  That's the film of unburned kerosene fuel that coats the inside of the nozzles to keep them from melting. F1's burn fuel-rich to protect themselves from their own heat.
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  23.  @adampedersen5384  Mice don't study physics either.
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  24. A near perfect design. There's a saying, "The only thing that can replace a DC-3 is another DC-3." Over the years there have been lots of upgrades for the old DC-3's avionics, of course, but also re-engine jobs. I remember seeing an ad in a 1980s edition of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine for a company offering to put turboprops on your DC-3. But anything that makes it less simple and harder to work on is almost a downgrade.
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  25. That's pretty cool. Railroading is a skilled profession.
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  26. It's kind of Lovecraftian, actually. Lovecraft stories often feature geometric shapes that make people insane by looking at them or which channel energy and open portals to other dimensions.
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  27. Merlin-equipped Mustangs had a ceiling of 42k ft? Wow, some jets even struggle up there.
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  28. They were optimized for a particular altitude, like any fixed-geometry bell nozzle engine. They were very efficient in near vacuum, which is where they spent most of their burn time.
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  29. "They pretend to tell us jokes, and we pretend to laugh."
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  30. I saw it in the theater on the 50th anniversary of the mission. Totally blown away! Absolutely emotional documentary. The footage looks like it was shot yesterday, but also the editing and music were amazing. Hard to watch it without tearing up.
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  31. NASA took a needless risk by launching the first shuttle with a human crew. I was told once, and this may be urban legend, that the only thing a human was needed for to pilot the orbiter was to throw the landing gear lever on final approach. Everything else the vehicle did could be done by computer and remote commanding, at least for basic stuff. For once the Soviets did something smart and launched Buran's first flight unmanned. NASA was super cocky after the Apollo program and to put Young and Crippen into a couple of ejection seats and hope for the best was not wise. To make matters worse, it was later determined that the ejection seats were useless and would've killed the astronauts in the plume of the SRBs, so they were very fortunate they never felt compelled to activate them. It's a testament to the engineers who built STS that it worked so well on it's very first flight. The program managers should've known better, though.
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  32. VMA-231 Ace of Spades. Oldest squadron in the USMC, Gulf War 1991. Will be the last Harrier squadron when it switches to F-35B likely in 2026. We got a whole lotta mileage out of those beautiful birds. Semper Fi.
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  33. I once visited the USAF museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and saw the B-36 up close, along with an engine on display nearby. Good Lord, what a gigantic beast! I always loved Pratt & Whitney's logo, with the eagle and the motto "Dependable Engines". Can't get much more plain language than that, and reminds the managers and employees what they are supposed to be striving for.
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  34. Teabagging the kills
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  35. "I shot down 3 MiGs with one of those."
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  36. In the old days, cops were held accountable for their actions and not treated like god-kings. Plus they hadn't yet learned mantras like "Stop resisting!" and "Officer feared for his life."
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  37. The B-52 is still in service because it has to do one simple thing and it does it well: be a flying dump truck full of weapons. It can't overfly defended targets with gravity bombs like it was to do in the 50s, but even in a lethal environment it can carry a metric shit ton of cruise missiles to within striking range. And once air supremacy has been achieved, it can go back to being a simple gravity bomb truck or it can load up with GPS-guided JDAMs and loiter in the area waiting for troops on the ground to call for support. There's something to be said for a fairly conventional design that can carry lots of stuff.
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  38. That missing jetliner is also probably in a thousand pieces, too, even if you find it you might not know what it is at first.
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  39. The dark plumes are due to water injection during maximum power takeoffs, when the plane is loaded to the gills with fuel and weapons and trying to get airborne before the incoming nukes obliterate the airbase. They aren't that smokey in cruise flight.
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  40. We don't need AI to land on the moon, we just need more practice.
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  41. True, but building a modern improved version of rockets like the Energia or even the Saturn V is not technically difficult; both vehicles are well-documented and have successful flight history and data, and there are even existing examples to physically inspect. NASA even has a raft of fresh never-used F1 engines in storage. The hardest part is funding, bureaucracy, institutional inertia, public perception, etc.
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  42.  @Shinzon23  It looks like something from Thunderbirds Are Go
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  43. Ah, I see, so he's registered that move with the Ministry of Silly Walks, then.
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  44.  @joevignolor4u949  And made more space available for donning suits, and on later missions, sleeping in hammocks.
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  45. These are, indeed, weighty matters to consider. For some reason I find them quite attractive. I am however, at a loss as to why I keep falling for them.
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  46. While Lockheed was involved in a lot of shady practices during that period, I don't think they can take the blame for canceling the SR-177; the British government at the time was making a lot of dunderheaded decisions to try and be cheap, and this was just one of many. The one that stands out in my mind is the assumption that the surface-to-air missile would shortly make fighter planes obsolete for defending the home islands, a classic case of believing what you want to believe. I am sympathetic to the fact that the UK wasn't swimming in cash at the time, but some of those decisions were hard to believe.
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  47. Yes, and be able to do it without spying on you via the IOT like every gadget made today is designed to do.
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  48. I recently visited KSC and took the bus out to the Saturn V visitor center, which drives right past the VAB. Sitting outside next to the VAB were both crawlers parked. The thing I love about Apollo is that everything we did was going to be the biggest, the best, the most powerful, the most badass, and we were destined to freaking win. Like the Saturn V itself, America's space program was an unstoppable juggernaut in those days, and the crawler transporters are living, breathing, still-working artifacts of that age.
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  49. While still in the gulag, even
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  50. The Red Queen has given me my target.
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  51. Lockheed Martin should restart this as a private project and smoke SpaceX. Do it all private, so Washington doesn't get to decide to kill it.
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  52.  @PiDsPagePrototypes  What you say ablut the F35 is what people said about the F111 in the 60s. Waste of money, too expensive, no need for advanced technology, etc. If it were up to them the 91 Gulf War would've been fought with Korean War weapon systems. The F-35 is the future.
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  53. Great video about a great subject, with a great fitting soundtrack and a shirt that looks fittingly like thousands of little nuclear explosions. Right on!
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  54.  @nitehawk86 The B-36 at the USAF museum is truly monstrous in size. Walking underneath it looking up into the bomb bay, you will notice there are hatchways that allow crew to enter the wings during flight. The wings are so big people can walk around inside them (hunched over, but still). In that same room is a B-52 which saw combat in Vietnam, and yes, the B-36 makes the B-52 look kind of small.
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  55.  @davebooth5608  Apollo 11 (2019)
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  56. The A-10's mission was pretty different from the Cheyenne. The two would've complimented each other nicely.
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  57. Not to get all nationalistic or whatever the term is, but when you say "Were 'we' right to abandon the moon?", that "we" is US citizens. Apollo was paid for by American tax money. Pretty much all of it. I realize that the rest of the West sees Apollo and even STS as belonging to us all in spirit if not in actual ownership, but it's US politics that drives whether these things get funded or not. Congressman Space-Hater doesn't answer to voters in England or Germany. Like you said, this was a government-funded project, free-market propaganda notwithstanding. The Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos' and Richard Bransons of today stand a better chance of getting back to the moon precisely because they don't have to answer to voters; they just have to amass the necessary cash to keep pushing their projects forward by other means. Yes, Musk's companies are either government subsidized (Tesla) or earn revenue from government contracts (SpaceX), but that is not the same as directly burning tax money allotted by Congressman Space-Hater. And the nice thing is that there is likely more opportunity for international citizens to invest in or take part in these corporate projects.
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  58. Look up the sounds of Saturn. Years ago when NASA first posted the recording online I listened to it at night with the lights off and it scared the piss out of me. Like a 1950s horror sci fi film.
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  59. And the SR-71 is so cool it needs muscle car V8 engines to start up its own jets.
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  60.  @evelghostrider  That's all been explained a million times. You might as well try arguing that water isn't wet.
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  61. Those eyes are super creepy. Never blinking. Dead eyes.
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  62.  @davebooth5608  It's weird, the footage is so clean and new-looking that at first it feels like you are watching a modern Hollywood movie set in 1969 instead of the real thing. Kind of like watching Apollo 13.
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  63. Where did Elon Musk get the money? From his successful Paypal business. Lockheed, Boeing, Northrup, etc. make tons of money off of defense contracts. Invest some of it. Once was a time when companies did that. The DC-X mentioned in this video? That came out of MD's pocket mostly. So did Lockheed's U-2. You want to succeed in private space? Find the capital, just like everyone else who doesn't live in defense contract Disney land.
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  64. Turn the Earth into a Death Star with a nuclear cannon? Sign me up!
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  65.  @RedLP5000S  LeMay may have been crazy, but he was certainly not stupid. Anti-American bigotry, on the other hand is as stupid as it is common.
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  66. I'm from America in the 2010's. What's this "rail travel" you speak of? BTW the music around 3:00 is pretty cool.
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  67. If you go to the Fighter Pilot Podcast channel and watch the episode on the B2 they mention it. The guy also says the rule for that little toilet is "Doing an inflight Number 2 is not cool", although 44 hours would be damn tough to avoid it. I imagine the crew might take laxatives the day before the mission and go liquid diet only lol.
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  68.  @flxrckt  They did it only once because they ran out of money. The whole country ran out of money actually.
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  69. Lana...LANA...LAAAANNNNA! What?! Danger zone.
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  70. Chuck Yeager's Air Combat was a killer combat flight sim in the 90s. If you screwed up a mission, Chuck would come up in the debrief screen and tell you about. Being told you suck by Chuck Yeager was a pretty good motivator to get better.
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  71. It got Sully safely onto the Hudson, and also saved the Gimli Glider.
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  72. He always wears wild shirts. That's half the fun of this channel!
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  73. Kickass book, best alien invasion story I've ever read.
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  74. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and everyone used to smoke everywhere all the time. It was gross but you got used to it because you couldn't get away from it. Don't miss those days at all, and never could understand why anyone would be so stupid as to start such a filthy habit.
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  75. Something about the P-51, especially the D model. Even today it looks as if it could handle itself in a fight against a MiG, it just has that look, like it was the perfect fighter design. When I was growing up I saw one at an airshow, and it blew me away. As it rolled down the runway in front of us on takeoff, the ungodly awesome sound of that Merlin engine and that giant prop is something I'll never forget, how I felt it in my chest, the thunderous roar and sense of power radiating from that beast, gleaming shiny metal in sunlight.
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  76. I have three of them, sometimes still use one at work when I'm too lazy to reach for my calculator.
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  77.  @miroslavdockal9468  It's not like it's an expensive hobby; all you need is to buy a decent shortwave radio and spend a few minutes turning the tuner knob. Do that often enough and you'll run across a numbers station. I found what I think was the "Spanish Lady" not too ago just by random chance.
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  78. Curious Droid: that research into miniature nuclear explosives was also related to Project Orion, IIRC. Some of the Orion team were concerned that the same technology used to make nuclear propulsive devices for spacecraft also made it easier to construct small, easily proliferated weapons.
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  79. 6:11 Beijing looks like Los Angeles in Blade Runner 2049.
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  80. When the Iowa class battleships were brought back into service in the 1980s they still used the 1940s analog fire control computers for the main guns, despite having all sorts of modern electronics and computers installed. The machines are still very accurate and they are basically built into the ships, mechanically linked to the gun turrets and gun directors, so may as well keep using them. Plus they keep working after an EMP or if the ship takes a massive hit, and because they were made in the 1940s when everything was bulletproof and overengineered they are very reliable as long as you take care of them.
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  81. Another example: a century ago the Pennsylvania Railroad had its own research division and did a lot of work optimizing and designing steam engines and other rail equipment. Many of their locomotives were designed and built in their own shops or the designs farmed out to contractors, they did their own signal technology and had lots of smart people on the payroll. The company ceased to exist around 1970.
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  82.  @RedLP5000S  The U2 camera sees it too. It sees everything.
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  83. STS-51L was part of a larger problem that developed within the STS program. NASA had promised Congress low costs, and the only way to get the cost lower was to have a higher launch rate, which meant rushing everything and scrimping on tracking down problems such as O-ring burn-through. What happened to Challenger could have happened on several previous missions launched in cold weather, the crew of 51L just happened to win the bad luck lottery that day. Same thing with Columbia; NASA had problems with debris shedding from the very first shuttle launch, and incorrectly determined it would not be a problem.
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  84. Hasselblad made that model up util just a few years ago, and sadly they discontinued it. A friend of mine has one and it's a really sweet camera.
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  85. "Just a dancing toaster" Cylon Centurion has entered the chat.
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  86.  @michaelpcoffee  Calling 1812 America "imperialist" as they fought a nation known literally as "The British Empire" for impressing American citizens into the Royal Navy. Now that takes a lot of sand.
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  87. They are far from simple, though. That's always been one of the struggles. In sci fi people put space suits on and off like a set of coveralls, but in real life it takes forever and involves lots of moving parts, all very expensive and some of which are custom made for each user.
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  88. They are useless for cleaning, but they do a pretty good job of mapping your private home and sending all the data to the manufacturer's servers.
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  89. I don't think it's technically an acronym, though, unless there is a way to pronounce it as a word, is it?
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  90. And my flying car? At this point I'd settle for a robot that cleans my toilet and does my laundry and dishes. Without spying on me and sending all the data to the company/goverment/whoever.
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  91. Yes, same thing.
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  92. The Secret War is awesome. 1970s documentary featuring a lot of interviewees from both the UK and German side about WWII high tech. I had to go to Daily Motion to find the episodes, I think Youtube takes them down.
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  93. I read that there actually is a very slight wisp of atmosphere on the Moon, so thin as to be negligible.
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  94. SpaceX is only effective because nobody gives them money, they have to deliver to get paid. NASA has been giving money to private companies for half a century. Those companies grew dependent on it. Keep private companies hungry and they will perform.
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  95. NASA hasn't blown up a rocket in over 30 years? I guess when they killed seven astronauts in 2003 on the Columbia, that didn't technically count as "blowing up a satellite", since it didn't blow up so much as disintegrate around its crew, exposing them to hypersonic shockwaves and heat. But whatever makes you feel better.
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  96.  @atomicshadowman9143  I prefer "reused dozens of times, then retired to gather dust in a museum", which is what they were built for.
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  97. Colossus: "There is another system."
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  98. IIRC the orbiter's tile heat shield system was the biggest expense in terms of time between flights. All those tiles had to be inspected, many replaced, and it was painstaking manual labor that cost a lot of time and money. The main engines were expensive to maintain, too, but they had a rotating pool of engines to swap out after each flight; while some were being torn down and refurb'd there were good ones available off the shelf, so the engines did not cause as many headaches as the heat shield. There were also a lot of other, smaller things that added up; swapping the windshield glass after every flight, for example, or even the tires after every landing. These things were technically good for many flights but NASA was trying to eliminate as many sources of accidents as was practical, and compared to O-ring redesign or debris shedding, these little things were easy to do.
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  99. Paul, the answer is "yes", the Pentagon does often reach out to SF authors from time to time, particularly the future-looking agencies like DARPA. And Jerry Pournelle worked for the Rand Corp. and other defense contractors and was involved in the SDI studies in the 1980s.
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  100.  @johnsutcliffe3209  Nonsense, they could not only build an F1 if they wanted to; they'd build a better one since materials and other technology have advanced. An F1B design was even floated a few years ago by Rocketdyne. This myth of "lost knowledge" surrounding the Saturn V keeps going for some reason.
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  101.  @allangibson8494  And a few Burt Rutan designs as well.
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  102. Jeff Goldblum remembers.
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  103. Also, the old Bell Telephone logo is a scarce sight these days, not just on the non-existent booths, but anywhere. For years after the breakup of Ma Bell, many of the Baby Bell companies had the right to use the logo but lately it's not being used by the telecom companies that still have the rights. When I was growing up that logo was everywhere.
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  104.  @Psychlist1972  Good party line speech.
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  105. War is stupid, but wishing it away and that all of us will live happily ever after is denying reality. There will always be conflict. The trick is keeping it from becoming violent conflict as long s possible.
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  106.  @paulhaynes8045  Along with a youtube comment that belies a strongly held opinion lacking in reality.
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  107.  @doodskie999  Yes, but your phone is far less reliable than the simple computers used on Saturn, which were designed and exhaustively tested for radiation, vibration, temperature, and redundancy before being cleared for flight, not to mention the extremely strict software configuration control, resulting in a near-zero error rate in the code, something no phone app developer has to worry about. If those computers don't work, they can kill the entire crew. I would never trust a cheap smartphone to do that task.
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  108. The willingness of Truax to do business with an that worthless idiot Knievel calls his judgement into question, but he gets credit for pushing rocket technology ahead of its time.
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  109. Artemis, like Space Shuttle, jump fast off the pad because they use solid rocket boosters, which are very high thrust but lower specific impulse compared to liquid fuel engines like those of Saturn V. Interesting footnote to the Saturn rocket family history is that some of the uprated Saturn variants studied featured strap-on solid rocket boosters to increase first stage performance, as well as a nuclear thermal upper stage and stretched booster stages, etc. All cast aside when the launch vehicle was retired, of course.
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  110.  @pegasusted2504  The universe is metal.
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  111.  @paulbedichek2679  Sorry but that's incorrect. The China Syndrome film was released 12 days before the TMI accident. And to say TMI "was not scary" is factually incorrect, as you can talk to anyone who lived near it at the time, including me. They were evacuating parts of the Pennsylvania countryside and telling people that if the core melted down into the water table that the whole region would become uninhabitable for years to come, so yes, people were actually scared. In the end, like I said, it resulted in zero deaths, no breech in containment, and a nasty mess to clean up.
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  112.  @fredthebulldog529  TMI, friend, TMI!
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  113. I read that it's because in a crash landing luggage and other stuff will be flying forward and hitting passengers in the face; facing forward means the seat back protects you from that.
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  114. 10:22 As a kid in the 80s watching movies like Tron, this image is what I thought future computers would look like.
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  115.  @krashd  There's a video of BioNerd as she climbs up the abandoned antenna array of the Duga and videos it. She's crazy.
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  116.  wally crail  Yes, but we've since developed a technique to get around that limitation using a retroflanged carbon vapor conductor over a celery substrate. As long as you watch the anode voltage, it should be safe to use for at least a few hours of running time.
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  117.  wally crail  Yes glad someone gets it. Kids these days just don't understand the power of gated pi functions and their effects on the spherical plasma cortex.
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  118. The Saturn V was empty on the transporter, too, wasn't fueled until it was on the launch pad. But even empty these big machines are still heavy.
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  119. Film is definitely superior to digital for certain niche applications such as this. One benefit of digital, however, is that you can livestream HD digital video from the launchpad in real time. With film you can't see it until it gets processed. In the Apollo days they had analog TV cameras for real time broadcast but none that close to the pad. Looking at the comments here it seems NASA is still using film after all, so they get the best of both technologies.
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  120. Try to explain to a 20-something what life was like before internet and mobile phones. "When you wanted to meet somebody, you didn't text them. You just agreed over the landline phone to meet at a pub, and if one of you didn't show, the other just went on without you and that was it."
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  121. I think this video is an excuse to show off that beautiful Artemis film footage again, always appreciated!
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  122. Japan is limited by their constitution when it comes to building "offensive" warships, but never count them out. If they decide it's necessary, they could have a full up carrier navy again within a couple of years, complete with nuclear reactors. Unlike most other nations, Japan actually has lots of history with carriers in heavy combat and a proud naval heritage.
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  123. Unless you have SpaceX's balance sheet there's no way to answer your question.
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  124. IIRC the IBM AP-101 computer family was used in a lot of applications in the 70s, including the F-15 fighter jet, the B-1 and B-52 bombers, and probably still is used. It's bullet-proof reliable and for the limited number of flight software programs you run on it it doesn't need to be super modern. I think the shuttle used them right until the end of the program, despite all the other avionics upgrades.
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  125.  @SeatBill  The US has the big amphibs, LHAs and LHDs, which are as big as WWII carriers. Aside from the strictly amphibious capability, you can load them up with Harriers, F-35s, and helicopters and use them as a sort of auxiliary carrier if need be.
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  126. When I was a boy I went to an airshow and saw a P-51 in high dudgeon rolling down the strip for takeoff. I was pretty far away but I will never forget that sound and the way it shook my chest cavity. Merlin FTW.
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  127.  @kpd3308  Maybe make your argument like an adult without all the snark.
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  128. Astronauts don't need suicide pills; just open the hatch and you'll pass out in seconds. Suicide pills? Those are for the conspiracy idiots.
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  129. The USAF had no replacement for the EF-111 and had to rely on the Navy for EW support after that. A bit premature methinks.
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  130. A mirror is a tiny fraction of the cost of a system like Hubble. Not only do you need to build the rest of the satellite, and launch it, but you need the ground facilities and infrastructure and employees to operate it and process the telemetry and astronomy data. That extra mirror may wind up in a ground telescope at an observatory someday.
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  131. At the distance these things are from the sun, it's like pointing a flashlight at a solar panel at the other end of a giant parking lot. Only in recent years have solar panels gotten good enough to be considered for use at the distance of Jupiter; in the 1970s there was zero chance to use solar power on anything past the orbit of Mars. Plutonium RTGs are still the best power source for a vehicle operating in the vast darkness of the outer solar system.
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  132. The Harrier is not retired just yet, friend.
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  133. Sarcasm aside, the last Hubble service mission installed a docking ring on the back of the telescope so that a vehicle such as Orion (or anything with that docking mechanism) can dock with and boost the telescope. The main purpose, IIRC, was to de-orbit it when the time comes, though.
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  134. I thought NASA also has a bunch of unused F1's in storage looking for a future booster to be used on.
    5
  135. Exactly. Quit treating the sites as if they are holy sites. They are fields of lunar dirt with footprints, old equipment, and bags of astronaut piss laying around them. Build a small stone monument, preserve a few odds and ends, and be done with it. Also, screw the Outerspace Treaty. It's a Cold War relic, a conspiracy between jealous governments that will hamper efforts to colonize the solar system for generations. Where there is a system of private property rights, there will be progress, otherwise every trip to space amounts to nothing more permanent than a camping trip in a National Park.
    5
  136.  @sshep86  It still is subsonic, and still in front line service. With the USMC, whose jets today were all built in St. Louis, Missouri. The UK even abandons its most successful programs.
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  137. Great video and some awesome footage, especially the treetop flying shots.
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  138. A low-flying Pluto wouldn't kill people from the shock wave, it would kill them by bombarding them with neutrons from the unshielded reactor. Also, one idea for Project Orion was indeed horrifying: it was to use it as a gigantic nuclear missile which would lob a humongous hydrogen bomb high over the USSR whose blast of light and radiation would basically fry a whole continent from space. Closest thing to a Death Star we ever dreamed up, and scared the crap out of President Kennedy and the Orion engineers who just wanted to explore the Solar System.
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  139.  @motmontheinternet  Yeah, I think it's just a chemical toilet and it's in a very confined space. Plus it sucks enough to be the mechanic whose job is to clean a toilet, so it's kind of rude to make the poor guy have to clean up crap too.
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  140.  @michaelpcoffee  (Rereads my own post) I made no such assertion.
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  141. When Curious Droid and Scott Manley each drop a nuclear vid on the same day.
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  142. It's really not that much different than the rail launcher the Wright Brothers used on their first flight.
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  143.  @RDDPro  I'm not the best person to explain it but my understanding is that injecting a bit of water into the combustion cycle adds thrust (ironically) by adding reaction mass or something. If you search on it there is probably a good explanation on wikipedia or even youtube. I know the Harrier also uses water injection when it's in hover flight for extra thrust, and that the water supply runs out after a few minutes.
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  144. "We're only immortal for a limited time" - Neil Peart
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  145. Actually, if you asked what is a computer, most people today would say it's that box on or under my desk on which I waste my life on social media. But I get what you're saying.
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  146.  @eternalreign2313  Buzz had to exit second and re-enter first because of the way the hatch was hinged. That's why the commander was the first to walk; the interior of the LM was too tight for the LM pilot to go first when they both had all their bulky EVA gear on.
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  147.  @MrMotey  You're a beta tester.
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  148. Yes, some gyroscopic instruments are electrically powered, some like the ones in older airplanes are powered by vacuum from the engine. often airplanes will have a mix of both types, so that if you lose electric power or the engine quits you don't lose all of your instruments.
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  149.  @Justanotherconsumer  Tough sell on that one.
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  150.  @Justanotherconsumer  Well, I think less of people who can't be bothered to get things right. It's an initialism.
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  151.  @pebo8306  A-1 Skyraiders scored a MiG kill in Vietnam
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  152. Aerodynamics is for the weak! We will power through and force the air out of our way. Diesel fuel is cheap.
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  153.  @theenzoferrari458  Try not talking down to people. The internet really brings out the true nature of people.
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  154. Hubble doesn't have any propulsion system, so there's nothing to refuel. It has to be boosted (or de-boosted) by a docked spacecraft.
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  155. Better to use a TARDIS for a shower. Lots of room inside. More than you'd think looking at the outside.
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  156. Doesn't it have to be more than one car to be considered a "train" though? Fastest vehicle on rails, certainly.
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  157. Because model rockets have no guidance system, other than maybe some fins, and fins only become effective once the rocket is moving at sufficient speed. Full size launch vehicles have gyroscopes, computers, flight software, and gimbaled engine nozzles to control their attitude throughout the powered phase of flight.
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  158. B-52 is projected to be in service until at least the 2040s. That will make it a 90-year-old design. And it was designed when the airplane was only a 50-year-old invention and military planes had service lives of only a few years.
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  159. Would that be the Casawba Howitzer?
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  160.  @piotrd.4850  Don't get all butthurt at me. People said the M1 would lose battles, and it didn't. All that other stuff is you looking for an argument. I really don't give two shits about Franks or whatever. We still won.
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  161.  @SephirothRyu  I'm sorry, but people have this sci fi movie idea of how VTOL jets are supposed to work, that taking off vertically all the time is expected, but it's not. Fact is, any VTOL jet that has wings can take off a lot heavier with a forward roll than it can straight vertical, because wings generate lift. The F-35 isn't expected to take off vertical, and the Harrier rarely does it except at air shows. These jets main strength is short field operations, and being able to use smaller flight decks at sea. The US Navy has a fleet of full size carriers, but it also has about twice as many amphibs, that, thanks to USMC squadrons, also operate fixed wing aircraft. And anyone who doubts the effectiveness and usefulness of the Harrier can just ask the Marines, who have used them extensively in heavy combat since the 1980s. A Harrier is the difference between conducting landing ops with just helicopters and conducting ops with solid fast mover support. The F-35 has some big shoes to fill for the USMC.
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  162. When I was little I thought it was cool that they named our galaxy after a candy bar.
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  163. Your jet must update and restart. Please choose a time.
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  164. The Guppy and Super Guppy transport planes come to mind as something that looks like it has no business flying. The F-117 Nighthawk is another one that looks wrong but flies fine thanks to fly-by-wire. On a related note, the F-16 is a plane that looks pretty much perfect, and you'd think it should fly fine, but it turns out that without fly-by-wire it is totally unstable, although I suppose if you shifted some internal weight forward you could build an F-16 that looks the same and is actually stable.
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  165. The "Space Shuttle" consists of the entire stack, orbiter, solid rocket boosters, and external tank. It's all part of one launch vehicle system, the Space Transportation System (STS). While the orbiter is very well designed and worked fine, it is pretty useless without the other two components, so as a system, STS failed twice.
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  166. That shirt is so 1970s that my hair grew 6" while watching this vid and John Bonham came back from the great beyond.
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  167. We will use the moon as target practice before the Klendathu bugs take out Buenos Ares. Want to know more?
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  168.  @randalscott7224  The best part is that Spock was actually afraid of the Starfighter, worried it might be carrying a Genie nuclear antiaircraft rocket. With no shields up, Enterprise would've taken a nuke direct in the face.
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  169. @ Reminds me of the bombing computers used in the earliest version of the A-6 Intruder during the Vietnam War. There was a mechanical drum turning, and if it wasn't working supposedly the bombardier was supposed to kick it to get it moving again.
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  170. "And the jellied brains of those who remain to put the finger right on you!" - Iron Maiden 2 Minutes to Midnight
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  171. X-33 and VentureStar are not the same thing. X-33 was a subscale proof of concept; VentureStar was the full sized SSTO shuttle.
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  172. They are literally two different vehicles. X-33 wasn't even going to fly in space.
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  173. Try not to get so condescending when somebody corrects you. Just accept it as part of a civil conversation.
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  174. Another word of advice: don't insult people and insist on getting the last word. That's right up there with being condescending. That said, I realize you need this, so I'm going to stop now and let you have it.
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  175.  @randomentity6553  "Maybe you should try an easier mission." Oof, Chuck Yeager says I suck...
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  176. Monopoly.
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  177. You mean your spelling, right?
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  178. Compared to Feynman, most of us are about as smart as a bag of hammers.
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  179. You didn't search for this channel: it searched for you.
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  180.  @davebooth5608  Watch on a big screen with a good sound system if you can. Enjoy.
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  181. During Desert Storm I witnessed USMC Harriers taking off with nape under their wings and returning empty quite frequently. Harriers were also using Mk-82s and 25mm cannon fire. Each Harrier had a bomb with a number stenciled under the cockpit indicating the number of sorties flown, and some of them were well north of 80. That was a really bad time to be an Iraqi soldier.
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  182. Yes that's the one, I guess it wasn't a full-size 4 model but still way out of scale.
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  183. Electronics used on spacecraft are usually several years behind what you can get here on Earth, because they need to be tested extensively for years in vacuum, temperature, and radiation environments, as well as cycled on/off, vibrational testing, etc., before you trust it to not fail on your super-expensive space mission, which you'll only get one shot at. Add to that the fact that JWST was delayed for many years so components like the main computer were designed and spec'd out a long time ago, and there's huge risk in altering the design once construction has begun. Even if you do make changes, they must go through a series of engineering review boards and be signed off by the program leaders, who are all very conservative-minded about taking on new risks, and then it costs a ton of money to implement the changes and retest everything.
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  184. uh, right, glad you're here to enlighten us all. Why don't go start a protest march or something.
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  185.  @James_Knott Yes, but that bears a fair amount of resemblance to the way older analog radar systems synchronize the antenna, pulsing, and display. So it's a fair question.
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  186.  @Mentaculus42  Both, but mostly the plane. There are hatches in the bomb bay that allow the crew to enter the wing in flight, which is almost thick enough to stand up inside. And the early model hydrogen bombs it carried could only fit in a B-36 because they are so big and heavy. They have an inert one on display next to the aircraft and it's huge.
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  187. You didn't mention the current work on the Northrop B-21 flying wing bomber, which is expected to enter service in 2025 according to Wikipedia. Also, there is footage of Jack Northrop in a wheelchair being brought into a secure office and handed a model of the B-1 by the Northrop managers, a very moving scene. Jack was a great aviation pioneer and a patriot and it was only right for them to give him a clearance and let him know his life's work was finally paying off, and that his brainchild was about to enter service in the USAF.
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  188. No, being exposed to sudden vacuum isn't particularly painful. Your eyes will get dry, the saliva in your mouth will fizz like soda pop, and if you stay conscious long enough you may get an earache, but before you really feel anything you will pass out within 10 seconds or so. You can briefly view the lunar surface with the naked eye and enjoy the view. And of course, the great thing about death is that you won't remember a thing about the pain once it's over. But if you try to hold your breath, you'll get a lung expansion injury which will hurt like hell. One of the few mistakes in 2001 was Dave Bowman holding his breath before blowing the hatch; in that situation he'd want to do the exact opposite: open wide yell loudly as the hatch blows to protect his lungs, especially since he planned on using them again.
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  189. Blaming somebody for donning a bulletproof vest instead of blaming the guy threatening to shoot him.
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  190. I hear you, but like I said, at least Northrop's flying wing design came to pass after all, unlike the TRS2 or the Avro Arrow, which were killed forever.
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  191. Reefer, I don't think your comments add much usefulness to this conversation. You may leave now.
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  192.  @giovannirodriguesdasilva646  Because the USAF, unlike the US Navy, hates the names of its own planes for some reason. The F-16 Falcon is called a "Viper", the A-10 Thunderbolt is called a "Warthog", and so on. To be fair, some of the official names of their aircraft are stupid and god only knows what Pentagon idiots chose them. The B-1 Lancer, for example. Or the B-2 Spirit. Seriously. The Navy and Marines, on the other hand get planes that mostly come with cool enough names to keep. Tomcat, Hornet, Harrier, etc.
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  193. Started with cookies in browsers and the tech companies who make this stuff have always been secretive about how much data they gather on you and how they do it. The longer they get away with it before you find out the harder it is to make it stop when they get caught.
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  194. Don't forget the awesome game Sinistar. "I live. I hunger. Run! Run! Run!"
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  195. Why would you ever want to change that awesome music? That was the best part of the show! Also, RIP Airwolf helo Bell 222 which crashed in Germany while being used as an air ambulance.
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  196. *V2. Known by the Germans as the A-4. The V-1 was the Buzz Bomb cruise missile.
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  197.  @paulhaynes8045  Roger that.
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  198. A lot of it was used, much of it multiple times. All of Artemis 1's engines, including the SRB segments I think, had flown previously.
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  199. VW Things were cool cars. Rare as hens' teeth now.
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  200.  @hansdeable  No, we certainly did not "lose the knowhow" of building F1's. Rocketdyne has designs for upgraded versions of F1's and will gladly build you some if you pony up the cash. This myth of "lost knowledge" is recurring bullshit on the internet and it's just not true. We can even build a steam engine if we want; there just aren't any customers for that tech these days.
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  201. There are 50 states, and each state's congressmen want a piece of the pie. That's why NASA has centers in so many states instead of just putting it all at Cape Canaveral where it belongs.
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  202.  @davidschwartz5127  Triggered much?
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  203. 15:00 I used to live near a Navy base where they flew P-3 Orions, and it's nice to see an Orion so clean and shiny as this.
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  204.  @sheevone4359  "...like a million civilizations..." is more like it I'm thinking
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  205.  @Anvilshock  Let's see, you wrote this on Wednesday. Maybe from now on, let's make Wednesday your "not dumb day" so you don't make posts like that, what do you say there, chief?
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  206. On any mission, the CSM main engine would be tested on course correction maneuvers during the outbound trip to the Moon, and if it fails to work, you can use the LEM descent engine to return home, which is what happened to Apollo 13.
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  207. My brother still has his GI Joe "X-14" Tomcat toy.
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  208.  @alastairbarkley6572  The F-35B does not use a Pegasus engine; it uses a geared lift fan. Not sure who builds the engine, might be RR. I remember there was a political battle to make sure two builders were contracted to make sure supply wouldn't stop if one were grounded, but I don't think that ever got through.
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  209. Done. The Harrier and the F-35 can both fly at zero knots.
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  210. To make good binocular images, you'd want the two scopes to be spaced far apart. For really distant stuff, you'd want them to be on opposite sides of the solar system, just for starters.
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  211. The LM used a SNAP-27 radioisotopic thermoelectric generator (RTG) for power. There is a photo of Apollo-14's RTG sitting on the surface of the moon after the crew unloaded it from the spacecraft on Wikipedia.
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  212.  @mikepatton8691  Even if you're using AI (which is a misnomer anyway) you still need to practice building, programming, and operating vehicles that land on alien surfaces. AI isn't magic.
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  213. It's the bayonet of aerial weapons.
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  214. ​ @adub1300  Apollo had a "commander" and a "command module pilot", so try again.
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  215. I like how you measure crew sizes in blokes.
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  216. From the people that brought us the F-14 Tomcat, Grumman.
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  217. Interesting that the Boeing candidate was the ugliest of the three; yet it's cousin the 747 is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever.
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  218. Don't forget "full nuclear exchange over the pole" to really crank up the anxiety. Been living with that what-if since the 60s.
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  219. I think the internet, or any telecommunications, is less secure than radio. The downsides to radio are that you can locate the transmitter, it can be jammed sometimes, it's one way only, and usually a low data rate. But you can't tell where the receivers are and if using the right encryption it's very secure. It also has an almost unlimited range, depending on the equipment used and the atmospheric conditions.
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  220.  @niki123489  Wrong. F-35 is the result of the Joint Strike Fighter program, to fill the role of the F-16 and F/A-18, both of which resulted from the 1970s Light Weight Fighter program. These jets are meant to be mass-produced multirole fighters that make up the bulk of the force. The F-22 was supposed to replace the F-15 in the air superiority role, and would've had it not been canceled. As a result, the USAF is scrambling to get newer F-15s. While there has been talk of building another run of F-22s in the future, Lockheed Martin would have to build new tooling and at this point any future F-22 would be vastly improved, using knowledge gained from the F-35 program. For now it's just talk.
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  221. About payloads taking the acceleration: there are smart rounds for artillery that have sophisticated electronic components which are designed to handle the shock of being fired from a cannon. In fact, the earliest examples of these date to WWII when radar-fused antiaircraft rounds were introduced.
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  222. How did you extract that judgmental nonsense from this video? You must be one of those guys who thinks he is a great driver and all those other drivers are idiots.
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  223. Ed Heineman went on to create the A-4 Skyhawk jet in the 50s, nicknamed "Heineman's Hotrod".
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  224.  @L3gionMusic  Maybe you should go beyond Brexit and just apply for statehood in the USA. At least then you'd get congressional representation and maybe Lockheed or Boeing will build a factory there and get you back in the manufacturing business. (edit to add: this was a JOKE, don't @ me)
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  225.  @LOOKINVERTED  We're part of the leg of a chair on some giant hillbilly's porch.
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  226.  @LOOKINVERTED  Sounds like old school Twilight Zone or Outer Limits.
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  227.  @ghost307  Solid rocket tech in the early 60s was not ready for prime time yet. The SRBs, especially after the Challenger accident redesign, were among the most reliable pieces of equipment used in manned spaceflight. The early shuttle astronauts were far more afraid of the RS-25 engine blowing the tail of the orbiter off than they were of the SRBs, due to them witnessing an RS-25 blow up a test stand in the late 70s.
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  228.  @SecretRaginMan  I'm restating what astronaut Mike Mullane says in his book. Prior to Challenger, astronauts were more worried about the RS-25 than they were about the SRBs. After Challenger, the SRBs have been reliable ever since on both the Shuttle and the single SLS launch to date.
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  229.  @elcapitan240  They aren't big enough to have a powerful motor nor can they carry the battery mass needed for it. No matter how strong the AI is they will always be bad at cleaning.
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  230.  @nagualdesign  Once they reach a number of flights you have to retire them. Nothing lasts forever.
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  231.  @andrewkline5611  Especially the people hanging out on the beach waiting for the launch. I almost expected to see my mom and dad there.
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  232.  @tompotter5981  F-4 Phantoms were used in the '91 Gulf War as wild weasels. That was the last use of the F-4 by the US before they were retired from American service.
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  233. The USAF's attitude towards Army aviation is pretty unproductive. The worst aspects of guild mentality, it prevents the Army from doing what they need to do to support their own troops. The Navy doesn't have any problem with the Marines having jets, because Marine air focuses on close air support, freeing Navy air to focus on fleet defense and other strictly maritime missions. On top of that, Navy and Marine air are part of the same system, train at the same schools, and can cover each other's missions when circumstances require it. It's a shame the Air Force can't build the kind of symbiotic relationship the Navy and Marine Corps have, especially considering that the Air Force was once part of the Army.
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  234. They'd love it more if they hadn't discontinued the 500C a few years ago. Film is still a big art medium and that was the best medium format camera on the market.
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  235.  @jeffzaun1841  Yep, there was also a lot of complaining about cluster bombs and land mines. We used a lot of cluster munitions in Desert Storm, both aerial bombs and artillery shells, precisely because they are so effective. The Iraqis were entrenched and Marines were about to assault straight through the middle, so Marine and Navy air was doing what they do best to help out.
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  236.  @jeffzaun1841  Just did an image search, and sure enough there is a photo of Marines arming one of my squadron's Harriers with nape at Jabayl where I was at the time.
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  237. Wow, another good one from the enlightened one. Ya really put me in my place, chief.
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  238. Ares-1 could've been a good crew launch vehicle, but in the end it was just money tossed into the ocean for some questionable test data.
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  239. I was thinking more the theme to Airwolf...
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  240. Now that you've pointed it out it cannot be unheard.
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  241. Using an electromagnetic launcher on the surface of the moon is a very old idea. It's been used in Arthur C. Clark and Robert Heinlein stories. I recommend The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for a great story featured a lunar mag launcher.
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  242. If I were in charge I'd run two trains: an early one with the actual material, unpublicized, and an on-time train with a fake cask filled with that stuff from light sticks that glows when you shake it. Then, as it passes by the protesters I'd arrange for an accident where the glowing cargo gets spilled all over the protesters. I'd be fired, of course, and maybe even charged with a crime, but to get that on video would make it worth it for me. I'm the reason we can't have nice things.
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  243. Project Orion was a sort of nuke gun propulsion system, the manhole cover experiment was part of where they got the idea for it.
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  244. Diameter is equal to four small Nerf footballs end to end, or about 2.4 large Nerf footballs end to end, depending on whether you soak them in cold water first.
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  245. When I was growing up I learned about Leonov when I read 2010: Odyssey 2 by Arthur C. Clarke and saw the movie. The Soviet spacecraft was called the Alexei Leonov and a younger, hotter Helen Mirren played the Leonov's skipper.
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  246. To be fair, there is the Northrop (aka Northrop Grumman) B2 bomber, which Jack Northrop lived long enough to see before he died, so the flying wing bomber made it after all.
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  247. @Rroff2 I think that was the point I was trying to make: The UK gave up on expensive fighter development in favor of "cheaper" surface-to-air missiles, and then dropped the ball on the missiles, indicating that actually defending the home islands was not the real goal to begin with; defunding the defense industry was. If you really want to do without manned interceptors, you need an absolute world-class integrated air defense system. The US/NORAD actually had this in the form of SAGE, BOMARC, and the Nike missile systems, but even then they still had high performance interceptors such as the F-106, never fully trusting missiles to defend against incoming bombers. UK gave up one for the other, and wound up with neither. And given a realistic assessment of the state of missile air defense technology in the 50s and 60s, manned interceptors were still obviously required to put up an effective defense against a mass bombing raid.
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  248. And, at least when it comes to home defense, arguing that it's too expensive falls a bit flat for a first-world power. Power projection may be too pricey, but defending one's homeland against attack is among the most basic functions of any government. Of course, there were politics involved in all of this in the 50s and 60s, as always with defense policy.
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  249. This is a 70s Berlin School flair in this vid.
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  250. So what's up with the fires? I've never seen a diesel locomotive catch fire like that. Were they burning ordinary diesel or some kind of high test jet fuel or was there something else about them that made them burn like that?
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  251. Guess you've never been to a hog roast. Probably should avoid those.
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  252. I watched Artemis 1 live when it launched. That was awesome. So happy to see this amazing footage. The sheer fury and violence of that massive powerplant is a sight to behold.
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  253. If you think the film 500C model was expensive, look up the price of a Hasselblad medium format digital. That big old sensor drives the cost way up like a Saturn V. I'll stick with the film for now, thanks.
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  254. Also, he can handle the recoil of a rifle which fires a projectile with a muzzle velocity of almost 8 km/s.That's a pretty tough guy.
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  255.  @ge69rh  Zero nuclear power accidents and a strong navy? More assholes like him, please. I am guessing his counterpart in the Soviet Navy was a nicer guy, perhaps, but their nuclear power safety record is an appalling joke, while Rickover's record speaks for itself.
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  256. Speed is no longer rated as highly as it once was, but there is something to say about a bomber that can sustain Mach 2 for long periods of time. SAMs might be able to hit it, but fighters trying to intercept it will have a hard time scrambling in time to catch it and can't keep up with it for long before running low on fuel. Even the SAMs' envelopes are reduced by a target hauling that much ass. Tough to go that fast at low altitude, though, and nap of the earth flight is also very hard on the airframe and fatigues it faster. Big airplanes like the B-52 and C-130 have long lifespans only if they avoid abusing their structures like that.
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  257. This. Orbiter identifies the dedicated space nerds.
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  258. When they build a repair drone that can fix my car (or fold my laundry, or clean my toilet) maybe I'll believe in one that can do what astronauts did on Hubble.
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  259. "Did not know how to remake the F1" is pure BS, a commonly recited fake fact. Rocketdyne not only knows how to make F1's today, they have designed much-improved version of the F1 and, if given a contract, will gladly build you as many roided-up F1's as you'd like. NASA or some other customer just needs to have a requirement for that kind of engine and the money to pay for it. Which, right now, they don't.
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  260. You can certainly build a modernized F1, that is about the same size and shape as the original and performs about the same, if a large 1.5+ million lb thrust kerosene-burning engine is what you want. No need to make an exact copy; the modern version would perform better and be easier to manufacture. Rocketdyne even has plans for this over the years, just in case the phone rings and NASA wants more big engines.
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  261. Gaming the algorithm to get clicks is clickbait.
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  262.  @ynoten  The title is a clickbait style title.
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  263.  @ynoten  It is though.
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  264. That was the plot of the TV show Salvage 1 in 1979 starring Andy Griffith as a junk dealer who builds a rocketship to salvage space junk, including high-dollar Apollo hardware from the moon.
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  265. 'Time becomes a loop.'
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  266.  @ammosophobia  "Enterprise, what we got back didn't live long...fortunately."
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  267.  @ammosophobia  McCoy was right all along.
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  268. These are American rocket designs from the 1960s, so inches. Don't get all butthurt about it.
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  269. I like how the Soviet rover has a smiley face on it.
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  270. I always loved the X-15, it's the perfect example of a test program and one of the most purebred badass airplanes ever built.
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  271. Good video, and the music is outstanding Berlin School stuff, totally fits the 70s technology backdrop of the video!
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  272. Awesome tribute to the Eagle's skipper.
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  273. A real life "atomic battery" is a radioisotopic thermoelectric generator, or RTG, like the ones flown on space probes. They are basically a thermocouple wrapped around a substance like plutonium or strontium 90 which generates heat from decay. The whole thing is encased in shielding to survive a launch failure and is quote safe to handle if built right, but not very efficient for the weight. So they are good for powering a space probe's electronics, but to power an electric car they'd be kind of weak and heavy.
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  274. Interesting. I always thought it as because the early missions were shorter and didn't need the extra power. Should be easy to look up.
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  275. 15:09 that looks like it's probably really bad for you eyes to be in that room.
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  276.  @SiriusAundB  Um, that's not from looking at his face. It's from something your mom told you to stop doing. (Maybe while looking at his face?)
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  277. And they should also be wearing an Omega Speedmaster watch, too, just like the one Buzz is wearing in these photos.
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  278. Let's hear it for the excellent soundtrack to this video.
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  279. Bulova Accutron movements were used in the Apollo LM cockpit instruments.
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  280. The deceleration slingshot has been used by spacecraft traveling to Venus and Mercury.
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  281.  @leonkernan  Everything I know about Australia I learn from Mad Max movies, so in my mind I picture Australian trains as having tanker cars with lots of armor, a bunch of dudes with mohawks and crossbows, and a kickass sound track. Am I close?
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  282. Dwellers of Plato's Cave.
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  283. They were British Army regulars under General Ross IIRC, not Canadians. Canadian troops did repulse US attempts to invade Canada on more than one occasion though.
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  284.  @kurtisrinker1202  Just ask George Soros to write you a check.
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  285.  @grizwoldphantasia5005  He was referring to my post, which said nothing about Canada.
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  286. Then we'd all be Scientologists.
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  287.  @jimurrata6785  It was on the Discovery Channel many years ago I think, I remember watching it on one of those disaster shows.
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  288. I know some people won't like this, but I kind of hope a meteor comes along and blankets the sites with a nice coat of ejecta powder, so we can quit acting like the sites are so sacred nobody may ever be allowed to disturb them. Nobody preserved the spot on the beech where Columbus first stepped off his boat, and nobody knows where the first human set foot on North America from the Bering Strait, and it doesn't matter. Trying to preserve every footprint on every Apollo landing site is a fool's task, especially the later sites like Apollo 17 where they drove miles from the ship on the rover. Armstrong's footprint? Sure, coat it with some kind of cement and put a marker stone next to it. Get really good detailed photos of everything, then move the equipment to a museum somewhere indoors, maybe underground on the first moon colony, where it can be protected. Put stone markers on all the sites, and then quit worrying about trying to disturb a single grain of dirt for crying out loud. Luna is a world we should be allowed to walk on and live on, not some kind of holy ground we have to treat like walking on eggshells for the rest of human history.
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  289. The return of naval gunnery. Maybe we will see the return of actual cruisers and battleships, equipped with different sizes of railguns. WWII battleships were quite capable of hitting moving targets with their slow projectiles and analog fire control computers; imagine what a battleship equipped with a few railguns could do. And how would you defend against this? I imagine traditional armor wouldn't be of much help against a kinetic projectile made of say, tungsten, coming in at Mach 5.
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  290.  @SeatBill  TLDR
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  291. SO if the Merlin was not named after a mythological figure, what about the Rolls Royce Pegasus that powers Harrier jets? Is there a bird in the UK called a Pegasus?
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  292.  Wallace  Cool, thanks.
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  293. If it wasn't for those idiots at the Pentagon and the political idiots getting us into generation-length wars the US military could be far more advanced and ready than it is today, and there'd be a lot less war.
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  294. Great episode!
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  295. Yes, didn't the YAK-38 have separate lift engines in the forward compartment instead of a lift fan?
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  296. Magnets, how do they work?
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  297. 12:59 is that Robert McNamara on the left in the glasses?
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  298. There is a school of thought that land-based ICBMs are more of a liability than an asset, because in a full blown attack they have only about 30 minutes to get off the ground before they are destroyed in their silos. This puts enormous "use it or lose it" pressure on the president, who, by the time he is awakened and told what is happening, might have only a few minutes to decide to launch a retaliatory strike or not. If it's a false alarm and he launches, the world dies. If it's the real thing and he doesn't, then the enemy's first strike gambit wins. As long as missile subs are at sea and bombers are airborne, the president (or whoever is in charge if he is taken out) still has a way to ride out the first strike and take some time to decide how to respond. Thus, some people, including a former US Defense Secretary, think focusing on sea and air based weapons that can survive a first strike is a better idea.
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  299. As for Lockheed and rotor wing aircraft, Lockheed Martin had the contract to build the next helicopter to carry the president and other VIPs back in the mid-2000s, but that got canceled after getting way behind schedule, over budget, and overweight. Lockheed learned their lesson: if you want to build helicopters, you need helicopter experts. So they bought Sikorsky. And the latest helicopter stuff Sikorsky is building is fantastically advanced and high tech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WDYUaFOIqM
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  300. IIRC, on the Cessna 150 I used to fly, some instruments were vacuum and some were electric. That way if one of those power sources was lost you didn't suddenly lose all your instruments. Been a long time since then, though.
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  301. And SLS will be ready before JWST.
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  302. Nice to know you can still go places in the world where Big Brother can't watch your every move.
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  303.  @rbrtck  True, but there just aren't enough of them to cover all the geographic regions the Air Force needs to cover. That's why the F-15 isn't going away. High technology is nice, but for things like interceptor duty there's no substitute for raw speed and performance, which the F-22 beats the F-35 in by a wide margin.
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  304.  @L3gionMusic  Quit the European Union and join the United States instead. Nevermind. It was a joke.
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  305. Now a photo of cats in space, on the other hand, that's just pure gold.
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  306. Col Edmund Drake's Well in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania was the first commercial oil well in the 1850s. There's a cool museum there, now, up in the hills a couple of hours from Pittsburgh.
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  307. Gotta correct you on one thing: torque on the spacecraft is due to solar light pressure, not solar wind. Solar wind effect is much smaller.
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  308. I've been waiting for ages for that Sabre engine to get rolling, what's the holdup? If you Brits build a no-shit reusable airbreathing launch vehicle engine that actually works, I guarantee there are American space industry types who'd buy it, not to mention the USAF. Probably even license-build them in the US.
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  309. Where does the 720 fit into this? They are all part of the "707 family", but not sure which came in which order.
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  310.  @9HighFlyer9  Cool, thanks.
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  311. On top of that, you have the E3 AWACs member of the family, as well as the EC-135 Rivet Joint and whatever J-STARS was called... The 707 family sure was adaptable.
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  312.  @nah-y4e  Watch out, looks like we got a badass over here!
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  313. What kind of shape? A teardrop of molten metal sounds about right. At 66 km/s you'd be out of the atmosphere in less than two seconds anyway.
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  314.  @spottydog4477  Ignore them, Comrades. China is the source of all light and good.
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  315. Where we're going, we won't need eyes...
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  316. lol
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  317. It was the War of Almost Losing Independence. Also the War of Getting Ass Kicked by Foolishly Invading Canada, War of Getting Washington DC Burned Down, and finally War of Winning a Major Battle After the Treaty Was Signed. And I guess it was also the War of US Navy Building its Lore.
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  318. Can't stop the signal, Mal!
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  319. The Universe is so metal. \m/
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  320.  @jwr2904  You can vote, though.
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  321.  @nagualdesign  Hopefully Artemis will get the new RS-25E/F.
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  322.  @GOOD_FARMER  Nonreusable engines can be cheaper than reusable ones, plus they can run them flat out almost to the point of trashing them because they are only going to burn for 8-10 minutes total.
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  323.  @atomicshadowman9143  Why?
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  324. Not quite. SLS is hugely expensive, but it has one flawless launch under its belt. Starship is getting there, but not quite yet.
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  325.  @pikaachoo3888  It's still incorrect to say Starship has rendered SLS obsolete. Starship hasn't been proven yet. It may happen soon, but not yet.
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  326.  @daviddesrosiers1946  We're not talking about Starliner here, or even Boeing. We're talking about SLS, which is 1 for 1, and we're talking about Starship, which is getting close but not quite there yet.
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  327.  @pikaachoo3888  SLS is not obsolete, it's overbudget. Overbudget is why it's being considered for cancellation. Not the same thing.
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  328.  @pikaachoo3888  Artemis is designed to use the SLS.
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  329.  @PolPotsPieHole  Absolutely. And when they did each maneuver and showed the velocity kick up on screen, epic.
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  330. Years ago the Onion had a funny article titled "NASA to launch money into space": https://politics.theonion.com/nasa-announces-plan-to-launch-700-million-into-space-1819568441 That's basically what James Webb Telescope is, except for the launching it part.
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  331. WHY DO CARBON UNITS INFEST ENTERPRISE?
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  332.  @jc441-i3q  Uh, because Persis Khambatta was redonkulously hot, that's why.
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  333.  @huwzebediahthomas9193  You mean like what women wear to support their breasts?
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  334.  @garrysekelli6776  Oh cool, an Internet Tough Guy! Cool that ITG's watch Curious Droid vids, too.
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  335. You can use not just water as shielding, but also rocket propellants such as hydrogen, oxygen, or kerosene. So one approach is to build the propellant tanks around parts of the crew quarters. As the mission goes on and you do maneuvers, you will reduce shielding of course, but the idea is to supplement the usual solid material shielding and so forth such that by the time the shielding gets low you have already reached your destination, be it a properly shielded Mars habitat or back to Earth.
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  336. Some of my recent favorites: "Birds aren't real", "Finland doesn't exist", "nuclear weapons are a hoax". I love stupid conspiracy theories, they make me laugh.
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  337.  @irresponse  Yeah, that one's great.
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  338.  @byloyuripka9624  problem?
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  339.  @jeffzaun1841  I am going by memory here, so I can't verify for a fact that I saw napalm, but they were metallic canisters under the wings. The ordinance men mentioned napalm to me in conversation, too, come to think of it. Hats' off to you for your service, and glad you're with us still today.
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  340. You forgot to mention that H G Wells' novel War of the Worlds featured Martians using space guns to launch their spacecraft which carried the invasion to Earth.
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  341. I wish, but it wasn't to scale, it was the same size as all other Matchbox cars.
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  342.  keith moore  No shit. I was talking about looks not performance.
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  343. There were too many reusable launcher ideas to cover. Ideas were proposed for a flyback version of the Saturn V first stage, for starters. Do a search on the Chrysler SERV idea for an alternate space shuttle design, that one's my favorite.
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  344. Those hypergolic propellants are still in common use today aboard many satellites and other space vehicles. It's toxic, but it stays liquid at room temperature, doesn't boil off so you can store it in propellant tanks for decades with no problems, and because it self-ignites, thrusters do not need a separate ignition source such as a spark plug, making them much simpler and reliable devices.
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  345.  @4RealTalk1989  Well then go look it up, it's publicly available. Although keep in mind that often when people "research" these things, they are just cherry-picking data that confirms the position they already hold, so try to avoid doing that.
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  346. ​ @4RealTalk1989  Also keep in mind that if there was a bump in cancer rates near Harrisburg in the years following the accident, you have to demonstrate strong evidence that they were caused by TMI and not some other source. But the fact is that the 3 deaths in the SL-1 accident can be absolutely attributed to the steam explosion, the Demon Core directly caused the deaths of two men, etc., while TMI has not been shown to have caused any deaths at all.
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  347.  @4RealTalk1989  Oh no, you're on to my secret plan to take over the world with nuclear power! How does that make you feel?
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  348. In the US it's almost impossible to find a pay phone anywhere at all now, let alone an actual phone booth. Where I live there are several abandoned pay phones which no longer function and are in various states of damage and decay. It's been years since I saw one that actually still works.
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  349.  @paulmoir4452  There is that. I wonder what accelerometer data from the one test shows.
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  350. There is a good film called Marooned from about 1970 or 71 about an Apollo spacecraft crew who get stranded in orbit when their main engine fails to ignite while trying to return from a space station. They have only a limited supply of consumables for power and life support, and NASA has to scramble to put together a hasty rescue mission. The flight director, played by Gregory Peck, makes the good point that a hastily prepared rescue mission puts two crews at risk instead of just one, and rushing to get a rocket to the pad by cutting corners is immensely risky. This film came out before Skylab was launched and scared NASA enough that for Skylab missions they always had a rescue Apollo-Saturn I vehicle stacked up in the hangar and ready to go just in case. All of that was long forgotten by the time Columbia happened decades later, of course.
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  351. 'twould be cool
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  352.  @jayzo  Yeah it was a joke.
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  353.  @danielch6662  You know it was a joke, right? Does nobody on this channel understand humor or what?
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  354.  @BTW...  Wow, you sure showed me, tough guy!
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  355. 0:00 United States Marine Band. Semper Fidelis
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  356.  @jcn115  Interesting, didn't know that. 223 and 231 were both part of MAG-32 back in the 80s and early 90s, along with VMAT-203, VMA-331, and VMA-542, until they all got moved to MAG-14 in 91 or 92. 331 retired their colors after the Teamwork 92 cruise aboard USS Nassau in winter of 1992.
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  357. 4:45 is a bit confusing, you say "watts per second", but a watt is a unit of power which represents energy per unit time in joules per second. So a "W/s" would mean "J/s^2" which means an power output increasing over time, not a steady power. Can you clarify, Curious Droid?
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  358. To answer your question re. what do I think? It is certainly an exciting idea and would be awesome to get involved in the field as it grows, but there are definite drawbacks, some immediate, and some growing in the future. For starters, concerning large collectors and transmitters in GEO, the GEO belt is already a crowded space and there are lots of entities competing for various longitudes just for relatively tiny communications satellites, each of which eventually dies and either gets boosted to a graveyard orbit or dies in place and becomes a navigational hazard. This problem will be bigger when you're talking about multiple giant orbiting solar farms. These large structures will also require maintenance, as the components will all have limited lifespans. They will also create issues for astronomers and any instruments using stars for navigation. The industrialization of local space may cause issues not yet thought of. Meanwhile, on the ground, the unsightly receiving stations would, if the technology is successful, multiply and pop up everywhere, using up large swaths of previously undeveloped land. Maybe this can be dealt with by building them above buildings, to solve two problems at once: reducing heat islands while generating power. There are currently zoning battles underway in parts of the US over the construction of vast solar farms in the countryside; needless to say getting renewable energy by way of cutting down a forest seems a bit counterintuitive. Also, although you mentioned the system would create no pollution, I wonder if you considered the heat caused by beaming all that energy onto the earth's surface, all of which will either get burned and converted to heat, or will get wasted before being collected, converted to heat as it strikes the air or ground? Waste heat from cheap, abundant energy is something Arthur C. Clark envisioned in the novel 3001: Final Odyssey, and is something that may be worth thinking about in advance. All that said, I would love to be one of the engineers working on something like this. Social problems and all, count me in.
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  359. The Phantom is the only fighter jet that looks pissed off just sitting still on the ground, like it can't wait to fire up those big J-79s and go hunt for something to kill. A US Marine fighter pilot back in the 80s once told me that while he like the F/A-18, he loved the Phantom. He said the Hornet was good but the Phantom had so much power and acceleration that if you got into trouble you cud just light 'em up and go away fast. He showed me photos his backseater had taken of SAMs in Vietnam. He was busy dodging them at the time the photos were shot. He said the Phantom was proof that you can make a brick fly if you put big enough engines on it. Eph-Phours Phantoms Phorever!
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  360. For what it's worth that hideous stealth ship shown here, the Zumwalt class destroyer, has pretty much turned out to be an expensive piece of junk, prompting the USN to buy a new run of proven and affordable Arleigh Burke class destroyers. The guns on the Zumwalts are basically just ballast, since the special ammo for them was canceled, so their original role to provide long-range fire support for Marine landings while remaining out of range and undetected is unfulfillable. Bring back the Iowa class: "You'll see us coming, there isn't much you can do about it, and when we get close enough, it's gonna hurt real bad. And that's before our Marines get to you."
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  361. 3:19 that's got to be the most ghetto-looking science facility lol
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  362. Great video!
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  363. Some people read Orwell's 1984 and think, "That's a good idea for running a government!", some people watch Terminator and think, "That's a great idea, we need stuff like that for our military and police!" Those people are insane. Unfortunately, they are also the ones who always wind up in charge of things.
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  364. Wow, that sounds like it was worse than the RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engine, which also blew up in a test and destroyed the test cell. The delays caused by the RS-25 development problems are part of the reason they couldn't get the Shuttle working in time to save Skylab. In the end, like the F-1, the RS-25 turned out to be a fine engine, possibly the best piece of tech to come out of the STS program.
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  365. I've read about this accident before, it's like a dramatic scene in a sci fi movie. You know things are bad when the Russian commander is telling the American to go fire up the Soyuz in case they need to get out of Dodge.
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  366. The interesting thing is that we've only been aware of this particular threat for a few decades, and only started really worrying about it much more recently. So for all of human history, from caves to Babylon to Egyptian pyramids to the Trojan War to the rise and fall of Rome to the settlement of the Western Hemisphere to the defeat of Nazi Germany and even to the invention of nuclear weapons we thought we had a pretty good handle on what we needed to worry about and that the world as we know would go on pretty much indefinitely. We even dream of being masters of our own fate, with talk of terraforming worlds and someday even engineering on interstellar scales. Now we suddenly realized that everything our species has ever done can be wiped out in a single bad afternoon, in about 30 minutes or so from the time of initial impact.
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  367. I don't know. I kinda want to...
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  368. How would that work regarding range safety, given that there is occupied land to the immediately to the east and west of Britain?
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  369.  @neighdolfhorstler3158  I have my own list, but I can't speak for everyone else.
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  370. A fond 90s memory
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  371.  @BeardofBeesPool  Yep. I'm still pretty handy with a map and a compass, always have been.
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  372. I think Britain was fortunate that they did not scrimp when it came to submarines, since the power of subs for area denial turned out to be a huge advantage. After the loss of the General Belgrano the Argentine navy was basically forced to stay in port and taken out of the equation (except of course for their well-trained air crews), allowing the Royal Navy and the landing force a lot more breathing room to operate. This must have been exceptionally stinging to the Argentine naval planners; here they were with a fairly capable fleet, including a CATOBAR carrier, engaged in a war with a major power, and that entire fleet is useless, jeopardized by its lack of solid antisubmarine warfare capability. Huge miscalculation on the part of the Argentines, and equally huge fortune on the part of the British due to their decision to keep a worthy submarine force operating.
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  373. The A-6 is regarded by some as the best naval bomber ever built. All weather, night time capability with a bomb load comparable to a B-17, and the later models had advanced avionics upgrades as well. The only reason the US Navy isn't still using them is because they wanted to save money for the F-35. Northrop Grumman was on the verge of building new ones in the early 2000's. Yes, I know the RN used the Buccaneer, not the A-6, but I was comparing what the RN had in 1982 to what the USN had in 1982. In the early 80s Phantoms were the naval interceptor of choice before the F-14 replaced them. Regarding the Sea Harrier, I am a big fan of the Harrier family of jets; the USMC has used them extensively in combat for decades now, but a force based on Harriers alone is a bit thin. They lack the speed and firepower of a Phantom and the payload and survivability of a Buccaneer or an Intruder. When the USMC uses them, it's within the context of a force that included Tomcats, Hornets, Intruders, etc. And USMC Harriers are optimized for ground attack/close air support. Argentine fighter pilots were at the edge of their range when they went up against Harriers, and the RN pilots used this to their advantage. But with a CATOBAR carrier and Phantoms, the RN could've had more influence over the airspace closer to shore and made life more difficult for the Super Etendard's and other Argentine aircraft.
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  374. Star Trek was made in the 1960s, and definitely not in a vacuum. It was a product of its time for sure.
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  375. Please don't correct the miswording in the title. It has a ring to it.
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  376. Paul, you should do a video on the Chrysler SERV, a VTOL launch vehicle that was submitted by Chrysler as an alternate space shuttle design. It's one of my favorite "what-ifs" in space history.
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  377. In Soviet Russia, ejection seat activates you
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  378. You could do a follow up video on the contention between the US and UK regarding nuclear technology following the war. The US government decided not to share nuclear weapons info with the UK, even though many of the scientists on the Manhattan Project were Brits (and even though the USSR already knew everything). The UK's lax security checks had allowed several Soviet spies to slip through the cracks, which was part of the issue, bet there was a lot of geopolitics going on after the war. This led the UK to eventually develop its own nuclear weapons, and the rush to do so indirectly led to the Windscale nuclear accident.
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  379. Nice tie-in to the recent Bell Labs video.
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  380. My thoughts? The sooner we become a multi-planet species the better. You can't uninvent these damn things and they're not going away, and while each individual device may be extremely safe (which may or may not be true, how safe are Pakistani weapons? Does anyone know?), that tiny percentage chance of unwanted detonation starts to add up when you have thousands of them laying around. And yet here we all are, stuck in this planet-seized lifeboat orbiting the sun with these things, and nowhere to run or hide to truly get away from the threat. Just manage it as best we can and keep the crazies in their cages.
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  381. 1:53 1 or 2-hour suborbital flights? Did they send them halfway to the moon or something?
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  382. America is so backwards. They'll never invent supersonic jets, transistors, or land a man on the moon because they use those old imperial units.
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  383. This is what we wanted, right? Robots do all the work while we walk around cities of crystal spires wearing togas and philosophizing, playing music on harps, and having casual sex. That's what advanced civilizations in Star Trek always looked like.
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  384. When your poor choice of words for your title dominates the comments instead of the very interesting content.
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  385. Awesome. I always thought dragsters are the ultimate race car. Nothing fancy, just get to the end of the track before anyone else, and be as loud and badass as you need to be to get it done. I also think of the RS-25 rocket engine used on the Space Shuttle as being like a dragster engine: it only runs for a brief time, runs at maximum performance pushing the limits of engineering, and has to be torn down after every flight as a result.
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  386. I just want to put in a word for the guy who had to go out on that beech and disarm that mine. Amazing courage.
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  387. We often wish we could un-invent things, but not only it that impossible, it's even worse: once you realize a thing is possible, someone somewhere is going to do it. So your only choice is to do it first. The Soviets got most of their information from British traitor scientists working on the Manhattan Project after sloppy background investigations by the British government, but even without them the USSR would've gotten around to it sooner or later. The Nazis and Imperial Japanese both had nuclear programs but didn't take them very seriously; had they made through the war intact they likely would've gotten around to it sooner or later, too. Once the science is out there, it's going to come to light like it or not.
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  388. Boca Chica is not supposed to be a long term launch site anyway, so there is the question of how much money do they want to blow improving it when eventually all the action will be at Cape Canaveral.
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  389. Everything about the Saturn program was astounding, awesome, massive, and literally earth-shaking. Great video, and great shirt!
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  390.  @AnotherPointOfView944  Von Braun looked up to Robert Goddard as one of his heroes.
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  391. This is a great video. Two things amaze me about this device: how they managed to build sophisticated electronic devices that withstand the forces, and even more so, how they managed to keep it a secret for so long, with so many people involved and troops in the field using it.
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  392. The problem with projects like this is it's such a high stakes gamble, it drives up the price, which makes the stakes higher, which drives up the price, which makes the stakes higher, which drives up the price, which makes the stakes higher, which drives up the price, which makes the stakes higher, which drives up the price, which makes the stakes higher, which drives up the price, which makes the stakes higher, which drives up the price, which makes the stakes higher, which drives up the price....anyway, the damn thing better work.
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  393. What about Planet P? Why Me?
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  394. 3:15 lol that guy with the rocket launcher posing for the photo.
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  395. Turbine powered land vehicles never seem to work out except in rare cases like the M1 Abrams tank. Even then it's a fuel hog. I think Jay Leno has a turbine powered car in his collection. Putting turbojets on a locomotive just seems like the worst idea. Noisy, smoky, hard to maintain, and worse of all, can't use them going backwards, a major fail for a railroad locomotive in an age when diesel electrics and external power electrics can run fine in either direction.
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  396. Would be funny if the Iranians named a ship "Squeaky Fromme"
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  397. I think it's a sign that aeronautic technology plateaued around the middle of the last century to some degree, at least when it came to large utility aircraft that don't require stealth and stay subsonic. The C-5, C-130, B-52, Tu-95, these are all large airframes that don't have to do anything particularly fancy other than carry large amounts of stuff long distances and in some cases, drop that stuff. Even modern jetliners all started looking the same as early as the late 70s. As long as they don't stress the airframes too much by pulling hard Gs or flying low level too often, they can avoid metal fatigue for many decades. And because they are big airplanes they are pretty easily upgrade with new avionics and other subsystems. That said, C-130 is still in production and new ones are rolling off the line today, much improved versions at the beginning of their service lives, while the last B-52 was built in the 60s.
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  398. The Earth is so metal.
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  399. Hardware wise it seems possible, the question is whether the flight software is there to pull it off.
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  400. The Planck second is one tick of the clock in the Matrix's CPU.
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  401. They should paint bombers in that shirt pattern to dazzle attacking fighter pilots.
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  402.  @jimdennis2451  It's a Lockheed Electra at heart, after all.
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  403. Was there a previous civilization in the distant past? H P Lovecraft knew...
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  404.  Coldern Ice  No shit Sherlock. Welcome to the class, "Lack of Sense of Humor: A Guide to Dying Alone"
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  405. Vanguard 1 is so cute, I want to adopt it.
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  406.  @bocahdongo7769  "Space shuttle engine already reach the moon anyway" What in heaven's name are you even talking about?
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  407. "Arecibo, when it's up and running again." Oh, are we being optimistic tonight?
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  408. Just remember to thoroughly test your ship's computer before going to sleep, lest you wind up like the 3 poor bastards on HAL-9000's Discovery.
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  409. I love how in Rick and Morty that was made into a videogame, where Morty had to simulate an entire lifetime as a different man and see how long he could go before he died, and comes out of it minutes later and traumatized lol.
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  410. I hate the environment.
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  411.  @marcuslang6153  I don't know, ask the Iraqi army?
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  412. I don't bother arguing with moon hoaxers anymore. I either ignore them or I just get them spun up and insult them. Trying to convince them that the landings were real is like trying to teach a dog math.
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  413. What's also interesting is the connection between public phones and the origins of hacking in the 1970s. Jobs and Wozniak, before they started Apple Computers, used to hack pay phones for the hell of it, and built gadgets to assist them in this.
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  414. You wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that speech. Plenty of bad guys will attest to that. The ones who survived, anyway.
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  415. Best shirt yet, gonna tell us where to get it please?
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  416. Freaking Air Force. For starters, the USAF has never made close air support a main priority. The A-10 was meant to be used for interdiction behind enemy lines, shooting up tanks and other vehicles behind the front, CAS was not its primary mission. And here we are in 2020 and the USAF has been trying to find an excuse to retire the A-10 for at least 30 years now, because it's not a cool pointy-nosed supersonic jet fighter. So why get in the Army's way when they are trying to find the best gear to support their troops? Inter-service political BS, that's why.
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  417. Every video or article I have seen about thorium fission power has been a thinly veiled sketchy-looking infomercial. The factual stuff I have read seems to indicate that thorium is no magic bullet solution to anything, comes with its own set of problems, and you can't use it to make plutonium, which is a downside if that's what you want to do (or a benefit if it's your adversary who's using it).
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  418.  @SeatBill  TLDR
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  419. For aggressive exploration of the Solar system, nuclear power is really the only realistic option. And right now, "nuclear" means "fission". If fusion ever becomes practical, that makes it easier, but for right now fission power, be it nuclear thermal or nuclear electric, is what we have to work with. We need to get over the political objections, get to work to make these things as safe and reliable as possible, and start building and flying them. It doesn't have to be NASA or some other government, it can be private/commercial or whatever, but it has to be. If humans are going to get beyond the moon with enough numbers and mass to make it worthwhile, this is the way to go.
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  420. The Shuttle SRBs are gimbaled.
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  421. I watched the whole thing and when I went to comment it suddenly disappeared, weird.
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  422. I thought I saw in a documentary that Grumman workers claimed they had hidden things like photos and autographs and stuff underneath the insulation blankets on the LM descent stages, which, if true, would mean the photos are quite well protected from dust and UV rays. If it is true, though, it's terrible quality control and discipline by Grumman. Generally, when a spacecraft is built, every step of the assembly is documented and even photographed so as to aid in troubleshooting if a problem pops up during the mission, at least so I've heard in the US.
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  423.  @agauld3212  I'm gonna have to remember that one lol
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  424.  @Makoto778  Very interesting info, thanks. My understanding is that low pressure was desired for Skylab to reduce leakage.
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