Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Sandboxx" channel.

@gags730 not quite. ICBM's and SLBM's are already hypersonic, but suborbital. But, during the ionization phase of atmospheric reentry, they stick out like a dick in a convent, stealth or no stealth - you can't hide that sheath of ionized air as the warheads and decoys make atmospheric entry. Once into the lower atmosphere, then they'd be a cast iron bitch to knock down, again, stealth or no stealth, they're still hypersonic. Maybe with a lot of shotguns to clutter their path, which would be hilarious just to watch any attempted test... ;)
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@ALTINSEA1 as I've said of many fast things, "Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow". A one degree course deviation would bring hellish G forces on the airframe, which tends to be inconsistent with its continued integrity.
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@thedungeondelver well, that and the Pershing II guidance system.
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@JimCOsd55 cheaper option, less maintenance needed for a boomer and its birds, believe it or not. Even when non-critical, reactors require a hell of a lot of maintenance. So, figure a few dozen total such reactors needing incessant TLC just to keep flight ready, a fleet of boomers is a lot less work. Meanwhile, it wouldn't take much to loft current ICBM warhead bus units into low orbit, to change course and reenter at one's leisure. We proved that possible with Gemini and Mercury. And an incoming MIRV warhead is hypersonic by nature and already has a number of flight options available on its way in. Also proven by our early space program.
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@danielleriley2796 it'd have to fly a hell of a lot higher while hypersonic. Even at the notionally high 30000 feet, the air is pretty damned dense for such travel, even our space capsules have slowed to subsonic by that altitude due to the density of the lower atmosphere. Think 100k feet, you'd be more on target and avoid essentially impossible stresses on the airframe and obscene temperatures generated by the denser lower atmosphere. Also, the story is bullshit as to radiation, it didn't spew reactor fuel, it did release a lot of gamma, x-ray and neutrons though, along with some daughter isotopes from the fission. Stay away from its exhaust, it'd be fairly safe, given its cruise altitude. It'd only come down for its terminal maneuver into its final target. Oh, NERVA did actually fly - without fuel, only ballast, just to see if the aircraft would be stable. Thankfully, they never lit off either for actual full power flight testing, not too sure if any might have or not have flown at low power, although I think that any benefit would be dubious at best. Low power doesn't equal producing usable thrust and the damned things were so radioactively hot, survival of a flight crew was questionable at best. Still, regardless of who would actually release such a product from the insanity factory, they'd most likely be suborbital single stage to suborbital altitude, then skip for range, then penetrate the upper atmosphere for the remainder of Mr Toad's Wild Ride. All, while ICBM's and SLBM's passed one another in their own suborbital pathways into oblivion. Still survivable, in a way. The Bikini Atoll is now habitable - as long as one doesn't eat the food or drink the water, lest one get a hell of a dose of cesium-137 and strontium-90 (mostly). Safe to stay there to visit and even spend a week there, if you bring your own food and drink. So, we'd be safe enough, just bring a century or so worth of food and water. I'll wait. ;) And yeah, I worked on them long ago. A stupider weapon I have yet to discover. Nukes are like having a handful of thermite grenades, while standing on top of a refinery tank full of gasoline. There won't be any winners in that game of chicken. So, go toward the light, my children! Go toward the light!
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I think it's only a matter of time until a mockup turns instead into a real, operational aircraft. Maybe not fighter performance, but at least can fly. ;)
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@jtc1947 sounds about right and the response being, "We're in an airport, you might want to try being a trifle more specific".
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@jeramysteve3394 pretty close and it used a skip reentry profile, skipping off of the atmosphere initially to extend range. The shape was pretty much the same as a MIRV unit, which combines lift and heat protection via ablation. Atmospheric entry is hypersonic and with warheads, minimum velocity is to be lost to make interception difficult to impossible.
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Some of that doesn't wash. Under what whistleblower provision was he reporting? There would be no reason to use aides to transfer the evidence, as he could trivially and lawfully transfer the data from IC systems via JWICS to the Congressional SCIF.
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The biggest reason is, experimental UAV's and aircraft are failure prone and tend to crash far more often than production models. There are around a dozen crashed A-12 and SR-71 hulks buried around Groom Lake, to give one example. Roswell is another infamous example, as the documentation has been declassified, but the hand waving crowd ignore them in favor of space aliens. What crashed was a sample capturing unit to capture fallout from Soviet nuclear testing. Remnants of the thing still get shown around as some magical exotic substance, while failing to recognize what was a classified material at the time is mundane and in common use today - honeycomb aluminum. I and my unit tested quite a few devices and technologies, ranging from at the time, classified UAV's that are common knowledge now to portable computing devices that gave squad level communication and personnel location tracking, with point and click artillery being experimentally available. Guess what? Each of those technologies had their own project code name, even for the team developing the primary software didn't know those names or capabilities, as it was all compartmented. Which long ago lead to a standing joke that remains alive today, "My job is so secret, I'm not allowed to know what I'm doing" and in some cases, one's boss isn't allowed to know what you are doing. So, what is really here is an SAP nothingburger.
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@mrpawpaw7023 well, not entirely true. He does have his word. Zero evidence, just his word. Yes, it was difficult to type that while laughing so hard. I mean, we're talking about the phenomenal competence to astrogate well enough to make it between stars, yet beyond phenomenal incompetence enough to slam into a planet that obviously swerved and suddenly stopped in their path, so they crashed. I honestly can't think of a chemical that could allow me to get so addled as to be convinced of that.
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@LisaAnn777 "I saw something that I don't know what it is" isn't a space ship. I saw plenty of craft I didn't know, all were classified military experimental vehicles, so I moved on with shit that was my business, as if I had a need to know, I'd be briefed.
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@LisaAnn777 I remember many reports of veteran pilots chasing an object around and never managing to close on it or find it on radar. Turned out to be reflections on the canopy of their aircraft. The F-117 and B2 bomber don't have a visible form of propulsion, obviously they're not from Barksdale AFB, they're from outer space. Satellites don't have visible forms of propulsion, obviously they're magic since they hang above in precisely the same way that a brick won't. Others fruitlessly chased a visible and radar confirmed target that turned out to be an orbiting satellite. So, obviously it's space aliens in flying saucers. Who are so phenomenally competent as to ply interstellar space routes, but so inept as to ram into our planet. Your last paragraph shows that your projection is showing clearly. Facts don't matter, little green men matter or something.
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@Adam-fl9uc I've worked in many US government officers over the decades, most where classified information was processed and accessed. That complaint to a janitor's office would just get security called on him. Indeed, reporting a lost access card is done through security, goes through to information assurance as well and the facility security manager's office as well. And entertainingly, I had in my last position a half dozen security cards to wrangle and use. If they weren't used on a very regular basis, the accounts linked to them were deleted. I've also requested and was granted access to certain programs, purely for the purpose of diagnosing a user's access problems. I was also quite happy once that was completed and I could have them remove that access, as I had enough on my plate without jumping into someone else's circus.
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@CakePrincessCelestia tanks and guns don't make for having an army. Armies were boots, tanks and guns without troops just rust.
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@JimCOsd55 something falsified by the existence and non-use in tactical combat both our ICBM and SLBM fleets. Maintaining such a missile would be expensive, with minimal gain beyond what our boomers already bring to the table for less.
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@paradiddlesixix7530 which court of law? Civil and criminal courts have massively different burdens of proof. People won't get the majority of any evidence, as most of the claimed sightings I'm aware of are military SAP projects, ranging from balloon type observation and communications platforms through combat UAV's, some with stealth. So, the only people who could get the proof are Congress, who can access such programs by subpoena and view the data in their house SCIF.
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