Comments by "Mike Black" (@RevMikeBlack) on "Curious Droid" channel.

  1. There are very few military hardware contractors who have consistently delivered top quality products like Pratt & Whitney. I wish they all were that way.
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  2. Being born a few months before Sputnik One, I grew up with the space age. Telstar One (and its awesome hit theme song by The Tornadoes) is the first non-manned spacecraft I remember. The satellite was discussed in my second grade class and the American news networks often aired brief segments from the UK. It was a BIG deal and an inspiration for elementary school students. Despite my familiarity with Telstar, I learned several new things in this video regarding Telstar's highly elliptical orbit and its unfortunate demise. Thanks for a great video, CD!
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  3. Here are three modest proposals: (1) When fighting a war, ask your enemies to give you a break every four hours so you can recharge all your fighting vehicles... or (2) Pull huge 10 meter trailers behind each tank equipped with monster diesel generators onboard with charging cables constantly feeding the tank batteries from behind. Or, if those brilliant ideas don't work... (3) Ask your enemies to build rapid chargers all the way to their capital city, so you can easily charge your tanks along the way. By doing this you can assure your opponents that they're being annihilated with the least amount of greenhouse gases possible... except for all those explosions going off, of course.
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  4. Good to see you back, Paul. Hope you're doing ok. Keep up the good work!
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  5. I think the Starship launch was a reasonably successful launch, making it to 39 miles before exploding. It would have been good to make it to the internded partial orbit, but it did better than the early Falcon rockets. SpaceX says there are 1,000 ways for a launch to fail, but only one way for it to go bad.
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  6. In American football we have a play called a "Hail Mary" in which the team on offense throws the ball downfield in desperation, hoping that one of their receivers will catch it, score and win the game. It's a low-percentage move, but our football history and real-life histories are filled with glorious tales of "Hail Mary" victories. The B-29 is one of those stories. It's a miracle that it worked well enough to deliver two a-bombs to the Land of the Rising Sun... but it did!
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  7. You have to wonder why NASA bothered to do so many expensive modifications to Glenn's cheapo Ansco camera. Both Nikon and Canon made superb, same-size automatic rangefinders at that time. They would have made much better images at no significant cost increase.
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  8. Wouldn't it be awesome if someone figured out a way to re-use rockets over and over instead of wasting billions on single-launch disposable rockets? They could launch the rockets, then fly them back to Earth or land them on a barge in the ocean. That would save US taxpayers a lot of money by developing a sustainable, economical space program. Nah... nothing like that will ever be possible.
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  9. As to whether or not there is intelligent life out there, I do not know. I seriously doubt that we'll become interstellar buddies with other six foot tall, bipedal creatures as on Star Trek. As much as I hope we will discover some form of verifiable intelligence in the cosmos, I think the search itself is immensely valuable to humanity. The technological advances associated with the search eventually make their way into the hands of ordinary people. Moreover, it keeps us thinking, imagining and hoping... three things essential to human growth. That's a good thing.
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  10.  @tdolan500  It was on the radio all the time. I liked it so much that my father bought me the 45 rpm record, which is still in playable condition.
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  11. Why bother trying to re-learn how to make F-1 engines? They were very expensive, rather temperamental and took a very long time to build, test and deploy. Why not use Raptor 2 engines, instead? They can be built in a day at comparably low cost. Three Raptor 2 engines equal the thrust of a F-1, they can be installed in hours instead of weeks AND they can be sent back into space again and again, thus significantly lowering the cost per kilogram for payloads. F-1 engines, like all NASA systems, always end up on the bottom of the ocean at great cost to the American taxpayer. Why do we even allow NASA to build rockets anymore? They're about as cost conscious as a drunken sailor on a three day pass.
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  12.  @EricHamm  Thank you, Mr. Bezos!
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  13. Glad you're ok. Keep up the good work!
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  14. Impressive research. Thanks.
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  15.  @captainjohnh9405  What a strange video, especially the musicians and the astronaut.
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  16. Excellent episode! There's a lot to be said for well-machined analog cameras. They are very forgiving and can take a lot of vibration without malfunctioning.
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  17. Nice video. The Holst works well.
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  18. ​ @generalmarkmilleyisbenedic8895  Go bother someone else, troll.
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