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Boeing's current development of the X-45A Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle, or UCAV, technology demonstrator draws directly on its Bird of Prey experience. Some aspects of the UCAV's innovative radar-evading design, such as its shape and inlet, were developed from this project.

Sounds like the original stealth fighter to me. It was a precursor to the stealth bomber, and was all sharp edges and black. Viewed from the right angle, it could look violin shaped.

http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/F_117A_Nighthawk .html

• Don't have to be a poor graduate student
• Because you're being paid, you can concentrate on your studies/research and don't have to teach classes or work for a professor
• Lots of freedom and responsiblity -- my group was incredibly under staffed
• The AF typically has boat-loads of money to spend on technology and training
• You're serving your country
• Job security
• Slow pace

• Low salaries compared to the industry
• Bureaucracy
• Because of a 12 year hiring freeze, your coworkers may not be well educated on the latest advances in technology
• Because of job security, your coworkers may be apathetic
• Slow pace

Re: The Ada catastrophe:

It is a pity that the catastrophe of ADA brought down the idea of dimensional analysis with it. Of course Hoare's Turing award lecture (please don't use this for anything safety critical the compilers are certain to be full of bugs) gave a salutary warning on unbounded complexity.

Gradually these objectives have been sacrificed in favour of power, supposedly achieved by a plethora of features and notational conventions, many of them unncessary and some of them, like exception handling, even dangerous.

But I come not to bury Hoare, but to praise him (Hell, he invented the case statement..):

It is not too late! I believe that by careful pruning of the Ada language, it is still possible to select a very powerful subset that would be reliable and efficient in implementation and safe and economic to use

The context was that of software for an unmanned microsatellite, not the shuttle.

Crewed spacecraft have an even more strict set of rules attached to the software development process. Have a look at some of the articles on DO-178B, the software development standard for avionics. Similar issues apply, but even more so.

Look, people - not Geniuses - just normal, everyday programmers - have been making software you can bet your life on for a long time now. We know how to do it even more cheaply than the normal buggy commercial work (though testing is radically expensive and blows out the total cost). There's no need, and no excuse, for BSDs and security problems. None. You just have to have the right tools, the right training, and the right attitude. If you like, the Right Stuff. Here's a quote from that article:

It's strictly an 8-to-5 kind of place -- there are late nights, but they're the exception. The programmers are intense, but low-key. Many of them have put in years of work either for IBM ( which owned the shuttle group until 1994 ), or directly on the shuttle software. They're adults, with spouses and kids and lives beyond their remarkable software program.

That's the culture: the on-board shuttle group produces grown-up software, and the way they do it is by being grown-ups. It may not be sexy, it may not be a coding ego-trip -- but it is the future of software. When you're ready to take the next step -- when you have to write perfect software instead of software that's just good enough -- then it's time to grow up.

One area I disagree with in the "Right Stuff" article is that the work doesn't involve creativity. This is balderdash - we're doing stuff no-one has ever done before under really tight resource constraints. To get a reliable architecture often requires significant smarts, lateral thinking. Anyone can make a complex solution to a complex problem, the really good guys and gals make solutions so drop-dead simple, obviously-correct and efficient that it's miraculous how much such simple, obvious and readable code actually accomplishes.

Looking at the general world of InfoTech, we see that most programmers out there would rather write the winning entry for the "Obfuscated C" contest than make some software that gets us around the solar system. And that people who make reliable software hit the unemployment queue on project completion, while those making buggy stuff have jobs-for-life in maintenance. Of course, they often have 80-hour weeks too, and are driven by PHBs who know b* all, and can't even take pride in the product, so there is some justice.

The context was that of software for an unmanned microsatellite, not the shuttle.

Crewed spacecraft have an even more strict set of rules attached to the software development process. Have a look at some of the articles on DO-178B, the software development standard for avionics. Similar issues apply, but even more so.

Look, people - not Geniuses - just normal, everyday programmers - have been making software you can bet your life on for a long time now. We know how to do it even more cheaply than the normal buggy commercial work (though testing is radically expensive and blows out the total cost). There's no need, and no excuse, for BSDs and security problems. None. You just have to have the right tools, the right training, and the right attitude. If you like, the Right Stuff. Here's a quote from that article:

It's strictly an 8-to-5 kind of place -- there are late nights, but they're the exception. The programmers are intense, but low-key. Many of them have put in years of work either for IBM ( which owned the shuttle group until 1994 ), or directly on the shuttle software. They're adults, with spouses and kids and lives beyond their remarkable software program.

That's the culture: the on-board shuttle group produces grown-up software, and the way they do it is by being grown-ups. It may not be sexy, it may not be a coding ego-trip -- but it is the future of software. When you're ready to take the next step -- when you have to write perfect software instead of software that's just good enough -- then it's time to grow up.

One area I disagree with in the "Right Stuff" article is that the work doesn't involve creativity. This is balderdash - we're doing stuff no-one has ever done before under really tight resource constraints. To get a reliable architecture often requires significant smarts, lateral thinking. Anyone can make a complex solution to a complex problem, the really good guys and gals make solutions so drop-dead simple, obviously-correct and efficient that it's miraculous how much such simple, obvious and readable code actually accomplishes.

Looking at the general world of InfoTech, we see that most programmers out there would rather write the winning entry for the "Obfuscated C" contest than make some software that gets us around the solar system. And that people who make reliable software hit the unemployment queue on project completion, while those making buggy stuff have jobs-for-life in maintenance. Of course, they often have 80-hour weeks too, and are driven by PHBs who know b* all, and can't even take pride in the product, so there is some justice.

I think the dangerous thing for people who "come into money" is the ability to follow through on flights of fancy

Dude, that's also the thing that makes people like Howard Hughes so compelling. He was nuts, did crazy stuff, and it kicked butt. Built the biggest plane ever and flew it once. Built a ship with a 2-mile long claw to raise a submarine off the seabed. Had an army of people spread across the US to find him the most, um, pneumatic woman, then cast her in the Outlaw, then called up preachers and conservative groups telling them how immoral it was so they'd protest and give it free publicity (thereby making Jane Rusell a star).

And all those billionaires who want to parachute out of a balloon at over 15000 feet just to beat (google for "Project Excelsior" for a description of the original).

Sure, it's not _useful_. But it's entertaining as hell.

Sumner

Note that the article states that the collector must track the sun as it moves, and this implies some sort of motor. Hence I would not go so far as to say that this could be used anywhere without power. Sure, it could run on batteries, but for a military application why not just use the laser medical pen from this slashdot story? It seems that keeping a supply of small 3V lithium batteries (probably industry standard) would be a lot easier than keeping batteries for a motor that must move a somewhat bulky device.

Also, I don't think this will ever see use in poor countries. First, the geography must be just right for there to be enough sunlight, this eliminates a lot of places. But also, the article states that these things will cost about $1000 USD. Now if you're trying to budget the supplies for a operating room and have little to spend, do you buy a bunch of $5 scalpels and hemostats, or a single $1000 device that works under limited conditions and with which hardly any surgeons have experience? I'm not a medical professional, but the field has operated just fine for a very long time without (sunlight|laser) beams, so I'm pretty sure that everything this does can be done with plain old sterilized surgical stainless steel, for a lot less cash.

The engine was a liear aerospike, which the design had being fueled by a Hydrogen slurry tank. The tank was not buildable with current material science, after a number of tries.

The engine was built. I have seen it. It burned isobutane, not hydrogen, and the burner from the engine is currently being used as part of a hypersonic wind tunnel at the US Air Force's Arnold test facility in Tennessee.

"Linear aerospike" describes a type of nozzle, not a type of engine, btw.

If ADA causes things to implode, I wonder what that means for America's new Joint Strike fighter?

Planes fly Mach 0.76 at 30000ft. A plane flying Mach 7.6 would be much higher, upwards of 100000ft, where there is very little air to cause turbulence. Friction becomes an issue. When the X-15 flew Mach 6,

Air friction at speeds much above Mach 6.0 would weaken even the X-15's chrome-nickel Iconel X skin, so a special resin-and-glass-bead ablative coating was developed that would gradually sear away in flight, carrying with it the excess heat.

This new course can be looked at from both perspectives. C# is state-of-the-art, easy to use (it's case-insensitive just like VB!), has a great support organization behind it, and will undoubtedly achieve good market penetration. On the other hand, it's very new, still has flaws, has security holes, and is generally not quite ready for prime time. Since these students are the ones who will be coding the next generation of languages (face it, a lot of them will probably end up at MS), it's better that they should be familiar with what's out there now, and what's wrong with it.

On the other hand, I'm now a six-year Java vet, and I have no intention of switching...

Funnily in the first part what you described is Eiffel contracts programming, now who is using Eiffel here? Nobody! The worst part is I don't know of any other language which use so heavily assertionw, pre-conditions, post-conditions, etc..

You spotted it. Yes, Eiffel has some excellent features here. Ada does essentially the same job by strong typing - no need to check if a value is between 0 and 23 if the variable is of a type that can't have values outside that range - and raises an exception if you try to put one in. Ada's strong typing is often better than Eiffel in that regard, but Eiffel's contracts are more useful in other circumstances. Ideally a language should be a cross between them, and also have some of the neatness of Java as regards inheritance, as opposed to Ada-95's rather clumsy syntax. Until that come along, my favourite's Ada, but I count Eiffel practitioners as being of like mind.

But having such features as part of the language just increases productivity and makes the programmer's life easier. You can get maybe 50% of the benefit by excellent practice with any language. In Theory, C programs written by a Genius can be almost as safe as Ada or Eiffel programs written by someone merely competent. Practice has shown that they never are, but that's because it takes so much more work in C. See the article Correctness by Construction in Crosstalk, the Journal of Defence Software Engineering. It still shouldn't stop programmers in C, C++, C#, Java or whatever from manually doing what the high-level languages provide automatically, and the really good ones know this. The result may not be good enough to fly a plane or run a railway safely, but good enough for non-safety-critical applications.

I would also add: use unitary test and non-regression tests. And if you're manager make sure that everyone is testing properly their software.

Damn straight. Wish there were more people like you around, BSDs and buffer overflows would be endangered species rather than being in plague proportions.

A.E.Brain's Tip of the day for Java programmers: Classes should have a main() that performs a self-test, a boolean-returning isSane() that weeds out obviously wrong values, and a fakeSomeTestData() constructor for other classes self-tests to use. Try it - development time will decrease, productivity increase, and maintenance is a doddle as anyone new coming in can run any class and see how it works.

Funnily in the first part what you described is Eiffel contracts programming, now who is using Eiffel here? Nobody! The worst part is I don't know of any other language which use so heavily assertionw, pre-conditions, post-conditions, etc..

You spotted it. Yes, Eiffel has some excellent features here. Ada does essentially the same job by strong typing - no need to check if a value is between 0 and 23 if the variable is of a type that can't have values outside that range - and raises an exception if you try to put one in. Ada's strong typing is often better than Eiffel in that regard, but Eiffel's contracts are more useful in other circumstances. Ideally a language should be a cross between them, and also have some of the neatness of Java as regards inheritance, as opposed to Ada-95's rather clumsy syntax. Until that come along, my favourite's Ada, but I count Eiffel practitioners as being of like mind.

But having such features as part of the language just increases productivity and makes the programmer's life easier. You can get maybe 50% of the benefit by excellent practice with any language. In Theory, C programs written by a Genius can be almost as safe as Ada or Eiffel programs written by someone merely competent. Practice has shown that they never are, but that's because it takes so much more work in C. See the article Correctness by Construction in Crosstalk, the Journal of Defence Software Engineering. It still shouldn't stop programmers in C, C++, C#, Java or whatever from manually doing what the high-level languages provide automatically, and the really good ones know this. The result may not be good enough to fly a plane or run a railway safely, but good enough for non-safety-critical applications.

I would also add: use unitary test and non-regression tests. And if you're manager make sure that everyone is testing properly their software.

Damn straight. Wish there were more people like you around, BSDs and buffer overflows would be endangered species rather than being in plague proportions.

A.E.Brain's Tip of the day for Java programmers: Classes should have a main() that performs a self-test, a boolean-returning isSane() that weeds out obviously wrong values, and a fakeSomeTestData() constructor for other classes self-tests to use. Try it - development time will decrease, productivity increase, and maintenance is a doddle as anyone new coming in can run any class and see how it works.

That's the Directed Energy Directorate. Undirected energy R&D is handled by the Energetic Materials Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory, which develops conventional bombs.

Official U.S. government system for authorized use only. Do not discuss, enter, transfer, process or transmit classified, sensitive national security information of greater sensitivity than that for which this system is authorized. Use of this system constitutes consent to monitoring. Unauthorized use could result in criminal prosecution. Unclassified, non-senstive, non-privacy act use only.

Bury this post and watch to see if my prediction comes true....

Is it just me or does this laser laser resemble something out of Real Genius? Now all we need is a giant Jiffy-Pop package and a mean ol' professor...

What intrigued me was the information about high power microwaves. It says

"High Power Microwave produces burnout and disruption in electronics while not affecting humans."

Yes, I realize that anything within a range of the spectrum around 2.4Ghz is considered microwave (cell phone, cordless phones, 802.11, etc.) but isn't the only reason they don't hurt people because they are relatively low power? I imagine if you pump enough power into one of those things it could start to make you boil.

Anyway, I'd hate to be one of the test subjects used in determining whether or not this actually does cause damage.

http://www.af.mil/news/radio/latest.mp3
updated five days a week.
Perhaps not the general news that submitter is looking for, but it is news in mp3. I would certainly prefer Ogg Vorbis though.

Yup.

Not according to this press release from the Arnold Engineering Development Center at Arnolds Air Force Base, Tennasee.
They claim to have flown, albeit briefly, a scramjet vehicle in August of 2001. Acceleration to operating speeds was achieved using a very big gun!

Not according to this press release from the Arnold Engineering Development Center at Arnolds Air Force Base, Tennasee.
They claim to have flown, albeit briefly, a scramjet vehicle in August of 2001. Acceleration to operating speeds was achieved using a very big gun!

Not according to this report from the Arnold Engineering Development Center at Arnolds Air Force Base, Tennassee.
They claim to have flown, albeit very briefly, a scramjet vehicle in August last year. The acceleration to obtain operating speed was achieved using a very large gun!

Not according to this report from the Arnold Engineering Development Center at Arnolds Air Force Base, Tennassee.
They claim to have flown, albeit very briefly, a scramjet vehicle in August last year. The acceleration to obtain operating speed was achieved using a very large gun!

There's a huge glut of C-130 cargo planes, because the factory is in Newt Gingrich's congressional district. Really. So the USAF has been looking for other things to do with C-130s.

The "AC-130", A for Attack, is a 4-prop cargo plane with armor and guns. The guns point sideways, so the plane banks or circles over a target and fires. It's a big, slow cargo aircraft that can carry a huge ammo load. The usual application is that, after any enemy air defenses have been suppressed, the AC-130 moves in and fires 1200 rounds per minute into enemy ground forces until they're all dead.

Adding a laser to the AC-130 would give it some air-to-air capability, so it could deal with unexpected incoming air threats and then return to its mission, extermination of ground troops.

I can confirm the figures for Australia. I've had over 20 years experience in the IT field, including being Chief Designer or Systems Architect for Naval Combat Systems, Spacecraft Avionics, Java/XML B2B systems and other such expensive and/or rare ecological niches. I've had job offers of DM 180k (about 90k US) to work overseas, which I've turned down. I like it here.

I'm currently earning more money than anyone else in the company - more than the CEO. US 40k per year. Others, with only 3 years or so experience, earn $20k. And these people are Good. As good or better than I was at that age.

We recently had a look at outsourcing some work to a really cluey mob in Sri Lanka - but found out that that their price was within 2% of ours (2% higher in fact). Too bad, they had an impressive track record.

It's been said You get what you pay for. Not true in our experience. The difficulty is not paying $90k to USAians or $9k to Indians for equally mediocre crud, the problem is getting good quality from anyone at any price. Where they come from has a lot more to do with their cost than the quality of their work. Top Quality leads to a doubling or at most tripling in price, 3rd World (including Australia) vs US is a factor of 10.

What can people in the US do to protect their jobs then?

1. Put up artificial trade barriers - no visas for Gastarbeiters, 10,000% Tariff on imported software, legislation to ban imports using DMCA, have Microsoft just buy up the competitors etc. The USA has a history of doing this.
2. Lower wages in the USA so that the job's pay is less than you get flipping burgers in the US (though Riches Beyond the Dreams of Avarice in much of the rest of the world.). Funnily enough, this one doesn't work except in the short term - people just move into other, better-paid professions. Or leave the US and live like Kings in some tropical paradise on 1/10 of a US salary. Guess this is me, though Canberra's cold at this time of year, and I'm not USAian.
3. Get more efficient at what you do. The US has a history of doing this one, too. There are ways out there for doing a lot more work, producing better quality, with less effort - no 60 hour weeks, 40 hours tops. e.g. A recent, large avionics project reported a four-fold productivity and 10-fold quality improvement by adopting such methods - from Crosstalk. Be 4x as productive and 10x as good as your competition, you'll get actually be worth 4x and possibly 40x the salary.

The B52 combat aircraft that are working in afganistan today were delivered in 1962. I agree that they might have recieved some maintence in the interim, but the airframes are older than tha pilots in almost all cases. Now thats reliability.

SD

Perhaps I am not the only slashdotter left who does not know what this thing looks like.

You can find a selection of pictures here. The fourth and fifth rows from the botttom of the page have photos of the F-22. The best one is here.

Perhaps I am not the only slashdotter left who does not know what this thing looks like.

You can find a selection of pictures here. The fourth and fifth rows from the botttom of the page have photos of the F-22. The best one is here.

GEODSS is rumored to have the ability to illuminate its targets with a laser. (A USAF site in Maui is known to have such capabilities.)

GEODSS was the first major computerized telescope system. It's an old system from the late 1970s, modernized in the 1990s. Back then, it took a huge military project to build something like this. Now, it wouldn't be that big a deal. With computer-controlled CCD telescopes widespread, this could be a good amateur project.

Most of the work is in the back-end data processing. The goal is to take all the images coming in, compare them with star maps and satellite ephemeris data, and see what new stuff turns up. Track satellites. Find space junk.

Doing this standalone could be fun, but the real payoff would be a network of amateur sites that cooperated over a peer to peer network. As soon as one finds something interesting, it should immediately communicate that to other sites so they can point at the same target if in view.

Nova did a great show on Joe Kittinger and his dive from 19 miles up.

They first tested it with human shaped models and found out the flatspin would be deadly, liquifying organs. After that they used a stabilizing chute to avoid the flatspin.

Exerpt:
http://www.yvcc.cc.wa.us/~chemyvcc/Skydive_From_St ratosphere.html

Here's the link to the shockwave game:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/escape/skydive.html

Wired article:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.08/space.html ?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=

Project Excelsior:
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/coldwar/pe. htm

I can no longer find my favorite desktop sized picture of the jump but a smaller one is here (the top picture):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/balloon/science/histo ry2.html

I like this picture better.

IRC there are about 200 000 objects ranging from milimeter size pieces to fat chunks of metal in orbit around our planet.

1.Catalogue them -- A database with all known objects and their orbits is the obvious first step

Please estimate amount of energy required to induce enough V/M to damage power electronics? Take into account near field effects. (Please refer to pictures of B-52 EMP hardening test harness)

Wouldn't it be easier, to um, you know, JAM the R/C?

Oh but that wouldn't be ubergeeky.

Besides, reality is more powerful than fiction.

I'm out of points, so someone please mod this up.

The Wattenburg method is a modern variant of the chain roller, an antique minefield clearing vehicle that had long chains attached to a horizontal roll rotating a few feet above the ground in front of the armored vehicle. The ends of the long chains would hit the ground with enough force to trigger their explosion, 10 to 15 meters ahead. So the concept is definitely proven.

If you really want to trigger a surface-laid mine or ammunition from far away, it is much cheaper to just fire at it using a 20-mm cannon. But of course that would be a cheap solution. Way too cheap, probably.

-- SysKoll

Just nitpicking...

'bout time we had what fighter pilots have...

I agree. I want one of these on my next car. That ought to do wonders on the idiots driving 40mph in the fast lane.

Three issues: Politics, Performance, and Engineering...

No doubt the engineering was brilliant, and far ahead of it's time. If you check the specs of the modern B-2 Bomber, you will see almost the same dimentions, especially that of the wing angle. The YB-48 failed for poor engines, and the YB-49 update almost made the grade with jets, but not enough.

Performance in the this new layout suffered from two significant tendencies which were common enough in other aircraft, but obstacles in this application. First was the tendency for a "Dutch Roll." Think of a gutter ball rocking from side to side as it rolls down the bowling alley. The aircraft is seeking a stable position as it flys, but as it turns to one side, the drag from the other side (where the wing is relatively longer now) pulls it back, and over corrects. This can continue until it resembles the skate/snow board whiz doing the tube dance. The control system of the day could handle it, but the pilots had to stay on top of things. This in turn made life difficult for the bombadier. Modern fly-by-wire computer systems make this a non-issue.

The other, easily fatal, tendency in a flying wing is "Tumble." Regular aircraft can be made to tumble ass-over-tea-kettle only with some effort, and usually near stall speeds. Think of the air show types who climb vertically until they fall over on their back (maybe two tumbles worth) before regaining control on the way back down. The distance between the wing (center of gravity) and the tail surfaces (lever) make this hard to happen and easy to recover from, if you have the altitude.

On the other hand, the tumbles that the YB-48/49 folks had to deal with was like none they had dealt with before. Take a piece of stiff paper, cut off a 1 inch strip about 8 inches long, give it a slight curve hollow along the length, then drop it. It will tumble with rotation axis from tip to tip. Lacking a good lever (tail surface) to break the tumble, the test pilots found a way to recover using full aleron speed brake drag on one wing and max asymetric power on the other side. This was enough to dump them into a more regular spin (flat rotation like a frisbee), and they knew how to recover from that. Very, very scary, but modern fly-by-wire makes it a non-issue, too.

And that leaves the politics. The heavy bomber mission was to deliver the B2 (IIRC) thermonuclear device to the bad guys as fast as possible. The later models, like the MK53, were dinky compared to the B2, which was the first production H-Bomb. The one at the Air Force Museum I saw next to the B-36 was about 7 ft in diameter, nearly 15 feet long, and weighed about 20,000 pounds. Compare this to the Mk 6, an atomic, not thermonuclear, bomb. The aircraft delivering the B2 had to carry 2 bombs (20 tons) over 5000 miles. It was a squeaker in the YB-49, which had the (dis)advantage of using a new, unproven design, and had at least one skeleton in its political closet, Tumble. The B-36 was a more regular design holding 80,000 lbs in a bomb bay larger than a Greyhound bus! Whatever skullduggery went on between Northrup, Convair, and the Government, the B-36 made more sense soley becaues it seemed more sensible. Not that is was, just that those who had only money, performance, and production in mind thought so.

Three issues: Politics, Performance, and Engineering...

No doubt the engineering was brilliant, and far ahead of it's time. If you check the specs of the modern B-2 Bomber, you will see almost the same dimentions, especially that of the wing angle. The YB-48 failed for poor engines, and the YB-49 update almost made the grade with jets, but not enough.

Performance in the this new layout suffered from two significant tendencies which were common enough in other aircraft, but obstacles in this application. First was the tendency for a "Dutch Roll." Think of a gutter ball rocking from side to side as it rolls down the bowling alley. The aircraft is seeking a stable position as it flys, but as it turns to one side, the drag from the other side (where the wing is relatively longer now) pulls it back, and over corrects. This can continue until it resembles the skate/snow board whiz doing the tube dance. The control system of the day could handle it, but the pilots had to stay on top of things. This in turn made life difficult for the bombadier. Modern fly-by-wire computer systems make this a non-issue.

The other, easily fatal, tendency in a flying wing is "Tumble." Regular aircraft can be made to tumble ass-over-tea-kettle only with some effort, and usually near stall speeds. Think of the air show types who climb vertically until they fall over on their back (maybe two tumbles worth) before regaining control on the way back down. The distance between the wing (center of gravity) and the tail surfaces (lever) make this hard to happen and easy to recover from, if you have the altitude.

On the other hand, the tumbles that the YB-48/49 folks had to deal with was like none they had dealt with before. Take a piece of stiff paper, cut off a 1 inch strip about 8 inches long, give it a slight curve hollow along the length, then drop it. It will tumble with rotation axis from tip to tip. Lacking a good lever (tail surface) to break the tumble, the test pilots found a way to recover using full aleron speed brake drag on one wing and max asymetric power on the other side. This was enough to dump them into a more regular spin (flat rotation like a frisbee), and they knew how to recover from that. Very, very scary, but modern fly-by-wire makes it a non-issue, too.

And that leaves the politics. The heavy bomber mission was to deliver the B2 (IIRC) thermonuclear device to the bad guys as fast as possible. The later models, like the MK53, were dinky compared to the B2, which was the first production H-Bomb. The one at the Air Force Museum I saw next to the B-36 was about 7 ft in diameter, nearly 15 feet long, and weighed about 20,000 pounds. Compare this to the Mk 6, an atomic, not thermonuclear, bomb. The aircraft delivering the B2 had to carry 2 bombs (20 tons) over 5000 miles. It was a squeaker in the YB-49, which had the (dis)advantage of using a new, unproven design, and had at least one skeleton in its political closet, Tumble. The B-36 was a more regular design holding 80,000 lbs in a bomb bay larger than a Greyhound bus! Whatever skullduggery went on between Northrup, Convair, and the Government, the B-36 made more sense soley becaues it seemed more sensible. Not that is was, just that those who had only money, performance, and production in mind thought so.

Three issues: Politics, Performance, and Engineering...

No doubt the engineering was brilliant, and far ahead of it's time. If you check the specs of the modern B-2 Bomber, you will see almost the same dimentions, especially that of the wing angle. The YB-48 failed for poor engines, and the YB-49 update almost made the grade with jets, but not enough.

Performance in the this new layout suffered from two significant tendencies which were common enough in other aircraft, but obstacles in this application. First was the tendency for a "Dutch Roll." Think of a gutter ball rocking from side to side as it rolls down the bowling alley. The aircraft is seeking a stable position as it flys, but as it turns to one side, the drag from the other side (where the wing is relatively longer now) pulls it back, and over corrects. This can continue until it resembles the skate/snow board whiz doing the tube dance. The control system of the day could handle it, but the pilots had to stay on top of things. This in turn made life difficult for the bombadier. Modern fly-by-wire computer systems make this a non-issue.

The other, easily fatal, tendency in a flying wing is "Tumble." Regular aircraft can be made to tumble ass-over-tea-kettle only with some effort, and usually near stall speeds. Think of the air show types who climb vertically until they fall over on their back (maybe two tumbles worth) before regaining control on the way back down. The distance between the wing (center of gravity) and the tail surfaces (lever) make this hard to happen and easy to recover from, if you have the altitude.

On the other hand, the tumbles that the YB-48/49 folks had to deal with was like none they had dealt with before. Take a piece of stiff paper, cut off a 1 inch strip about 8 inches long, give it a slight curve hollow along the length, then drop it. It will tumble with rotation axis from tip to tip. Lacking a good lever (tail surface) to break the tumble, the test pilots found a way to recover using full aleron speed brake drag on one wing and max asymetric power on the other side. This was enough to dump them into a more regular spin (flat rotation like a frisbee), and they knew how to recover from that. Very, very scary, but modern fly-by-wire makes it a non-issue, too.

And that leaves the politics. The heavy bomber mission was to deliver the B2 (IIRC) thermonuclear device to the bad guys as fast as possible. The later models, like the MK53, were dinky compared to the B2, which was the first production H-Bomb. The one at the Air Force Museum I saw next to the B-36 was about 7 ft in diameter, nearly 15 feet long, and weighed about 20,000 pounds. Compare this to the Mk 6, an atomic, not thermonuclear, bomb. The aircraft delivering the B2 had to carry 2 bombs (20 tons) over 5000 miles. It was a squeaker in the YB-49, which had the (dis)advantage of using a new, unproven design, and had at least one skeleton in its political closet, Tumble. The B-36 was a more regular design holding 80,000 lbs in a bomb bay larger than a Greyhound bus! Whatever skullduggery went on between Northrup, Convair, and the Government, the B-36 made more sense soley becaues it seemed more sensible. Not that is was, just that those who had only money, performance, and production in mind thought so.

Great. They've finally re-invented the Northrop Flying Wing, first built back in 1941!!! here is a picture of one... look familiar?

This revolutionary blended wing design, called BWB for short, was conceived by the McDonnell Douglas Corporation and now proposed by Boeing.

A good link to the benefits of using Ada and SPARK on the C-130J and other projects is at Crosstalk, the Journal of Defence Software Engineering.

This is the umpteenth time I've quoted this link, or one like it. Maybe one day people will read the goddam literature and not keep on making the same mistakes in the same old way. The Facts - not religious opinions, unsubstantiated assertions or even unverifiable anecdotes - are out there.

Sorry, got carried away there. We need more light, less heat. But people - not some ubergeeks with Supernatural powers, just your standard geeks - have been making software that works first time, every time for years now. Every time you fly on a modern airliner, you bet your life on it. And it's a good bet. We know how to do it. We've proved it, repeatedly. It's just that no-one seems to listen when we tell them that they can do it too, just by doing things in a different way. One that (at least in manufacture) costs less too. Testing's another matter.

Now tell me, if the hard drive is going bad and intermittently returns bad data, including the the executable code itself, how are you supposed to deal with that?!? Do you write the code in multiply redundant code blocks, and tweak the machine code so that if the starting offset is set to a random location, including in the middle of a valid instruction, that your code can still recover?

Well, Yes, actually.

For some problem domains. e.g. Aircraft Avionics, Spaceflight Avionics (where Radiation and single-event-upsets (SEUs) are a fact of life that will cause glitches.

But of course, such military/safety-critical-spec software costs a hell of a lot more than a standard piece of COTS. Using Ada and other high-grade techniques can actually save money in manufacture, but it still costs heaps to test.

It's a matter of requirements - what does the customer need? If crashing once a week is acceptable, providing the cost is less than $X then provide that. If crashing anytime is unnacceptable, then they should be prepared to pay maybe six times that.

Note: I know whereof I speak - I've been chief architect for a Naval Combat System, lead a team on spaceflight avionics software development. And one system I had a small part in at one time had a hardware problem that caused unpredictable jumps to random locations in memory. It still worked - just slowly as 95% of the time was spent in error-recovery. Adequate to ensure no-one died as the result. But we fixed it before delivery anyway, was a problem caused by a 3rd party CPU design flaw.

Now tell me, if the hard drive is going bad and intermittently returns bad data, including the the executable code itself, how are you supposed to deal with that?!? Do you write the code in multiply redundant code blocks, and tweak the machine code so that if the starting offset is set to a random location, including in the middle of a valid instruction, that your code can still recover?

Well, Yes, actually.

For some problem domains. e.g. Aircraft Avionics, Spaceflight Avionics (where Radiation and single-event-upsets (SEUs) are a fact of life that will cause glitches.

But of course, such military/safety-critical-spec software costs a hell of a lot more than a standard piece of COTS. Using Ada and other high-grade techniques can actually save money in manufacture, but it still costs heaps to test.

It's a matter of requirements - what does the customer need? If crashing once a week is acceptable, providing the cost is less than $X then provide that. If crashing anytime is unnacceptable, then they should be prepared to pay maybe six times that.

Note: I know whereof I speak - I've been chief architect for a Naval Combat System, lead a team on spaceflight avionics software development. And one system I had a small part in at one time had a hardware problem that caused unpredictable jumps to random locations in memory. It still worked - just slowly as 95% of the time was spent in error-recovery. Adequate to ensure no-one died as the result. But we fixed it before delivery anyway, was a problem caused by a 3rd party CPU design flaw.

Here's a story about an A-10 that took a SAM hit during Desert Storm:

A few days later on 6 February 1991, Johnson demonstrated his skills again when another aircraft he was flying was hit by enemy fire. Johnson; flying A-10A - S/N 78-0664, was attacking a Surface to Air Missile (SAM) site when his aircraft was hit by portable shoulder-mounted SAM. The explosion left a gaping hole in the right wing of the A-10, disabled one of the aircraft's two hydraulic systems, and crippled the right engine. He managed to fly the badly damaged "Warthog" back to Saudi airspace, where he air refueled as he recovered at King Fahd AB. Johnson feared that when the right gear was lowered, he might lose the outer wing, but fortunately he got "three in the green." Having bought the aircraft home "on a wing and a prayer," he flew a no-flap approach to a smooth landing, despite a blown tire which shredded on touchdown!

Now that's a survivable aircraft! The JSF, as good as it is, was not engineered to survive this much punishment. Again, apples to oranges.

Makers of the P-38 Lightning (the first all-aluminum skinned fighter, flown by the top 2 aces in the Pacific Theater during WW2), the P-80 Shooting Star (first operational US jet fighter), the SR-71 Blackbird (fastest aircraft in the world, high speed, high altitude photo recon) and the new F-22 Raptor. Wonder if Lockheed will be putting the same powerplant that's in the F-22 into their JSF bird. It'd be nice since the thing can produce Mach 1 without afterburner/reheat.

The highest balloon flights attempted...

1961 -- Current Official Altitude Record Set: Commander Malcolm Ross and Lieutenant Commander Victor A. Prather of the U.S. Navy ascend to 113,739.9 feet (just over 20 miles) in 'Lee Lewis Memorial,' a polyethylene balloon.

1958 -- Project Manhigh, Major Simons takes his balloon to an altitude of 101,516 feet.

I wish this guy good luck. I'll be impressed if he launches, more impressed if he returns in one piece, but let him orbit the Earth a few times before calling him an astronaut. Hmmm... I know Mr. Chuck Yeager wouldn't be too happy with that comment.

Imagine an escaped virus destroying the Earth's oil reserves and its whole industrial potential? Curiously, the military may implement the environmentalists' ultimate dream!

Let me clue you in on what it is that the fuel eaten by these bacteria (not viruses) eventually breaks down into - water and carbon dioxide. This is a more controlled form of a process better known as FIRE.

Flame of yet another kind: Timothy, you are an idiot. Even as a joke that was a grade A stupid thing to say. It reflects poorly on you as an editor and as a human being. If you don't know the difference between a virus and a bacterium shut your cornhole.

We, Environmentalists, object to gasoline being burned (turned into Carbon Dioxide) faster than it is deposited in peat marshes and such. I don't want to rehash the global warming argument here, so don't y'all even start.

The fact that the gasoline, while burned, does useful work, instead of, say, fueling the growth of a manmade organism, does not bother anyone.

You can find out more about Hydrocarbon Utilizing Microbes (HUMs) here. The document is fully accessible to a non-scientist. The people at Brooks Air Force base, who are/would be (?) developing these fuel eating microbes for offensive use have already made use of them in a peaceful context. Again, the press release is non technical. Personally, I find this to be admirable work - they're using them to clean up petrochemical contamination of soil and groundwater, which is an underappreciated ecological problem. I'm not terribly worried about these organisms going out of control and eating the world's petrochemical reserves. They exist in nature already in various forms and have not done that.

The New Scientist has an older article about the fuel eating bugs, or, more specifically, about the circumstances surrounding the release of documents discussing the bugs; I think this may have come up on slashdot before but I searched just now and didn't find it. The sunshine project also has an article about there efforts to get the documents released.