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Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Stats on the Boeing 707-320B from Boeing.com

"Advanced 707-320B Wingspan 145 feet 9 inches (44.42 m)
Length 152 feet 11 inches (46.6 m)
Wing Area 3,010 square feet (280 m2)
Gross Weight 336,000 pounds (152,400 kg)
Cruising Speed 607 mph (977 km/h)
Range 6,160 miles (9,913 km)
Service Ceiling 36,000 feet (10,973 m)
Power Four Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofans of 18,000 pounds thrust each
Passenger Cabin 141 passengers mixed class or a maximum of 189 all economy"

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/707family/product.html

Technical Characteristics -- Boeing 767-200ER
Passenger Seating Configuration
      Typical 3-class 181
      Typical 2-class 224
      Typical 1-class up to 255
Cargo 2,925 cu ft (82.9 cu m)
Engines 2
maximum thrust
Pratt & Whitney PW4000 60,200 lb

GE CF6-80C262,100 lb

Maximum Fuel Capacity 23,980 U.S. gal (90,770 L)
Maximum Takeoff Weight 395,000 lb (179,170 kg)
Maximum Range 6,590 nautical miles (12,200 km)

Typical city pairs:
New York to Beijing
Typical Cruise Speed at 35,000 feet Mach 0.80 (530 mph, 851 kph)
Basic Dimensions
      Wing Span 156 ft 1 in (47.6 m)
      Overall Length 159 ft 2 in (48.5 m)
      Tail Height 52 ft (15.8 m)
      Interior Cabin Width 15 ft 6 in (4.7 m)"

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/767family/pf/pf_200prod.html

Now as this picture shows...
http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/images/wtc-gallery/nist1-3d/6-19_wtc2-collapsing.jpg

No "building being dropped on another building" nonsense happened.

As the picture clearly shows, the atomized debris dust preceded the collapse. The dust and debris is being blown out of the site of the initial area of collapse at a high rate of speed such as one would expect to see when explosives have been used.

Also, their thrust numbers for the 767 are completely wrong. Each engine can produce > 60,000 lb of thrust for the smaller engine on the 767-200ER. Not sure where they got 30,000 lb of thrust, but that's half of what each engine will produce. When you recalculate based off just those numbers, the 767-200ER has a MUCH higher thrust to weight ratio (~.31 compared to .21). Refute that if you will.

Though, in this discussion, a thrust to weight ratio will not play into the max speed that the plane will hit the building at. The higher thrust of the 767 is for efficiency reasons to allow the cruising speed to be close to the vmax. Also, these planes weren't cruising, they were in a dive, and most likely were in an overspeed condition during the dive. So cruising speed really doesn't play a huge role. It would be more for a CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) condition where the plane is flying low and "runs into" a building. These were definitely not that type of condition, but were a "dive bomb" to hit a building on purpose. The maximum velocity is not an airframe rating, but instead is the maximum speed the engines can push the plane in straight and level flight. Those planes can go much faster before breaking apart.

I'm not going to buy into a site (or series of sites parroting the same information) that is incorrectly stating widely available technical data for the purpose of furthering their point of view. I find it alarming that you would subscribe to theories based on incorrect data.

That's not to say the system can't be improved. It IS to say that the problem is very difficult. NATCA has said for years that the quickest and cheapest increases in capacity would come from adding runways. The fifth runway at ATL has more than borne out that position, taking airborne delays from a bi-hourly occurrence to something that is rarely seen in good weather.

A handful of engineers and a stenographer cooped up in a hotel room over a weekend, designed and developed the B52. And its still going strong 50 years later.

After all, it not rocket surgery.

"one camp tried to advance the underlying solar technology and mostly failed."

That is simply not true at all. December 6, 2006 http://www.boeing.com/ids/news/2006/q4/061206b_nr.html. 40% is nothing to scoff at, and it does use a different underlying technology.

Nanosolar has done great things - but to say that advancements in underlying solar technolgy have not been made in recent years is in accurate.

Nanosolar is also the only company that I know of that has fundamentally streamlined the solar panel production process.

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/delta/delta4/delta4.htm

I have not doubt a Delta IV Heavy Lifter can get your Civic to the ISS =)

Just a little factual update: it's been delayed by 18 months total - not 18 more months. Doesn't mean it won't eventually be, but that's not the official word. Check the source.
http://boeing.com/news/releases/2008/q2/080409b_nr.html

CAP 756 - Portable Electronic Device Generated Electromagnetic Fields on board a Large Transport Aeroplane
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP756.PDF

CAA PAPER 2003/3 - Effects of Interference from Cellular Telephones on Aircraft Avionic Equipment
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAPAP2003_03.PDF

Boeing Aero 10 - Interference From Electronic Devices
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_10/interfere.html

Still think banned cell phones have nothing to do with navagation interference?

What the.. you're telling me you'll outfly a laser???
And that one's airborne. I would suspect that all you need is a little extra heat to melt a hole in something that's right at its skins thermal limit. Come to think of it I wonder if that's one of the reasons they quit using the SR-71 so much.

HI, Quite interesting re painting satellites black. If you look at some of the photos of the recent 'wideband gapfiller satellite', the satellite bus is mostly black. http://www.boeing.com/ids/news/2006/q3/060926b_pr.html has a picture of the satellite in a frame prior to testing. If you look at it, you can see all the communications antennas are black. I'm not sure is this is painted for stealth reasons, or the antennas are made of carbon fiber. I'm sure this is only one example of many recent satellites that have been painted black.Either way, painting a satellite would only solve a small amount of the problem, since pretty much all satellites carry an RF payload which transmits data back to earth, they can be detected this way if they cannot be seen. The article mentions the 'seesat' group which does visual obs, but a parallel group 'hearsat' works with the RF downlinks, identifying satellites purely by their RF fingerprints. In fact several satellites have been detected at RF, orbits computed which were then passed on to the 'seesat' folks for visual confirmation. There are a few sites that you can check out if you are interested in the RF Aspects of satellite detection, www.hearsat.org, www.satellitenwelt.de and www.uhf-satcom.com being just a few.

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/ic/fcs/bia/051012_2006flipbook.html

And they used Hellfire http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/agm-114.htm and Brimstone http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/1999/news_release_990823n.htm missiles to destroy those people.

I was discussing this with an engineer friend. Let's say we wanted to get back into the race? Simple enough, you just dust off the plans for the Saturn V, setup the tooling, and...
 
Oh, shit... Not only don't we have the tooling, but we don't even have enough kids trained in running a drafting pencil to design the tooling. WE WOULD HAVE TO OUTSOURCE THE DESIGN AND FABRICATION TO --- Yup. Asia.

...into international waters. You don't have to get permission to leave the planet from there...

Might be easier to launch in international waters: http://www.boeing.com/special/sea-launch/

Sea Launch is not an oil platform, was not refurbished, and was never registered under any tiny Pacific island.

Typically, examples are supposed to reinforce the point you're making, but hey, do it your way...

And so the seeds of space piracy and "independent traders" are sown...

Recipe for telling the state go suck bricks through a thin straw sideways:

1. Buy an old oil platform
2. Refurbish
3. Reregister under the flag of a tiny pacific island which is not a signee to the treaty (optional)
4. Tow outside territorial waters (bonus points for launching from near the equator to save fuel).
5. Launch... And potentially Profit...

Example: http://www.boeing.com/special/sea-launch/why_sea_launch.htm. Surprise who are the usual suspects - the darlings of the USA defence industry - Boeing and the darlings of the russian defence industry - Energia. Cousying in the same bed. Nicely and quietly while the USA and Russia politicians rattle the sabres in the name of a new Cold War.

Alternative recipe

1. Buy or hire an Il-76, An-124 or Mriya. The last is difficult, for the rest call this chap: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6991487.stm. He is rumoured to be good. Alternatively, get your hand on a White Swan or a Concorde (that may be quite difficult, but as our Bulgarian friends say "What cannot be bought with money can be bought with a A LOT of money").
2. Reregister it under a suitable nation in the middle of Africa or Oceania (optional).
3. Load a launch vehicle on it. Two under development - Shtil-3A and RIF-MA. Both are rumoured to work. To buy - call the same chap. Or build your own.
4. Fly outside the airspace of all nations signing the treaty (again - bonus points for equatorial launch)
5. Launch... and potentially Profit...

Example: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/shtil3a.htm and http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/rifma.htm. Actually the last 5 on the right will all do nicely: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/graphics/n/newlv640.jpg.

Alternatively (if you manage to get your hands on a White Swan or manage to get the French to sell you a Concnorde as a launch vehicle): http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/burlak.htm

Right. And a 747 only carries 63,705 U.S. gal (241,140 L) or fuel. That works out to over 8mpg, but still, if this boat could carry that much fuel, well....dayumn. http://www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/pf/pf_4 00er_prod.html

'B-52' was the aircraft designation for the bomber that coincidentally had its maiden flight on April 15, 1952 (the YB-52). The designation was assigned to the design in 1948.

The original Predator UAV had auto return home on data link loss capability. And there have been upgrades since. So yes, it is a true robot.

Boeing recently demonstrated the ScanEagle, a smaller UAV able to lock onto and follow a truck autonomously. So autonomous operation is getting serious. The goal is to have more air vehicles than operators, with long-endurance UAVs cruising around looking for something to image or kill. Operators take over when things get interesting.

Incidentally, the ground control station for Predators runs X-Windows and Motif.

I sometimes toy with the idea of going to the various used computer stores, buying a pallet of used computers and making my very own Beowulf cluster. I've seen pallets of fast P3 and low-end P4 boxes at interesting prices. Boeing Surplus have large numbers of essentially identical computers almost every time I go there. I remember once looking through a big bin for a particular size wrench and grumbling to the sales person "Surely there is something bolted to a 747 with these size bolts!" They laughed...

The alternative would be to do something with new motherboards and processors. Might even get a break on the electricity.

...laura

A 777 rolls out approximately every 6 days. It's final assy factory flow was three weeks for quite a while, and should be dropping to just shy of two weeks as the moving line becomes fully implemented.. The 787 final asssy flow is intended to be 3 days once its up to rate.

It's obvious that the Parent is unfamiliar with the 777 and 787 lines. On 777, where major structural joins take place, the aircraft is so surrounded by scaffolding and support structure that you cannot even directly see the fuselage from ground level. You can walk right past it and not even realize that there is a plane there. The 787 tooling itself is massive, but there is FAR less of it. Compare http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/photorele ase/q2/pr_020627h.html to http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2007/q2/070521 c3_pr.html , and imagine the view from the floor. Both these pictures are at approximately the same percentage of completion.

Yes, VC-25A #28000 (it's only AF1 when the prez is on board.)is being painted. However, it doesn't affect 787 at all. Completely different paint hangars. You can see it being pushed into the empty paint hangar in the third pic at the following link. http://flightblogger.blogspot.com/2007/06/under-co ver-of-darkness.html

Sincerely,
A Boeing Employee (who knows what they are talking about)

A 777 rolls out approximately every 6 days. It's final assy factory flow was three weeks for quite a while, and should be dropping to just shy of two weeks as the moving line becomes fully implemented.. The 787 final asssy flow is intended to be 3 days once its up to rate.

It's obvious that the Parent is unfamiliar with the 777 and 787 lines. On 777, where major structural joins take place, the aircraft is so surrounded by scaffolding and support structure that you cannot even directly see the fuselage from ground level. You can walk right past it and not even realize that there is a plane there. The 787 tooling itself is massive, but there is FAR less of it. Compare http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/photorele ase/q2/pr_020627h.html to http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2007/q2/070521 c3_pr.html , and imagine the view from the floor. Both these pictures are at approximately the same percentage of completion.

Yes, VC-25A #28000 (it's only AF1 when the prez is on board.)is being painted. However, it doesn't affect 787 at all. Completely different paint hangars. You can see it being pushed into the empty paint hangar in the third pic at the following link. http://flightblogger.blogspot.com/2007/06/under-co ver-of-darkness.html

Sincerely,
A Boeing Employee (who knows what they are talking about)

The first 787 will not roll out of the paint hangar completed until late july. Sincerely, A Boeing Employee

There are spaces in OP's URLs, so they don't work (not to mention they're not links). I'm a kindly soul with time to kill, so here is the Boeing link, and here is the Air Force Times link.

they will have to endure the cost of installation, training, etc. No way can they do that efficiently!

Exactly.

The technology is already there, but it's the economics that haven't been worked out yet.

I remembered back in December, Slashdot covered the high efficiency multi-junction solar cells with a 40% conversion efficiency from Boeing's Spectrolab. According to the press release, they already had a fully functional 33 kilowatt generator in the Australian outback.

Too bad according to Wikipedia, it costs up to $40 per cm^2.

http://www.boeing.com/ids/news/2006/q4/061206b_nr. html
href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell%23Gal lium_arsenide_.28GaAs.29_multijunction

Many improvements in efficiency are through more expensive processing etc resulting in more expensive PV. The World Solar Race favours the team with the best efficiency, even if that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Much of the PV research is geared towards efficiency and this is the measure by which they compete (eg. http://www.boeing.com/ids/news/2006/q4/061206b_nr. html).

This focus is detremental from a practical position of solving the energy crisis. While the big research dollars are focussed on efficiency we will continue to have PV that has useless $/W. It is far more important to ignore efficiency and focus on $/W.

I won't use PV if it costs me $20,000 to fit a PV array. If I could fit a $2000 PV array we'd be talking. So what if that takes up 50 square metres of roof space instead of 5? Cheap stuff could even be made into roofing tiles. It is reducing the $/W that makes PV practical.

It is a real shame that Boeing will spend huge dollars to inflate their egos with high efficiency while more practical programs like http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2007/Press_Releases /04-04-07.html struggle.

The two public reasons, interference with other systems, could easily be tested, but neither the FAA nor the FCC manage to do such testing.

/HJ

I just found an interesting page here that goes into some interesting price/cost analysis figures for passenger costs when using air travel.

Of note is a remark talking about the original Pan-Am Pacific Clipper service that on average cost about $4/mile (inflation adjusted to 2004 dollars). Assuming that you went from San Francisco to Tokyo, that would have cost the equivalent of about $10,000-$20,000.

By comparing that to what Virgin Galactic is asking here, it doesn't seem so far fetched.

In addition, there were several people who around 1900 also financed expeditions to Antarctica and attempts at going through the "northwest passage" north of North America. Many of these were wealthy millionaires, including I might add the founder of the Orteig Prize that the X-Prize was modeled after.

So while prices in the early airline industry weren't quite on the same level, there certainly were prices that were close to the same general order of magnitude as many of the current prices for commercial manned spaceflight.

Virgin Galatic has suggested sub-orbital flight between California and Japan as an eventual option, with costs in the range of about $10,000-$20,000. How is that for coincidence.

Yep. To create a wing strong enough to carry a whole passenger airplane aloft, the wing needs to have a decent thickness. The only way to achieve this thickness with low drag is to use an airfoil shape. The rest of the empty space is usually filled with fuel.

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/photorele ase/q2/020620g.jpg

Nearly all launch vehicle platformsin the US outside of the shuttle are privately owned.

Atlas V is Lockheed Martin
Delta is Boeing
And my current personal favorite due to the recent perfect ride they gave us, the Minotaur is Orbital.

you better tell these guys this, they seem to have built something that does just that.

I wonder how much money they waisted on building it before finding out that what they are doing couldn't be done? Notcie the tense there? In case your wondering, I'm under the understanding that they are doing exactly this.

Apparently I didn't miss it. Boeing (who built the thing) says it's only going up to 492km (circular). See Mission Overview link at this page.

Given they're spec'ing a 1000km rendezvous range, I think the OE will have to be beefed up a bit for GEO. ("Sure we can service your satellite in, um, 37 years.")

767 - 63,000 litres http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/acaps/76 7sec2.pdf

707: depending on model, according to this http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/acaps/70 7sec2.pdf, up to 90,000 litres (smallest 65,000)

It always amazes me just how little research (took literally 10 seconds of googleing) skeptics on this issue do before shooting their mouths off. Hell you could even just bother to read the official reports from the government agencies you trust so much, which will TELL you that the fuel did NOT cause the collapse, since they say it burned out in minutes (therefore the steel should have long cooled down and regained most of its strength, had this actually been a major factor in the collapses, by the time of the collapse).

As to the structural engineer comment, you can stick that up your arse along with the peanuts you use for a brain, since you dont need to be a structural engineer to have done uni physics/chem and have common sense.(how bout you look up some info for yourself instead of trusting the very people many CT "nutjobs" tell you are fooling you to give you correct info. Try youtube for one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL4isaZRapY, and note he says "FULLY LOADED, not empty of fuel and running on fairy floss"

finally, if you think this post is a bit harsh, it probably is, I'm just really sick of people calling other people nutjobs when they cant even be bothered doing 10 seconds of googleing to verify their "information"

767 - 63,000 litres http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/acaps/76 7sec2.pdf

707: depending on model, according to this http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/acaps/70 7sec2.pdf, up to 90,000 litres (smallest 65,000)

It always amazes me just how little research (took literally 10 seconds of googleing) skeptics on this issue do before shooting their mouths off. Hell you could even just bother to read the official reports from the government agencies you trust so much, which will TELL you that the fuel did NOT cause the collapse, since they say it burned out in minutes (therefore the steel should have long cooled down and regained most of its strength, had this actually been a major factor in the collapses, by the time of the collapse).

As to the structural engineer comment, you can stick that up your arse along with the peanuts you use for a brain, since you dont need to be a structural engineer to have done uni physics/chem and have common sense.(how bout you look up some info for yourself instead of trusting the very people many CT "nutjobs" tell you are fooling you to give you correct info. Try youtube for one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL4isaZRapY, and note he says "FULLY LOADED, not empty of fuel and running on fairy floss"

finally, if you think this post is a bit harsh, it probably is, I'm just really sick of people calling other people nutjobs when they cant even be bothered doing 10 seconds of googleing to verify their "information"

Sorry, but I read the article carefully and also searched in my browser and failed to find the word "coast" in it. Perhaps there is a convention to call a certain part of the US coast the "Mid-Atlantic", but that's certainly not well known in the rest of the world.

For anyone who isn't a "Merkin" and is interested in space exploration, the expression "Mid-Atlantic Commercial Spaceport Makes First Launch", which is the title of this Slashdot story, will evoke a mental image of a spaceport located in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, somewhat like the one that exists right now in the middle of the Pacific ocean

This is what you're looking for: Sea-Launch

In addition, 40.7% is just a bump up from 39%, which (apparently) Spectrolab has been achieving for the better part of the year. They may be very close to high-volume production. Direct photovoltaic solar generation is an immediate revenue source, but solar energy can be directly applied for other processes, the most notable being desalination.

Perhaps you've heard of this little place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon.

http://www.boeing.com/ids/a_to_z.html looks like a lot of pork (IE government subsidies) to me.

I get your point, but don't think for a second that the US is not funding R&D for Boeing. And they are using money confiscated from me to remain the "world's policemen," even though most of the world didn't ask us in the first place.

Boeings' site http://www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/pf/pf_4 00_prod.html suggests fuel capacity is 57,285 US Gallons and it has a maximum range of 13,450 km (8 357.4 miles) , even assuming that does not count taxying/circling/emergency fuel this gives us an efficiency of 0.14588 miles per gallon. Multiplied up by the 524 passengers this gives us 76.44 miles per gallon per passenger. This is better than any car I've driven.

An elevator is an enclosed space with little or no air exchange. An aircraft is an enclosed space with a very high air exchange rate. Pepper spray in a commercial aircraft would dissipate very quickly. On the order of 1-2 minutes. For some reason people tend to think of the air in planes as stagnant, but that's very far from true.

The solution for powering a space elevator by laser certainly won't be trivial. It's not like you can just point a laser straight up and it'll hit the receiving dish/antenna/panel ... there will be lateral movement the climber will be undergoing. So there will need to be some type of optics required to guide the beam. These optics have existed for a long time, they just need to be adapted for higher powers and probably wider laser beams. To compensate for refractive index changes in the atmosphere, some form of adaptive optics will be needed. This type of research was done in previous atmospheric studies, and projects like the Airborne Laser.

Right now the largest disadvantage for lasers is the inefficiency in creating electricity from photovoltiacs. The team i'm on - Punkworks is hoping to use a microwave rectenna array to convert 2.4 GHz RF energy into a few hundred watts of electricity. Right now we're lending our transmitter to another team, and have reached a deal to split the prize 50/50 if they win with our transmitter. The reason we're using microwaves is due to the conversion efficiency, there's lots of journal papers on microwave rectenna design indicating a maximum efficiency of 85%. This is a huge improvement over the ~30% you'd get from a solar panel.

My team has yet to compete, and I'm eagerly waiting to hear how our climber performs. Right now they made us move to another location at the test site despite our approved application from the FCC. Apparently the airport doesn't like the idea of us beaming 13 kW of microwaves into the sky ...

unfortunately I'm not in New Mexico for the competition, but a number of my teammates did the 44 hour drive.

Actually, the Japanese constitution (9th paragraph) states that the only use of armed forces can be for self defense. That said, there is a plethora of laws that forbid it from doing even that.

Here is the translation of Article 9 found at Wikipedia.

ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

That it allows Japan to have self defence forces is a rather forced interpretation.

The Japanese self decense army is under prepared, under staffed, and does not have the necessary equipment. We have no missiles. Our jet fighters were deliberately modified so that they don't have fuel tanks large enough to fly a round trip to Korea and back.

I'm not sure if F-15s and Mitsubishi F-2s cannot fly sorties to North Korea from Japanese bases, not that I see point in doing that. It does not seem F-15J/DJs were in any way modified to reduce their range, either. IIRC, the range of the F-15 became an issue in the parliament when its introduction was discussed. Also, now JASDF has tankers.

The old Model 66 assault rifle, when dis-assembled, broke down into 30-some odd parts, including some very small springs, which my brother says would be impossible to re-build in the field. People lose parts when undergoing re-build training in the baracks!

Type 64 (not 66) rifle may have been PIA to maintain, but current infantry weapon is Type 89. I don't think it's not much inferior to any modern assault rifle. And I highly doubt small differences in personal weapons are strategically that significant.

Even the high-mobility vehicles, the Japanese version of the Hummer HMMV (built by Toyota under the civilian model name Mega Cruiser), simply resembles the U.S. Hummer, but in reality is not even close in functionality.

It's not like HMMVs did not have major problems not having armours. Japan also brought light armoured vehicles to Iraq.

Overall, the parent post reads very much like a typical sentiment of a Japanese person living in Japan. The problem I see is that they are not exposed to international media and do not know how much self-perception is different from perception from outside. Most of the Japanese see China and South Korea as some sort of bullies who always mention and exaggerate what the Japanese did during the WWII. This must come as a great shock for the Chinese and South Koreans who are genuinely scared of the Japanese behaviour in the first half of the 20th century. Just like they see Japan as the victim during the WWII (another big surprise for those who are not Japanese), they still feel that they are isolated and have no friend.

There is also a sensationalism with regard to North Korea. There are some factions of nationalists in Japan who capitalize on the actions of North Korea. They tend to overhype the danger of North Korea. I find this very dangerous.

North Korea always seemed to be seeking for attention. They don't seem to like the fact that the US is paying more attention to Iran, or a south Korean becoming the general secretary of the UN. As long as they get attention, they seem happy. I also figure that anybody, including South Korea,

Does anyone else question the intentions of the sponsors of this event? The competition is sponsored by the SpaWar Systems Center (where the competition was held), the US Navy, and other military industrial greats such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing.

Given the substantial non-military uses of autonomous robotics do we really need the military funding? I for one do not welcome our autonomous-deathsub-controlling overlords. In fact, I hit on this point in a blog yesterday.

NASA's deep space 1 launched 1998 http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/quick_facts.html

ESA's SMART-1 launched 2003 http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEMSDE1A6BD_0. html

boeing sells ion thrusters for satelites http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bss/fact sheets/xips/xips.html

additionally, these technologies will never be used to replace chemical rockets. chemical rockets throw a lot of mass out the back at a relativly slow speed, but all at once. giving you enough velocity to get off the planet.

ion thrusters throw a very little bit of mass out the back at very high speeds, but run continuously for months/years. after that length of time at a constant acceleration you end up with a very high velocity.

unless you have discovered some new physics and an antigravity engine, throwing things out of the back of the spaceship, or hauling it up an elevator are the only conceiveable methods of getting something off the planet.

UPS has bought purpose-built freight aircraft, though these are freight variants of passenger airliners like the 757-200 Freighter. Many of the MD-11s are probably passenger conversions, since airlines like Delta seemed to get rid of their MD-11s pretty quickly.

I'm surprised the tinfoil hats haven't said it was the U.S. Military using the airborne laser weapon LOL. http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/

Even given how outdated, expensive, failure-prone and downright dangerous the Space Shuttle is, they're still pretty goddamn sweet looking when they lift off.

Agreed. The video footage during ascent is amazing.

The planned Ares V should continue the tradition of spectacular launches. It will use 2 shuttle-derived 5 segment solid rocket boosters and 5 (!) RS-68 H2/O2 engines that burn even more colorfully than the shuttle SSMEs. Should be a great show at night.