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It's not cognitive dissonance because there is no contradiction. Ask yourself this. What sort of "industry" is going to be created to dodge taxes? The answer obviously won't be "building airplanes".

Except that there is contradiction.
On the logical level, we are supposed to believe that a government which would implement higher taxes in order to raise funds would then allow loopholes which would let those taxes slip through their fingers.
Because, they are all... you know, stupid and lazy and incompetent I guess.

On a historical level, he is talking about Truman-Eisenhower years. You know... the "golden age" of the 1950s.
When the interstates were built, when owning a home, a car and a TV became the norm, when unemployment was at record lows... when USA was "building airplanes".

not true at all.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Government_Role/security/POL18.htm

Security has helped a lot. Overall. I'm not talking about some of the nonsense happening now.

They had IFR before WWII. Jimmy Doolittle made the first blind take off, flight, and landing back in 1929 https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Jimmy_Doolittle#Instrument_flight here is a brief history of the airway system that started around the same time http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Government_Role/navigation/POL13.htm

I have been an EAA member since 1978 and soloed in a 2-33 glider at 16 many years ago. I have been involved in aviation for a very long time and I have never heard a single reference to nuclear aircraft or submarines in reference to IFR flight. What documentary was this? I am asking for some hard reference because it makes no sense. The ocean is very large and the total number of submarines has always been pretty small compared to aircraft. You never have 100 subs coming into port on any single day. Not even during WWII. I doubt that you would even have 10 in a day. Before nuclear subs subs spent most of their time on the surface anyway. The would transit to and from their patrol areas on the surface because they had to use diesels to move any real distance at speed and they where actually more trackable on sonar when snorkeling than on the surface because more of the sound would get transmitted to the water.

Since the first nuclear submarine was not launched until 1954-55 It is far more probable that submarine operating procedures where influenced by IFR rules. And in now real way where they influenced by the single test aircraft with a nuclear reactor. Oh and as to aviation documentaries they are often terrible sources of information. You have no idea how many times I have seen crap on the Military channel or History channel that makes me want to beat people.

So again do you have any references? Some documentary isn't one and I can find no reference to what you are saying in any history of IFR fight I have access to. A lot of aviation practices have been derived form maritime practices but your suggestion that IFR rules where put into place because of the low outward visibility of nuclear bombers that where never built and submarines doesn't make a lot of sense and I can not find any supporting documentation.
Now in an interesting aviation to submarine cross over when the US built the first teardrop shaped sub named the Albacore which lead to the Skipjack class of really fast nuclear subs the navy used bimps to train the helmsmen. It was so maneuverable that it was much more like a blimp than any ship. Reference http://www.amazon.com/U-S-Submarines-Since-1945-Illustrated/dp/1557502609

I don't see why we ever upgraded from four course radios.

Those seem like a clever idea for the time.

More early patent trolling. A form of eminent domain is needed as long as people keep trying to claim that we're dealing with real property here. And the states should have a right to tax it as such as long as it can be held privately with restricted access.

Its harder to get good photographs of weather at high latitudes because you either have to do it from high altitude and an oblique angle, or from low altitude in a high inclination orbit.

You missed options three and four. You can also use a high inclination Molnyia orbit. (Which the Russians have used at various times.) You can also use a polar orbit (which most US birds use), which can get photos every couple of hours.
 
So high latitude weather photography is really only difficult if you choose to make it so.

The current generation of missiles can hit a target at 100+ km away, I think... So what's the point?

Rules of Engagement are the point. A missile that can hit a target at 100+ km is useless if the people calling the shots (i.e., civilians in command of the armed forces) require the warfighter to visually identify a probable target as friend or foe before pulling a trigger. That's why U.S. military air arms re-discovered dogfighting in the early 70s: American warplanes in the air battle of Viet Nam weren't permitted to engage North Vietnamese aircraft at missile range, and wound up in close-range gunfights... often, in aircraft with no guns. Even after retrofitting guns, American pilots had to deal with their lack of training in close-in air combat maneuver, and in consequence did a fair bit of "win or die" on-the-job training.

Here's a pretty good history of that particular scenario.

Red Flag and TOPGUN came out of the dogfighting Renaissance of the post-Vietnam period in the U.S. air combat arms, as the survivors of the school of lethal knocks came back to teach their successors how to dogfight before those kids had to learn it the hard way.

> Geosynchronous orbit is 32,000 miles...

Geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles.

[citation needed]

Surely the refutation is no more helpful to the reader if it's just your word against GP's...? :)

That just doesn't seem like the original intention of the patent system.

Oh, but it is. This kind of crap has been going on for a very long time.

"Aircraft designers generally describe an airplane's radar cross section in terms of "decibel square meters," or dBsm. This is an analogy that compares the plane's radar reflectivity to the radar reflectivity of an aluminum sphere of a certain size. The B-2 reportedly has a radar signature of an aluminum marble. The F-22 Raptor interceptor is roughly the same, and the F-117 is only slightly less stealthy. The newer Joint Strike Fighter has the signature of an aluminum golf ball. The older B-1 bomber, designed during the 1970s and 1980s, is about the size of a three-foot (one-meter)-diameter sphere, whereas the 1950s-era B-52 Stratofortress, a monstrously non-stealthy airplane, has an enormous radar cross section of a 170-foot (52-meter)-diameter sphere. The size of an aircraft has little relationship to its radar cross section, but its shape certainly does."

The first cars and airplanes tended not to instantly kill their passengers on impact. On the first cross-country airplane race, the pilot crashed several dozen times, and had even strapped crutches to the wings as a precaution.

They also didn't have the potential to take out an entire city block upon crashing. Nor were these "tourists" expecting a safe ride. Nor were they largely people with enough money that I think you'd have to be an idiot to think that a simple waiver would be a open-and-shut way to prevent your company from getting sued into oblivion if you kill them. That's my biggest concern: that these very public failures of "joyride" rocketry that doesn't do anything to advance orbital rocketry will discourage investment in companies like Orbital and SpaceX that are doing *actual, orbital rocketry*.

We already have aircraft that operate on the same principal - being inherently unstable to allow greater maneuverability, and kept going in a straight line when necessary by a computer.

"Have Blue was not inherently stable in flight and would tumble out of control. But fortunately, computers also rendered this fact irrelevant, because aircraft designers for several years had been designing planes, like the F-16 fighter, that were kept stable by computers that constantly adjusted their flight controls in the same way that a person riding a bike is constantly making minute corrections to remain balanced. This same solution was applied to the Have Blue airplane. Lockheed engineers soon developed the Have Blue into a larger bomber aircraft given the designation F-117. Despite being designated a "fighter," the plane was always intended only to drop bombs, not fight other aircraft." ( source )

I've searched for some information on the error that you mentioned, but I have not found enough to figure out more details. Here is an article http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/SPACEFLIGH T/soviet_lunar/SP21.htm that mentions problems with the Soviet lifting platform in 1969, but it didn't give any detail other than the rockets falling and exploding. I also found information on the Vostok disaster that killed around 50 people, but that was in 1980, well after the race to the moon was over. Which disaster are you pointing out?

Though, as an aside, NASA's predecessor, NACA, was pronounced letter by letter.

I claim that, historically, companies that depend on patents and litigation for their income tend to crater. Some classic examples include the Wright patents and the Calotype patent.

Microsoft's PR department is backpedaling against Brad Smith's statements in Fortune. One of two things is going to occur. One, Ballmer or Gates will smack down Brad Smith and all will continue as before. Two, Microsoft's sales problems with Vista will gain political traction for Brad Smith within Microsoft, and Microsoft will turn into a lawsuit juggernaut. If point two comes to pass, Microsoft will bleed slowly, just like all the other companies that have depended on lawsuits for income.

Do you really think our military technology is designed only for use against terrorists? Because it's not. A B-2 bomber that can drop 20 bombs on 20 different targets will be just as useful--if not moreso--against another "superpower" as against insurgent strongholds. The only real difference is that we'll have to actually work to establish air and space superiority, as opposed to taking it for granted like we do now.

I also dispute the assertion that Germany was the "most advanced war machine of its time"--not compared to the United States once we became involved. Was there any point during the war when the Germans were producing 9,000 aircraft per month? I'll grant that aircraft production isn't the sole measure of industry power, but I doubt Germany had anything comparable in terms of its industrial production.

It would be like a Gee Bee racer. Doolittle was one of the few who could tame this beast, and he quit while he was ahead.

How would you rate a car that might roll over when you cranked the engine? "Mad Max"?

And don't forget Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan, who in 1935 left New York headed for California, but ended up in Ireland.

(While he claimed it was a mistake, it's believed that he probably meant to go to Ireland and filed a false flight plan after the FAA refused to approve him for a solo trans-Atlantic flight)

It's been done by Joseph Kittinger in a balloon:

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Explorers_ Record_Setters_and_Daredevils/Kittinger/EX31.htm

http://www.guzer.com/videos/space_parachute.php

What's the fun of a high altitude balloon if you can't jump from the balloon?

"During his descent, he reached speeds up to 614 miles per hour"

The light aircraft industry went into decline after World War II and never really recovered. The technology was stagnant at entry level. There were dramatic improvememnts in travel by road, by commercial air. Take away the lawsuits and nothing much changes, General Aviation - An Overview

Yes, patents can be abused, as with submarine patents. And patents can slow technological progress, as with the wing warping patent battles. But I don't think it logically follows that patents are always bad, and that technological progress would be faster without them. After all, the patent system was created to reduce trade secrecy and and encourage invention, and it certainly does that, however imperfectly.

Well, effectively, they did. There was nothing that could be done at that point to save them.

While I do agree that there was a high chance of them being unconscious the fact is that if they were conscious they could have survived if NASA would have gotten it's head out of it's ass and listened to Project Manhigh

Tell that to Goodyear, Fuji Film, Met Life, and the vast number of other companies that operate them. And don't forget to mention it to ESPN, ABC Sports, Fox Sports, and all the other networks who use them for their sports coverage.

As to WWII, the blimp was used very successfully. To quote: "The United States was the only power to use airships during World War II, and the airships played a small but important role. The Navy used them for minesweeping, search and rescue, photographic reconnaissance, scouting, escorting convoys, and antisubmarine patrols. Airships accompanied many oceangoing ships, both military and civilian. Of the 89,000 ships escorted by airships during the war, not one was lost to enemy action.

This is the REAL highest balloon flight.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Lighter_th an_air/20th_cent_records-2/LTA12.htm

and I suspect no one will ever come close because it takes the backing of an org like the US airforce. Not only is it the highest ballon flight but HE JUMPED OUT making it also the longest and farthest human free fall. The only person to break the sound barrier without an aircraft. Now that is is baaaaaaaddddd aaaaaaaasssss. All that just to test a space suit. :)

Yep the US air force is pretty sweet.

If my aging memory serves correct, one of the key issues that killed off America's SST project was potential damage to the Ozone layer. Has this problem been solved, or simply ignored?

I'm not certain which SST program you mean (SST just means supersonic transport, and includes the Concorde) ... perhaps one of the more aggressive ideas like the National Aerospace Plane concept of the 1980's.

People were worried about ozone damage, but unless it was really catastrophic an environmental concern like that would never stop a major project if there was money to be made, short of a major international treaty.

No, economic and engineering factors killed the NASP and similar projects. It was cold-war thinking that wasn't even doable on a military budget at the time, and is questionable if it's doable now. It certainly had no chance of producing a profitable civilian commercial venture. Sure, NY to Tokyo in 2 hours is great, but not if you have to play 1.5 million for a ticket.

Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights.

Boeing layoffs accounted for the slump in Seattle during the 70s.

And the summer construction is the reason behind I5 being reduced to 2 lanes. That is mostly over until next year. http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/construction/

It's funny. I just flew back from a visit to one of aviation's great monuments: Kill-Devil Hills, where the Wright brothers figured out how to build a controllable aircraft and actually flew it.

The interesting thing about the Wright Brothers is that they approached the "aviation problem" with a totally different view of how the Europeans were approaching it. They studied the European data for why it didn't work, rather than why it did. They discovered, for example, that the Lilienthal tables of aerodynamic performance were far more inaccurate than anyone realized.

Perhaps, with all the effort that we're seeing toward research on the "fusion problem" we ought to ask ourselves, why this isn't working, instead of how it can. And then perhaps someone can think of something better than the brute force methods that everyone seems to enjoy funding. The turn of the last century was one where many governments were throwing money at all sorts of outlandish research projects to figure out how to aviate. Socially this feels remarkably similar to the "fusion problem" of today.

OK, so the first "cold fusion" experiments weren't the real thing. How about Sonoluminescence?
And let's not stop there-- there are many other theories about how one might be able to get fusion energy surplusses on a smaller scale. Ultimately, this may be a class of problem like the power to weight ratio that the Wright Brothers noticed.

Where are those Wright Brother types when you need them?

As old as powered flight. The Wright Brothers patented a wing warping system that was used on the Wright Flier, which was of course, the first powered heavier than air craft to successfuly fly.

Very true, and Slashdot readers might be interested to know that wing warping was the subject of a huge patent battle between the Wrights and Glenn Curtiss. See here and here. The consensus is that the patent fight significantly inhibited US aircraft development at the time.

After my last trip from Miami to Australia I got curious about the longest scheduled airline flight these days. It seems that as of last summer there's a Newark-to-Singapore flight, SQ 21, that lasts 18 hours and 35 minutes non-stop on a stripped-down (no first class!) Airbus 340-500. (The return, SQ 22, is a bargain at only 18:25.) The distance is 9534 statute miles (8285 nautical miles); the article is in error on this.

Of course, things were worse in the old days. There used to be 21-23 hour nonstop flights from London to the U.S. west coast on Lockheed L-1649A Super Constellation Starliners (see Starliner if you'd like to buy your own), but perhaps the all-time record is held by KLM:

"Perhaps the most famous day in the early history of KLM was October 1, 1931, when the airline began regular passenger service between Amsterdam and Batavia (now known as Jakarta in Indonesia) using Fokker F.12 aircraft fitted with four luxury seats. The trip lasted 10 entire days, including 81 hours of flying time. It was the longest regularly scheduled flight offered by any airline in the world."

Actually you are completely wrong. There were 3 apollo astronauts killed during the "Apollo Mission" or 1/17 of the total number of apollo astronauts since there were 17 missions. Seeing as there has been 114 Shuttle missions to date and only 2 accidents that makes the shuttle Far superior in terms of accidents. I am not saying that the shuttle is safer, I just want people to remember that there were accidents during the space race of the 60's. http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/SPACEFLIGH T/Apollo_1/SP49.htm

Thanks for the info. The blackbird was stealth too, though. But the Nighthawk was the first, you're right, so it's the one which is usually called "stealth". *gingerly hands you your nit back*

Wanting to put a good light on a July 13th Launch, here is an item I came across:

First lighter-than-air transatlantic flight. The British dirigible R-34, commanded by Maj. George H. Scott, left Firth of Forth, Scotland (July 2, 1919), and touched down at Mineola, L.I., 108 hr. later. The eastbound trip was made in 75 hr. (completed July 13, 1919)

There is an image of the dirigible in the link, and they have a large version of the image, clearly showing that it has 4 engines and other interesting features. The link refers to the R-34 as a Navy dirigible, the year of 1919 is correct, so I guess it is the same one that made the trip ending on July 13th.
Of course the STS-114 flight will not end on the 13th, but I wanted to show that aviation pioneers are not at all afraid of the 13th. They just do it.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary /kittinger/DI29.htm At the time, he was a captain, but I think he is mostly known as "Col. Joe". Freefall from 102,000 feet. I remember seeing this on the discovery wings (now military channel) years ago. What a way to free fall! 600+MPH.

This flight wasn't the first non stop unfueled flight, but the fastest.

The first [centennialofflight.gov] was in 1987 and was another Burt Rutan built plane which took 9 days to do the trip!

No, he didn't. They were practically running on fumes when they landed:

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Explorers_ Record_Setters_and_Daredevils/rutan/EX32.htm

Rutan and Yeager completed their journey when they touched down at Edwards Air Force Base at 8:06 a.m. on December 23, 1986. The entire 24,986-mile trip had taken 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds, or a little more than 216 hours. During their trip, they had averaged around 116 miles per hour (187 kilometers per hour), and when they landed, they only had a few gallons of fuel left.

...and Jeanne Yeager (who is Chuck's daughter, I believe).

Not according to this site. It seems that they are not related.

Shortly after the WW1 and before commercial air travel became popular, "barnstorming" aviators would "buzz" small towns or county fairs, using of one of the local farm fields as a temporary runway, and offer airplane rides to customers. These flights didn't have a "real destination". The purpose was not travel, but experience.

The emerging space tourism industry is about to begin it's "barnstorming" days, selling rides for the experience, not the destination. Initially it will only suborbital flights. Soon, they will be competing for altitude and duration of weightlessness records. Then someone will start offering a "once around" package.

Space flight as a means to an end is not going to happen until you have and end with meaning. Why "sit on a thousand pounds of explosives" to go to the moon? There's nothing there but grey rocks and dust. Mars, same thing, but the rocks are red. There's no real destination, no purpose in going except for the experience of being there, and that won't change until we get some sort of permanent outpost set up there.

A&B may have had a harder time of it, but after "Wrong Way" Corrigan, even Lindbergh had it tough - more people turned up to Corrigan's ticker tape parade than Lindbergh's.

I'm not sure what message that sends out, other than "we love the people who try crazy things (provided you live)". The closest recently have been the adventures of Steve Fossett and Richard Branson (amongst others).

Only at FL60 and below.

Ref: http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary /airspace/DI79.htm

Famous? Maybe, but wrong.

"Helicopter flight was probably the first type of flight envisioned by man. The idea dates back to ancient China, where children played with homemade tops of slightly twisted feathers attached to the end of a stick. They would rapidly spin the stick between their hands to generate lift and then release the top into free flight." - US Centennial of Flight Commission

back in the early days, the first programmers were women.

Actually, some of the first computers were women. NACA, I guess a precursor to NASA, used to have women whose job title was "computer", because they would do calculations for things such as forces and pressures in wind tunnels.

More about this here:

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Evolution_ of_Technology/Computers/Tech37.htm

The ranger series of robots paved the way for Neil and Buzz.

they flew between 1961 and 1965

The ranger series of missions were pretty crude. they were cameras on legs which were mostly designed to test the radio controlled retro rocket system for a safe landing... heck the earliest rangers were actually tasked with hitting the moon at any speed to see if it could be done.

The future robots are many, many orders of magnitude more sophisticated, and will work to establishing an infrastructure (better maps, other needful things) for future astronauts, rather than just seeing if it is possible to go there.

I'd say he'd probably have gone; for example, all the way around the world without refuelling.

Scaled composites was started because he had proven expertise in composite aerospace vehicles, and Scaled composite was the company he started to leverage that to generate income.

It's their damned airport.

Airports recieve public funding for construction and maintainence, at least in the US, and I'm willing to bet overseas as well. They should make an effort to at least try to serve the public good if they're using public money, and part of that is not blaring CNN 24 hours a day in airport terminals, as they do at Laguardia in New York. The counter assistants also do not have the power to turn them off. If people want the news, they should bring a radio with *them*. My feeling is, the default state of a public area should be silence, and everyone should be free to bring what they want in as long as it isnt distrubing anyone.

People in TV induced comas are known for their lack of situational awareness.

Ah, the classic condescending "you watch TV so I'm smarter than you argument."


The effect of television watching on metabolic rate.(This dosen't seem to want to make a link, you can find it at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8424001&dopt=Abstract ) It goes down, way down. I've observed what the grandparent poster was talking about very often, by the way, even in very intelligent people: TV grabs your attention in ways that things in real life can't compete with. The light flickering into your eyes, especially with TV with fast cuts (like commercials or any modern station really) actually triggers the same physical response as moving leaves in a jungle would, causing in the long term desensitization to stimulus via prolonged "immediate" stress going unrelieved. The grandparent wasn't implying that TV watchers were stupid, he was talking literally about the coma-like state that people absorbed in a television show enter. In a public place, I'm not talking about in a bar or anything here, I think that that's beyond the bounds of good taste.

Anyway, most satellites in low orbit, around 250 miles ... Satellites in higher orbits, such as geosynchronis

FWIW, geostationary satellites, a subset of geosynchronous orbits, are a little over 22 miles above the equator.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary /GEO_ORBIT/DI146.htm

Oh, and the RCS thrusters were developed by NASA for use in the Mercury capsules.

Do you have a reference for that? Note that the Russian manned spaceflight predated NASA, and had RCS as well. It's not like NASA invented RCS.

But they did. And Russia did, too. Independently of each other. Whoever did it first doesn't really matter in this case, since they BOTH did all the work required to develop the systems. They weren't exactly sharing information.

My reference is here.

The world already has a standardized launch system, courtesy of the Russians. It's called a vostok, and is actually an incremental improvement over the R-7 launch vehicle, which in turn was developed from ICBM technologies.

However, the world also long ago standardized on several designs for an internal combustion engine. That doesn't stop manufacturers from looking for better solutions.

Oh, and for those further up the thread (not the parent of this comment), I'm one of those Yanks you're talking about. Funny how until this paragraph I never even mentioned the US, isn't it? A criticism lacking in the ability to inform and instruct is just a flame.

Err, the first person killed in an aircraft crash was an Army officer the Wrights were showing their aircraft to. They were actively trying to sell it as a military vehicle. This is the story of Lt. T. E. Selfridge, the first military casualty of an aircraft mishap. Orville was piloting the aircraft, and Selfridge was killed when the wing warped and the propeller broke.

This article talks about the Wrights' courting of the military, without bothering to mention Selfridge's death. Interesting, what? Can't be tarnishing the names of the Holy Brothers Wright...

The rest of your post is right on.

B-52s are bombers, not fighters. While a B-52 probably could, given a crack crew, and apparently in this case did, shoot down a MIG fighter, that's not what they were built for, and I guarantee you the B-52 in question wasn't flying over North Vietnam for the purpose of engaging enemy fighters.

No, Linebacker II was an aerial bombing campaign targeting civilian targets - Vietnamese cities. It was Nixon way of trying to end the war on his terms, not those of Congress. And he killed a thousand plus people, most of them almost certainly civilians, to do it. Moore is simply "translating" the plaque into more historically revealing terms.

To quote one sympathetic account of the Linebacker II bombing campaign:

In light of the 20,000 tons of bombs that were dropped on the citizens of Hanoi and Haiphong, there were relatively few casualties. Only 1,318 people were killed in Hanoi and 306 in Haiphong, a truly remarkable number.

So no, the plaque does not proudly proclaim that the bomber killed thousands of Vietnamese civilians. It proudly proclaims that the bomber took part in an operation in which 1624 (over a thousand, but not "thousands and thousands") Vietnamese, mostly (not exclusively) civilians, were killed. So while Moore is exaggerating, he's actually reading the plaque with far more attention to allusion than you, or especially Hardy Law, with your (plural) complete lack of historical knowledge or intellectual discernment, seem capable of doing. By proclaiming that the plane was part of Linebacker II, the plaque is indeed bragging about an operation designed to kill a large number of Vietnamese civilians.

For an example of the sort of history he no doubt had in mind, see this account of the combat history of the B-52.