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"Like just recently when the US papers published all those articles about a non-existant war in Cuba and got the US into a war with Spain."

That wasn't recent, it was about 100 years ago. There was definitely a war in Cuba at the time (the term "concentration camp" was invented here for one of the methods Spain was using to exterminate Cubans). It was a period of colonial horror visited upon Cuba which was unmatched until the Soviet reigh of terror during the 1960s.

What was "non-existant" was any act of war by Spain against the United States. This is what Hearst fabricated in his newspapers.

If you still doubt there was a war in Cuba, please check into the life of Jose Marti: "Marti went back to New York where he lived from 1881 to 1895. In that year, he left to join the war for Cuban independence which he had so painstakingly organized. There he died in one of its first skirmishes." (source)

Whittle didn't deserve his patent. There was prior art as far back as 1910.

Stupid patents were issued back then too...

Not quite....but I did to get Mandrake 9.1 RC2 to install and run
inside VMWare Workstation 4.0 Beta (this is a few days b4 the 9.1 final release).
Check out the screenshots.

There is something seemingly dangerous about running beta software inside beta VMs...

The cruising speed of a typical commercial jutliner is about 550 mph.

The speed of sound is about 761 mph (sea level, bleah bleah.)

Invest in some skepticism.

> The problem is that Santos Dumont did not make any fundamental breakthroughs.

That is not true. 14-bis had ailerons before anyone else. He was also the first to use internal combustion engines, while still working in ballons, and to steer dirigibles around. The Demoiselle was also the first ultralight airplane. And BTW, among other inventions he created the wristwatch, commissioning his friend Cartier to manufacture the first wristwatch ever, to be used while flying.

> according to this page [lycos.co.uk] the Demoiselles, which first flew in 1907, did not have ailerons, or wing warping. Just rudder and elevator.

If this was true, how could he reach 100km/h speed and 20km range as he did? But it was false. The Demoiselle used wing warping, simply because the ailerons used at the 14-bis weren't simple and small enough for such a light airplane.

> The problem is that without exclusive manufacture and distribution how can one profit from an invention?

In a word, royalties. Obviously there should be an upper limit, and the option of contesting them in courts if they are deemed prohibitive for a given use.

> Except that "using" cannot be as clearly defined as we'd like. Wrights thought Curtiss was using their invention, and Curtiss thought he didn't.

That would be an argument against patents, because they have the potential of throwing a whole field in disarray, like they are doing now for computing.

I figure Australian Pilots are underestimated. Just because they are down under...

This > fellow has been flying from Sydney to London, something like two years after Lindbergh flew to Paris. It's way further though.

Mach is an accepted measurement of speed, and when used as such it does indeed have a specific value. Reference Mach is measured at 15 deg. Celsius at sea level, yielding ~340 m/s or 1224 km/h (someone feel free to doublecheck the math, conversion and multiplication errors abound when you post).

So while, yes, the speed of sound does indeed change with altitude (due to temperature changes, which is related to pressure changes), the reference Mach value does not. So Mach 7.6 was 9306 km/h or 5784 mph.

"The thing I don't like about Mach numbers is it's not consistent. Reason being, the speed of sound changes based on your altitude. Higher, where the air is thinner, sound travels slower."

Untrue. Sound travels slower because the air is colder, not thinner. The speed of sound in the Earth's atmosphere is proportional to the square root of the temperature, nothing else. http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/mach.htm

Here's an atmosphere simulator where you can pick an altitude and see the speed of sound. As it says, "the speed of sound depends on the temperature and the gas," not on pressure.

OTOH, the public didn't care when they did it, either. Personally, I just don't think anyone finds ballooning exciting; it's been around for too long.

But would anyone disagree that the world population would tune out Britney to watch the first manned Mars landing? No one pays attention to space because no manned missions have gone anywhere new in 40 years.

Moderation Totals: Offtopic=1, Insightful=2, Funny=1, Total=4.

Add to that Observant +1 (note to previous moderator, how can parent be offtopic?)

It's a weak lead into to a scattergun shot at successes/failures of DSL/CableModem/etc. from server and client side. Of all service providers, though, PacBell is stable and not likely to evaporate, like Covad and others. Love or hate PacBell, if the service works and is reliable (not really all that unusual, from anecdotes) there's no reason to drop it, other than for the cost. I'd love to have it, myself and I live in spitting distance of the main switch, in my hamlet.

I pay $19.95 a month for the benefit of dial up (yeah, it could be less, but not by much) and by habit avoid many large downloads because I'd rather not have my phone line tided of for hours, while 56K (which is *NOT* actual, but theoretical, in practice much less for binary (.zip or .gz) downloads) does it's thing, and disconnects occasionally. $30 more per month is an incredible deal.

OT Stuff:
All that said, here's something I tried to submit and it got rejected, hope someone enjoys it, it's pretty cool, particularly if you have a fast connection:

Nosing around the U.S. Geological Survey I found this nifty press release concerning a joint effort between USGS and Florida International University, TerraFly, which allows viewers to 'fly' over the Continental US, but still in its infancy. In two years nearly all (probably excluding some sites for security purposes) of the continental US will be viewable, followed by satellite maps and 3D views, all through a browser.

Thanks for the answers.

Not sure how I can do this? What info I know is still classified.

Well there is a difference between classified and known by others. If it something that has been discussed / investigated and while still classified is known to the outside world, like everyone knew about No Such Agency well before it was acknowledged, and the same goes for Echelon.

Two reasons: one, because it's illegal to remove it and the project would be cancelled, and two because I called after posting and verified that things have not changed with regards to the presidential directive. I trust the individual who gave me the answers so I believe it's still in place.

I'd like to point out that millions of people do illegal things every day,just because something is illegal doesnt mean it doesnt happen. The directive maybe in place, the question is is the code? I know from a project I worked on in the UK that their were many levels of deceit going on, the only one that was eventually exposed was the massive cost overruns in the order of £800M thats about ~$1.2BN US on the project, it was only exposed when an investigaive reporter found out, what they never found out was that weapon system did not work even after the cost overruns, after the whole thing had subsided the project was quietly dropped.

Yes, but you're not going to like the answer. The project is still alive and grows each year and I was party to phone calls and awards where the project was lauded for giving concrete results. They're not keep the project funded with millions every year just to give us contractors revenue. It's a good project. More than thant is classified still...sorry. If you're really interested, send me an email and I'll tell you off-line the unclassified stuff and you can draw your own conclusions.

Sounds interesting, it depends who the targets are, if they were Bin Ladens mob and they got some of them that would be a good outcome, if they were tracking your average Joe for signs he might be commiting thoughtcrimes I would be very concerned, like Oppenhiemer said "We're all Sons of Bitches now". I don't get involved in that sort of stuff now, I was up for being involved in another project, fortunately I didnt take it, that was stuff linked to SDI, 22 of the top techies on the project wound up dead in various mysterious circumstances, what was funny was another guy I worked with later on in my carreer had an offer from them and chose to turn them down, you could say we were both quite lucky. Heres a link

I've heard of these books and I'm skeptical for two reasons. One is I truly don't care (despite me posting about it -- I just want to clear up misconceptions and let people draw their own conclusions), I've been there, done that, and I really didn't like all the classified stuff. Second, is can you trust the books. Many people aren't aware of this, but when you get an NSA clearance (different than DoD), you actually waive your first amendment rights to free speech. You may not publish anything without their consent (and I truely hope I'm not violating that because I do respect the government and it's security needs) and review. So you have one of two cases: the person was formerly on the inside and is now writing a book that his been reviewed by the NSA and published with their consent, or they are an outsider and everything they are publishing could be based on rumor and heresay. Draw your own conclusions... :-)

Read the books, check the FOIA documents for yourself, no one has said they are wrong, in fact US administations have made no comments, just hoping it would all quietly fade away. Always check sources, thats my motto. There is a clear distinction for me between those that can and cannot back up their claims. Both books are reasonable accounts of what is documented as far as I have been able to verify myself, it's like the whole MKUltra/Delta stuff, in 10 years everyone will acknowledge it and it will be just another thing thats in the media (like the MKUltra fluff of Conspiracy Theory), unfortunately governments and their depts work by saying "That was then, a completely different administration,we have changed now and are really cuddly", sadly in my expereince it's business as usual.

Has anyone noticed that the X-33 looks remarkably like a penguin when sitting in the vertical takeoff position?

Interestingly enough, the X33 is now dead. I'd be willing to bet that Microsoft had something to do with its demise. That would have been a helluvan advertisement for Linux!
official X-33 site with no penguin-like images.

I'm not sure if Yuri is still alive.
Yuri died in a test-plane crash some years later, so if you could get his signature on that capsule you'd have really worth something.
Besides Google is your friend on this one: I found a short biography in less than two minutes ;-)

Russian schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) was proposing manned and unmanned spaceflight using rockets while Robert Goddard was still in diapers.

Tsiolkovsky, who was self-taught from the age of 10, was inspired by sci-fi pioneer Jules Verne. He became a writer himself but left fiction behind to work on the more theoretical problems of space exploration.

His contributions to the field are too numerous to list here, but here is his seminal "Plan of Space Exploration" of 1926:

1. Creation of rocket airplanes with wings.
2. Progressively increasing the speed and altitude of these airplanes.
3. Production of real rockets - without wings.
4. Ability to land on the surface of the sea.
5. Reaching excape velocity (about 8 Km/second), and the first flight into Earth orbit.
6. Lengthening rocket flight times in space.
7. Experimental use of plants to make an artificial atmosphere in spaceships.
8. Using pressurized space suits for activity outside of spaceships.
9. Making orbiting greenhouses for plants.
10. Constructing large orbital habitats around the Earth.
11. Using solar radiation to grow food, to heat space quarters, and for transport throughout the Solar System.
12. Colonisation of the asteroid belt.
13. Colonisation of the entire Solar System and beyond.
14. Acheivement of individual and social perfection.
15. Overcrowding of the Solar System and the colonization of the Milky Way (the Galaxy).
16. The Sun begins to die and the people remaining in the Solar System's population go to other suns.
    

Currently, we're about half way down the list.

More info on the recognised father of astronautics can be found at the Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics, which also has a more complete biography. Even NASA recognises that modern rocketry began with his endeavours in this article oriented for kids.

Goddard may have been the first to launch a rocket in modern times (as earlier posters pointed out, the Chinese were using rockets centuries earlier), but he followed and everyone else followed in Tsiolkovsky's footsteps.

There has been extensive research on this:

Including, but not limited too:

1)This Article in Scientific American
2)This Reasearch Paper
3)This NASA report


Just FYI ;-)