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NASA Tests Hypersonic Blackswift
dijkstra writes "Blackswift was previously rumored to be a super secret hypersonic scramjet-based aircraft co-named HTV-3X, essentially a 21st century version of the SR-71. Today NASA has unveiled the real Blackswift (video link), which uses pulse detonation engines (PDEs). A PDE is essentially a modern version of the old V-1 buzz bomb engine. This engine requires significantly fewer moving parts and achieves much higher efficiency than a turbofan, and is technically able to go hypersonic without any kind of 'dual-stage' engine."
Wow, I really can't stand Fox news.
Please warn us when linking to Fox News. Jesus those people are dumb.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why does every news website feel the need to design their own broken video player?
The guy couldn't even tell the audience how fast Mach 5 to Mach 10 was. Like what? 3,500,to 7,500 miles an hour? Approximately, ok? Oooo, ten thousand..That's fast.. Thanks babe. You're not that ugly either.
What?
I'd prefer to stay stupid. Thanks.
Just because Fox interviews a NASA analyst doesn't mean NASA developed the thing. The video clearly says it's the air force that's developing this.
Holy shit that was a pain to watch. Billy is a fucking retard.
"Can you explain in english not in science-talk."
Oh, you mean english to people who aren't slack-jawed idiots. The way he says it makes it sound like he's proud that he's so fucking stupid.
What a fucking jackass. How can someone that stupid be put out there as a news-person? On national television?
I'm hoping for the one day when the scientist being interviewed tells the guy to get a fucking education and then explains what's going on in adequate detail with plenty of scientific concepts.
Sorry, but 'fewer' moving parts? :)
This article is wrong in so many ways. Let's just say, that the previous rumor mentioned was closer to the truth than whatever this is that Fox News is reporting.
...and we still can't find a certain Muslim hiding in a cave, or defeat his low-tech followers. We spend millions just to kill one terrorist, while they achieve their missions with a handful of dollars. And every convert to their side is in essence another kill to us.
rather surprised... Cheney must have approved (or leaked it)
but this does explain all the UFO sightings lately eh? LOL!
...only one small problem that I can see.
With the current trend in price hikes for fossil fuels, would this also be reflected in (presumably to be used in this vehicle) cryogenic fuel? If so, then a tank full of hydrogen is gonna cost a bomb (pun intended) and this will be reflected in seat prices. Hypersonic travel is going to be prohibitively expensive. If you're not in Government and taking bribes, or you're not obscenely rich to begin with, or you're not dipping your hands in someone else's pockets in some other way, or you're not flight crew, then forget about getting within spitting distance of one of these aircraft.
While I'm pissing on rugs here, what new infrastructure (if any) will be required to accommodate these skyliners? Ten mile runways?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Jesus built this hot rod.
The AIR FORCE is conStructing this HYPER sonic jet exploder thingy, with the help of JESUS, in order to fly at 10 times the speed of sound over countries where POOR people who HATE us live, in order to deliver with very high efficiency SWEETS and other confections which they need to live. They'll drop right out of the bom...CANDY bar bay. The Pentagon calls this the SNICKER candy bomb. At least they were snickering when they told the story to Fox News. Praise the lord
"Why yes, I HAVE been watching Fox news lately. How can you tell?"
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
My favorite part was how the news anchor was so aggressively stupid that my brain pulled itself out of my head and strangled itself with my ears. Good gods, is this what American "news" is like?
Could this be the Aurora, the "triangular shaped" airplane with the "donuts on a rope" contrail that various people have reported seeing over the years? (I saw something on discovery channel about it)
now, don't get me wrong. this is a cool bird. but I wouldn't say it was cooler than the SR-71.
I've found a few better articles and videos, here, here , here & here.
It's probably designed to be the replacement for the "blackstar" program, which doesn't exist, but is hands-down the very coolest thing out there, the only thing cooler would be a functioning Orion spacecraft.
But this looks like it might have the capability of taking the place of the blackstar "mothership", although I bet with less performance & payload; as this isn't designed to be a Mach 3+ cruise nuclear bomber, that's understandable. but those cold-war birds have got to be tired by now, and looking forward to retirement. i think one would look great in my driveway as a static display.
I do wonder what they are going to use to replace the orbital component, which was probably based on the X-20. Maybe a NASP? The X-43?
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
"This engine requires significantly less moving parts"
Fewer is for quantities you can count. Less is for quantities you can't count. So unless you're implying that NASA scientists took a V1 Buzz Bomb engine (whatever that is) and poured out a heterogeneous liquid stream of moving parts until only puddles remained inside, it's FEWER moving parts!
between a scramjet and the PDE? Both seem to operate by burning the fuel at supersonic speed ?
Right after the FOX talking head asked "How much would this cost?" I seriously expected him to ask the NASA guy if he would eat the plane if it was made of barbecue spare ribs.
I was laughing so hard I thought I would start coughing up blood, until I realized a majority of the American population is EXACTLY as smart as those news anchors. Then I realizes something truly terrifying: those same Americans have access to nuclear arms.
We saw a strange object in the sky over Goldendale Wa. (USA) while stargazing from our yard. It seemed to change velocity rapidly and was followed by a biz-jet at est 2000' AGL at full throttle about a minute behind. Multiple sightings were reported in Yakima and Spokane. I always figured it was some spook project.
There's that word. "Essentially".
I don't know what to feel, I feel dirty allowing NoScript to access fox, And then this guy: "In English not in science please" I feel offended, English is not my first language and i feel offended. America deserves better! and you know the sad part? Fox hands this "Know-How" to other TV station in other countries and all you see it's Fox clones babbling and drooling and making up local news. I always have wondered if theres any way to stop that. 4th power should be accountable for misleading people intelligence. Someday they will be put in a wall, no make up, no lights, no power ranger sets.. plain old soviet Russian wall >First plane to the face and make them ONE BY ONE admit that they have been deceiving and misinforming the people, and they have to apologize and leave for ever. It's information anyway isn't it? This is a forum about the freedom of information isn't it?
:)
.. excuse my rant... now i feel better
Pulse detonation engines: This used to be called "piston engine"
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
The V1 flying bomb used a pulse jet engine rather than a pulse detonation engine - the difference being that a PDE burns at a supersonic rate whereas a regular PJ wouldn't be able to get to those speeds.
Pulse jets are surprisingly easy to build, and I'm going to flagrantly link to my own build log of my engine being built with videos of it running/imploding here.
Videos are all here.
Cheers.
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
The difference is that they're very very different kinds of engines really. Sorta like the difference between a turbofan and a piston engine in an aircraft. Both suck in fuel and use a propeller to push the air towards the back, but they're very different engines anyway.
A scramjet is, sorta, an afterburner without the turbojet in front of it. Think just a de Laval nozzle, sorta, where the airplane's own speed shoves the air from the front, and you inject the fuel and light it in the back. It can only operate at hypersonic speeds, because it does need the air coming in really hard and fast, and it burns fuel continuously. There is no need for pulses or detonations.
A pulsejet, well, think a pipe with a valve in front. Sorta like this, with "front" being downwards:
The T is the valve.
Air comes in, you inject the fuel, and ignite it. The pressure closes the valve, so the only way the burnt gasses can go is backwards, pushing your aircraft forward. Then the pressure equalises, the valve opens again, and the cycle starts all over again.
This one can _only_ operate in pulses. On the up side, it can operate at subsonic speeds too. It's also a very simple and robust engine. The V1's pulsejet could be riddled with holes and still generate most of the thrust. The RAF found it easier to just tip it over, with the tip of the fighter's wing pushing the V1's wing upwards, than shoot them.
Downside, also generates massive vibrations. The buzz of the V1s could be heard from the ground. It's a bit like flying a jackhammer. Which is one reason it never got too popular for manned aircraft, or aircraft which were supposed to fly more than once.
Well, that's the simple explanation anyway. There are more modern designs which, for example, do away with the valve and essentially just choke the flow via a nozzle to achieve the same effect. But that's the general gist of it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's potentially around the earth in two and a half hours!!!!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
What was that UFO thing at the end? I know FOX news has some stupid people but that blonde had a good point about the relative velocity given the positioning and parallax of the camera, the movement of the background and such.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Do not post Fox news links, the topic will be almost ignored and replaced by our hatred of Fox News. Really, I was hoping for a more interesting discussion, but sure, I can vent on Fox with the best of them.
Air Force Research Laboratory's Propulsion Directorate
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/afrl/rz/
I thought I'd post a useful link rather than bashing some corporate spew machine.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The cavalier attitude of the puppets at Fox News are exceedingly annoying. I can't decide if I'm upset or sad that the American public eats up their garbage.
Near the beginning when they are showing a COMPUTER GENERATED animation of the plane, the dim-witted Fox anchor crows "Check that out, you see that go off the runway?". Wow, everything shown on TV and in movies must be real!
Fox turd also spouted "In English, not in science talk". Instead of inferring that scientists don't speak English, he would've done the public a much better service by using a phrase like "in layman's terms". Maybe the Fox clowns need take some remedial English classes instead of hiding behind their condescending attitudes.
Until now, I believed that a local Czech commercial TV (that I will not name here since everybody knows what TV I am talking about :-)) is as dumb as one can get, but, wow, THIS was an eye opener... I sympathize with all the inteligent Americans. Poor you... (There must be quite a lot of them, though, MIT seems to prosper quite well.)
Ezekiel 23:20
Whatever NASA/the Air Force/DARPA is admitting to, they already have new secret technology that makes what you know about obsolete.
Whatever NASA/the Air Force/DARPA is admitting to, they already have new secret technology that makes what you know about obsolete.
For me (German ISP/IP address) the link leads to random commercials. Each time I try it another one.
Fuck Fox News, and thanks to the posters who provided alternative links about the project...
C - the footgun of programming languages
Even worse... that's above the average level of intelligence of, and was likely confusing to, the majority of Americans.
The problem is getting steadily worse, as there is an inverse relationship between being educated and breeding.
Half of America gets the idea its okay to be ignorant because they see people like that in front of them day in and day out. They see their leaders barely able to keep from drooling on themselves. And now we're in a downward spiral of a culture that focuses on trying to under-think the next guy. For some reason we, as a formerly educated society, continue to allow these people to participate in society as full citizens, and allow them though social welfare and tax programs to continue to breed with the financial support of the responsible, educated, intelligent America.
Everything that Rupert Murdoch does is avowedly anti-intellectual. Over there it's FOX News and the New York Post; over here it's the Sun, the News of the World, and the current Labour government.
pulse engines will rattle them loose fer sure.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
(FX: Check notes)
You can take off, fly at 6 times the speed of sound *and* come back again?
Fantastic, it come back?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Watch secret footage of UFOs being launched by aliens !!
What, you mean like in your car's engine?
(yes, I know what a pulse jet is, I'm making fun of Fox News)
I really do wonder what they're dicking around with out there. The two bits of evidence I heard of supporting the idea of a fancy post-SR-71 wonderplane were the donuts-on-a-rope contrails (which the link says can be produced by conventional aircraft under the right conditions) and linear earthquakes picked up on seismographs that do not follow any existing fault line that seemingly originate in the atmosphere. I've seen that "fact" mentioned before but have no idea how accurate it is.
http://tinwiki.org/wiki/Aurora#Contrail
I have no proof one way or the other, I just think it would be surprising for the government to retire something as valuable as the Blackbird without having an even better replacement in the works. Then again, using logic to explain government decisions is often a losing proposition.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
At least this propulsion system has been flying since at least 2005 (I don't remember the season). It sort of sounds like a piston engine, but leaves a contrail of "puffs" and appears to be very fast.
I heard what I thought was a strange-sounding small plane. Found the contrail, and the head growing far ahead of where the sound was coming from, and I couldn't see the contrail source. Maybe 20 seconds from hearing the sound from the north to seeing the head of the contrail disappear to the south. It was flying down the Front Range of the Rockies. I was just north of Gunbarrel, Colorado.
I googled around and found conspiracy nut sites talking about "Aurora", which fit my observations well. Since then, I've just been waiting for it to finally be revealed. I guess the research has gone on far enough to start production.
It disappoints me to see such unintelligent conversations he at /. I remember when when the reader comments where about the topic in general and not slamming the people. Does it make you feel like a smarter person to slam someone else who does not understand the technology? Are you so bigoted that you lower yourself to making fun of people who do not have the same understanding of a particular topic? The funny thing is who are you? Are you a nobody? At least these people have good jobs and are taking care of their family, can you say the same? And after reading that last line I bet you are defensive and ticked off thinking I am implying something when all I am doing is asking a question.
It is a sad state of affairs when all we care about is belittling someone else to make ourselves look better. What is really sad is I dont care if someone is liberal or conservative, we are all people and deserve to be treated with respect, and that is definitely not being displayed here. I hope for your sake that you get treated with the respect you give to others (which does not seem to be very much).
The leadership around the world has led to this demise in our thinking and compassion. We hear all the time politicians and political figures telling us and each other how stupid they are, so we follow their lead. I think we should be better than the people that govern our lands. Just remember what Politics really is poly meaning many, and a tic is a blook sucking insect. So politics must many many blood sucking insects. Dont become one of them.
We no longer use our brains to think we use them to react and express our feelings. Logic no longer prevails. The only stupid ones are the ones that do not realize that the leaders around the world are working together to own everything you and everything you have. They find new ways to keep our eyes off the ball and what is really going on in the world today. This green movement is a perfect example, why do you think it is called "Green"? Yea right, to save the planet, bull@#$% it is because someone is making some greenbacks on this BIG time! Do some research of your own, many people involved with the "Green" movement have been selling us "environmentally unfriendly" things for years. The heads of many of the "unfriendly" companies are the ones also funding the protests and the lobbyists to force laws into place that will restrict what we can do/buy/etc. I think it is a great idea for people to use light bulbs that use less electricity. However, the new light bulbs that they are passing laws to force everyone to are ridiculous, you want to save power and money on light bulbs, switch everything to LED bulbs. The use far less power and last even longer than the "new" bulbs. And the bigger problem is why are we passing laws when at least in the US we are supposed to be FREE?
So lose your freedom go green, follow our leaders and lose your soul. Believe everything you hear and read without validating anything yourself. Watch your carbon footprint, and eventually be charged for breathing. Is there a God, we better hope not or we will all burn in hell!
Have a great day!
According to the NASA "analyst" it's "very complicated" and it goes "real fast".
Durr. Me watch Fox. Me go fast.
Jesus those people are dumb.
Yacht, fancy house, nice car, holiday home etc etc.
Deleted
Not one single usable tidbit of info in this video clip. The "expert" could not even convert Mach numbers to MPH. Amazing.
In general pulse combustion is a poor idea compared to continuous combustion. You have huge variations in pressures, temperatures, and mixture ratios, all non-optimum for large parts of each cycle. You have poor efficiency as things are generating power for only part of each cycle, the rest of the time is wasted. and you have tremendous vibration and noise. Typical ramjet engines, even made of Hastelloy X and other exotic metals, burn up in just a few minutes, so you're talking about very short bursts of Mach 10, not any kind of extended cruise.
We distort. YOU comply.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It isn't just that they act dumb. It might be just me, but those Fox newsreaders give me the creeps. It's their eyes. Their body language and facial expression are so animated, but their eyes are so lifeless.
I may be politically biased against the network, but there is something in the flawless but soulless choreography of Fox news that stinks of evil. The effect reminds me of C.S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength, in which a government think tank called NICE manipulates its members using their ambitions and insecurities. As their ambition drives them toward the coveted membership in the inner circle, their fear drives them further into themselves. By the time they make it into the inner circle, there's nothing outwardly left of their humanity to enjoy it. They can pass superficial inspection, but the closer you look, the more obviously robotic they are.
What makes That Hideous Strength such an effective story of the supernatural is that the mechanisms of damnation are so psychologically plausible. Anybody with sufficient money could actually put the NICE methods for turning people into passive tools to the test.
I don't know about the people on the screen, but Fox definitely plays this game with its viewers. It appeals to greed and fear.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Pentagon 09 budget request $750M to fund hypersonic jet."
Pretty much all that exists of the project is this dodgy CGI animation which is not new, this (pdf) programme outline and some preliminary research into the engine The news here is that they want your money to do more research next year. This Fox news piece is to help smooth the way.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The key point that you have to remember about America is that there is a far greater range from high to low than in other nations. We have great leaders like Kennedy and Roosevelt punctuated by boobs like GWB. We have put men on the moon but cannot record votes accurately. The top 10% of US high school students outperform the top 10% from any other nation, yet our average is below almost any developed country.
I just want to say two things: Jack Cafferty & Lou Dobbs - Both not on FOX.
Yeah, that's flame bait baby - take a bite ...
The fuel has electrolytes. It's what planes crave.
Towards the Singularity.
Actually this is the result of Rupert Murdoch (an Australian) owning a lot of media world-wide. He puts the same sort of mindless drivel out everywhere he operates.
I'm hoping for the one day when the scientist being interviewed tells the guy to get a fucking education and then explains what's going on in adequate detail with plenty of scientific concepts.
That would have been awesome to all of us, but shortly after, Fox news and all the other news channels (even the one or two reputable ones) would turn this into a "Scientist wigs out on national TV" story. Fox in particular would be making fun of the scientist as if he's some sort of nutjob, making fun of the scientific terms he uses next as if he's gone into some sort of crazy rambling lunatic-speak. Telling a stupid waste of life such as this braindead jock to get a fucking education would seem perfectly rational and well-justified to us, but to Average Joe Sixpack it would seem like "Wow what's that guy's problem? He must be a kook! All scientists must be kooks! LOLZ kooky scientists!" And the usual crappy media circus would ensue, somewhat ironically resulting in a loss of credit for the scientific community.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'll go get the link off CNN or MSNBC ...... oh, snap they don't have one.
Very interesting read until I watched the news clip.
That clip completely killed all my curiosity and some how managed to give me a slight headache.
I was not prepared for a news cast by morons.
We should like totally change that cross thingie into a T.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You are wrong on the no one likes part.
There are plenty people out there who like that shiny-flashy braindead excuse for information.
So much, that CNN, NBC and like are flashing up and dumbing down to keep up.
See Outfoxed.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yeah, Fox News is for idiots, but the NASA guy did a very poor job. (I suspect Fox likes to pick out media challenged types whenever inviting anyone who might not be a conservative, or who might want Congress to spend money on something other than Iraq and corn subsidies.)
How about "In a regular jet engine, fuel is delivered continuously, which is why you hear a constant whoosh from the engines as the plane takes off. In a pulse detonation engine, fuel is delivered in rapid bursts. Each fuel burst explodes violently and propels the aircraft forward at speeds higher than can be reached with a regular jet engine. The result is a loud buzzing sound from the engines."
(OK. That's a little lame, but you get the picture.)
I chose this moment to stop listening to that report. I am always amazed at the simpletons on that channel, although since 2000 we have been in the dumb down the public era.
"My friends and acquaintances are not a random sample."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
As a conservative voter, it doesn't really matter to me that the rest of the world views both parties as conservative. It is a question of movement, do I want a government that will move toward more social spending and a larger public sector? No. I want a government what will move away from social spending and toward free markets and deregulation.
All your statement proves is that the rest of the world has even farther to go before they would be a place I'd ideally like to live.
That's exactly the attitude of a Fox News viewer, I know many of them.
If I had a quarter for every time I heard a more long-winded version of "Don't use science talk, I'd prefer to stay stupid, thanks" I'd be posting from a custom-built laptop on my custom-built hydrofoil-folding-sail-yacht docked on my private island with at least one hot chick who is there of her own free will.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Oh please. Do you even know how intelligent a person with 100 IQ is? Well, about half the people are below that...
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I'm not an idiot, but I play one on TV.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
What's more sad than anything is that Fox News got this story first (assuming that slashdot could not find a more legititmate source). Why are news outlets not interested in reporting scientific achievements anymore?
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
That was really The Onion right? Tell me it was the Onion before I run away screaming.... oh hell, I'll just do that now anyway.....
Yacht, fancy house, nice car, holiday home etc etc.
Not after he receives my 'Request for assistance' letter from Nigeria...
If Bill Hemmer is so stupid why did CNN employ him for ten years?
I think Hemmer's show competes with Oprah and Ellen and the other mid-day idiot trash.
If you're going for Oprah's audience, you're going after a bunch of complete imbeciles.
Oh well, I like how prejudice works.
Hemmer working for CNN golly what a smart respectable journalist.
Chetry working for Fox golly what a complete airhead.
Hemmer working for Fox golly what a complete airhead.
Chetry working for CNN golly what a smart respectable journalist.
Please, all the networks hire their idiots from the same idiot factories, cover the same stories the same way, and even Nova is shit when it comes to science.
Want science news? Don't watch TV for it. I haven't bothered picking one up in years, but the Dallas Morning News used to have the nation's best science section.
I was driving in the middle of the night, just south of the air force base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Something went overhead, and whatever it was, it didn't sound like a jet. There was a full moon, and in its light we could see that the plane was leaving a lumpy exhaust -- puffs, basically -- and it was so weird that I pulled off and got out to look, and so did two other people driving. We were all three "what the HECK is THAT?" This was in 1992 or thereabouts so I didn't have a digital camera, alas. It was dark enough we couldn't see the plane, but we could hear it. Weirdest thing I've seen in a long time.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Most people are dumber than me?
And?
I've been aware of that since first grade.
What are you bellowing about?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Holy mother of God. I know a lot of people bash Fox News so at first I took the comments as just the typical bashing but after reading several I had to go and watch myself. Both of the newscasters should be shot. Put some chlorine in the gene pool already!
To the main news guy: someday a doctor will tell him he has an iq of 42 and is retarded.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
What's your problem with Czech commercial TV, that there are stories about cute animals at the end of each news segment?
I havn't watched the video yet
So I head here to the comments to find out some technical details about this plane, and it turns out this article is about some crappy news network.
Who knew?
WOW, my reaction after watching that Sky video, is still OMFG... OMFG, how stupid can presenters on Fox be!. Wow, I'm shocked. I've got to watch it again!
I'm reminded of another /. story today "Drug Reverses Retardation In Mice" ... that moron on Sky is probably about to loose his job to a mouse!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/27/1210202
Was there actually a scientific achievement reported in there somewhere? I only saw artist's renderings and a whole lot of BS, plus a $750 million request to make it real. Granted, I didn't manage to watch the whole steaming pile of video, but I sure didn't see anything remotely approaching a newsworthy "scientific achievement".
If we have the technology to build a plane that can fly at Mach 10, then we can build Zubrin's Hyersonic Skyhook without nanotube cables or any kind of unobtanium. This would give us Space Elevator priced access to space!
Basically, you build a beanstalk that doesn't go all the way to geosynch, and doesn't go all the way to the ground. It's a lot less massive and doesn't require the same stupendous tensile strength as a Space Elevator. A Mach 10 hypersonic plane could deliver cargoes to the bottom end, perhaps with the help of a small booster rocket on the cargo pod. After the cargo is attached, you winch it up and use ion engines or interaction with the earth's magnetic field to accelerate the skyhook. (Which would be cheaper, since ion engines have huge delta-V, and magnetic interaction requires power and no fuel.)
Another Paper
The pulse detonation wave engine can use oxygen from the air for oxidizer, or from on-board LOX, hence the many references in the piece to the shuttle. This may be the intelligence community's follow-on to the SR-71 and the shuttle, as the Constellation isn't really suited for that sort of work. This design should scale, not only for orbit with a small crew, but for orbit with cargo capacity for the station, or for unpredictable overflights of hostile installations, as our recon bird's orbits are pretty well-known.
What the cost to orbit is for this compared to the DCX, Blue Horizon or other competing projects is, I do not know. It would be interesting to find out.
There is such a thing as a useful idiot, and some are well paid. The wealth doesn't them any less of an idiot.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
The wealth doesn't them any less of an idiot.
Oops, that should read:
The wealth doesn't make them any less of an idiot.
Where's my fancy house!
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Consider: Fox News is "breaking" this. If that doesn't peg your BS meter, check your wiring.
A NASA analyst is not necessarily someone who works for NASA doing analyses, it can also be someone who analyzes things having to do NASA. James Oberg is a NASA analyst, probably one of the best, and doesn't work for them. Still, even if the talking head was a NASA employee, even as some kind of analyst, chances are they have nothing directly to do with the project.
DARPA released footage of this thing months ago. Here's a still of it taken from Aviation Week's photo stores. I found it on Defence Pakistan. http://sitelife.aviationweek.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/11/8/ab8c59d3-5d59-43c2-8806-e75d8adfd82d.Large.jpg
The only reason Fox is running this and no one else is, is because everyone else knows there's very little to say about it at this point besides "golly gee whiz!" which is all Fox did. When they take it for a real (declassified) spin, we'll all hear about it in words with multiple syllables.
Nice looking bird. But I think the Boeing Bird Of Prey still gets the prize for looking like evil in flight.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
is that the same organisation that produced The X-Files, Futurama and The Simpsons? Is it the same organisation that gave us Fight Club? I guess some parts of it must cater for different audience profiles?
Now the good news, being exposed to any sort of television show does not have a detrimental effect on anyone no matter how stupid the show is or how stupid the demographic is. I have been watching television for a long time now and can reveal that the true purpose of TV is to run adverts, to make you want things that you don't need. The bits in between the ads are there to expose people to the ads.
It is an almost universal misconception that this is the other way around.
Clear evidence can be found in any long running bit between the ads - the 1960's show The Fugitive - 119 episodes of unanswered questions with lots of back story - generated loads of ad revenue and ran until is was no longer making money. In the 21st century they've reworked the same concept, stuck the characters in a different location, thrown in lots of science fiction, mumbo jumbo, relationship crap, handsome young men, attractive young women and loads of great ad revenue is generated. Lost - or almost any other show you could think of.
Now, about that fancy new jet plane the military have built...
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I tried searching the web for more information on blackswift or the HTV-3X project. Most news articles I found were from February or March and all of them said it used scramjets, not DPE's. Even on darpa says the plane uses scramjets to sustain hypersonic flight. Unless Darpa decided to suddenly change the propulsion system on it in the last 3 months, I do not believe this article is not accurate.
As with others, I am amazed at quite how dumb the fox news reporter was. I don't normally watch fox, so I guess I wasn't adequately prepared. Wow!
But frankly the slashdot article wasn't a whole lot better. No, NASA didn't "unveil" anything, contrary to th earticle, which even emphasizes that it was the "real" thing. There isn't anything to unveil (well, not that we know about, I should say). This was clearly described as a simulation. Perhaps the slashdot poster has been sitting in his basement too long and forgot the difference between simulations and reality.
That difference applies to aircraft too - not just sex - an area where stereotypical slashdot posters are also alleged to go in for simulation in lieu of reality.
Oh, and in reply to another followup. No, the X-43 was not anything even particularly close to the same thing. Everything that goes fast isn't automatically the same technology.
I had no idea that this project was so far developed. It's too bad we only get to see the silly animations.
This is great news. I say several billion dollars well spent to send bipolar leftist collective punks like some of the pacified halfwits here and their more aggressive buddies to the great here after. I Love it. Let's get it on!
Hopefully we'll be seeing this technology in the next couple of decades applied to the skip bomber and advanced delivery systems for the presidential 10 minute, hyper kinetic, execution anywhere, world wide.
You must have something better to do than griping about Fox news. Fox this, CNN that, the MSM is evil, no it's rightous... It'll waste billions... waaaah... Oh please.
It is obsurd to think that the car came into existance through millions of random design mutations that somehow did not cause it to blow up. The only reasonable explanation for the existance of the car is that it was designed and created by some intelligent being. Therefore God exists.
What's doubly funny is that cars, trains, and (especially) planes, DID "come into existence through [a large number of semi-]random design mutations, some of which did indeed cause them to fail in spectacular ways. (Motion picture cameras were rolling for some of the more spectacular early aircraft foulups, which are interesting viewing.) This despite their designs being planned by intelligent beings.
So evolution and a creator (or set of them) are not mutually exclusive.
Of course you won't find any religions going with that (even if some of them admit to evolution AFTER "the creation"). To do so would be inconsistent with the omniscient/omnipotent claims about the nature of God.
And I suppose "the programmer whose entire system design works right the first time" is as good a definition of God as any other I've heard.
As one of my colleagues once remarked: "If God created life, and DNA is the program for it, are introns the comments? And if so, are they 'holy writ'?"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Too bad my mod points just expired, but I found your post very insightful. I think your analysis is accurate and corrects the assumption I made before I read your post.
The presenter makes a good point. Airspeeds that high usually require special hi-tech transparent deflector plates to be attached ahead and around the pilot's location.
Otherwise it gets very windy inside the cockpit.
Eric Baird
The entire left/right scale is a tad silly simply because it stuffs a whole bunch of utterly unrelated ideals into a binary system. You can have a free market capitalist who believes in gay marriage, abortions, and a lack of sex and drug regulation. You can also have someone who advocates socialist economics want to outlaw those very same things.
Interestingly, there's a two-dimensional analysis that works a LOT better than the one-dimensional left-right scale.
Divide issues into "economic behavior" versus "social and private behavior" and measure how much a person things the government should control such behavior versus how much the individual should decide for himself. Correlation is high within each set of issues.
Now sum the opinions on how much freedom versus control the person wants for each of the issues in the groups to create two summary numbers. Plot the numbers as a position on a two-dimensional graph. And the various common ideologies spread out in a clarifying way.
- Conservatives end up near one corner (economic freedom, social.private control).
- Liberals end up near the opposite corner (social/private freedom, economic control).
- Libertarians near a third corner (freedom, freedom).
- Authoritarians near the fourth (control, control).
Rotate it 45 degrees so it's a diamond, with liberals on the left and conservatives on the right (libertarians usually put themselves at the top B-) ) and a number of things become much clearer than they do in a left-right analysis:
- Totalitarians end up at the authoritarian point, fascists up the edge a bit toward conservative, communists and then socialists up the other edge toward liberal, but all clustered together.
- Similarly, anarchists end up at the libertarian point, libertarian minarchists near it (and generally a tad down the edge toward "conservative").
- Various flavors of conservatives end up in different spots near the conservative corner, of liberals/progressives near the liberal corner.
- And the wishy-washy sheep end up in the "centerist" region near (of course) the center.
Thus it becomes clear why you hear things like "I'm so far right I'm coming back from the left" or vice-versa from libertarians, who aren't anywhere near the middle of the line between the liberal and conservative corners. And why communists and fascists seem so much alike.
The analysis has been independently discovered/invented a number of times. But the most widespread version is called "The Nolan Chart" after the person who is arguably the earliest inventor to formalize it and give it wide disclosure.
Wikipedia has a fine article on the Nolan Chart. Search for "The World's Smallest Political Quiz" to find a do-it-yourself tool for finding your own ideology's place on it. Or go to nolanchart.com to see blogs by a number of commentators (mainly, but not all, in the libertarian section) who have chosen to take the test and display their results along with their commentaries as a form of full disclosure.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Essentially the entire broadcast media in the U.S. was (and largely still is) biasing the news by giving no coverage to conservative viewpoints (except to occasionally ridicule them) or events that would support conservative worldviews.
Make that "... broadcast NEWS media ...". (Neo)conservative talk shows, with hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity, etc., are a major industry.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Sad that we have to pay more taxes for something that area 51 has had for the last decade. Asking NASA to foot the bill for an aircraft not designed for stealth flights is the Airforce's way of saying "NO I WON'T SHARE MY TOYS!"
It would be kind of like the stealth 'fighter' from a number of years back. I believe it flew for about seven or eight years before the Air Force admitted that it existed. And the Air Force name for the project was definitely not what the aerospace media called it. (Nor was it shaped anything like the Revelle model that was created representing a stealth fighter.)
One thing about the stealth fighter that sticks out in my mind from back then -- at the time toy makers and magazines like PopSci was coming out with fantasy paintings of futuristic-looking "stealth" fighters, Discover Magazine did an article in which they did some scientific and engineering guesswork of what a stealth plane would look like.
On the cover of that issue was a painting of their extrapolation: A black triangular flying wing, with intakes on the top surface of the wing, and a zig-zag rear margin. I couldn't believe it when years later I saw a picture of the actual stealth bomber.
This view is overly simplistic.
The Ashari school of thought came in early, and gained a lot of support perhaps from the 10th century onwards.
At the time, the other schools of thoughts, which are not "sects", within the majority Sunni Islam were as follows:
a) the Mu'tazili, which were supposed to a rationalist theological branch. They had followers among the elite, but very little among the majority. They managed to be the "state religion" under Al-Ma'moun. This caused severe oppression of the traditionalists, going to extremes, such as crucifying leaders of opposing sects, making them more popular among the public at large, and refusing to pay ransom for Muslim prisoners of war of Byzantium who were tested for their creed and did not confirm to Mu'tazilism. They are touted today by some factions in the West as an alternative to the literalist Hanbalis, forgetting that they were so oppressive when in power. Their school of thought lived on among a few scholars and elite, but faded from existence. Some of their thought got absorbed into other schools, for example the Shi'a Twelvers of today.
b) the Hanbalis (traditionalists), which have a literalist legalistic interpretation of theology based mainly on scripture and tradition. Their thought lives on within the contemorary Salafi/Wahhabi, which is not necessarily militant, although Al-Qaeda subscribes to that thought.
c) the Asharis, which sought to merge aspects of the above two in theology, retaining both tradition and reason. This was the majority thought from the 10th century on. One famous Ash'ari scholar was Al Ghazali of Persia in the late 1000s. He sought to refute many of the theology of the philosophers, and was also a Sufi. He is incorrectly blamed for the decline in scientific thought.
d) the Sufis (mystics), with a whole spectrum ranging from just "I am not interested in materialism" to "I get my revelation directly from God". They were mainly interested in ethics, conduct and sometimes esoteric practices (like the Whirling Dervishs), and there were Sufi strains within sects, e.g. Shi'a. It is important to note that Sufis were very prevalent in the 18th to early 20th century. Many anti-colonial leaders of "Jihad" were Sufis, such as Omar Al Mukhtar in Libya, Abdul Qadi in Algeria, the Mad Mullah in Somalia, Al Mahdi in Sudan, and Shamil in the Caucasus. Again, some in the West advocate Sufism as a replacement for the literalist Hanbali, forgetting that Sufis were the main religious opposing force, to the extent that Russia outlawed all the Sufi orders!
e) the philosophers, who were really a few, but had a lot of influence. They went beyond Mu'tazilis and wrote commentaries on Aristotle and Plato's work. The adherents to those were mainly medical doctors who were polymaths, such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Al Farabi, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and others. They were often close to rulers, but did not seek to make their thought a mass thing like the Mu'tazilis did.
f) the Zahiri (literalist jurists), which never gained popularity, apart from the famed debates of Ibn Hazm of Cordova. Although literal in Sharia, they were not so in matters of theology, more of a mix between Mu'tazilis and Ash'aris.
The golden age of science under Muslim rule between 900s and 1200s, and carried over to the 1400s in some areaas. Ash'aris were well established during that time, with most rulers and the public being Ash'aris.
Read the articles of Dr. George Saliba of Columbia University sometime. They detail how scientific thought continued well into the 15th century.
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... bet the morning crowd is dominated by low-ambition types: welfare moms.
'cause if they were smarter than they were willful, they wouldn't have gotten knocked up at 16.
Of course it doesn't help that the welfare providers go into the public schools at age 14 to tell the girls that if they do get knocked up, there is a welfare safety net there to catch them.
The stay-at-home-moms that are intelligent, don't vegetate in front of the TV in the morning. They aren't the eyeballs watching the TV. Can you blame Fox for pitching to the dullards that actually watch?
There are plenty of stay-at-home-moms that are intelligent; but they take their kids to the playground or a mothers' group or something.
Well, it seem Aurora is officially out of the box then.
That was simply painful to watch, and I couldn't finish it. Fucking unbelievable. Those fuckers should be shot to save the human genetic pool from self-destructing. That or six months in the trenches in Afghanistan.
The European far-right as somehow more anti-immigration and nationalistic than the American right?????
You're American, right? You've heard about the immigration issues in American politics, right? You've heard about the fucking border fence in Texas, right? You've heard presidential candidates previously wanting to make arrest and deport all illegal immigrants, right?
You've fucking read here on /. the diatribes against H1-B visas, right?
You've read the hate filled anti-European diatribes here on /. accusing Europeans of everything from Communism to Fascism, right?
In short, where the fuck have you been????
You fucking yanks are just as fucking mind bendingly dumb as we fucking eurofags are. The only difference is that we fucking know it, and you crackers pretend it doesn't exist.
RNC's Fox News spokesman request clarification: "In English, not in... [pauses for synapses to fire, times out] ... science talk..."
Split screen shows NASA man wants to poke pencil in man's ear to see if it comes out the ear on the opposite side...