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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."
Please warn us when linking to Fox News. Jesus those people are dumb.
It's not that THEY'RE dumb (which they are so very dumb) but rather they feel the need to dumb down everything for their audience.
I want to punch that Fox man in the face. And I feel so bad for Ken Christiansen (sp?). It seemed apparent he was not prepared to deal with such a moron.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
http://news.google.com/news?q=blackswift
I'm somewhat confused as to what has been "unveiled".
Everything I've read so far says that this plane is still in the "sketches and mock-ups" stage.
Though I guess someone found the time to do a slick render.
Maybe the PR push is an attempt to keep Congress from cutting their funding.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I don't think any of the links you provided mentioned the use of a pulse detonation engine, only dual-mode scramjets for hypersonic flight and turbofans/jets for takeoff and landing.
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The alarming thing is not that Fox News readers do not reflect upon the standard of intelligence at Fox News Studios, rather, it reflects upon the intelligence of the American Public in general. After all, this is a free market, and Fox News is only delivering the quality that people are demanding in that free market.
*That* is what frightens me.
I hate printers.
"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!
They are part of and help feed the "scientists don't know everything," "They're elitists," "I didn't come from no damn monkey," and "God wouldn't let the earth get too hot" crowd.
They are and speak to those who are afraid of knowledge, especially if it contradicts their own assumptions, thus wounding their little egos.
These are the "don't look it up in a book, look it up in your gut" people that Colbert satirizes.
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So no Americans choose to watch Fox?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
The fact is that liberals have control of the networks - I saw poll that showed essentially all journalists at CNN, ABC, CBS etc vote for the Democrats.
You might want to rethink that assertion. The journalists certainly do not control the networks.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Sadly yes. The last 8 years make a bit more sense now, don't they?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Uh, no it was that around 90% of journalists that make campaign contributions contribute to the Democrats. But the number of journalists making campaign contributions was around 10%. So you can only say for certain that <10% of those journalists support Democrats. The party orientation of those who donate doesn't necessarily match those who don't. I could conceive of a scenario where those who don't donate are greedy and figure they're sufficiently supporting the Republican party through biased news worth far in excess of the monetary contribution of their Democratic-donating counterparts. Not saying that's the case, just that the data that's available could be consistent with either scenario.
Now, most contemporary journalists are also pretty scientifically illiterate, which make them an easy target of ridicule in the technical community. And their understanding of economics and far too much else is often not much better. However, that Fox talking head in the linked video seems like a particularly egregious example. Fox News appears bad to anybody who isn't blind since they seem to insist on giving equal or more time to the emperor and his tailors than to the small child and his observations.
Nevertheless, you might also want to consider that many journalists get to see and hear about the raw information before it gets massaged by editorial boards that are selected by corporatist management. So when it comes to coming to conclusions that only require facts and common sense, not technical knowledge, like the general state of the country and how various political parties influence it, they're likely to be better informed than you.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
WOW, did you SEE that thing lift off the RUNWAY??!? It was GANE!!OMGZERSone11one
Surely the correct response would have been 'no, that was an artist's impression.'
The news anchor may be employed to use baby-talk, but there's no excuse for a supposedly informed correspondent to go along with the idiocy. The pride in ignorance is obviously annoying him, why doesn't he challenge it?
Equally when asked to explain in 'English, not science-talk,' perhaps he should have said 'Yes, perfectly possible. Let me explain' and delved into some of the simpler theory of reciprocating engines, turbojets, high and low bypass fans and scramjets. When challenged he could then say, "what with words less than 3rd grade level? Ah, no sorry, not possible.'
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
That reporter definitely didn't seem like he was acting. He's either a genius, or an idiot. I'm guessing the latter.
which is totally what she said
No, they just get hired by the people that do control the networks. Those people will hire people who are likely to promote the same viewpoint.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
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.
the really interesting bit is that *NEITHER* the democrats or the republicans are very far from what the rest of the world would consider 'ultra right wing' or 'conservative'. The fact that even here on ./ people with an probably above average intelligence have swallowed that left/right bullshit hook line and sinker.
In any other country there would be a real left wing and something close to your democrats or republicans as right wing or ultra right wing.
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Please do not equate American News with Fox News. Our news may be lacking, but Fox News is that media cousin that's always getting wasted at family picnics and no one likes.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Whereas those who reject science say "science doesn't know everything" and so they reject science and instead embrace the thing that starts out with NO knowledge, insists it knows EVERYTHING, the ultimate truth, and thus makes no further effort to learn, makes no progress for centuries. Religion.
And its complete BULLSHIT that intellectuals have been behind the genocides and murders.
Intellectuals, scientists discovered evolution... and through sequencing the genome have discovered that there is NO SUCH THING AS RACE. Scientists have found that if you take a white frenchman, a black nigerian, and a white englishman, sequence their genes, you're just as likely to find that the frenchman is more closely related to the nigerian than the englishman as vice versa.
It's the anti-intellectuals who distorted this. Just like they do with their bible, they rejected the parts they didn't like (we came from apes) and distorted the parts the suited them (social darwinism.)
It's not SCIENCE that said that blacks were created inferior to whites, it's religion. It's not SCIENCE that divides people and tells the to slaughter the "others," it's religion.
Religion was behind the "blacks are inferior" thing, the preachers were preaching against interracial marriage, now they're preaching against gay marriage.
It's not scientists and intellectuals who are behind this "fight against islamofacism."
And ya know what Stalin and Hitler did with intellectuals? They KILLED them. Slaughtered them ny the thousands, felt they were a threat. (Which of course they were, a threat to fascism.)
Hitler used religion, and Stalin eliminated religion not to replace it with intellectualism (ever hear of Lysenko?) but rather to replace the power of religion with his own.
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This assumes that the political/social interests and standards in the US match those of the rest of the world, which they most certainly do not. You do make a valid point though that the Democratic and Republicans parties are not nearly as different in practice as they would like us all to believe.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Well, it's Fox News - that cub reporter was oh so promising in his better days at another network. But now... Thank Rupert Murdock for yet another sterling contribution to public science...
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.
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Those people will hire people who are likely to promote the same viewpoint.
They hire people who make them money. They are big business corporations, after all.
I would believe that if the "liberal" run networks had more viewers. But that's not the case. In cable news, Fox gets more viewers than all the other cable news networks combined. So, if their job were to get more viewers (and thus more money), then they would have followed Fox's example years ago.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
"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."
The unofficial/official line was that the government DID have something better - satellites with resolution much better than previously available.
That being said, I'm with you and think Aurora is real - hell, the SR-71 "didn't exist" for a long time.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Oh, come on. All of our news sucks - clearly Fox sucks much more than all the rest, but the rest is horrible too. All the other new organizations seem to actually be pursuing Fox News, becoming increasingly crappy in order to become increasingly profitable.
"I don't think it's reaction times that matter so much as perhaps just brazen balls out fearlessness. Fast reaction times are useful when you overstep the limit or someone ahead blows a tyre out or something like that, but most of the time I don't think it's the defining factor in what makes a good race-driver. For most types of racing I'm of the opinion that anyone could do it with a bit of tuition and cash."
Perhaps - but "overstepping the limits" or "someone ahead blows a tire out" happens ALL THE TIME in racing; while anyone may be able to turn competitive times on a racecourse, that's different than an actual race. Joe Blow may last one or 2 races, but without getting his reaction times up to speed he will either lose miserably or crash - either way his racing career is likely to be quite short.
It's like saying because Ray Charles could be a perfectly good driver, because he drove a Mercedes out in the middle of the Mojave; sure, he operated the controls competently, but lets not call him a "driver".
Likewise, comparing lap times for professional racers in a "reasonably priced car" to the average guy is ridiculous; drop them both in an F1 car and see what happens - I mean, the only difference is that one is faster than the other, right?
Let's make it even simpler - American style drag racing. Simplest automotive sport in the world - go 1/4 mile as fast as possible. No turns; pure acceleration. Now, lets put Tony Schumacher in a Honda Accord next to me in my identical car and race. We will probably get to the finish line within .400 seconds of each other - .400 being the difference between when he reacts to the starting light and when I do. We will both finish in about 15 seconds with a top speed around 90 miles per hour. AWESOME - that means I'm competitive with a 5 time National Champion - racing just can't be that hard.
Now, put us in his car - a top fuel dragster. A competitive car will travel the 1/4 mile in under 5 seconds, and finish at well over 320 miles per hour. Are you really going to say that I will still be competitive in that car? Assuming I actually survive the trip?
That's the problem with egalitarianism - some people really ARE better than others.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson