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First Successful Unmanned Drone Landing On an Aircraft Carrier
redletterdave writes "Salty Dog 502 flew from the Patuxent River Naval Station in Maryland to the USS George H.W. Bush operating off the Virginian coast, but unlike other drones, Salty Dog was piloted entirely by computer without a human operator. The unmanned operation is considered one of the most difficult operations due to navigating the air and a moving ship, and many have said it's a major milestone in the development of drone warfare. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus described the event as witnessing the future and compared it to the first manned aircraft landed on a carrier in 1911."
Landing on a carrier is much more difficult because the motions of the ship and the disturbances on the airplane are random. In space, the motions of all the objects are highly predictable.
Prototypes are expensive, mate. Cost of progress. You're probably right, we could test the individual systems more cheaply, but lab tests in similar gear will only get you so far. At some point you need to do a full-up test run with the actual platform and all components.
Honestly, I would suspect that many MANY tests were run just like you suggested, prior to this event, and the combined cost of those tests (and rectifying and problems found) are all rolled up into that Total cost, driving that cost up further.
This signature is false.
I always love when some random internet wanker posting from his mom's basement posits that a man that: ...is an idiot.
a) flew fighter jets for the National Guard (deprecate it all you like, make smarmy comments about his attendance, whatever - nobody doubts that he flew and qualified in fighter jets, which was neither easy nor particularly safe)
b) Graduated Yale, and earned an MBA from Harvard (it's particularly noteworthy that he's the only president ever with an MBA...if he was a Democrat, that would be widely known)
c) won an election as Governor of TX over a popular opponent (Ann Richards)
d) won election to the Presidency of the United States. Won RE-ELECTION (by an even larger margin).
This man has actually accomplished a great deal in his life. Maybe he IS an idiot, but doesn't that make his accomplishments all that more impressive. Particularly compared to you - what have you done? (I mean, aside from generating snarky comments nearly-anonymously on an internet message board? I mean, of course that's pretty impressive alone...)
Of course, there's practically a Leftist industry of shat-smearing on Republicans (as opposed to Democrats that make 'journalists' legs tingle), so you can't really be blamed. The script has always been "Democrats brilliant, Republicans stoopid" so, if you cheerfully swallow when someone tells you to, that's the impression you're going to have.
But the sort of self-aggrandizing narcissist fantasyland you exist in to deprecate this man's accomplishments must be...impressive.
-Styopa