It's really interesting to watch how Microsoft higher-ups use words. It's almost as much as watching politicians of any stripe, but specifically American politicians in the two major parties, snipe at each other with shadings of words.
Examplia gratis:
The inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows has been absolutely great... for innovation in the software industry.
Note: The ellipsis used is directly from the original article; I'm curious to know what was left out!
If I could completely ignore the ellipsis--though I can't--you'd get to thinking that "innovation in the software industry" == "whatever improves M$FT's bottom line". The comments about competition are similar--they like competition that they can beat the snot out of, not that pushes a better product.
The use of the cancer thing is interesting...M$FT is shifting its attack from the license to the OS, while noting that the OS is licensed in a matter that makes it "a cancer". It's a carefully crafted use of hyperbole, and it'll hit home.
But I think it'll end up being a boomerang strike. I continue to expect back-end systems to merge to modern *nix systems, including Linux and the *BSD's. I think that's good from an overall push-the-ends-of-the-free/open-movements, and probably good for business in the long run, too.
I find that it would be one way that I would give back. Why? I'm not a coder--I'm a user. I'm working my way up to be a coder, but if I contributed to something like a distro right now, I'd fear that I'd screw it up. So why not give the distro some of my money as well as feel like I own a piece of that distro?
The long-term solution, which most folks won't like, might be to charge a deposit on the hardware or complete systems at sale. Just like the deposit on glass bottles in some states [Michigan comes to mind], you get an economic incentive to give them back afterwards.
If the money would be managed in the interim, given a five-year shelf life of most components, the interest could be used to bear the burden of the costs of extraction, and the principal could be returned back to the individual.
Running simple cost thoughts here, using compounding interest at 3.3% [what my credit union gives on a savings rate], a five-year investment on $100 deposit for a full system would garner $17.63--probably not enough to cover the extraction and recovery costs, but enough to ameliorate them.
I do understand the desire of many here to re-use old machines [working on getting my 850MHz T-bird finished so I can turn my P166MMX into my home LAN firewall myself], but at some point, the hardware does stop working. Those schools do have to junk the boxes at some point, often because the adults don't have the technical knowhow to fix them, the district doesn't have the money to pay them, and no one will let the kids play with it to get it back running.
Blown Just A Wee Bit Out of Proportion
on
Nostrildamus
·
· Score: 2
Okay, yeah, so these guys do their job to protect that 'stronauts. Nice. Much more important is the testing that goes on beforehand for things that could kill them. A nice story, but a bit, well, fluffy.
I work with the guys at Marshall Space Flight Center who do toxicity testing pretty regularly. Offgassing is a huge concern, up there with flammability. [Stuff that doesn't burn in Earth's atmosphere will burn in the ISS/STS atmosphere, especially ISS, which runs at 25.3% oxygen.
With all of Bush's rhetoric about an energy crisis, why doesn't NASA latch onto this idea to secure more funding?
It couldn't be because NASA still doesn't have a new Administrator, could it?
Seriously, the fact that we're 100+ days into the Bush Administration [which I helped vote into office] yet do not have a NASA Administrator--despite having plenty of excellent candidates inside and outside of NASA--is a travesty. It's high time for Bush and his staff to make their pick and get rid of Dan Goldin, who's set NASA back at least ten years.
Of course, each side in this great debate will point to those who were helped by models close to their side. Mundie cites Bell, Edison, and Ford as users of patents. All well and good, but plenty of scientific discovery has also happened in the open, many times in cases where one man or woman could not deign to get it all.
My thinking on this is that sometimes, one person or a small group of individuals can alter the balance of [balance to be altered]. In the interregnum, it's got to be a collective work. The GPL recognizes that, I think.
If you don't find what you're looking for, the aerospace world has some excellent best practices for documentation configuration management in more NASA specifications than I care to think about. If interested, email. --
And, really, do any of us give a flying fsck if PHBs love free software or not? The choice will still always be OURS - and that's the important part.
Waaaaaaaait a minute there, Luke. There's a big difference to be noted here.
I remember moving from DOS to Windows. I pushed it as a kid at home, because Windows was cool, had a GUI, and wasn't a Mac. I knew nothing of Unix or its variants, and without the Internet [realize, this was the early-to-mid-1990s in Mississippi...], I had no way of knowing.
I got my mom and my brother to use it. My dad remained stalwart in his DOS usage--it was what he'd used in the Air Force, it was what he used at his current job, and it was good enough for him, so why change?
Eventually, my dad went to a work environment where Windows use was pretty well required. Kicking and screaming, he switched. Why? It was what he used at work, so he became familiar with it, enough to use it at home, too.
Now, the entire family hates Windows, and I'm slowly but slowly pushing them to be Linux converts. It's going to take me building a system I can use stably for a long period of time and have them use and go, "Damn, this is cool!" before they'll use it themselves.
Even so, my dad probably won't switch over. Why? Why use two things, one at work, one at home, when one thing does adequately [if not that well, of course].
Before you jump up and down, my dad's an engineer. So am I. My dad took CS courses back in the '60s because he recognized what tools computers were back then. Even still, it will take entry into the workplace--where people have to use Linux/BSD/etc.--for the mainstream computer user to want to install it at home. They will have to see the benefits on a daily basis to make the desire to switch--they're not like some of us, who'll install three or four OS's in a weekend just for the hell of it.
The Bill text has yet to be posted to the web, but should be up in a week or so.
Back when I was still an SGA Officer at UAH, I usually kept Senate's stuff updated all the time. But it kept me from doing other things [biggest complaint was that the University wouldn't let me even run basic CGI, so I was forced to build static HTML pages...ugh].
But if the Feds can't have a group that rushes stuff up on the Web quickly enough, isn't that a sure sign that we need it?
This is nothing but thinly-veiled bullshit. Apply this to almost any other situation, and it becomes evident that this practice is wrong. For example, let's say I just moved, and I got a new phone installed. When I called the Phone Co., they asked me if I wanted some add-on service, like Caller ID, which I declined. Now, let's say in a month, I get a call from someone at the telephone company, saying that they know I didn't want Caller ID a month ago, but they thought I might be interested in it now. I can assure you that you wouldn't want to be in the room if I got that call. (Well, actually, it might be kind of funny...)
After I switched my phone service from AT&T to another carrier, AT&T started regularly calling to get me to come back. The first time, I listened to the schpiel, it wasn't a better deal, so I thanked the nice lady for her time and told her to have a nice day. She was pretty cool, and only protested once.
The second time, the guy who called was a bit more insistent. I told him that, yes, I had changed my service, and yes, I was happy with what I had, and no, I didn't want to change at this time. He protested for a few tries, and I finally told him, "Look, fella, it won't work. Bye," and hung up.
The third, fourth, and fifth times, they got my roommate, who pays me money after I pay all bills. After the fourth call, my roommate called me and told me AT&T wanted to talk to me. I asked how many times they'd called. Since it was an hour before I got home, I decided to get good and angry.
I get home, and the phone rings three minutes after I walk in. [You'd think they'd bugged my apartment or something in the interim.] The guy calling sounded fairly official, so I cut him off right away. Since it was the truth, this is what I told him, but if you want to steal it, you can. You must sound very commanding doing it, but I said:
Look, sir. You're doing your job, which is fine. I've done my job, and I've looked into service. At this time, I'm happy as hell with my long distance, and frankly, I get frustrated when you do some "market research" to see if you can "offer me a better deal". Guess what, I do my own market research. I'm an engineer, and when I want to change service, I'll call you. Call me again, and I'll make good and damned sure that I will never use AT&T again.
I either scared the shit out of him, or he hung up while I was ranting, because there was dead air on the other line.
"This is important aerospace research, and if you read the article, it's pretty easy to see why. The ability to fly at such speeds for intercontinental, oceanic flights is of great societal benefit. Speed of transport will make this work commercially."
Doubtful. Supersonic jets bring loud engines and louder sonic booms. This means that such a jet will only be able to fly out of a handful of airports, limiting the number of planes that will be sold, which limits the price of seats to the social elite.
... kinda like Concorde...
Miss the part where I said oceanic? Of course, I've got no huge personal problem with the sound of freedom, but hey. =) But the service can be a big business boost. For example, my company does a lot of business with Japanese aerospace companies. Be nice to travel to/from Tokyo more quickly!
Wouldn't this be useful as the first stage of a two-stage system?
Well, not really, as you have to have high velocity to start the scramjet. So that means you have a rocket to start things off to get to scramjet startup speeds, then kick in the scramjet. It might work for a three-stage system, but...
Using a rocket all the way is Single Stage To Orbit [SSTO]. Mass fractions there run from 95-99%. Mass fraction, if you don't know, is the fraction of mass that is fuel and oxidizer. That doesn't count engine mass, structure, or payload. SSTO vehicles don't work, because we can't build a vehicle big enough that's reliable and not a budget buster to make it work.
Yes, the oxidizer will weigh that much more. It will make a difference. Not enough of one to make it viable, but a difference nonetheless.
Eh? You've got to get outside the slipstream to make this work. That causes all sorts of perturbations, and crossing the shock--which it will presumably do at some point--will kill a lot of the kinetic energy. Yes, there will be momentum, but we're not looking at that level of v/z combinations, or at least I don't think so. --
So the claims of the space shuttle reaching Mach25 aren't that impressive? Does that mean that while in orbit it is effectively orbiting at Mach infinity (as sound has zero propagation speed in space...)?
Nope. The Mach references are to ground velocity. Mach is defined relative to the local speed of sound, of course, but for terms of lay and data sheets, you define it relative to ground.
Where Mach does matter is in terms of compressible flow, where you do need to know local Mach numbers to know whether you're in the incompressible [Ma1.0], or hypersonic [Ma>3.5 or so]. The flow properties change significantly depending on Mach value--converging areas act to speed flow at subsonic speeds but slow flow at supersonic speeds.
Gah. This is turning into fluid mechanics and aerodynamics! NOOOOOOO! I've already taken those classes and passed them! =)
Yes, the SR-71 got to Mach 3+, but not a whole lot faster--the engines were losing efficiency at that point and couldn't push any harder. Even moving the spike in the aerospike didn't help--you were still using some mechanical compression, and the mechanical compression was what was slowing the flow down. Shutting down the turbine blades wouldn't work, either. The theoretical limit is somewhere in the Mach 3.6+ range. I once saw a better analysis, but that was in a book I sold back. =)
But the "been there, done that..." scenario doesn't hold. The X-15 was a rocket plane, and as such had to carry its own fuel. Also, the X-15 was dropped from a bomber after being carried to altitude. The SR-71 had its theoretical limits as above. This is a step beyond either--something that would take off on its own and fly faster than the X-15. Granted, I don't enjoy aerospace engineering anymore, but even I think this is tres cool.
To get mach, after you find a [which, per my reply to this, is a=SQRT(kRT)], is simple:
Ma=V/a, where V is the velocity[*] and a is the speed of sound.
[*] Yes, this could be the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, but you know, I don't think a swallow can go supersonic, no matter if it's carrying a coconut by the husk, under the dorsal, or on a line...
This will teach me to post five minutes before staff meeting.
a, speed of sound, is a function of three variables:
k, the ratio of the specific heats [usually 1.4 for a gas]
R, the universal gas constant [make your units work out--I think this is per molar value of the material in question]
T, the temperature
The actual equation is a=SQRT(kRT).
I knew I should have brought my fluid mechanics text in from the truck this morning. But noooooo, I had to bring in my CD's to rip to MP3 instead. Silly engineer.
Go back and read the article. The idea is to have rockets power the craft to scramjet speed, use the scramjets until oxygen consumption is minimal [probably 100,000 feet, but then I don't have good scramjet data here in my office], and then use rockets again to boost to orbit. So that's their goal in this, although I wonder how they would want to land it, either... --
Actually, a [the speed of sound] varies with altitude, as temperature and density have an effect on the speed of sound. You can go supersonic, technically, simply by holding speed but changing altitude.
Most Mach references are to sea level a of 340 m/s.
The SR-71 was designed and built by the Lockheed Skunk Works, now the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. SR-71s are powered by two Pratt and Whitney J-58 axial-flow turbojets with afterburners, each producing 32,500 pounds of thrust. Studies have shown that less than 20 percent of the total thrust used to fly at Mach 3 is produced by the basic engine itself. The balance of the total thrust is produced by the unique design of the engine inlet and "moveable spike" system at the front of the engine nacelles and by the ejector nozzles at the exhaust which burn air compressed in the engine bypass system.
The moveable spike does add a lot of the thrust. But what's being discussed is a scramjet, and as such, it gets all its air without compression. The ramjet is a compromise between the scramjet and the turbojet, really. Also, the ramjet has realistic speed limits, because there is some compression needed to fly, and the craft can't make it to scramjet operational speeds with air-breathing engines.
I'd rant further, but I sold back my propulsion texts when I realized I was going into the church business. Oh well.
This is important aerospace research, and if you read the article, it's pretty easy to see why. The ability to fly at such speeds for intercontinental, oceanic flights is of great societal benefit. Speed of transport will make this work commercially.
The military aspects are a bit more challenging, though. If you're going to build a bomber so fast it can't be shot down, fine--but then you have to either slow down the craft so that the munitions can exit the slipstream, or you have to come up with some design that will allow you to drop iron at high speeds--such as the Valkyrie, which dropped munitions out the tail.
Either is a huge design problem. If you slow the craft down, you have to design a craft that performs at all speed ranges with in-theater fidelity. If you kick the munitions out of the back, you have to compensate for the mass changes with aerodynamics, because you change the center of gravity all the way through the release profile, and you better hold the craft steady during release, lest you hit the bomb on the way out. "Somebody set us up the bomb," indeed!
But this won't replace STS. Yes, a scramjet is nice. Yes, this is similar to rocket-based combined cycle. But we could more cheaply build a reliable, two-stage system to get into orbit. Mass fractions are all you have to look at to wonder why Single Stage To Orbit [SSTO] is some perverted NASA priority. As a NASA sub, I know they don't live in reality, but damn...
But this is, for once, a positive example of your tax dollars at work.
The old saying goes something like, "If the mind can conceive and the heart can believe, the person can achieve." You've got to know what to do and believe that you can do it before you can make it happen.
Of course, if you'd told me about the leaps computer networks were making between the time I left Ohio in 1991 and moved to 'net-unaware Mississippi, when I didn't get access to the Internet until 1995 at my alma mater, I would have pestered my parents for the ability to stay connected in that four-year interregnum. Then I might have started writing about sports online a little bit earlier.
An interesting phenomenon...mod the parent of this comment up.
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It's really interesting to watch how Microsoft higher-ups use words. It's almost as much as watching politicians of any stripe, but specifically American politicians in the two major parties, snipe at each other with shadings of words.
Examplia gratis:
Note: The ellipsis used is directly from the original article; I'm curious to know what was left out!
If I could completely ignore the ellipsis--though I can't--you'd get to thinking that "innovation in the software industry" == "whatever improves M$FT's bottom line". The comments about competition are similar--they like competition that they can beat the snot out of, not that pushes a better product.
The use of the cancer thing is interesting...M$FT is shifting its attack from the license to the OS, while noting that the OS is licensed in a matter that makes it "a cancer". It's a carefully crafted use of hyperbole, and it'll hit home.
But I think it'll end up being a boomerang strike. I continue to expect back-end systems to merge to modern *nix systems, including Linux and the *BSD's. I think that's good from an overall push-the-ends-of-the-free/open-movements, and probably good for business in the long run, too.
I find that it would be one way that I would give back. Why? I'm not a coder--I'm a user. I'm working my way up to be a coder, but if I contributed to something like a distro right now, I'd fear that I'd screw it up. So why not give the distro some of my money as well as feel like I own a piece of that distro?
The long-term solution, which most folks won't like, might be to charge a deposit on the hardware or complete systems at sale. Just like the deposit on glass bottles in some states [Michigan comes to mind], you get an economic incentive to give them back afterwards.
If the money would be managed in the interim, given a five-year shelf life of most components, the interest could be used to bear the burden of the costs of extraction, and the principal could be returned back to the individual.
Running simple cost thoughts here, using compounding interest at 3.3% [what my credit union gives on a savings rate], a five-year investment on $100 deposit for a full system would garner $17.63--probably not enough to cover the extraction and recovery costs, but enough to ameliorate them.
I do understand the desire of many here to re-use old machines [working on getting my 850MHz T-bird finished so I can turn my P166MMX into my home LAN firewall myself], but at some point, the hardware does stop working. Those schools do have to junk the boxes at some point, often because the adults don't have the technical knowhow to fix them, the district doesn't have the money to pay them, and no one will let the kids play with it to get it back running.
Okay, yeah, so these guys do their job to protect that 'stronauts. Nice. Much more important is the testing that goes on beforehand for things that could kill them. A nice story, but a bit, well, fluffy.
I work with the guys at Marshall Space Flight Center who do toxicity testing pretty regularly. Offgassing is a huge concern, up there with flammability. [Stuff that doesn't burn in Earth's atmosphere will burn in the ISS/STS atmosphere, especially ISS, which runs at 25.3% oxygen.
It couldn't be because NASA still doesn't have a new Administrator, could it?
Seriously, the fact that we're 100+ days into the Bush Administration [which I helped vote into office] yet do not have a NASA Administrator--despite having plenty of excellent candidates inside and outside of NASA--is a travesty. It's high time for Bush and his staff to make their pick and get rid of Dan Goldin, who's set NASA back at least ten years.
Of course, each side in this great debate will point to those who were helped by models close to their side. Mundie cites Bell, Edison, and Ford as users of patents. All well and good, but plenty of scientific discovery has also happened in the open, many times in cases where one man or woman could not deign to get it all.
My thinking on this is that sometimes, one person or a small group of individuals can alter the balance of [balance to be altered]. In the interregnum, it's got to be a collective work. The GPL recognizes that, I think.
If you don't find what you're looking for, the aerospace world has some excellent best practices for documentation configuration management in more NASA specifications than I care to think about. If interested, email.
--
Waaaaaaaait a minute there, Luke. There's a big difference to be noted here.
I remember moving from DOS to Windows. I pushed it as a kid at home, because Windows was cool, had a GUI, and wasn't a Mac. I knew nothing of Unix or its variants, and without the Internet [realize, this was the early-to-mid-1990s in Mississippi...], I had no way of knowing.
I got my mom and my brother to use it. My dad remained stalwart in his DOS usage--it was what he'd used in the Air Force, it was what he used at his current job, and it was good enough for him, so why change?
Eventually, my dad went to a work environment where Windows use was pretty well required. Kicking and screaming, he switched. Why? It was what he used at work, so he became familiar with it, enough to use it at home, too.
Now, the entire family hates Windows, and I'm slowly but slowly pushing them to be Linux converts. It's going to take me building a system I can use stably for a long period of time and have them use and go, "Damn, this is cool!" before they'll use it themselves.
Even so, my dad probably won't switch over. Why? Why use two things, one at work, one at home, when one thing does adequately [if not that well, of course].
Before you jump up and down, my dad's an engineer. So am I. My dad took CS courses back in the '60s because he recognized what tools computers were back then. Even still, it will take entry into the workplace--where people have to use Linux/BSD/etc.--for the mainstream computer user to want to install it at home. They will have to see the benefits on a daily basis to make the desire to switch--they're not like some of us, who'll install three or four OS's in a weekend just for the hell of it.
--
Back when I was still an SGA Officer at UAH, I usually kept Senate's stuff updated all the time. But it kept me from doing other things [biggest complaint was that the University wouldn't let me even run basic CGI, so I was forced to build static HTML pages...ugh].
But if the Feds can't have a group that rushes stuff up on the Web quickly enough, isn't that a sure sign that we need it?
--
After I switched my phone service from AT&T to another carrier, AT&T started regularly calling to get me to come back. The first time, I listened to the schpiel, it wasn't a better deal, so I thanked the nice lady for her time and told her to have a nice day. She was pretty cool, and only protested once.
The second time, the guy who called was a bit more insistent. I told him that, yes, I had changed my service, and yes, I was happy with what I had, and no, I didn't want to change at this time. He protested for a few tries, and I finally told him, "Look, fella, it won't work. Bye," and hung up.
The third, fourth, and fifth times, they got my roommate, who pays me money after I pay all bills. After the fourth call, my roommate called me and told me AT&T wanted to talk to me. I asked how many times they'd called. Since it was an hour before I got home, I decided to get good and angry.
I get home, and the phone rings three minutes after I walk in. [You'd think they'd bugged my apartment or something in the interim.] The guy calling sounded fairly official, so I cut him off right away. Since it was the truth, this is what I told him, but if you want to steal it, you can. You must sound very commanding doing it, but I said:
I either scared the shit out of him, or he hung up while I was ranting, because there was dead air on the other line.
And hey, my roommate ph34rs me now.
--
Thanks, Decibel, for smacking me upside the head. =)
However, I didn't say the X-43A wouldn't carry its own fuel. I should have said that the X-15 had to carry its own oxidizer. My fault.
--
Coming to that conclusion does suck, doesn't it? I know the feeling--had it last semester. =)
Actually, this really only applies to chemical rockets. You could do SSTO with a nuclear rocket...but then that raises more issues. =)
--
Miss the part where I said oceanic? Of course, I've got no huge personal problem with the sound of freedom, but hey. =) But the service can be a big business boost. For example, my company does a lot of business with Japanese aerospace companies. Be nice to travel to/from Tokyo more quickly!
Well, not really, as you have to have high velocity to start the scramjet. So that means you have a rocket to start things off to get to scramjet startup speeds, then kick in the scramjet. It might work for a three-stage system, but...
--
Using a rocket all the way is Single Stage To Orbit [SSTO]. Mass fractions there run from 95-99%. Mass fraction, if you don't know, is the fraction of mass that is fuel and oxidizer. That doesn't count engine mass, structure, or payload. SSTO vehicles don't work, because we can't build a vehicle big enough that's reliable and not a budget buster to make it work.
Yes, the oxidizer will weigh that much more. It will make a difference. Not enough of one to make it viable, but a difference nonetheless.
--
Eh? You've got to get outside the slipstream to make this work. That causes all sorts of perturbations, and crossing the shock--which it will presumably do at some point--will kill a lot of the kinetic energy. Yes, there will be momentum, but we're not looking at that level of v/z combinations, or at least I don't think so.
--
Nope. The Mach references are to ground velocity. Mach is defined relative to the local speed of sound, of course, but for terms of lay and data sheets, you define it relative to ground.
Where Mach does matter is in terms of compressible flow, where you do need to know local Mach numbers to know whether you're in the incompressible [Ma1.0], or hypersonic [Ma>3.5 or so]. The flow properties change significantly depending on Mach value--converging areas act to speed flow at subsonic speeds but slow flow at supersonic speeds.
Gah. This is turning into fluid mechanics and aerodynamics! NOOOOOOO! I've already taken those classes and passed them! =)
--
Per the article, the X-15 got to Mach 6+.
Yes, the SR-71 got to Mach 3+, but not a whole lot faster--the engines were losing efficiency at that point and couldn't push any harder. Even moving the spike in the aerospike didn't help--you were still using some mechanical compression, and the mechanical compression was what was slowing the flow down. Shutting down the turbine blades wouldn't work, either. The theoretical limit is somewhere in the Mach 3.6+ range. I once saw a better analysis, but that was in a book I sold back. =)
But the "been there, done that..." scenario doesn't hold. The X-15 was a rocket plane, and as such had to carry its own fuel. Also, the X-15 was dropped from a bomber after being carried to altitude. The SR-71 had its theoretical limits as above. This is a step beyond either--something that would take off on its own and fly faster than the X-15. Granted, I don't enjoy aerospace engineering anymore, but even I think this is tres cool.
--
To get mach, after you find a [which, per my reply to this, is a=SQRT(kRT)], is simple:
Ma=V/a, where V is the velocity[*] and a is the speed of sound.
[*] Yes, this could be the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, but you know, I don't think a swallow can go supersonic, no matter if it's carrying a coconut by the husk, under the dorsal, or on a line...
--
WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING!!!
This will teach me to post five minutes before staff meeting.
a, speed of sound, is a function of three variables:
The actual equation is a=SQRT(kRT).
I knew I should have brought my fluid mechanics text in from the truck this morning. But noooooo, I had to bring in my CD's to rip to MP3 instead. Silly engineer.
--
Go back and read the article. The idea is to have rockets power the craft to scramjet speed, use the scramjets until oxygen consumption is minimal [probably 100,000 feet, but then I don't have good scramjet data here in my office], and then use rockets again to boost to orbit. So that's their goal in this, although I wonder how they would want to land it, either...
--
Actually, a [the speed of sound] varies with altitude, as temperature and density have an effect on the speed of sound. You can go supersonic, technically, simply by holding speed but changing altitude.
Most Mach references are to sea level a of 340 m/s.
--
The moveable spike does add a lot of the thrust. But what's being discussed is a scramjet, and as such, it gets all its air without compression. The ramjet is a compromise between the scramjet and the turbojet, really. Also, the ramjet has realistic speed limits, because there is some compression needed to fly, and the craft can't make it to scramjet operational speeds with air-breathing engines.
I'd rant further, but I sold back my propulsion texts when I realized I was going into the church business. Oh well.
--
This is important aerospace research, and if you read the article, it's pretty easy to see why. The ability to fly at such speeds for intercontinental, oceanic flights is of great societal benefit. Speed of transport will make this work commercially.
The military aspects are a bit more challenging, though. If you're going to build a bomber so fast it can't be shot down, fine--but then you have to either slow down the craft so that the munitions can exit the slipstream, or you have to come up with some design that will allow you to drop iron at high speeds--such as the Valkyrie, which dropped munitions out the tail.
Either is a huge design problem. If you slow the craft down, you have to design a craft that performs at all speed ranges with in-theater fidelity. If you kick the munitions out of the back, you have to compensate for the mass changes with aerodynamics, because you change the center of gravity all the way through the release profile, and you better hold the craft steady during release, lest you hit the bomb on the way out. "Somebody set us up the bomb," indeed!
But this won't replace STS. Yes, a scramjet is nice. Yes, this is similar to rocket-based combined cycle. But we could more cheaply build a reliable, two-stage system to get into orbit. Mass fractions are all you have to look at to wonder why Single Stage To Orbit [SSTO] is some perverted NASA priority. As a NASA sub, I know they don't live in reality, but damn...
But this is, for once, a positive example of your tax dollars at work.
--
Either:
Hmmmm. Sounds a lot like being a writer or a musician. =)
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The old saying goes something like, "If the mind can conceive and the heart can believe, the person can achieve." You've got to know what to do and believe that you can do it before you can make it happen.
Of course, if you'd told me about the leaps computer networks were making between the time I left Ohio in 1991 and moved to 'net-unaware Mississippi, when I didn't get access to the Internet until 1995 at my alma mater, I would have pestered my parents for the ability to stay connected in that four-year interregnum. Then I might have started writing about sports online a little bit earlier.
An interesting phenomenon...mod the parent of this comment up.
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