A scramjet is a Supersonic Combusting Ramjet. Let's back up a step. A ramjet is an engine that uses shock waves, instead of fan-shaped compressors, to compress the air to mix with your jet fuel. If you don't grok why you need to compress air, go thou and Google search for a description of turbojets or any other internal combustion engine. This is going to be a long enough post as it is. : )
As the ramjet passes air through the shock wave system in its inlet, the air a) heats up and b) slows down. The speed of sound increases with temperature, and the speed of the gas goes down (from the Mach 3 to Mach 6 where ramjets can typically be operated). At some point, the air is actually subsonic. At that point, fuel is introduced and ignited. Hot air go out back of motor, airplane go forward.
Scramjet is basically the same idea, except without the slowing the air down to subsonic part. The entire combustion process happens in a supersonic airflow. While the physics of "low speed" combustion are pretty well understood, doing the same thing in a high speed flow is seriously non-trivial. In the paper we wrote, we adopted a technology called a "hyper-mixing injector" to dump fuel into the stream, and we actually let the high temperature air ignite the fuel all by itself. Keeping that fire going is, well, hard. Stick a Zippo out your sunroof. You get the idea.
Scramjets are way tricky. If you don't manage the airflow very precisely by varying the geometry of the intake section and not maneuvering the aircraft EVER, you might get a condition called an "unstart". Basically, all the nice shock waves you've been using to compress your gas glom together into a big strong shock wave perpendicular to the gas flow directon in your inlet, and basically at that point the temperature and pressure in your combustion chamber go from really really improbably high (which is good, and you've designed for that) to freakin' nutty crazy blow-up-spaceship now high, and you start collecting pieces of the thing across three states.
See recent Columbia accident for a much less violent example of what would happen. It would be far worse.
Scramjets are scary. Yeah, they might work, but they're REALLY finicky, and I don't believe our flight control systems are sufficiently advanced to fly them reliably and safely.
And forget about having a guy driving the plane. If you pitch the nose a few degrees off the trajectory, or roll the airplane at all, the shock system will change formation, and very likely you won't even know what hit you. No way to do it without computer control end-to-end.
You might have observed that the low speed for a ramjet is Mach 3. In order to have the shock waves in the inlet, you already have to be going really fast. You might be interested to know that the SR-71 used a partial ramjet cycle at its Mach 3 cruise condition. It also had a turbojet engine core to accelerate it to ramjet operating speeds.
Nuclear powered plasma would work great in an atmosphere...if you don't mind dumping a very highly radioactive plume all over Florida.
Actually, even though the specific impulse of the nuclear rockets is really good (specific impulse is a good measure of the fuel efficiency of a rocket. It tells you the number of pounds of thrust you get per pound of fuel) the peak thrust values are not very high. In other words, it'll be a good interplanetary drive, but really not ideal for launch systems (bad environmental issues aside).
You did, when you mentioned the X-30 NASP, which is powered by a scramjet.
Your proposal to use "regular propulsion" to get to a max altitude has some merit, but not the way you think it does. A big, fast airplane powered by low-bypass turbofans or turbo-ramjets might be a good platform to launch a light rocket ship from, but it would take a lot of engineering to figure out if that would be more cost effective than using a small spaceplane (powered by rockets exclusively: Air breathing single stage rocketry is, I believe, not viable) coupled with a large semi-reusable heavy launch system.
And what the heck do you need flight control and power for on reentry? Just pick your de-orbit point to land wherever you want. The last thing you need when coming down from space is more speed, so an engine is totally useless. The ideal spacecraft gets into orbit with only enough fuel to maneuver and de-orbit. Any excess fuel is a colossal waste because of the equations that govern orbital insertion.
Well, I can't, since most of his points are absolutely accurate.
Exceptions:
Buran was a 3/4 scale duplicate of Shuttle, not the same size. It also never carried a crew...its one mission was unmanned. Read more here.
A crew escape section (a jettisonable cockpit, for instance) is a good idea for launch related problems. Howevet, on reentry, it would be absolutely impossible to get the capsule a) protected from the reentry heat and b) away from the Mach 20 reentering shuttle. It would also be absurdly heavy as a retrofit. I do believe that it should be considered for next-generation reusable spacecraft.
The reason that the Challenger problems were left up to the "old boy" network is the same reason the same engineers that crashed Mars Pathfinder builts its successors: There just aren't a hell of a lot of people who know how to do this stuff. It's horrifically complicated, and the stakes are impossibly high. You don't just let a recent graduate (like I will be soon! Yay!) design a new Shuttle. Or even a system on the shuttle. You use experienced, seasoned engineers, checking and cross-checking each other. And you still have fatal mistakes.
He's also wrong about his (rhetorical) contention that throttling up Challenger's engines was fatal. The solid rocket boosters were already burning (fatally), and they are not throttled. As soon as those things were lit (that is, before it left the ground), the fix was in. That ship was going to die.
I do disagree with a lot of his conclusions. This fellow doesn't seem to be committed to manned space exploration. His discussions about going to the Moon (which is a dead end: Been there, done that) are red herring arguments.
My personal feelings on the future of the space program are very ambiguous. I use that word in the sense that I have very strong, opposing opinions on the topic.
I believe passionately in/manned/ space exploration. I think it feeds the human soul and imagination. You don't have to look much past the story of Dr. Kalpana Chawla (an alumnus of the UTA, where i'm graduating in May) to see how the challenge of space can motivate and inspire people.
However, I think NASA is doing a very bad job of stewarding our resources. They're given a budget (although I certainly wouldn't call it lavish), with the understanding that that budget will be returned to the communities around major NASA installations, and the contractors that supply them. Good engineering or no, that is the only way you can get any sort of large-scale project done in this country: Spread the wealth to as many congresscritters' pork barrels as possible. I don't like it either, but I don't know how to change it.
So, I want people in space. But I don't think that going over and over to LEO accomplishes anything. If I thought it would be possible to say "OK, we're not going to fly any people for five years, but then by God we'll start flight testing our Mars hardware!" I'd be a happy guy. However, I believe that if we don't keep in the habit (if you will) of putting people in space, we will lose the political will to do it. I think that would be Bad, because we (America and its partners) would cede to somebody else (China?) primacy in solar exploration. I think that's a Baad Idea.
Uh, no. Nobody's figured out how to keep a scramjet lit. The Australians did it for about six seconds, which is a record for a free-flying vehicle.
Last semester my classmates and I wrote a draft for the AIAA design paper competition for a reusable, air breathing single stage to orbit "rocket" plane.
Bottom line? Unless we get a lot better fuels, or radically lighter structures, it's not going to work. That's even assuming that you can keep the scramjet lit. (which would get you a PhD, if not a Nobel prize)
X-30 is not the way. Venture Star was much closer. A shuttle-oid with Boeing's fly-back boosters might be a really good short term solution.
NASA isn't about doing science. NASA is about doing politics. That's why the only two major "space exploration" plans are more shuttle flights, and the ISS. NASA is making certain that they, and the shuttle, are the only American heavy-lift vehicle available.
Do I think it sucks? You bet. Do I think the answer is to throw more money at NASA? No. I think NASA should be acting as a technology incubator. The X-plane program is really good, and getting much better since the aircraft no longer need to be man-rated to explore the flight envelope. I would like to see a private venture use NASA technology to build a rapidly serviceable, man-rated heavy launch vehicle, whether or not it is SSTO. (Me, I think that SSTO rocketry is not yet viable. I would prefer something like a reusable staged system, or else a cheap disposable booster pushing a reusable people capsule and/or a disposable payload section).
Shuttle's "one size fits all" approach is not ideal.
Crack propagation is a well-understood failure mode of metal structures. Just because YOU don't understand it doesn't mean it doesn't cause airplanes to fail. If you want to say that the Yakuza is responsible for more aircraft crashes than poor crack maintenance, have at it. Don't let the fact that your opinion is misguided and silly prevent you from thinking whatever you want.
Parts DO just break. Any idea how much "force" is being applied in (say) a wing box in an airliner? Hint: It's more than your house weighs. The word you're looking for is "stress", which is a force per unit area, and a stress CAN change even when a force does not, because the cross sectional area the force acts on changes.
Go read about metal fatigue and crack propagation.
I've done metal fatigue experiments with my own hands. I've seen crack propagation happen with my own eyes. The Yakuza were not present, unless they had invisible ninjas in my lab.
You are really uneducated about this subject. Nothing wrong with that...I'm uneducated about lots of stuff. But I DO know what I'm talking about on this front. You, my friend, are making stuff up.
FAA investigates aircraft crashes. Forensic engineers look at pieces and reconstruct the accident. I do not personally view these chunks o' disaster, but I know people who do. That source is credible to me. I defy you to give an example of an aircraft crash that does not have a very well-supported explanation for what went wrong.
A guy saying "Uh, we saw a picture that looks like an EM blast burning a hole in the side of an aircraft" are not credible. They're absurd. I do not find that source credible.
You know the Yakuza exists. You know airplanes crash.
Therefore, the Yakuza crashes airplanes!? Brilliant. Write QED at the bottom and send it to the FAA. I'm sure they'll be thrilled with your amazing deductive skills.
I'm going to walk you through this horse/zebra thing carefully, so you see what I'm talking about. It's a thought experiment, now: I'm not actually saying that horses and zebras are relevant to the discussion. I'm also not saying that I don't believe in zebras. I've seen them. I know they're not imaginary.
If you get run over by a four-legged fast moving large animal in anyplace other than the African savannah, odds are your culprit is a horse, not a zebra. Why? 1) There are a lot more horses on Earth than zebras. 2) Zebras are non-migratory (just like swallows from the same region), and are not likely to be found outside Africa. (You know you were not run over in a zoo, because you were on the scene when you got run over, and the scene was not in a zoo.)
Therefore, when you apply Occam's razor CORRECTLY, you can proceed from the assumption that you got run over by a horse. You might be wrong, yes, but until the evidence leads you to another conclusion, the simplest hypothesis is most likely to be true.
OK, so you're now trying to shore up Bearden's arguments by pointing to an even LESS credible source? It is immediately obvious that you've never been in the same room with a logic textbook. You might find one edifying.
What theory accepted by the establishment? "The Government" isn't saying anything, which considering that this happened 26.5 hours ago (at the time of this post) is entirely appropriate. I've developed some plausible guesses as to what might have happened based on what I've seen on video, but I'm not asserting that I have the One True Explanation.
Hell, I don't even trust NASA to accurately solve this problem. They've got too much riding on keeping Shuttle and ISS viable. They'll whitewash the hell out of this, given half a chance.
Okay, look: I'm a mechanical engineer by training. I am aggressively ignorant about electricity, so I won't go into my (enormous!) skepticism about his over-unity power generation thing. Maybe you CAN pull juice out of the luminiferous ether. But, I think it's/more likely/ that he is a nut.
Yes, some nuts in the past have proven right. I'll be at the head of the line proclaiming "mea culpa!" if he's right and I'm wrong. But his assertion that the Yakuza is shooting down airplanes with a "scaled interferometry" weapon (which, upon a cursory search, I can find no references to that don't involve this guy's web site), I'm going to go ahead and earmark that particular theory "unlikely".
I look for horses, not zebras. You might have heard this principle referred to as "Occam's razor".
Might he be right? Sure. I might also become the Pope. I don't think either is very likely.
I agree with everything you say, except for the viability of Delta Clipper.
Landing vertically on a rocket on a planet with a thick atmosphere is stupid and wasteful. The fuel consumption math demonstrates that this is idea has zero advantages.
Parachutes and wings work good. Why not use them?
DC-X was a VERY COOL technology demonstrator. It was just a silly idea for an orbiter.
Reynolds' number is proportional to the pressure stresses (forces per unit area) acting on a body divided by the viscous stresses.
Reynolds' number increases with object size and speed. Meaning, a 747's wing (long chord: call it 40 feet) operating at cruise has a Reynolds number of 10,000,000 or so, because the viscous forces are almost totally irrelevant compared to the pressure forces. Bumblebees have a wing chord of a couple millimeters, and operate at slow speeds, so the ratio of pressure forces to viscous forces is a lot smaller. That's why aerodynamic models that work really good for large flying objects totally fail to explain what's going on with bumblebees: Many aerodynamic calculations discard viscous forces as negligible because they're orders of magnitude smaller than pressure forces.
You can predict the transition from laminar to turbulent flow based on a Reynolds' number, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't have controlled flight. Bumblebees get blown around by air currents, but they still get to where they're going. If your system reacts fast (and if it's small, it can) I can imagine controlled flight even in turbulent low-Reynolds' number flows. How fast? Well, Dyson says not very, and he's awful smart, but I'd want to see more of his reasoning in order to agree with his number of millimeters/second.
On the other hand, Crichton explains that the things fly by "climbing" air molecules. He just made that shit up.
Slashdot Mirror
It gets a little hairier than that. : )
A scramjet is a Supersonic Combusting Ramjet. Let's back up a step. A ramjet is an engine that uses shock waves, instead of fan-shaped compressors, to compress the air to mix with your jet fuel. If you don't grok why you need to compress air, go thou and Google search for a description of turbojets or any other internal combustion engine. This is going to be a long enough post as it is. : )
As the ramjet passes air through the shock wave system in its inlet, the air a) heats up and b) slows down. The speed of sound increases with temperature, and the speed of the gas goes down (from the Mach 3 to Mach 6 where ramjets can typically be operated). At some point, the air is actually subsonic. At that point, fuel is introduced and ignited. Hot air go out back of motor, airplane go forward.
Scramjet is basically the same idea, except without the slowing the air down to subsonic part. The entire combustion process happens in a supersonic airflow. While the physics of "low speed" combustion are pretty well understood, doing the same thing in a high speed flow is seriously non-trivial. In the paper we wrote, we adopted a technology called a "hyper-mixing injector" to dump fuel into the stream, and we actually let the high temperature air ignite the fuel all by itself. Keeping that fire going is, well, hard. Stick a Zippo out your sunroof. You get the idea.
Scramjets are way tricky. If you don't manage the airflow very precisely by varying the geometry of the intake section and not maneuvering the aircraft EVER, you might get a condition called an "unstart". Basically, all the nice shock waves you've been using to compress your gas glom together into a big strong shock wave perpendicular to the gas flow directon in your inlet, and basically at that point the temperature and pressure in your combustion chamber go from really really improbably high (which is good, and you've designed for that) to freakin' nutty crazy blow-up-spaceship now high, and you start collecting pieces of the thing across three states.
See recent Columbia accident for a much less violent example of what would happen. It would be far worse.
Scramjets are scary. Yeah, they might work, but they're REALLY finicky, and I don't believe our flight control systems are sufficiently advanced to fly them reliably and safely.
And forget about having a guy driving the plane. If you pitch the nose a few degrees off the trajectory, or roll the airplane at all, the shock system will change formation, and very likely you won't even know what hit you. No way to do it without computer control end-to-end.
You might have observed that the low speed for a ramjet is Mach 3. In order to have the shock waves in the inlet, you already have to be going really fast. You might be interested to know that the SR-71 used a partial ramjet cycle at its Mach 3 cruise condition. It also had a turbojet engine core to accelerate it to ramjet operating speeds.
Nuclear powered plasma would work great in an atmosphere...if you don't mind dumping a very highly radioactive plume all over Florida.
Actually, even though the specific impulse of the nuclear rockets is really good (specific impulse is a good measure of the fuel efficiency of a rocket. It tells you the number of pounds of thrust you get per pound of fuel) the peak thrust values are not very high. In other words, it'll be a good interplanetary drive, but really not ideal for launch systems (bad environmental issues aside).
You did, when you mentioned the X-30 NASP, which is powered by a scramjet.
Your proposal to use "regular propulsion" to get to a max altitude has some merit, but not the way you think it does. A big, fast airplane powered by low-bypass turbofans or turbo-ramjets might be a good platform to launch a light rocket ship from, but it would take a lot of engineering to figure out if that would be more cost effective than using a small spaceplane (powered by rockets exclusively: Air breathing single stage rocketry is, I believe, not viable) coupled with a large semi-reusable heavy launch system.
And what the heck do you need flight control and power for on reentry? Just pick your de-orbit point to land wherever you want. The last thing you need when coming down from space is more speed, so an engine is totally useless. The ideal spacecraft gets into orbit with only enough fuel to maneuver and de-orbit. Any excess fuel is a colossal waste because of the equations that govern orbital insertion.
Well, I can't, since most of his points are absolutely accurate.
/manned/ space exploration. I think it feeds the human soul and imagination. You don't have to look much past the story of Dr. Kalpana Chawla (an alumnus of the UTA, where i'm graduating in May) to see how the challenge of space can motivate and inspire people.
Exceptions:
Buran was a 3/4 scale duplicate of Shuttle, not the same size. It also never carried a crew...its one mission was unmanned. Read more here.
A crew escape section (a jettisonable cockpit, for instance) is a good idea for launch related problems. Howevet, on reentry, it would be absolutely impossible to get the capsule a) protected from the reentry heat and b) away from the Mach 20 reentering shuttle. It would also be absurdly heavy as a retrofit. I do believe that it should be considered for next-generation reusable spacecraft.
The reason that the Challenger problems were left up to the "old boy" network is the same reason the same engineers that crashed Mars Pathfinder builts its successors: There just aren't a hell of a lot of people who know how to do this stuff. It's horrifically complicated, and the stakes are impossibly high. You don't just let a recent graduate (like I will be soon! Yay!) design a new Shuttle. Or even a system on the shuttle. You use experienced, seasoned engineers, checking and cross-checking each other. And you still have fatal mistakes.
He's also wrong about his (rhetorical) contention that throttling up Challenger's engines was fatal. The solid rocket boosters were already burning (fatally), and they are not throttled. As soon as those things were lit (that is, before it left the ground), the fix was in. That ship was going to die.
I do disagree with a lot of his conclusions. This fellow doesn't seem to be committed to manned space exploration. His discussions about going to the Moon (which is a dead end: Been there, done that) are red herring arguments.
My personal feelings on the future of the space program are very ambiguous. I use that word in the sense that I have very strong, opposing opinions on the topic.
I believe passionately in
However, I think NASA is doing a very bad job of stewarding our resources. They're given a budget (although I certainly wouldn't call it lavish), with the understanding that that budget will be returned to the communities around major NASA installations, and the contractors that supply them. Good engineering or no, that is the only way you can get any sort of large-scale project done in this country: Spread the wealth to as many congresscritters' pork barrels as possible. I don't like it either, but I don't know how to change it.
So, I want people in space. But I don't think that going over and over to LEO accomplishes anything. If I thought it would be possible to say "OK, we're not going to fly any people for five years, but then by God we'll start flight testing our Mars hardware!" I'd be a happy guy. However, I believe that if we don't keep in the habit (if you will) of putting people in space, we will lose the political will to do it. I think that would be Bad, because we (America and its partners) would cede to somebody else (China?) primacy in solar exploration. I think that's a Baad Idea.
Uh, no. Nobody's figured out how to keep a scramjet lit. The Australians did it for about six seconds, which is a record for a free-flying vehicle.
Last semester my classmates and I wrote a draft for the AIAA design paper competition for a reusable, air breathing single stage to orbit "rocket" plane.
Bottom line? Unless we get a lot better fuels, or radically lighter structures, it's not going to work. That's even assuming that you can keep the scramjet lit. (which would get you a PhD, if not a Nobel prize)
X-30 is not the way. Venture Star was much closer. A shuttle-oid with Boeing's fly-back boosters might be a really good short term solution.
NASA isn't about doing science. NASA is about doing politics. That's why the only two major "space exploration" plans are more shuttle flights, and the ISS. NASA is making certain that they, and the shuttle, are the only American heavy-lift vehicle available.
Do I think it sucks? You bet. Do I think the answer is to throw more money at NASA? No. I think NASA should be acting as a technology incubator. The X-plane program is really good, and getting much better since the aircraft no longer need to be man-rated to explore the flight envelope. I would like to see a private venture use NASA technology to build a rapidly serviceable, man-rated heavy launch vehicle, whether or not it is SSTO. (Me, I think that SSTO rocketry is not yet viable. I would prefer something like a reusable staged system, or else a cheap disposable booster pushing a reusable people capsule and/or a disposable payload section).
Shuttle's "one size fits all" approach is not ideal.
And yes, that is my professional opinion.
I stand four feet behind #2 and pee on pee-ers 1 and 3. I try to aim right below the knees, so it goes flappy flappy when they walk.
IF it went down the way everybody seems to think it went down, I'd write your point the other way:
It is a sad day when one person's arrogance and abusiveness excludes them from technical discussions.
Communities have a right to choose with whom they wish to associate. I don't HAVE to put up with your abuse, just because you're smart.
*sigh*
Crack propagation is a well-understood failure mode of metal structures. Just because YOU don't understand it doesn't mean it doesn't cause airplanes to fail. If you want to say that the Yakuza is responsible for more aircraft crashes than poor crack maintenance, have at it. Don't let the fact that your opinion is misguided and silly prevent you from thinking whatever you want.
Been fun feeding your troll, but I'm done now.
Parts DO just break. Any idea how much "force" is being applied in (say) a wing box in an airliner? Hint: It's more than your house weighs. The word you're looking for is "stress", which is a force per unit area, and a stress CAN change even when a force does not, because the cross sectional area the force acts on changes.
Go read about metal fatigue and crack propagation.
I've done metal fatigue experiments with my own hands. I've seen crack propagation happen with my own eyes. The Yakuza were not present, unless they had invisible ninjas in my lab.
You are really uneducated about this subject. Nothing wrong with that...I'm uneducated about lots of stuff. But I DO know what I'm talking about on this front. You, my friend, are making stuff up.
OK.
FAA investigates aircraft crashes. Forensic engineers look at pieces and reconstruct the accident. I do not personally view these chunks o' disaster, but I know people who do. That source is credible to me. I defy you to give an example of an aircraft crash that does not have a very well-supported explanation for what went wrong.
A guy saying "Uh, we saw a picture that looks like an EM blast burning a hole in the side of an aircraft" are not credible. They're absurd. I do not find that source credible.
OK, that was totally incoherent.
You know the Yakuza exists.
You know airplanes crash.
Therefore, the Yakuza crashes airplanes!? Brilliant. Write QED at the bottom and send it to the FAA. I'm sure they'll be thrilled with your amazing deductive skills.
I'm going to walk you through this horse/zebra thing carefully, so you see what I'm talking about. It's a thought experiment, now: I'm not actually saying that horses and zebras are relevant to the discussion. I'm also not saying that I don't believe in zebras. I've seen them. I know they're not imaginary.
If you get run over by a four-legged fast moving large animal in anyplace other than the African savannah, odds are your culprit is a horse, not a zebra. Why? 1) There are a lot more horses on Earth than zebras. 2) Zebras are non-migratory (just like swallows from the same region), and are not likely to be found outside Africa. (You know you were not run over in a zoo, because you were on the scene when you got run over, and the scene was not in a zoo.)
Therefore, when you apply Occam's razor CORRECTLY, you can proceed from the assumption that you got run over by a horse. You might be wrong, yes, but until the evidence leads you to another conclusion, the simplest hypothesis is most likely to be true.
OK, so you're now trying to shore up Bearden's arguments by pointing to an even LESS credible source? It is immediately obvious that you've never been in the same room with a logic textbook. You might find one edifying.
What theory accepted by the establishment? "The Government" isn't saying anything, which considering that this happened 26.5 hours ago (at the time of this post) is entirely appropriate. I've developed some plausible guesses as to what might have happened based on what I've seen on video, but I'm not asserting that I have the One True Explanation.
/more likely/ that he is a nut.
Hell, I don't even trust NASA to accurately solve this problem. They've got too much riding on keeping Shuttle and ISS viable. They'll whitewash the hell out of this, given half a chance.
Okay, look: I'm a mechanical engineer by training. I am aggressively ignorant about electricity, so I won't go into my (enormous!) skepticism about his over-unity power generation thing. Maybe you CAN pull juice out of the luminiferous ether. But, I think it's
Yes, some nuts in the past have proven right. I'll be at the head of the line proclaiming "mea culpa!" if he's right and I'm wrong. But his assertion that the Yakuza is shooting down airplanes with a "scaled interferometry" weapon (which, upon a cursory search, I can find no references to that don't involve this guy's web site), I'm going to go ahead and earmark that particular theory "unlikely".
I look for horses, not zebras. You might have heard this principle referred to as "Occam's razor".
Might he be right? Sure. I might also become the Pope. I don't think either is very likely.
Oh.
Gosh, you're right. His proofs by assertion are much more convincing on the second read.
Oh wait, no they aren't. What are you? His publicist?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't have to have a reason to be skeptical: It's the way I'm wired.
Keeps me out of tinfoil hats.
Then get to it, sparky.
Who needs stability when you can get a big short-term payoff on the market for your officers?
What, you thought they were worried about YOU when they talked about shareholders' interests? Silly monkey.
I didn't say that it was hard for me to imagine Iraqis reveling. I said I have a hard time imagining PEOPLE reveling.
And the cultural divide isn't between America and Iraq, it's between people with compassion for their fellow travellers and those without.
Yes, there are stupid bloodthirsty Americans too. They are also invited to partake of my penis.
I think that they have Dr. Evil as an accountant.
Dr E.: "Steve! Ted! We just lost ninety nine kajillion bazillion dollars!"
Ted: "Shit. Guess I'll have to delay my purchase of Swaziland. Hey, is Connie Chung hot or what?"
Steve: "I think I broke a nail."
Better put on your tinfoil hat before you read that article. Guy sounds like a crank to me.
Well, for what it's worth, i talked to a couple people today at work who thought that Al Quaeda blew it up 'cuz there was an Israeli on it.
I disabused them of that silly notion. Not like you can hit Shuttle with a Stinger SAM.
I agree with everything you say, except for the viability of Delta Clipper.
Landing vertically on a rocket on a planet with a thick atmosphere is stupid and wasteful. The fuel consumption math demonstrates that this is idea has zero advantages.
Parachutes and wings work good. Why not use them?
DC-X was a VERY COOL technology demonstrator. It was just a silly idea for an orbiter.
I'm pretty darn opposed to war in Iraq. I think it's a bad idea that doesn't serve America's national interest.
However, the Iraqis who said that (who I'm sure are a small subset of the Iraqi people), are free to SUCK MY ENORMOUS WHITE PENIS.
Man, I really have a hard time believing how people can revel in stuff like this. Talk about a cultural divide.
Motherfuckers.
Ummm...you know that statistics are, like, really not useful for small numbers of events, right?
113 is a small number of events.
Perhaps you're not familiar with the idiom. Tongue in cheek denotes playful joking.
Uh, you're confused.
Reynolds' number is proportional to the pressure stresses (forces per unit area) acting on a body divided by the viscous stresses.
Reynolds' number increases with object size and speed. Meaning, a 747's wing (long chord: call it 40 feet) operating at cruise has a Reynolds number of 10,000,000 or so, because the viscous forces are almost totally irrelevant compared to the pressure forces. Bumblebees have a wing chord of a couple millimeters, and operate at slow speeds, so the ratio of pressure forces to viscous forces is a lot smaller. That's why aerodynamic models that work really good for large flying objects totally fail to explain what's going on with bumblebees: Many aerodynamic calculations discard viscous forces as negligible because they're orders of magnitude smaller than pressure forces.
You can predict the transition from laminar to turbulent flow based on a Reynolds' number, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't have controlled flight. Bumblebees get blown around by air currents, but they still get to where they're going. If your system reacts fast (and if it's small, it can) I can imagine controlled flight even in turbulent low-Reynolds' number flows. How fast? Well, Dyson says not very, and he's awful smart, but I'd want to see more of his reasoning in order to agree with his number of millimeters/second.
On the other hand, Crichton explains that the things fly by "climbing" air molecules. He just made that shit up.