Regardless of who is at fault (sender or receiver) there is an obvious dating advantage to any male who can better interpret intent. According to the study they created a dataset of 280 pictures and the intent that a majority of women associated with it.
Five points to anyone who gets a hold of the dataset and turns it into a training course for dating men.
I would like to respectfully disagree with your pessimism about both management and technology of this project.
First a few basics. As has been noted by others, a scramjet refers to supersonic combustion ramjet engine. The air is compressed by the inlet to a ratio suitible for combustion. The air is then mixed with fuel (in the case of the X-43A: hydrogen) and then thrust is generated by the expansion of the gas as it exits the engine. The key to this is that at all times the gas flow remains supersonic so that higher speeds are possible.
The technology is valid and other tests have shown that it is within reach. An australian university recently completed flight testing HyShot, which managed to demonstrate supersonic combustion. Also Pratt & Whitney recently completed wind tunnel testing on a hydrocarbon fueled, flight weight scramjet engine. Both of these projects showed significant positive thrust.
On the management side I would like to say that I have a more positive view of this project than most people. Although NASA clearly has its problems, I believe that it is undertaking this in the correct way.
The way I understand this is that NASA is orchestrating the project on a high level and running the flight tests, but contracting the engineering work out to companies like Microcraft(X-43A), and the RBC^3 consortium. This encourages competition, while melding the results to speed advancements.
This sort of Government facilitated interaction between companies has worked very well for us in the past. See the development of proximity fuses for AAA and radar.
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Regardless of who is at fault (sender or receiver) there is an obvious dating advantage to any male who can better interpret intent. According to the study they created a dataset of 280 pictures and the intent that a majority of women associated with it.
Five points to anyone who gets a hold of the dataset and turns it into a training course for dating men.
I would like to respectfully disagree with your pessimism about both management and technology of this project. First a few basics. As has been noted by others, a scramjet refers to supersonic combustion ramjet engine. The air is compressed by the inlet to a ratio suitible for combustion. The air is then mixed with fuel (in the case of the X-43A: hydrogen) and then thrust is generated by the expansion of the gas as it exits the engine. The key to this is that at all times the gas flow remains supersonic so that higher speeds are possible. The technology is valid and other tests have shown that it is within reach. An australian university recently completed flight testing HyShot, which managed to demonstrate supersonic combustion. Also Pratt & Whitney recently completed wind tunnel testing on a hydrocarbon fueled, flight weight scramjet engine. Both of these projects showed significant positive thrust. On the management side I would like to say that I have a more positive view of this project than most people. Although NASA clearly has its problems, I believe that it is undertaking this in the correct way. The way I understand this is that NASA is orchestrating the project on a high level and running the flight tests, but contracting the engineering work out to companies like Microcraft(X-43A), and the RBC^3 consortium. This encourages competition, while melding the results to speed advancements. This sort of Government facilitated interaction between companies has worked very well for us in the past. See the development of proximity fuses for AAA and radar.