We adopted a stray kitten (now 1+ years old) that makes the same noise, albeit not for quite the same reasons. He'll make it a lot when he's chasing or playing with something, or when he first takes off for a game of "chase the little cat around the house". He also makes a "squeaky" noise and a really pathetic keening when he wants something (usually your food). No normal meow from this one.
Our other cat (a big fat siamese) has a low, gruff "pay attention to me" meow she makes when she wants to be petted (usually accompanied by headbutting your hand) and a plaintative "pleeeeeease" one, like if she wants to go out on the porch.
Both of them have a very loud, annoying cry if they're out on the porch and want in, or if they're in their carriers in the car.
First, I never stated that we should have a "global" military with bases all over the world, and be involved everywhere. What I said was that, if you want to cut military funding, you're going to have to give some of that up, and you're going to have to think long and hard about the consequences. Maybe it would be good to do that, to pull out of most places we're involved in and lock down the borders. I think it would be, anyways. But you still have to think about your actions before just abruptly cutting funds. Many people are under the illusion that you can just drastically cut the military's budget at random without any effect; I'm trying to point out that that isn't the case.
Second, "this is what we're doing right now" and "this is what we need right now" is not any kind of basis on which to plan military procurement for the next 20 years. That's a classic case of "trying to fight the last war" syndrome. No, we don't need F-22s in Iraq. But they'll be useful in North Korea for taking down air defense sites and helping to stop the flood of low-tech fighters they use. They'll certainly be useful if anything happens against Iran, since their aircraft are somewhat more advanced (they use relatively modern Russian designs, and have fairly advanced ground-based defenses). And you flat-out [i]need[/i] them in a war with China, as unlikely as such a war may seem [i]at the present time[/i]. You don't plan your military on best-case scenarios, and given the speed at which modern wars erupt, you simply don't have time to build up a small peacetime military to face the threat. It has to be ready beforehand. If there's one thing in history class, it's that you can't make definitive statements about the future when it comes to international relations. Fifteen years from now, the country you were at war with might be your friend, and your previously close ally might be aiming artillery your direction. You have to plan accordingly, and if that means buying expensive fighters and submarines that may never get used to their full capability, so be it. I'd rather spend the money now, even if we don't use that capability, than skimp on it to save money and be desperately wishing we had those F-22s later on. It's kind of like paying extra for additional airbags and safety features in your car--you probably won't ever need them, in which case you spent the money for nothing and dragged all that additional weight around. But that's better than getting in an accident without those things to protect you, and wishing you had paid for them.
Third, the reason many other countries get away with such small military budgets is that they know full well the US will ride to their aid in a serious conflict. That's why European countries have gotten away with smaller expenditures; not only are their economies smaller, but the US has essentially a permanent presence there. The US kind of adopted that "world policeman" status; right or wrong, many came to rely on that.
Ah, ignorance. "Just cut military spending and put it towards other stuff!" Sounds great--I like and support space exploration, too. But what are you going to give up in exchange?
Sustaining a certain level of military operations requires a certain amount of funding. And despite the fantasies and delusions of many, it's not there just to keep somebody's friends rich. Everything the military does, everything it operates, everywhere it goes, is driven in some way by the policies made by the civilian government.
For example, the US is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual-defense alliance created in response to a perceived threat from the Soviet Union following World War II. Effective membership in NATO carries with it certain obligations and responsibilities, including joint training operations and equipment purchases. Those cost money.
It has long been US policy to assist Taiwan in the event of an attack by the PRC. Again, fulfilling this commitment requires maintaining a certain level of readiness, both in terms of training and equipment. That costs money.
I could go on, but that would take more time than is reasonable. The point is, at the top level, the military has a certain set of "missions" assigned to it by the civilian leadership, both in furtherance of international policy goals and in direct defense of the US mainland. In addition, there is a further, almost unspoken policy requirement (driven by the people as a whole) that the military will try to minimize civilian collateral damage and its own casualties whenever possible.
At the next level down, the military looks at the missions and goals assigned to it, and tries to figure out the best way it can accomplish those goals within the financial, material, and human resources allocated to it. This is kind of a feedback loop; the military decides what it would ideally have and feeds that back to the civilian government, which might issue a revision, etc. In any case, the military analysis will come back with requirements for X airplanes, Y ships, Z people, etc.
Now, it's important to understand a few things. The notion of a "fair fight", of "honor" and "chivalry" on the battlefield, got kicked to the curb and left for dead a long time ago. You don't want a fair fight. You want it to be as unfair in your advantage as you can make it. If you're fighting a fair fight, you f'ed up. One of the ways you make the fight unfair is through advanced technology--more specifically, having more advanced technology than your opponent. It allows you to do many things, like minimize your own casualties, minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage, commit fewer personnel to an operation, operate with less supporting infrastructure, and so on. Obviously, advanced technology is expensive. You also have to think ahead if you want to maintain that advantage, and keep advancing at least as fast as any potential opponents. In practice, this means that you can't wait until everyone else is caught up with you before you bring out the next generation of equipment. You need to bring it out now, while even your current equipment is still better than everyone else, so you can start working on the next generation.
Even if you already have it designed, all this equipment is still more intricate and requires much greater resources to manufacture than in previous generations. You can't just ramp up the production rate overnight and build a whole bunch more fighters or ships after the war breaks out; it'll probably be over by the time the extra equipment starts rolling off the line. That means you have to have this stuff already made and ready to go; you can't just rely on being able to build more after the conflict starts.
Now, all of this pretty equipment is great and all, but it doesn't do anyone any good if nobody knows how to use it, or if it's broken. That means you need to train with it, and you need to maintain it, or you won't be able to use it when you need to. The same goes for personnel, too; everyon
That's a lot like my navigational method, too. I build a mental map of the area, picture the routes, and navigate by DR and geographic orientation. I cross-correlate that map with landmarks and the "street-level" view if I've been there before.
I'm not very good at judging distance on the ground, though. You know that old comparison about how men will give directions by distance ("go three miles, turn left, go half a mile...") whereas women go by landmarks and such? Yeah, I don't match up. Drives people nuts when I give directions, because not only do I not give distances, but I rely a lot on compass directions.
Unfortuantely, this stuff means I don't know actual street names very well, either. Drives the wife nuts, because she rememebers everything as a series of nodes in one giant linked list--"Main connects to Adams, which connects to Williams and Smith, which is where the vet is..."
Atmospheric tests don't cause fallout; only groundbursts do.
You're getting your terms mixed up. Atmospheric tests are ones that take place above ground but not in space; that includes groundbursts as well as low and high airbursts. In other words, you can see the fireball and mushroom cloud and all that. Quite a number of these were groundbursts (mounted on a fixed test stand, for example) or airbursts low enough that they still picked up debris from the ground
This is distinct from underground tests (the norm since 1963), which (when deep enough) don't really create atmospheric fallout at all.
Ok, then, at what point does striking back go from valid, moral self-defense to immoral? Is only immediate self-defense justified (shooting down bombers and missiles in your airspace, preventing invasion)? Are you justified in striking back to remove his offensive capability (the threat)? Where is that point?
It always amazes me how many people truthfully and honestly believe that disarming, stripping one's defenses, baring one's metaphorical (or physical!) throat to an an aggressive assailant will somehow move him to compassion or pity, that he is just really a poor misguided soul who threatens and hurts other people but doesn't really want to.
People like this, whether they're hardened street thugs and rapists, drug or Mafia bosses, terrorist leaders, or brutal dictators, are not nice people. They don't secretly want others to just be nice to them. They want power and spoils, and they have no qualms about hurting others to get them. They use brutal tactics to suppress their opponents and gain/maintain their positions. They speak and understand only the language of power and force, and seek only their own gain. Offers of appeasement, self-sacrifice, and mere words are simply accepted as giveaways of what they seek, a temporary means of satisfying their naive opponents while they maneuver for greater advantage to themselves.
Appeasement, unilateral acts of weakness, and surrender do not keep the mugger, rapist, or murderer from hurting you. They do not convince the street gangs to go home and leave others alone. They do not placate the terrorist and dissuade him from bombing transit systems and markets. They do not make the junta or the dictator feed their people or stop "purging" those who disagree with them. Rather, they encourage such acts by demonstrating that nobody has the balls to stop them. A normal, reasonable person will respond to kindness and generousity in kind, recognizing that it benefits everyone--but these are not reasonable or normal people. And they are not little children, who do what they're told by mommy and daddy and play nice with others--they frankly don't care about others at all, only themselves.
I don't advocate the use of force as a first option, nor the general application of preemtive force. Diplomacy, sanctions, and other peaceful measures are obviously a hell of a lot more desirable. But you have to remember that those alone will not stop these people and prevent further harm. They must be removed from that position, by peaceful negotiation or surrender or by force if absolutely necessary. You must have the force to back up your demands, and you must be willing to use it when you say you will.
There is nothing morally wrong with using directed force in self defense to stop an imminent threat. It does not "provoke or "escalate the situation"; that was done when the first threat was issued. I'd even argue that not defending oneself is immoral, at least when the means and opportunity are available.
I just don't get it. Why do so many people insist on denigrating themselves, decrying their wrongs (and even their right actions!) in support of others' actions which are far worse? Why is the person who stops a horrible act worse than the one trying to commit it?
Those figures aren't unreasonable at all. High-end military hardware (which ICBMs, bombers, nuclear devices, and submarines all certainly are) are much more complex than your average family car or consumer electronic device, and are often put through much harsher use, even just in training. Consider this:
Mission-capable rates (the percentage of equipment that, at any given time, is available to perform a mission) for conventional military aircraft generally hover in the 70-90% range. Sustaining a rate of 90%+ is considered phenomenal performance. Periods of sub-60% are not unheard of.
(incidentally, this appleis to ships, too... most ships spend 1/2 to 2/3 of their time in port or drydock, or in exercises, rather than on deployment. An aircraft carrier, for example, may spend 6 months in port for refit, modification, and resupply, then 6 months training and exercise, then 6 months deployment. That's why 12 carriers in service only equates to 4-5 on station at any given time, plus one or two more available if needed)
Civilian launch vehicles still experience a number of malfunctions, and that's with an army of support personnel, flexible deadlines, and optimal conditions. Plus, they get rather frequent launches to test things and learn from them. ICBMs and SLBMs don't get that kind of testing due to funding and political constraints, and even when they do, it's under those optimal conditions. And if rockets in optimal conditions still have relatively high failure rates, what does that say about the ones sitting in underground silos for years that have to be launched at a moment's notice?
Even "simple" guided weapons like laser-guided bombs, SAMs, and AAMs experience a number of failures and near-misses. Hitting a precision target with a ballistic missile is much harder.
Most nuclear devices in service have not been tested in a long time, and only a handful of them were tested under "operational" conditions. The vast majority were simply mounted in a test fixture and initiated after careful setup. They very well might not respond as well after a high-G launch, zero-gravity and very cold coast, and a very high-G, high-temperature ballistic entry.
Finally, consider that some portion of your arsenal may be destroyed before launch, or shot down on its way to the target.
After all that, those servicability figures don't look unrealistic at all--and from what I've read from those "in the business", they might even be optimistic.
Yeah, nuking a bunch of big cities will have an impact on human society--but on the grand environmental scale, it's not going to do very much. People have a misconception that setting off a mere handful of devices will somehow blanket the whole world in radioactive fallout and kill every living thing--and that's not the case by any means. Close to 1000 atmospheric tests took place before 1963, and we're all still around.
It's also been argued that 50 Mt or so is about the practical limit on yield--beyond that the warhead blows itself apart before it can use up the rest of the "fuel".
The largest warheads in regular service were about 25 Mt (Soviet) and 10 Mt (US). Nowadays, most warheads are much smaller, in the sub-megaton range. More accurate delivery systems mean you can use smaller ones.
I think you're highly overestimating what nukes will do. They're powerful, yes, but they're actually less powerful than most people realize.
A "couple dozen warheads", even when properly targeted and making the giant assumption that they all work and all get through to the target, is maybe enough to take out a couple of cities like Savannah, Georgia (which has a couple of military installations, a large port, an airport, railyards, etc). That is, of course, assuming that the strike is targeted against military assets and the things that support them. One could instead drop a device or two in the middle of major population centers; more civilians would be killed but the warfighting ability of the target would not be hindered as much.
Now, expand what I said above, and apply it to an entire country. You're targeting at least one warhead for every major airport, port, railyard, army base, missile silo, air defense site, and major power generation facility. Sometimes you can overlap the targets, but not always. Now account for the fact that not all your warheads will be available at one time--not only will a given fraction their delivery systems be down for maintenance at any given time, but the delivery systems may fail or be shot down, and so may the warheads. That's how you wind up with arsenals in the thousands.
Actually, fallout is worse from groundburst initiations than from airbursts--they scoop up a lot more dirt and debris than an airburst does. An airburst is optimal for soft targets and wide areas, but hardened targets (bunkers, command centers, missile silos) and inherently overpressure- and thermal-resistant things like roads, railyards, and runways essentially need a groundburst to destroy.
Precautionary fuel stops are signs of a safe pilot.
When you start getting into the realm of commercial airliners, every extra pound carried on the aircraft equates to additional fuel burned--and therefore extra cost. The aircraft aren't usually filled up before every flight*--they typically only carry enough to get to the destination, plus reserves (30-45min or more, depending on weather and stuff) and maybe some to get to a preselected alternate airport, if required. But sometimes, even that isn't enough. Unexpectedly strong headwinds, delays on the ground or while airborne, mechanical issues**, etc. can all result in not having enough fuel to make it to the destination with the desired margin of safety. In that case, they will stop to refuel.
* One exception is called "tankering". Sometimes, the fuel at the destination is so expensive that it's cheaper to carry extra fuel for later and just eat the extra fuel burn.
** Certain mechanical issues (broken APU, one inoperative pressurization pack, etc.) are specifically allowed, within limits. And before you get your thongs in a wad, they don't affect safety of flight. Sometimes, though, those come with altitude, routing, or speed restrictions, which can increase fuel burn.
And that gets right back to my point: You learn by doing, not by making powerpoint slides.
Go back to the first US spacewalks during the Gemini program. Ed White's wasn't too bad, as he was just floating around and didn't have to try and work on things. But the next couple, where the astronauts were given tasks like remove sample packages and mess with tools, were almost scary--they quickly worked themselves into exhaustion and overheated, making work almost impossible. What everyone thought would be easy and relatively effortless actually wasn't.
Finally, they took all of those lessons and re-figured their approach to spacewalking. Handholds were added, equipment was changed, and the training was revolutionized with the now-standard underwater practice. On Gemini XII, Buzz Aldrin put all of that into practice.
The same thing will happen as we move forward. The lessons learned from the Apollo surface EVAs will be incorporated in the new generation of surface suits. Those currently in use for shuttle EVAs have benefited from years of previous experience capturing satellites and working on Hubble. New tools and work methods build on the ones used before.
So yes, develop your new suits and gloves with feedback from the men and women who use them. Make prototypes, and test them. Build flight-ready ones and have someone try them out in a vacuum chamber. Lather, rinse, repeat. But don't just sit on your butt and expect it to happen from nothing. If you want the tech to improve, you still have to pay for it--and I think that's what so many people are missing.
If a meaningful mission would cost too much now, there's no shame in waiting for the technology to became more mature.
But you must also remember that technology doesn't just mature on your own, especially if it's something specialized. If this were a matter of computing power or technology, for example, you actually could just wait, since there are enough other pressures driving its development to keep it moving. But things like deep-space propulsion, closed-cycle life support systems, and vacuum-qualified hardware are pretty specific to the space industry; if you don't pay to keep developing them, they won't mature.
And even then, you'll still need to use them and test them on occasion. Doing so probably involves flying some kind of mission. And if you're going to be doing that, you might as well accomplish other stuff on that mission, like, oh, land on the moon.
Meh. Vikings are more entertaining. And they have cooler hats.
Oh, and you might skip the separate salting of the soil and nuking stages, and instead just use enhanced-radiation devices ("neutron bombs") with cobalt jackets. Make sure you use ground bursts too, they're dirtier. Just don't stand downwind... the fallout's a bitch.
And the great part is that, just like income tax, they won't see the per gallon increase, they just get a bill at the end of the month that they have to pay
If you want to make it "just like the income tax", deduct it straight from their paychecks every week. Then people don't notice.
Shit, if everyone had to withhold taxes for themselves, and make a payment at the end of the year (or even every month), you'd see a violent tax uprising faster than a politician can say "campaign contributions". Unfortunately, that's why it won't happen. We'll keep paying outrageous, wasteful taxes because the average person is too fucking dumb to realize how much is being taken from him.
Now the autopilot takes off and lands too. The pilot is there in case of emergencies. But I would still wager that a computer would statistically be better than a human overall, otherwise the airlines wouldn't deploy this.
How does this get +4 informative?
The airplane does not fly itself. Autopilots are not intelligent. All they do is take a pilot-input path (whether just a simple altitude-and-heading hold, or a complete VNAV profile with a 3D flight path across various positions, and speed commands throughout), and try to make the airplane follow it. Imagine a control system for a car that commands the cruise control speed and follows a purple line down the middle of the road. That's all the autoflight system does, no more. The job of this autopilot is to relieve the pilots of the "low-order" tasks like keeping the wings level and holding a constant airspeed so they can concentrate on "higher-order" stuff like navigation, systems monitoring, ATC compliance, traffic avoidance, weather-avoidance, etc. Autopilots also have the advantage of being able to fly more precisely within their design parameters and when everything is working correctly. It will fly more smoothly under normal conditions than a human pilot will, primarily because its feedback response is faster and has more resolution. But in the abnormal situations, the human has the advantage, because humans can assimilate, anticipate, or at least respond to the unexpected, unpredictable, and unanticipated things you run into in an emergency.
Also note that pilots overwhelmingly choose to make landings manually; they only make autolandings when required to do so by weather conditions or to maintain currency requirements (pilots and aircraft are required to make an autolanding every so often). And the autopilots are very closely monitored during those times.
Some background on autopilots:
Autoflight systems systems are generally divided into two parts which are completely and totally separate from the flight control computer (if any): the flight director (FD), and the autopilot.
The flight director is the "brains" of the system (though I hate using that term). It looks at the aircraft's present position, heading, and speed, compares that to the desired flight path, and spits out the pitch, roll, and speed required to get from where it is to where it should be. This is then displayed on the pilots' instruments and fed to the autopilot. Note that the FD does not actually fly the airplane--it just spits out a suggestion, if you will.
All the autopilot does is try to follow the outputs of the FD, usually by means of mechanical servos connected to the manual controls in the cockpit. It need not be active--indeed, the pilots can choose to fly with only the FD engaged, and follow its outputs manually rather than let the autopilot do it. They can also choose to fly without either of them. To my knowledge, this holds true for all civil aircraft, fly-by-wire or not.
The thing is, these airplanes don't have a "computer override". There's no function that cuts in, takes away control from the pilots, and decides on its own to do what it wants. There are things called "limiters", which prevent the aircraft from exceeding certain well-defined parameters, but those are pretty rigidly defined mathematically within the control laws of the system, and not some "fuzzy" limit determined at the whim of a computer.
In my experience working on fly-by-wire systems, and from my personal perspective as an engineer and a pilot, a system like this should be designed to revert to "direct mode", where control surface deflection is directly proportional to stick throw (acting essentially like a traditional non-computerized aircraft) in the event of air data loss or if any doubt exists as to the quality of that data.
Yes they do, but that is solely the result of computer assistance
You don't need computers to run spoiler-assisted roll. Plenty of non-FBW aircraft have roll assist spoilers--the A300 and A310, Boeing's 707, 727, 737, and 747, the B-52, Gulfstreams, Dassault Falcons, the F-4, and on and on and on...
It should also be noted that unlike ailerons spoilerons do not control roll by increasing the lift of the wing, they work by inducing drag.
No, they induce roll by reducing lift, just like deflecting an aileron upwards does. They do generate drag, but that will cause yaw rather than roll moments.
in any system other than fly-by-wire the use of spoilers is utterly exhausting to the pilot, as far more drag is experienced than with the use of an aileron.
Ok, now I'm at the WTF point. It is quite possible (having been done many, many times before) to add spoiler assist on roll using direct mechanical or mechanically-controlled hydraulic linkages. It is not "utterly exhausting" as you claim; if anything, spoiler roll assist makes the pilot's life easier. You're talking out your ass at this point, and have no clue what you're talking about.
Signed, a private pilot/aerospace engineer who works on flight control systems
Oh, I'm not blaming the engineers for anything. They'll do the best they can with the steaming pile of shit they're given, and come out with something usable at the end--they've proven that before (ref. Shuttle). It's just going to take a lot of work and a lot of money, and the cost and time savings touted for the "recycled shuttle" approach is going to end up costing just as much, if not more than, a scratch build. And through no fault of the engineers, it will be a giant, horribly inelegant kludge. But hey, we saved jobs and kept some congressdouchebags in office!
Actually, many aircraft use them to supplement the ailerons. Next time you're on a commercial airliner, watch the wing. You'll see spoilers on one side or the other work in tandem with the aileron. It helps reduce adverse yaw, and adds more control authority.
Some aircraft like the B-52 (later models) and the MU-2 don't have ailerons at all--roll control is entirely through spoilers.
The current SRB's are reliable, tested, and well-documented in their current application. But the reuse of them for the Ares I is actually a significant change. When you start doing things like extending the booster, changing all of the loadpaths and dynamics, introducting new control methods, changing the propellant grain, flying a different flight profile, you have to re-test and re-document all of the changes. And by the time you've done all that, while still working within all of the other constraints that reusing a design imposes on you... yeah, it's going to cost a lot. Just look at other attempts to radically change existing hardware for new uses. In most cases, what you wind up with is an entirely new system, with only passing commonality and limited carryover from the previous generation.
Shuttle hardware (particularly the SRBs) is being reused due to politics, not due to any pressing engineering concerns.
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We adopted a stray kitten (now 1+ years old) that makes the same noise, albeit not for quite the same reasons. He'll make it a lot when he's chasing or playing with something, or when he first takes off for a game of "chase the little cat around the house". He also makes a "squeaky" noise and a really pathetic keening when he wants something (usually your food). No normal meow from this one.
Our other cat (a big fat siamese) has a low, gruff "pay attention to me" meow she makes when she wants to be petted (usually accompanied by headbutting your hand) and a plaintative "pleeeeeease" one, like if she wants to go out on the porch.
Both of them have a very loud, annoying cry if they're out on the porch and want in, or if they're in their carriers in the car.
First, I never stated that we should have a "global" military with bases all over the world, and be involved everywhere. What I said was that, if you want to cut military funding, you're going to have to give some of that up, and you're going to have to think long and hard about the consequences. Maybe it would be good to do that, to pull out of most places we're involved in and lock down the borders. I think it would be, anyways. But you still have to think about your actions before just abruptly cutting funds. Many people are under the illusion that you can just drastically cut the military's budget at random without any effect; I'm trying to point out that that isn't the case.
Second, "this is what we're doing right now" and "this is what we need right now" is not any kind of basis on which to plan military procurement for the next 20 years. That's a classic case of "trying to fight the last war" syndrome. No, we don't need F-22s in Iraq. But they'll be useful in North Korea for taking down air defense sites and helping to stop the flood of low-tech fighters they use. They'll certainly be useful if anything happens against Iran, since their aircraft are somewhat more advanced (they use relatively modern Russian designs, and have fairly advanced ground-based defenses). And you flat-out [i]need[/i] them in a war with China, as unlikely as such a war may seem [i]at the present time[/i]. You don't plan your military on best-case scenarios, and given the speed at which modern wars erupt, you simply don't have time to build up a small peacetime military to face the threat. It has to be ready beforehand. If there's one thing in history class, it's that you can't make definitive statements about the future when it comes to international relations. Fifteen years from now, the country you were at war with might be your friend, and your previously close ally might be aiming artillery your direction. You have to plan accordingly, and if that means buying expensive fighters and submarines that may never get used to their full capability, so be it. I'd rather spend the money now, even if we don't use that capability, than skimp on it to save money and be desperately wishing we had those F-22s later on. It's kind of like paying extra for additional airbags and safety features in your car--you probably won't ever need them, in which case you spent the money for nothing and dragged all that additional weight around. But that's better than getting in an accident without those things to protect you, and wishing you had paid for them.
Third, the reason many other countries get away with such small military budgets is that they know full well the US will ride to their aid in a serious conflict. That's why European countries have gotten away with smaller expenditures; not only are their economies smaller, but the US has essentially a permanent presence there. The US kind of adopted that "world policeman" status; right or wrong, many came to rely on that.
Ah, ignorance. "Just cut military spending and put it towards other stuff!" Sounds great--I like and support space exploration, too. But what are you going to give up in exchange?
Sustaining a certain level of military operations requires a certain amount of funding. And despite the fantasies and delusions of many, it's not there just to keep somebody's friends rich. Everything the military does, everything it operates, everywhere it goes, is driven in some way by the policies made by the civilian government.
For example, the US is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual-defense alliance created in response to a perceived threat from the Soviet Union following World War II. Effective membership in NATO carries with it certain obligations and responsibilities, including joint training operations and equipment purchases. Those cost money.
It has long been US policy to assist Taiwan in the event of an attack by the PRC. Again, fulfilling this commitment requires maintaining a certain level of readiness, both in terms of training and equipment. That costs money.
I could go on, but that would take more time than is reasonable. The point is, at the top level, the military has a certain set of "missions" assigned to it by the civilian leadership, both in furtherance of international policy goals and in direct defense of the US mainland. In addition, there is a further, almost unspoken policy requirement (driven by the people as a whole) that the military will try to minimize civilian collateral damage and its own casualties whenever possible.
At the next level down, the military looks at the missions and goals assigned to it, and tries to figure out the best way it can accomplish those goals within the financial, material, and human resources allocated to it. This is kind of a feedback loop; the military decides what it would ideally have and feeds that back to the civilian government, which might issue a revision, etc. In any case, the military analysis will come back with requirements for X airplanes, Y ships, Z people, etc.
Now, it's important to understand a few things. The notion of a "fair fight", of "honor" and "chivalry" on the battlefield, got kicked to the curb and left for dead a long time ago. You don't want a fair fight. You want it to be as unfair in your advantage as you can make it. If you're fighting a fair fight, you f'ed up. One of the ways you make the fight unfair is through advanced technology--more specifically, having more advanced technology than your opponent. It allows you to do many things, like minimize your own casualties, minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage, commit fewer personnel to an operation, operate with less supporting infrastructure, and so on. Obviously, advanced technology is expensive. You also have to think ahead if you want to maintain that advantage, and keep advancing at least as fast as any potential opponents. In practice, this means that you can't wait until everyone else is caught up with you before you bring out the next generation of equipment. You need to bring it out now, while even your current equipment is still better than everyone else, so you can start working on the next generation.
Even if you already have it designed, all this equipment is still more intricate and requires much greater resources to manufacture than in previous generations. You can't just ramp up the production rate overnight and build a whole bunch more fighters or ships after the war breaks out; it'll probably be over by the time the extra equipment starts rolling off the line. That means you have to have this stuff already made and ready to go; you can't just rely on being able to build more after the conflict starts.
Now, all of this pretty equipment is great and all, but it doesn't do anyone any good if nobody knows how to use it, or if it's broken. That means you need to train with it, and you need to maintain it, or you won't be able to use it when you need to. The same goes for personnel, too; everyon
That's a lot like my navigational method, too. I build a mental map of the area, picture the routes, and navigate by DR and geographic orientation. I cross-correlate that map with landmarks and the "street-level" view if I've been there before.
I'm not very good at judging distance on the ground, though. You know that old comparison about how men will give directions by distance ("go three miles, turn left, go half a mile...") whereas women go by landmarks and such? Yeah, I don't match up. Drives people nuts when I give directions, because not only do I not give distances, but I rely a lot on compass directions.
Unfortuantely, this stuff means I don't know actual street names very well, either. Drives the wife nuts, because she rememebers everything as a series of nodes in one giant linked list--"Main connects to Adams, which connects to Williams and Smith, which is where the vet is..."
Anyone know if similar things are available in the US? I'd love to get some for my area...
Atmospheric tests don't cause fallout; only groundbursts do.
You're getting your terms mixed up. Atmospheric tests are ones that take place above ground but not in space; that includes groundbursts as well as low and high airbursts. In other words, you can see the fireball and mushroom cloud and all that. Quite a number of these were groundbursts (mounted on a fixed test stand, for example) or airbursts low enough that they still picked up debris from the ground
This is distinct from underground tests (the norm since 1963), which (when deep enough) don't really create atmospheric fallout at all.
Also, none of those tests caused a firestorm.
True.
Ok, then, at what point does striking back go from valid, moral self-defense to immoral? Is only immediate self-defense justified (shooting down bombers and missiles in your airspace, preventing invasion)? Are you justified in striking back to remove his offensive capability (the threat)? Where is that point?
Thank you.
It always amazes me how many people truthfully and honestly believe that disarming, stripping one's defenses, baring one's metaphorical (or physical!) throat to an an aggressive assailant will somehow move him to compassion or pity, that he is just really a poor misguided soul who threatens and hurts other people but doesn't really want to.
People like this, whether they're hardened street thugs and rapists, drug or Mafia bosses, terrorist leaders, or brutal dictators, are not nice people. They don't secretly want others to just be nice to them. They want power and spoils, and they have no qualms about hurting others to get them. They use brutal tactics to suppress their opponents and gain/maintain their positions. They speak and understand only the language of power and force, and seek only their own gain. Offers of appeasement, self-sacrifice, and mere words are simply accepted as giveaways of what they seek, a temporary means of satisfying their naive opponents while they maneuver for greater advantage to themselves.
Appeasement, unilateral acts of weakness, and surrender do not keep the mugger, rapist, or murderer from hurting you. They do not convince the street gangs to go home and leave others alone. They do not placate the terrorist and dissuade him from bombing transit systems and markets. They do not make the junta or the dictator feed their people or stop "purging" those who disagree with them. Rather, they encourage such acts by demonstrating that nobody has the balls to stop them. A normal, reasonable person will respond to kindness and generousity in kind, recognizing that it benefits everyone--but these are not reasonable or normal people. And they are not little children, who do what they're told by mommy and daddy and play nice with others--they frankly don't care about others at all, only themselves.
I don't advocate the use of force as a first option, nor the general application of preemtive force. Diplomacy, sanctions, and other peaceful measures are obviously a hell of a lot more desirable. But you have to remember that those alone will not stop these people and prevent further harm. They must be removed from that position, by peaceful negotiation or surrender or by force if absolutely necessary. You must have the force to back up your demands, and you must be willing to use it when you say you will.
There is nothing morally wrong with using directed force in self defense to stop an imminent threat. It does not "provoke or "escalate the situation"; that was done when the first threat was issued. I'd even argue that not defending oneself is immoral, at least when the means and opportunity are available.
I just don't get it. Why do so many people insist on denigrating themselves, decrying their wrongs (and even their right actions!) in support of others' actions which are far worse? Why is the person who stops a horrible act worse than the one trying to commit it?
Those figures aren't unreasonable at all. High-end military hardware (which ICBMs, bombers, nuclear devices, and submarines all certainly are) are much more complex than your average family car or consumer electronic device, and are often put through much harsher use, even just in training. Consider this:
Mission-capable rates (the percentage of equipment that, at any given time, is available to perform a mission) for conventional military aircraft generally hover in the 70-90% range. Sustaining a rate of 90%+ is considered phenomenal performance. Periods of sub-60% are not unheard of.
(incidentally, this appleis to ships, too... most ships spend 1/2 to 2/3 of their time in port or drydock, or in exercises, rather than on deployment. An aircraft carrier, for example, may spend 6 months in port for refit, modification, and resupply, then 6 months training and exercise, then 6 months deployment. That's why 12 carriers in service only equates to 4-5 on station at any given time, plus one or two more available if needed)
Civilian launch vehicles still experience a number of malfunctions, and that's with an army of support personnel, flexible deadlines, and optimal conditions. Plus, they get rather frequent launches to test things and learn from them. ICBMs and SLBMs don't get that kind of testing due to funding and political constraints, and even when they do, it's under those optimal conditions. And if rockets in optimal conditions still have relatively high failure rates, what does that say about the ones sitting in underground silos for years that have to be launched at a moment's notice?
Even "simple" guided weapons like laser-guided bombs, SAMs, and AAMs experience a number of failures and near-misses. Hitting a precision target with a ballistic missile is much harder.
Most nuclear devices in service have not been tested in a long time, and only a handful of them were tested under "operational" conditions. The vast majority were simply mounted in a test fixture and initiated after careful setup. They very well might not respond as well after a high-G launch, zero-gravity and very cold coast, and a very high-G, high-temperature ballistic entry.
Finally, consider that some portion of your arsenal may be destroyed before launch, or shot down on its way to the target.
After all that, those servicability figures don't look unrealistic at all--and from what I've read from those "in the business", they might even be optimistic.
Yeah, nuking a bunch of big cities will have an impact on human society--but on the grand environmental scale, it's not going to do very much. People have a misconception that setting off a mere handful of devices will somehow blanket the whole world in radioactive fallout and kill every living thing--and that's not the case by any means. Close to 1000 atmospheric tests took place before 1963, and we're all still around.
It's also been argued that 50 Mt or so is about the practical limit on yield--beyond that the warhead blows itself apart before it can use up the rest of the "fuel".
The largest warheads in regular service were about 25 Mt (Soviet) and 10 Mt (US). Nowadays, most warheads are much smaller, in the sub-megaton range. More accurate delivery systems mean you can use smaller ones.
I think you're highly overestimating what nukes will do. They're powerful, yes, but they're actually less powerful than most people realize.
A "couple dozen warheads", even when properly targeted and making the giant assumption that they all work and all get through to the target, is maybe enough to take out a couple of cities like Savannah, Georgia (which has a couple of military installations, a large port, an airport, railyards, etc). That is, of course, assuming that the strike is targeted against military assets and the things that support them. One could instead drop a device or two in the middle of major population centers; more civilians would be killed but the warfighting ability of the target would not be hindered as much.
Now, expand what I said above, and apply it to an entire country. You're targeting at least one warhead for every major airport, port, railyard, army base, missile silo, air defense site, and major power generation facility. Sometimes you can overlap the targets, but not always. Now account for the fact that not all your warheads will be available at one time--not only will a given fraction their delivery systems be down for maintenance at any given time, but the delivery systems may fail or be shot down, and so may the warheads. That's how you wind up with arsenals in the thousands.
Actually, fallout is worse from groundburst initiations than from airbursts--they scoop up a lot more dirt and debris than an airburst does. An airburst is optimal for soft targets and wide areas, but hardened targets (bunkers, command centers, missile silos) and inherently overpressure- and thermal-resistant things like roads, railyards, and runways essentially need a groundburst to destroy.
How the hell does this get "informative"?
Precautionary fuel stops are signs of a safe pilot.
When you start getting into the realm of commercial airliners, every extra pound carried on the aircraft equates to additional fuel burned--and therefore extra cost. The aircraft aren't usually filled up before every flight*--they typically only carry enough to get to the destination, plus reserves (30-45min or more, depending on weather and stuff) and maybe some to get to a preselected alternate airport, if required. But sometimes, even that isn't enough. Unexpectedly strong headwinds, delays on the ground or while airborne, mechanical issues**, etc. can all result in not having enough fuel to make it to the destination with the desired margin of safety. In that case, they will stop to refuel.
* One exception is called "tankering". Sometimes, the fuel at the destination is so expensive that it's cheaper to carry extra fuel for later and just eat the extra fuel burn.
** Certain mechanical issues (broken APU, one inoperative pressurization pack, etc.) are specifically allowed, within limits. And before you get your thongs in a wad, they don't affect safety of flight. Sometimes, though, those come with altitude, routing, or speed restrictions, which can increase fuel burn.
And that gets right back to my point: You learn by doing , not by making powerpoint slides.
Go back to the first US spacewalks during the Gemini program. Ed White's wasn't too bad, as he was just floating around and didn't have to try and work on things. But the next couple, where the astronauts were given tasks like remove sample packages and mess with tools, were almost scary--they quickly worked themselves into exhaustion and overheated, making work almost impossible. What everyone thought would be easy and relatively effortless actually wasn't.
Finally, they took all of those lessons and re-figured their approach to spacewalking. Handholds were added, equipment was changed, and the training was revolutionized with the now-standard underwater practice. On Gemini XII, Buzz Aldrin put all of that into practice.
The same thing will happen as we move forward. The lessons learned from the Apollo surface EVAs will be incorporated in the new generation of surface suits. Those currently in use for shuttle EVAs have benefited from years of previous experience capturing satellites and working on Hubble. New tools and work methods build on the ones used before.
So yes, develop your new suits and gloves with feedback from the men and women who use them. Make prototypes, and test them. Build flight-ready ones and have someone try them out in a vacuum chamber. Lather, rinse, repeat. But don't just sit on your butt and expect it to happen from nothing. If you want the tech to improve, you still have to pay for it--and I think that's what so many people are missing.
If a meaningful mission would cost too much now, there's no shame in waiting for the technology to became more mature.
But you must also remember that technology doesn't just mature on your own, especially if it's something specialized. If this were a matter of computing power or technology, for example, you actually could just wait, since there are enough other pressures driving its development to keep it moving. But things like deep-space propulsion, closed-cycle life support systems, and vacuum-qualified hardware are pretty specific to the space industry; if you don't pay to keep developing them, they won't mature.
And even then, you'll still need to use them and test them on occasion. Doing so probably involves flying some kind of mission. And if you're going to be doing that, you might as well accomplish other stuff on that mission, like, oh, land on the moon.
Meh. Vikings are more entertaining. And they have cooler hats.
Oh, and you might skip the separate salting of the soil and nuking stages, and instead just use enhanced-radiation devices ("neutron bombs") with cobalt jackets. Make sure you use ground bursts too, they're dirtier. Just don't stand downwind... the fallout's a bitch.
And the great part is that, just like income tax, they won't see the per gallon increase, they just get a bill at the end of the month that they have to pay
If you want to make it "just like the income tax", deduct it straight from their paychecks every week. Then people don't notice.
Shit, if everyone had to withhold taxes for themselves, and make a payment at the end of the year (or even every month), you'd see a violent tax uprising faster than a politician can say "campaign contributions". Unfortunately, that's why it won't happen. We'll keep paying outrageous, wasteful taxes because the average person is too fucking dumb to realize how much is being taken from him.
It has everything to do with states attempting to extend their reach beyond the Constitutional provisions of the Commerce Clause.
Hell, the Feds have been doing it for decades now... surprised it's taken the states this long to get in on the game.
Now the autopilot takes off and lands too. The pilot is there in case of emergencies. But I would still wager that a computer would statistically be better than a human overall, otherwise the airlines wouldn't deploy this.
How does this get +4 informative?
The airplane does not fly itself. Autopilots are not intelligent. All they do is take a pilot-input path (whether just a simple altitude-and-heading hold, or a complete VNAV profile with a 3D flight path across various positions, and speed commands throughout), and try to make the airplane follow it. Imagine a control system for a car that commands the cruise control speed and follows a purple line down the middle of the road. That's all the autoflight system does, no more. The job of this autopilot is to relieve the pilots of the "low-order" tasks like keeping the wings level and holding a constant airspeed so they can concentrate on "higher-order" stuff like navigation, systems monitoring, ATC compliance, traffic avoidance, weather-avoidance, etc. Autopilots also have the advantage of being able to fly more precisely within their design parameters and when everything is working correctly. It will fly more smoothly under normal conditions than a human pilot will, primarily because its feedback response is faster and has more resolution. But in the abnormal situations, the human has the advantage, because humans can assimilate, anticipate, or at least respond to the unexpected, unpredictable, and unanticipated things you run into in an emergency.
Also note that pilots overwhelmingly choose to make landings manually; they only make autolandings when required to do so by weather conditions or to maintain currency requirements (pilots and aircraft are required to make an autolanding every so often). And the autopilots are very closely monitored during those times.
Some background on autopilots:
Autoflight systems systems are generally divided into two parts which are completely and totally separate from the flight control computer (if any): the flight director (FD), and the autopilot.
The flight director is the "brains" of the system (though I hate using that term). It looks at the aircraft's present position, heading, and speed, compares that to the desired flight path, and spits out the pitch, roll, and speed required to get from where it is to where it should be. This is then displayed on the pilots' instruments and fed to the autopilot. Note that the FD does not actually fly the airplane--it just spits out a suggestion, if you will.
All the autopilot does is try to follow the outputs of the FD, usually by means of mechanical servos connected to the manual controls in the cockpit. It need not be active--indeed, the pilots can choose to fly with only the FD engaged, and follow its outputs manually rather than let the autopilot do it. They can also choose to fly without either of them. To my knowledge, this holds true for all civil aircraft, fly-by-wire or not.
The thing is, these airplanes don't have a "computer override". There's no function that cuts in, takes away control from the pilots, and decides on its own to do what it wants. There are things called "limiters", which prevent the aircraft from exceeding certain well-defined parameters, but those are pretty rigidly defined mathematically within the control laws of the system, and not some "fuzzy" limit determined at the whim of a computer.
In my experience working on fly-by-wire systems, and from my personal perspective as an engineer and a pilot, a system like this should be designed to revert to "direct mode", where control surface deflection is directly proportional to stick throw (acting essentially like a traditional non-computerized aircraft) in the event of air data loss or if any doubt exists as to the quality of that data.
Yes they do, but that is solely the result of computer assistance
You don't need computers to run spoiler-assisted roll. Plenty of non-FBW aircraft have roll assist spoilers--the A300 and A310, Boeing's 707, 727, 737, and 747, the B-52, Gulfstreams, Dassault Falcons, the F-4, and on and on and on...
It should also be noted that unlike ailerons spoilerons do not control roll by increasing the lift of the wing, they work by inducing drag.
No, they induce roll by reducing lift, just like deflecting an aileron upwards does. They do generate drag, but that will cause yaw rather than roll moments.
in any system other than fly-by-wire the use of spoilers is utterly exhausting to the pilot, as far more drag is experienced than with the use of an aileron.
Ok, now I'm at the WTF point. It is quite possible (having been done many, many times before) to add spoiler assist on roll using direct mechanical or mechanically-controlled hydraulic linkages. It is not "utterly exhausting" as you claim; if anything, spoiler roll assist makes the pilot's life easier. You're talking out your ass at this point, and have no clue what you're talking about.
Signed,
a private pilot/aerospace engineer who works on flight control systems
Oh, I'm not blaming the engineers for anything. They'll do the best they can with the steaming pile of shit they're given, and come out with something usable at the end--they've proven that before (ref. Shuttle). It's just going to take a lot of work and a lot of money, and the cost and time savings touted for the "recycled shuttle" approach is going to end up costing just as much, if not more than, a scratch build. And through no fault of the engineers, it will be a giant, horribly inelegant kludge. But hey, we saved jobs and kept some congressdouchebags in office!
You don't use a spoiler to fly the plane.
Actually, many aircraft use them to supplement the ailerons. Next time you're on a commercial airliner, watch the wing. You'll see spoilers on one side or the other work in tandem with the aileron. It helps reduce adverse yaw, and adds more control authority.
Some aircraft like the B-52 (later models) and the MU-2 don't have ailerons at all--roll control is entirely through spoilers.
The current SRB's are reliable, tested, and well-documented in their current application. But the reuse of them for the Ares I is actually a significant change. When you start doing things like extending the booster, changing all of the loadpaths and dynamics, introducting new control methods, changing the propellant grain, flying a different flight profile, you have to re-test and re-document all of the changes. And by the time you've done all that, while still working within all of the other constraints that reusing a design imposes on you... yeah, it's going to cost a lot. Just look at other attempts to radically change existing hardware for new uses. In most cases, what you wind up with is an entirely new system, with only passing commonality and limited carryover from the previous generation.
Shuttle hardware (particularly the SRBs) is being reused due to politics, not due to any pressing engineering concerns.