SOXBLOX

I wasn't judging. As the article says, the US used hypergolics in Titan-derived LVs and predecessors before the Chinese even had spaceflight. It's just preferable when leaders avoid letting rocket stages fall on inhabited areas.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/why-chinese-rockets-spew-toxic-bright-red-gas-clouds-on-launch The War Zone features Scott Manley's video on hypergolics in an article on old Chinese launch vehicles like the LM3B. I like to reference them here a lot, and now they've turned around and referenced one of our own. Sometimes the internet is a small world! EDIT: Finished reading... Plus two more!

Update to the above article quotes the DoD saying it was to be a hypersonic weapons test, but was canceled due to something in the pre-flight checks. Associated with the LRHW program for the Army.

Couple of MDA Gulfstream jets in the air not too long ago, plus something near the pad. These guys think it's a mobile launcher... https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/mysterious-launch-out-of-cape-canaveral-appears-imminent

Sounds like a great idea! This has my seal of approval!

[See signature below.]

It seems like the entire reason for this capsule is to avoid flying on American vehicles. Somehow I doubt that that will be a strong motivator.

@JoeSchmuckatelli These were some of my favorite videos! Like an Irish version of Bob Ross, with "happy little planets" instead of "happy little trees". There's a lot more on his channel worth watching; both the new and old stuff is good. Enjoy! The second vid should have more resonance stuff.

Ummm.... no. Even if the real world acted like KSP, where you can drag and drop components and they magically click together, and you can just add some struts to hold everything together, this wouldn't work. But the real world is waaaaay more complicated. The idea presented sounds a lot like something my six-year-old nephew came up with and showed me yesterday. Just sayin'...

I get back after, like, three months away from this forum and this is what I see. Now I know why I love this place!

At least it's cute...

I did a calligraphy birthday card for my father yesterday, and I laid out the margins in inches, but ruled the guidelines in metric. *shrugs* I do know a place where feet will never go out of use. It's pipe organs. Ranks of pipes have their pitches measured in feet. I can't imagine a 2.4384 m Gedackt, but I use an 8' Gedackt all the time.

Isn't Linux a brand of soap?

^ Oh, good. I was coming here to ask if we'd gotten any news on the incident. Now I know... Thanks!

I agree. I personally love flat UI designs. I dislike extreme minimalism. There shouldn't be tons of empty space. Colors and highlights should all fall within the same palette. This UI we're seeing from the devs checks all my boxes.

I play a building.

Ehhh... Maybe a teeny tiny bit. But what they'd really notice would be the early warning radars. Clear AFB, Thule, and Olenegorsk would look like beacons compared to wimpy TV signals.

There were no clouds of fighters guarding the F-117. It flew solo strike missions into the heaviest air defense umbrellas. In many cases, other strike packages would be present in the same general area, coming in from different directions. Maybe that confused you?

There's a reason, though, that the F-117 did like 80% of strike missions. Stealth is just that hard to beat.

It sounds like Tom Clancy to me. I'd read that book!

Glorious! I love procedural parts sooooo much! Can't wait to play this game!

I think it happens because of the particles and anti-particles that spontaneously generate in all of space. (That's the reason you can never have truly empty space.) Normally, they cancel out, and nobody notices them, but when they pop up near a black hole, sometimes one particle is pulled in, and the other gets away. The flow of escaping particles is what we call Hawking radiation. Anyone who knows better, please correct me if I'm wrong!

I think speculation is okay as long as it's marked as speculation. Pretending it's factual is wrong, but making educated guesses based on past events is fine and perfectly normal. So, what I want to know is this: If the airliner really did shed parts mid-air, what could have caused it? Could frantic maneuvers caused by disorientation have done it? I know very little about airliners, except that they have huge safety margins. Perhaps @mikegarrison could help?

I wonder if the massive descent rate plus some frantic maneuvers could have caused that... Obviously wings don't just fall off, unless it was maintained really, really poorly. I still like SunlitZelkova's explanation, though. The same exact thing happened with a JASDF fighter over the Pacific. No mayday, no ejection, and it wasn't the aircraft's fault. The pilot became disoriented, and his sensory inputs gave him false information. It happened despite having instruments in the cockpit which he could have used.

That looks about like it. Sad...