Nuke

sr-71 has been used several times for science (tm), with tail featuring the nasa logo (not usaf). https://www.reddit.com/r/SR71/comments/4j5acm/q_what_is_this_on_the_back_of_the_aircraft/?st=iqkipimo&sh=3d933870 its kind of unique in its flight regeme. good for testing hypersonic components. not a whole lot of aircraft that can do that. so its no wonder that nasa is still flying them. i dont think we would hand one over to rel for testing, but we probibly wouldnt be against letting them bring the engines over here to run the tests under nasa/usaf supervision. actually i think rel has negotiated with the usaf in the past. renting the blackbird is likely a lot cheaper than building a new airframe from scratch.

idk i always figured the skylon is way to big to be a first step. rel should get the engines working and see who buys them. you can save a lot of money using an existing aircraft as a test bed, they mentioned a dc-10 in the article, figure replace its center engine with a sabre and your tankage in the fusalage. that would be something to see. however that configuration isnt going to do anything to test supersonic operation, let alone hypersonic. its probibly enough to test airbreating mode in the subsonic regeme, and cycle switching. you would need to send a few engines to nasa to have them test it on an sr71, which is probibly the only aircraft that can get into sabre's full air breathing flight regime, nasa has used them in tests before. thats ignoring the fact that its a lot of engine for a not very big bird.

the best thing nerds can do is find other nerds. i always thought it was short for 'inquisition', but meh.

asm is really just machine code thats been formatted for human readability. this is why every architecture has its own flavor of asm.

had has had more that a few good agc related posts. its certainly worth reading. core ram. the rom was core rope memory, sometimes called lol memory, because it was woven together one bit at a time by little old ladies.

ive recently been turned on to vektor, kind of a spacey neo-thrash metal band with a lot of scifi themes. terminal redux utterly blew me away. then theres arcturus. sort of an advantgarde metal band with some spacey themes on latter albums.

as i understand it the rocket is actually the cheap part. things like mission control, launch facility operations, use of space communication infrastructure for the duration of the mission, the people you need to pay for months or years, regulatory fees, insurance. those cost money.

it looks like a streamlined el camino.

nostradamus is very poetic in his writings, its the same sort of unnecessary grandiosity you tend to find in religious texts. the excessive use of metaphor tends to result in a text that has a lot of potential meanings. the depiction of a dictator for example (hisstor) might come from historical accounts of similar tyranical rulers in the authors past. you can logically assume if there have been tyrants in your history then logically there would be tyrants in your future. you can take those historical events and spin them into a future scenario, and eventually time will produce a dictator that fits in lockstep with that description. the author may not even be aware that he is doing this. he might be drawing conclusions from his subconcious or his imagination, attribute it to forsight and let future historians be the judge. anyone who has read the dune series understands the problems with prophecy. even if you receive a prophecy the information is useless. you are either powerless to change those events, or fore knowledge of those events causes them to happen. how do you know what you saw was an image of the future and not something you thought up. the protagonist in dune was asked if he could tell the difference between the dreems that come true and those that dont, to which he replies yes (i cant remember if that was in the book or one of the movies). every now and again i have a thought about something and then it happens, im not going to jump and call myself a prophet because of that mostly because i have no way of knowing before hand which thought is going to come true and which one wont. i have to write that off, if you guess enough things then statistically some of them will be right.

im not trying to be harsh or anything. its just my experience with people asking me to alpha test their stuff, and sometimes even help work out a code problem. he still bugs me a couple times a month even though ive made it clear that i have no further interest in helping. in this case i probibly wouldnt help if he paid me. i had another guy ask awhile back to do some modeling, he even offered to pay, but some stuff was going on and i couldn't put myself into the right frame of mind to get creative. i told him i couldn't help and he was cool with that.

i know one guy from another community who always wants me to test his stuff. and most of the time i find it rather annoying. of course he asks me a lot and is very annoying about it. if you ask nicely, once, i dont see anything wrong with that. if they say no, just accept it, if they say yes maybe ask them if they want to keep testing but dont nag em to check every little thing. however you will find a lot of people will help you test stuff just to get an early glimpse at your game. but you better wow them otherwise they will get bored and wonder off. you can also pay them.

i for one still use the 30 year old mega roll of solder i sort of pilfered from my grandpas shed sometime after he kicked the bucket. i get superior joints to any kind of solder ive bought at radioshack or online. ive heard stories about how solder can "go bad" but i just dont see that as having any basis in reality.

this gal put together has a 6502 retro computer named veronica, complete with build log, schematics and some asm code. she built the whole thing from scratch and stuffed it into an old timey radio, though she did cheat and use some modern microcontrollers for things like video generation. totally worth a read.

no! canadians METAL!

telepresence. its better to have robots outside doing most of the work, the operator can sit inside his radiation shielded module and do his job without risking himself in the process. never underestimate the number of mundane outdoor jobs that immediately become high risk operations the second you remove the atmosphere from the equation. were already kind of starting to see this on the iss, and so it will apply to moon bases and asteroid mining and the like.

ive seen everything from beeswax and hot glue to silicone to hard resins which are damn near impossible to remove. for anything involving sticking a bunch of wires together, just get some heat shrink.

is this thing actually in orbit or is it just another trojan like cruithne.

i think the idea is repeated on/off cycles cause all the traces to expand and contract, resulting in metal fatigue that breaks traces. ive never actually seen this happen. computers fail for these *reasons: software (then its not really a failure, nuke the partitions and reinstall if you cant fix it in less than an hour). power supply. caps age and eventually burst. no matter how well you can account for this you cant run a computer (or most any other electronic device for that matter) without sufficient capacitance for buffering and noise removal. im not beyond recapping a psu (use japanese caps). the user. no way to fix this. anyone who has done tech support probibly wants to build re-education camps for all those repeat customers who should be living in the woods eating squirrels for a living. the ones who just have no buisness using a computer. like that one guy who wanted me to pre-install banzi buddy on his brand new rig. or the one who backed up shortcuts to his files and then ran the repair disc, then wondered where his data was. the most you can do is turn a profit. *this is just a top 3 and is not intended to be an all inclusive list.

you know sata connectors and cables have given me a lot of grief over the years ever since they were introduced. use connectors with metal clips and a tight fit for best results. if you start having problems change your cables.

doctor who kind of played around with the concept in the last season. the man from earth was probibly the best movie where absolutely nothing happens. then theres zardoz, a very heady movie with a lot of male member references, also you get to watch sean connery run around in his underwear the whole movie.

i shut down every day, or whenever i leave my desk for an extended period of time. cleans up loose processes, swap file (if used), etc. im always paranoid that cosmic rays are flipping my bits.

its from that scene in beneath the planet of the apes, where the mutants are worshiping the nuclear missile.

i stopped playing mario when the bits got up to 32.

one of my major pet peves are people who fail to remove those protective vinyl cling films from their tech products. its packing material, get rid of it. especially the ones that are printed for marketing reasons. most of the time they are unaware thats what its for or that you can even peel it off in the first place (sometimes its so well pressed down clear and bubble free that i dont notice it for weeks). whats even worse is when they try to justify its existance. "durr... but it protects the finish" what good is the finish if you cant see it through the couldy clingfilm! "dun te duh.. but i want people to know my tv is 1080i" your cable box only delivers standard def! it doesnt even have an hd capable output! also 1080p is better.

most recent data loss fail was when i lost my videos folder during of all things a system backup. the ssd i had bought awhile back wasnt big enough to store all the files from my 1 terabyte mechanical hard drive. so it only had a partial set, my disc image archive (i had decided to stop using cd drives and virtualize my entire collection), and my videos (including some videos of lizzy when she was a kitten) all had to be stored elsewhere. fast forward to my last pc build, i had forgotten this. now i dont trust backup software, i like to do things manually. so when i went to back up my ssd to my 1t drive, i just formatted in instead of delete everything to save time. forgetting that my videos where on there. i had managed to make room for my disc images some time earlier, which i had realized were not that big (most were 700mb or less). but those kitten videos, gone, forever. tragic. when i was on my first computer i did format my hard drive, lost all my descent mods and levels, all my high school code projects, and my then tiny mp3 archive. i think everyone does this at least once, its part of the learning process. most recent non computer failure was fairly recent, ive been designing my own r/c hovercraft from the ground up, using parts on hand and a 3d printer. one of my prime directives is to do so without buying anything, using only the crap in my parts bins that i had accumulated over the years. so after designing, printing and testing the main impeller fan, bolting it to a brushless motor, sticking it in a box (fitted with skirt consisting of tape and plastic) and getting a successful air cushion, it was time to think about forward propulsion and steering. i have this really nice 3d printed ducted fan with almost enough thrust to hover, it just happens to have a big nacelle on it preventing the installation of a rudder. to make things more difficult, i dont have a two way speed controller, so i can only thrust forward. i rummage through boxes trying to find something i can use. i find an old busted tail assembly for an rc helicopter. the system can pitch the blades in either direction, but its designed with belt drive in mind, and i dont know how to set that up. it has no blades, and the blade mounts are broken, but the hub, bearings, and all the variable pitch gear is intact. so i start salvaging, i find 3mm precision rods, gears (despite being salvaged from 2 different things, mesh just fine), and a motor. i am not satisfied with the motor, so i open it up and re-wind the coils with some thicker wire. i test it and while it runs hot (15 amps hot, but motor controller can handle 18) it works. i then design the whole assembly and spent all day printing it. i break it down into 5 parts, 2 blades, which mount into the metal hub, an axle bearing housing and servo bracket, a motor bracket (i want it separate in case i need to adjust its height with washers or layers of card stock or whatever to ensure good gear meshing). i also design a fan cage, but dont print it because the damn thing needs to work before i worry about not loosing fingers. here are the failutes in order. first thing the mounting point for the lever that changes the blade pitch hits the bering housing, i redesign in software, but ultimately fix it with a file, avoiding a reprint. servo bracket is too small and i cant get the servo in it. more filing ensues, i finally get the servo in there and then realize ive put it in backwards, and filing was not needed. derp. i found out i didnt measure the distance between the blade pivot and the screwhole for the linkage accurately enough, so i dont get the blade pitch i had intended, i can either reprint the blades or print new linkages to fix it (the latter is easier). the motor bracket i designed doesn't fit the motor, turns out i didnt account for the full motor diameter, only the lip at the buisness end of the motor. i worry i may have to redo the whole design, but ultimately print a working solution (thanks to that removable motor mount i had designed earlier). i get the unit assembled and realize that nothing prevents the axle from sliding in the berings, screwing up the variable pitch system. fix this by pressing a second pair of berings into the slots intended to install the first set into their sockets, this worked well. i also try my metal working skills and turn a small aluminum end stop from the undercarriage of a long destroyed rc spitfore foamy into another endstop with a slightly wider hole. i drill it out to 3mm, chuck it up in my drill ans use it as a lathe to taper one end, found a couple washers, and it keeps it from sliding out just fine. and the final fail. motor burns out. i guess its fragile commutator and brush assembly cant handle 15 amps. oops. anyone who knows enough to re wind a motor should know that. derp. so now i need to find a whole new motor, and not rewind it (or at least use slightly thinner wire this time) and print yet another motor mount. 4th times the charm. also this nekro thread.