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DDE
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Posts posted by DDE
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1 hour ago, Teilnehmer said:
Can Dzhanibekov effect be recognized by the pattern of luminosity changes? (E.g. patterns like ABCABCABCDCBACBACBADABCABCABC.)
I rather doubt that, because you'd be seeing a mere light curve. This means B and C or C and D are near-impossible to tell apart.
Without knowing what you're looking for, you'd be too busy trying to fit the observations to a curve rather than trying to come up with a relatively fanciful explanation for occasional anomalies, if you can even detect those.
Now maybe, maybe if it's A that gets "disappeared" by the Dzhanibekov flip, someone might notice...
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Soyuz MS-21, landing nominal
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Terra Invicta has released, and, whoa, that's a lot of drives I haven't heard about.
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I don't think the premise of your question is valid. BSG wasn't a niche thing. Sure, it was a sci-fi nerd thing, but by the 2000s "sci-fi nerd" wasn't a marginal identity. I mean, you probably wouldn't get references to BSG in the Big Bang Theory of the viewers of the latter didn't know what the former was.
SpoilerGranted, the references didn't require that much context
I do think the low budgets and expensive, laborious CGI meant that the fantasy shows of the late 1990s-2000s were quite barebones and had to embrace the camp. BSG broke ground by having a lot of decent CGI in every episode, but that was for space-based action, it took quite a bit more time for it to become available for everything else, and it is still more labor-intensive.
All that said, you're talking about animation, a whole separate topic that I can't comment on due to aversion to anime.
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Besides the expected lament about "Space for @all (some caveats apply)", the article spends quite a bit of time on remarking that International Launch Services still exists. Somehow. For some reason.
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QuoteThe six suggested uses indicated on the label were:
- Remove label and tell your enemy it's laughing gas.
- Energy free night light (illuminates in darkness).
- Mix with cold cream for that radiant beauty.
- Instant male sterilization (sniff twice daily).
- Use as a room air freshener.
- Toothpaste recipe: mix 3 to 1 ratio with baking soda, forever glowing smile.
Size: 4.5" high, 3" diameter
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@kerbiloid's list should be expanded. Here are the structural materials proposed for X-15B:
The thorium would've been mildly radioactive. Skin was, yes, largely niobium. There also was the alternative design from Douglas:
QuoteThe Model 684 would have used HK31, an alloy of magnesium, thorium, and zirconium which is no longer in use since the three percent that is thorium makes the alloy radioactive. At the time its relatively low radioactivity was not considered much of a problem, though, and it had the advantage of being much lighter than Inconel X. This meant that the Model 684’s skin could be much thicker, which would reduce costs and would dramatically increase the heat capacity of the plane and keep it from pushing 1000 Celsius on re-entry. The leading wing edges would be made of copper, which would conduct heat away quickly into the rest of the plane.
LOL, you couldn't make such a cool name up if you tried: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mag-Thor
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Blast it, Fett! I said "no disintegrators".
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This multilocular O is found in exactly one 15th century rendition of the Psalter, and used in exclusively one word: "multiocular seraphim"
Looks like someone still saw it fit to incorporate the letter into Unicode, but bungled up the rendition.
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9 minutes ago, wumpus said:
As far as I know, the system is called "Phalanx". Supposedly the term means the whole system from the RADAR to weapons control, but the media typically just refers to the gun itself as "Phalanx". This sounds like what I was working on in the 1990s, where they were trying to tie all the communications of the ship together, some long alphanumeric string lost to time like AN/Q80, which tied together a bunch of systems including "Phalanx". All our company did was build trainer RADAR consoles, computer-monitor map tables (no idea if anyone set up the projection system to show any big football games), and submarine monitor relays (a monitor that let you choose from various video inputs).
The whole notion of "Commander's" probably doesn't make any sense to the Navy. Presumably everything is fed to the captain anyway. Having the weapons system controlled by anyone not onboard ship doesn't sound like something they'd be happy about, although I suspect they beam E2C/D/F RADAR information from the "eyes in the sky" to various surface ships.
Honestly, from my observations, the CIWS refers to a concept, and then that concept gets rather nebulous. For example, Phalanx's contemporary counterpart the AK-630 has a separate fire director/radar unit (that's shared with other AA gun systems, if present) and so doesn't seem that drastically different from a WWII AA gun with centralized fire control. Basically, at this point in common parlance a CIWS is any shipborn, anti-air, light and rapid-fire autocannon (up to circa 40 mm), which just happens to be only really practical against enemy missiles.
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2 hours ago, TheSaint said:
I can't really speak for it's Russian counterparts, but the B-52 is specifically not used in any sort of contested airspace anymore. It either carries standoff weapons, or it flies in totally uncontested, asymmetrical warfare environments.
Word is, the Tu-22M has been barred from contested environments, and the Tu-95MS can't carry anything besides cruise missiles in the first place. Tu-160... hasn't seen anything on their use since Syria.
That said, the Tu-22M3M is the ideal case study for my question... and it doesn't come out in my favor. Back when designing the Tu-22M Tupolev offered the military either a tail gun or more ECM. Back then they went with what the rivet counters today deride as the "holy twin-mount". However, as of the most recent mod, they're removing it... to put in more ECM.
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Quote
The pessimist is reading All Quiet on the Western Front
The optimist is reading In Storms of Steel
But the realist right now is reading The Adventures of Good Soldier Švejk
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21 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:
Figure that you would need not only the gun(s) and ammunition, but also the turret mechanism, framing and sensor arrays... And you've got a massive redesign & shift of weight. Good engineering can solve this - so it again goes to the threat: will the bomber have a sufficient threat of 'up the tailpipe missiles' coming at it to justify the effort and expense? (Tail defense turret may be utilized for incoming rear and maybe side threats - at the cost of constant 'here I am' pinging with the sole hope of overwhelming electronically/kinetically. )
I think here the balance has shifted somewhat, to the point where @SunlitZelkova's examples from B-52s may be invalidated. SAM operators and fighter pilots are both likely to attempt a shootdown from the longest possible range. This is going to cause the missile to come in from the side aspect rather than from below; in cases of extremely long-range missiles they have an actual ballistic arc and would come in from above. Furthermore, it seems a lot of the antimissile manuvers - certainly for the air raft big enough to mount a turret - amount to turning away from the missile and trying escape the engagement basket. Because of that, it would seem that a lot of missiles would end up coming in from the rear aspect - again, for an aircraft large enough to consider a turret, and thus not prone to flying within range of MANPADs and other "minor" AA.
21 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:Adding a new thing at the back of the plane for the pilot to play with isn't going to improve his /her SA & effectiveness... And if everything was done right up front - the tail gun is looking back on smoking wreckage.
Yeah, this is completely out of the question for single-seaters. However, aircraft as small as fighter-bombers (Su-34, certain Marks of F/A-18) tend to have a WO.
18 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:My 'thought experiment' version of this was a tungsten-BB auto chaff shotgun that could be used to hard kill incoming missiles - but a pilot friend told me that you'd be losing more than you gain trying to build that into a jet
When it comes to chaff, this has actually been attempted, with PRL-series rounds for 23 and 30 mm Soviet guns.
Hasn't heard much of the results, though.
21 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:(Tail defense turret may be utilized for incoming rear and maybe side threats - at the cost of constant 'here I am' pinging with the sole hope of overwhelming electronically/kinetically. )
Maybe I misread this, but I know there's an issue with the turret gunnery radar inviting enemy and even friendly fire. However, there are still attempts to add dedicated rearward radars to aircraft (e.g. the Su-34M - apparently, contrary to all claims, it's not present on Su-34s) as well as significant advancement in infrared-based missile detection. Plus there's the fledging Tochmash school of passive-only AA systems (Palash/Pal'má and Sosna), so it may be possible to discard the targeting radar.
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12 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:
What is the most use rocket engine?
Not sure about most-used, but Sutton writes that 22 thousand of AGM-12 Bullpup missiles have been produced, all of them featuring a liquid-propellant rocket engine, and considers them the most widely-produced LRPE.
But this, of course, makes us then consider such things as the booster rocket on the RPG-7, or the various solid-propellant rockets slung about during WWII...
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You may have heard about the Martian P6M Seamaster, the US Navy's second attempt to sidestep the USAF and develop their own strategic bombing capability - this time via flying boats supported by submarine fuel tenders. Thing is, they weren't alone...
Enter the Beriev Supersonic Long-range Maritime Bomber-Scout (SD MBR) of 1956.
Landing gear, including a hydrofoil:
I wasn't entirely willing to post this, but then someone in the VK thread asked "So, time to build this in KSP?"
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Alex Andreev having his fun with one of the more basic modes of Midjourney
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57 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:
And let them throw grenades again.
Oh, I was thinking of that little gizmo as well. Although it was more of a short-lived mine, IMHO.
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Is it possible to resurrect the tail gun as a CIWS?
I think I've asked the question a few years prior, and I'm still inclined towards "no", at least not in the form of a "hardkill" turret. However, I can't completely shut the door on the possibility.
I know that for air defense applications a quadruple or Gatling 30 mm is believed to be barely sufficient. But in case with aircraft, from the rear aspect the closing speed is a lot lower, and the target, while smaller, is a lot more fragile than an armored anti-ship missile. So, theoretically, some sort of a proximity-fused round could be effective; doesn't even have to be a rapid-fire high-velocity gun.
Thoughts?
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8 hours ago, Spacescifi said:
1. Tungsten/steel alloy.
2. Tungsten/titanium alloy.
3. Tungsten/alluminum alloy.
I have no idea how well these alloys would perform for starship.
Alloys don't work like that - it's not a dorect merging of pros and cons.
In reality, you have either a majority-tungsten alloy with most of the failings mentioned above, or a tungsten-doped steel with a significant increase in mechanical resilience. There are some tungsten - titanium oxide alloys in the works, apparently, but again, not what you're looking for.
Ultimately, I haven't heard of a good heat shield material capable of also acting as a structural material as well as the material for a cryogenic tank. I don't think they'll get away from either some sort of cooling, or tiles, or scales, or something else that would be a bother. I don't think Shuttle's problematic TPS was a fluke that you can just walk away from.
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2 minutes ago, Starwaster said:
It was probably just a stunt to send something to mars for publicity. It was a bad idea that wasn’t actually planned out. The ICBMs in question were Russian and by their very nature are strictly sub-orbital. So we’re talking hypothetically about a small payload that would have then had to get orbital AND do a TMI to Mars. Or some kind of direct launch to mars.
Dniepr is stated to be capable of 550 kg to TLI. That's surprisingly much.
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8 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:
Is it known what Musk’s ICBM based Mars architecture was supposed to look like?
Or was this merely an idea in his head that never got beyond the words “use retired ICBMs to get to Mars” before he found out he couldn’t buy them and decided to do SpaceX?
A better question is whether there even was a Mars in his plans at the time.
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9 hours ago, HvP said:
@AngrybobHWell, we happen to have had a nationwide experiment in driving behavior and accident rate during the pandemic lock-downs the past few years. And unfortunately that data contradicts the assumption that speeders drive more attentively or have fewer accidents.
The percentage of drivers speeding increased, the accident rate increased, injury and fatality rates increased.
https://blog.burnsmcd.com/understanding-the-data-behind-pandemic-speeding-and-fatalities
Over and over again we see that when drivers believe it is safe to drive fast the roads actually become less safe. The solution is to design roads in which it is physically impossible to drive too fast.
Ugh. Without outright lockdowns, in some places Corona has boosted road traffic as people avoid mass transit.
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1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:
So the ROS would sit derelict for two more years?
Or it would have to be jettisoned by someone else. My best take on the Russiam plan is that the whole station gets deorbited in 2028.
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4 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:
splitting the station
There are no plans to do that.
At least from the Russian side.
Real Life "Kerbalisms"
in The Lounge
Posted
The adventures of Aarno Lamminparras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnair_Flight_405