Jonfliesgoats

Yeah, I am aware of wavelength limitations. The array idea was appealing for a while, but then you have to have really good fidelity of communication between satellites in the array along with really good fidelity of position and velocity information. The more I thought it about it, the more complex the inter-sensor communication and position requirements become for an orbiting array. At that point the cost and complexity savings offered by cubesat arrays are more than offset by processing and communications difficulties. Using a constellation of cubesats for wide field change detection may by more useful. You could cover most of earth's surface, or figure out which parts of the cosmos deserve attention from more expensive assets, like the JWST.

Lights inside the helmets of spacesuits: Useless glare that only serves to illuminate the star's face.

http://www.space.com/35097-missile-defense-tracking-systems-in-space.html

Columbine happened when I was in Highschool. Immediately afterward, everyone was terrified of people who played with acetylene bombs, etc. Regardless of what you do, you may want to let your school know if you are going to start building your own rocket engines. Sadly, I saw small town rumor networks and fear from breathlesss news programs conspire to screw up some good kids who just like chemistry. Local ladies and gents on the PTA rarely ask direct questions. They may give you some serious hassles as you are working on your homemade rocket projects. Informing your school and locals about your intentions heads off these issues. So be bold, but please also be prudent. I am eager to see what progress you make! Don't be shy about your failures either.

Drop red and green lights in parachutes over Kerbin's Ice Caps?

Land a comical, comical vessel vessel on another body an illuminate it with red and green lights?

I used to play on PC with MJ and KER. Now I am on consoles I have no ability to use mods. I find the game is MORE fun this way. I am not sure all-stock involved elitism as much as finding tools and reference on your own. There is a little more decision and learning involved, and that is fun. Also, you are little more invested in each flight. I find I have a lot more fun when I deliberately avoid using revert to launch or revert to VAB functions. A lot more thought is involved and you actually start developing test protocols. Now an expensive crash can break your space program. I don't think this involves any elitism becuase I don't look down on players who use MJ or KER. Perhaps this is because I used to use these mods myself?

Yeah, the more I think about it, arrays of little, orbiting data to mimic single, big telescopes rapidly hit a point where complications in coordination, network communication and processing are greater than simply launching or building bigger assets. Complexity is an enemy of good design, and arrays of satellites get complex fast. Lots of IMINT or SIGINT cubesats can do some important things in a network, though. Generally sensorsnhave to choose between coverage area and resolution. Do we want to look through a sofa straw at fine detail or look through a sewer pipe at rough detail? More, cheap sensors in cube sats can provide global "sewer pipe" coverage that gets fed through an algorithm. That allows us to rapidly decide where we want to aim better sensors to see or hear interesting things. It means an organization with lots of small, cheap satellites can run through an OODA or other decision loop faster than other organizations.

He worked really hard on popular climate awareness.

The Buccanneer is sort of beautiful in its own way.

https://warisboring.com/the-supermarine-nighthawk-was-a-bizarre-zeppelin-hunting-flop-1753500089e1#.9lhe8u33w

Great question, YNM!! The airflow in the area immediately behind a wing is deflected downward, usually (there are some important exceptions to this.). This is important for tailplane efficacy. As angle of attack increases prior to stall, downwash aft of the wing increases a little more. This means AOA changes a little more for the wing than it does for a horizontal stabilizer. With Mach tuck, stalls due to aoa or contamination of the wing, you can see upward motion of air aft of the wing and associated nose down pitching. One of the advantages of T-tail design is they experience less (but still some) of these downwash effects. Aerodynamics is pretty cool like that. In the space immediately above a wing, there are a number of variables that affect the precise direction and velocity of air. It also depends exactly where you measure these things. The shape of the wing and nearby structure, angle of attack, airspeed and altitude all play roles. In either case, while an airplane is flying most of the time, most of the air above a wing is seeing laminar, non-turbulent airflow. This means overwing hard points can be designed to be aerodynamically "happy" in most but not all flight regimes. Mounting things on wings does cause some aerodynamic interference which has penalties, however. Usually this leads to losses in performance. There are a lot of factors that determine airplane and wing efficiency, but this is one of the manifold reasons four engine jets are slowly going away as larger engines can be mounted on Twin jets certified for ETOPS. Even in this case, however, there are significant exceptions. Sometimes things on wings help. Stall fences, vortex generators, etc. all help with high AOA, maneuvers at altitude (low speed Mach buffet) or transsonic effects near and above Mmo. This is why I reserve my comments to jettison concerns. I don't know enough about that airframe with that load. There are some very interesting considerations to ponder, however.

There are some implicit problems with overwing hardpoints which make them sort of a design feature of last resort. The ability to jettison stores in an emergency becomes a little more difficult. That said, the Brits did make them work. The overwing hardpoints kept their existing platforms competitive rather than forcing them to invest in smaller numbers of newer fighters. Odd designs features are frequently borne out of necessity or bamdaids to deficiencies found in the field. Yes, the Tigermoth was a Canadian design.

This is a link to the declassified Aerial Attack Study by John Boyd. I think a lot of my fellow wonks may find the interplay between emergency management, technical details of seeker heads and other things rather interesting. This document evolved in the early 1960s after Capt. Boyd had flown in Korea and came back to weapons school. At the time, the Air Flrce was committed to stand-off missiles and was convinced the dogfight was done. Service politics being what they are, Boyd retired as a Colnel and had his biggest impact after retirement giving us airplanes like the F-5 and F-16. http://www.dnipogo.org/boyd/pdf/boydaerialattack.pdf

Gotcha! In that case, I'd look to see if you can associate with local clubs. Alternatives include getting some local sponsorship. Schools all want press of starting something STEMwise in extracurricular activities. Homestly, if you are willing to take the lead in establishing a school rocketry club, you could probably get funds or set up fund drives to be a little more ambitious. You will need a plan to sell, though. As an aside, leading an effort to successfully start a rocketry club and, say, compete at TARC, looks really good on university applications. Are you passionate enough about the project to do that kind of leg work? You will have people laugh at you. If you set up a team for TARC trials, make sure your school name is involved. If they say no, and I mean a hard no, there are alternatives.

Compared the HP 0/400, the Vimy was fine art. The British did make some beautiful planes. The Buccaneer, Tempest, Typhoon, Dragon Rapide and Empire Flying Boats were all gorgeous. The Gamnet has multiple canopies to facilitate rapid ingress and egress of the crew. This also allows people to be more comfortable and have more headroom without the mass and bulk of a generally larger fuselage. The Tiger Moth and Chipmunk are two of. The best looking trainers out there.

Pretty fascinating ideas, guys. I get that tiny mirrors simply can't collect the light to peer deep into space. Huge, terrestrial telescopes seem to be advantageous. Still optical arrays of cubesats could be pretty powerful for earth observation, it seems. Does this mean networked cubesats can bring .1 or .01 meter resolution earth imagery to organizations with smaller budgets? I get maneuvering and attitude control would have to be pretty stupendous for the cubes. I suppose relative a position and motion of individual sensors would have to be actively monitored and compensated for by image processing software. Would it be more advantageous for orbiting sensors in a cubesat array to broadcast position and image date to another processing and relay sat or have the sensors broadcast image and position data to a ground station for image processing? To this point I have been imaging arrays of cubesats taking a simultaneous snapshot of whatever they want to look at. Would a swarm of cubesats be able to continuously monitor the earth and provide successively greater resolution by pushing more data through image processing to eventually get higher resolution imagery? Orbital mechanics being what they are, clouds of cubesats could be maneuvered so that the constellation gets clustered over points of interest. The networked sensors could switch array networks they are part of, thus each sensor would not have to dedicated to a single array and out of use for the majority of its orbit.

Space-Mentos! We have a sponsorship idea, guys!

Great responses! What actually got me into the telescopes-in-cubesats mind frame was another discussion about cubesat-sized reconnaissance satellites. There, light collection is less of an issue. Also, what about arrays of telescopes with better image processing? In my previous life, folks smarter than myself solved some challenging imaging problems with software improving the resolution by compensating for atmospheric effects and other things. Theoretically can software integrate imagery collected from a formation of cubesats into something better? I guess an array wouldn't be able to catch that one photon from the far side of the universe, but they may be able to resolve things in our neighborhood, right?

The alpha Centauri thing is .5meters. I brought it up as an example of miniaturization coming and promptly mixed it up with cubesat telescope missions in my head. I am announcing my error there. You know, I was just looking at some cubesat telescope missions. I think those will have military applications in the near future. Here's an example of one: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cubesat/missions/asteria.php There is another proposal for two cubesats in formation to address focal length issues.

This too! http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cubesat/missions/asteria.php I have no idea how they will keep two satellites properly positioned with accuracy to make a decent telescope.

I wonder why I thought this was based on cubesats? This is why I can't be trusted. Still, it's a lot smaller than Hubble. Miniaturization is coming. Found the cubesat telescopes I was thinking of. I got mixed up on the Alpha Centauri thing. This uses two satellites to make one telescope. http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/the-rise-of-cubesat-astronomy-08032016/ This too: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-eyes-first-ever-carbon-nanotube-mirrors-for-cubesat-telescope

Let me dig up the link. Just a sec. http://www.space.com/34340-project-blue-alpha-centauri-earthlike-alien-planet.html Project Blue

Is there anything that would stop us from inflating a bubble with spray paint?