Jonfliesgoats

The Argosy was a gem of aesthetics. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armstrong_Whitworth_AW-660_Argosy_T2,_UK_-_Air_Force_AN2230786.jpg The cockpit, however, see,s like it was pretty well set up: http://www.airliners.net/photo/Elan-Overnight-Delivery-System/Armstrong-Whitworth-AW-650-Argosy-101/630032

Here's a t37 from the instructor's seat. The student has a full instrument panel in front of him, and instructor has attitude and air data as well. Engine instruments and radio tuning stuff is between the pilots for easy access. Return to the Provost cockpit to compare, if you like. http://m.imgur.com/gallery/YYVnNGz Finally, so I don't get too US-centric in my cockpit ergonomics rant wrt British planes, here's an L29. Even the Czechs had it figured out. http://www.airliners.net/photo/Russia-Air-Force/Aero-L-29-Delfin/1240771 It is worth mentioning that light airplanes in the US all had wildly different instrument panels in the post war years as part of a branding effort. Cessna went through a period of having centrally mounted gyro-horizons, piano-key switches, where down was on and up was off, etc. We had some ergonomic challenges of our own.

MY iPad is having trouble loading photos. Here is a link to the Provost cockpit photo. The instructor and student share primary flight instruments while radio panels are isolated and allocated to each individual pilot. Having the instructor crane his head to assist an instrument candidate is routine in the US, but most planes have been designed so the pilot commanding has attitude and pitot-static information directly in front of him. In the Provost, both pilots are looking just a little bit to the side. Still, the plane was a successful trainer and made many good aviators, so I may be nitpicking. I will link up contemporary Western jet trainers for comparison. Aesthetically, I thought the Provost looked decent, even nicer than a T-37. http://www.airliners.net/photo/UK-Air-Force/Hunting-P-84-Jet-Provost-T3/2288966 For comparison's sake, here's the cockpit of another jet trainer which was designed BEFORE the Provost: the T-33. Imortant stuff regarding flying the airplane is right in front of the pilot. Less important stuff, like radios are between the pilots knees and systems management stuff are by the pilot's right knee. Because the T33 has tandem seating, I'll also link up a cockpit from a T-37 to compare side by side instrument panels. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:T-33_Cockpit.JPG

I remember sitting in the cockpit of a Jet Provost and noticing now primary flight instruments were scattered all over the instrument panel. Granted, it wasn't until the 80s before a the six-pack of instruments that pilots are familiar with became standardized (replaced by CRT and LCD screens only a decade later). To be fair, the Provost I got to play around with was a restoration project, so the instruments in production Provosts may have been placed better. Also, the airplane was a joy to fly, what little I got of it. The Jetstream 31/32, a popular commuter airliner from the 80s, had all its important, pilot accessible circuit breakers on the doorframe of the bulkhead behind the cockpit. That was done to save space, but it made seeing a which breaker had tripped little bit more challenging. Smoke and smells moved forward toward the crew rather than aft as well.

The launch window planner also gives you a good idea of where you need to burn to get into your desired track. This should save you from having to make lots of corrections. If you don't want to do any mods, you can calculate thrust to weight with a calculator and use the same calculator or online tool to figure your Delta v. Google can explain concepts like delta v, TWR, gravity turns, specific impulse, etc. Here are some links you may find useful on the PC and I dare say necessary on consoles: TWR=Thrust/ (mass*local gravity). You can do this in your head for Kerbin by dividing your thrust by ten times your vessel mass. Your estimate will be close enough to ensure decent acceleration on launch. Launch Window Planning: https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/#/Kerbin/80/Jool/100/false/ballistic/false/2/161 Online delta v calculator http://www.strout.net/info/science/delta-v/ Others have already given you decent Delta v maps of the solar system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Rotodyne

Very cool! I figured my estimate about the conversion of water to steam was off. I just pulled that number off of google and was aware of no provisions to account for water turned, kineticallt into ejecta, etc. The Americans experimented with conventional and nuclear tsunami-bombs to be detonated on the sea floor as well. They never turned out to be practical.

Everything I see is an announcement of a test rather than an announcement of a result. Still, they are flying one of these things, so we will know, once and for all, if can actually move something in space.

The Jetstream 31 and Jet Provost has some ergonomics and systems idiosyncrasies.

The Chinese claim to be testing EM drives in flight. Public announcements of something like this usually have more to do with politics and information campaigns than actual developments. Still, I am sure this will generate some renewed discussion in the KSP community. Personally, I am reserving my thoughts about the EM drive until we get more data from these and other experiments and better testing methods. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4052580/China-claims-built-working-version-NASA-s-impossible-engine-says-s-orbiting-Earth.html http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/space-race-revealed-us-china-test-futuristic-emdrive-tiangong-2-mysterious-x-37b-plane-1590289

British planes, rockets, missiles and satellites always seemed to have very unique aesthetics for better or worse. What's the oddest looking British equipment you can think of? My photos won't load. I was going to point out the Fairet Gannet, Blowpipe and Prospero Satellite.

The Vulcan was the best looking V bomber. The silhouette is beautiful, but the cockpit always seems a little goofy looking. Britain always seemed to make things in aesthetic extremes. There were few okay looking British aerospace systems. Did that picture load?

Each LRAP round was super expensive. With reduced Zumwalt numbers it was 800k usd per shot! There's an interesting historic note regarding expensive ordnance here. In the twenties and thirties torpedoes were so expensive that the US navy didn't test them in large numbers. When we went to war, the torpedoes were less than fifty percent reliable due to problems in the detonation mechanism, The result was that engineering had to be done, literally, on cruises in submarines to improve the torpedo performance. Beyond this, the improvements were resisted by administrators in the Navyas late as 1943. There was literally a deadly amount of administrative inertia in the peacetime navy which had to be overcome. It took about two years to get Air Corps to shift paradigms in certain ways too, so this wasn't restricted to the Navy. The US military is generally more transparent than other armed forces, and part of winning our next real fight is acknowledging that we aren't as adaptive as we should be. This plagued us in the Civil War and all Allied powers in the First World War. It is prudent to think that we will face similar timeframes to adjust in future conflict rather than assume we have achieved a level of adaptability not achieved by our predecessors. Back to the subject at hand: I think they are having trouble getting the RAIL barrels to survive a reasonable number of firings. Thanks for the updates regarding the ram accelerators. I think the ram accelerators were considered more for delivery to orbit via something like a space gun. Speaking of electromagnetic catapults, have they finally worked out the teething problems with those on the Ford class carriers?

I think it's interesting either way. Also, does anyone have insight regarding follow on effectsinnthe monents after impact? Itokawa is roughly the size of this model and has a mass of 3x10^9kg. Impacting at 8km/s, it would carry 9.6x10^16 joules or the equivalent of 22.9 megatons of TNT. That's roughly half the size of the largest acknowledged, deliverable nuclear weapon in history, the Soviet Tsar Bomba (57MT). The reason I delve into the energy is that a literal hole would exist in the ocean after the impact. Using the energy of vaporization of water (which I admit is of questionable utility regarding the mechanics of an impact) at an average depth of 3.5 kilometers, a 2km radius hole would be blown in the ocean. Wouldn't the waves caused by the inrush of water to fill a 4km diameter hole in the ocean generate some pretty large tsunamis, even if the impact itself doesn't? Is there a more informed scientist who has a better idea of how to calculate the mount of water column vaporized or ejected, assuming the asteroid does not make it to the sea floor or airburst? Also, something .3 to .5km in size is big but not so big to discount it falling apart due to gravitational and aerodynamic stresses. Are there formulae for this?

Sandwich, where are you finding your photographs? They are good.

The V bombers were all weird looking! On this day in 1928 a Lockheed Vega was the first plane to fly over Antarctica.

I love it!

This is only based on 3D modeling. Fundamentally, we don't really know what would happen with these impacts, and I a, not sure if this accounts for second order effects, like waves generated from a massive inrush of water to replace the vaporized material after an impact. More educated scientists can contribute here, I am sure. http://www.space.com/35081-asteroid-impact-ocean-computer-simulations-solar-system.html

http://www.space.com/35012-curiosity-finds-mars-may-be-covered-in-organic-materials.html

Looks like hydrated salts may be trickier indicators of liquid water than we originally thought. Still the RSL are fascinating and worthy of investigation. http://www.space.com/35071-mars-dark-streaks-liquid-water-debate.html

I am constantly impressed with the thought that people put into these posts regardless of the position they take. This is one of the reasons I like ruminating on these things before I have to finish my coffee and do adult things. I generally come out with a few more snippets of knowledge and/or perspective than I started with. A note about referencing the Untied Stares and cultural effects of people from my homeland: We Americans sometimes harm ourselves with the idea that we are so advanced that we can't learn from the Russians, Indians, Chinese, etc. Cultural effects in academia, engineering and even in the cockpit have to be appreciated to get the most out of them while minimizing their costs. I'd say we Americans bring about as many good things as bad with us, when it comes to technical applications. Fundamentally all fields of study and application are interrelated in some way. This includes relationships between social factors and natural sciences. Like it or not, we have to accept that people have gut, emotional reactions. Separating science from social dynamics and politics is a noble but very difficult goal. This is something we have to work with rather than ignore, like the terrain and weather around a given location.

They would require light UAV with large rotors and/or really high RPM. Alternatives include using fixed wing UAV. I have only seen commercials for the program, but UAV are feasible even in the Martian atmosphere. I seem to remember a proposal to fly a glider or UAV around mars somewhere. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/features/mars_airplane.html Also, welcome to the legions of KSP nerds, Dan!

RAIL guns are slowly developing and are even being considered for Zumwalt class destroyers. Have there been any developments with ram accelerators? They were supposed to be able to get objects up to 6-8km/s.

This is great news!

Electrodynamic tethers in orbit are back. This is neat. http://spaceflight101.com/stars-c-cubesat-deployed-from-iss/ While there are significant differences, it reminds me of this: http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html Also, here is the space tether Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether