Seret

Indeed. The report isn't (as the OP seems to be suggesting) an expose of gross negligence at NASA, it's them looking at the causal factors of the accident, so they can close up any procedural holes and prevent similar things happening again. Except that in this case it's clear they (wrongly) didn't think the suit was faulty. If they did, I think it's likely this accident wouldn't have happened. What people such as myself are arguing against are claims like those of the OP, who has posted up a report then made some inflammatory statements that aren't supported by the contents of that report.

A risk assessment would have been done. It's not like they just threw some suits in the back of the space van as an afterthought. Manned spaceflight being the way it is, I suspect they went over everything with a fine tooth comb before they gave it the ok. At the very least they would have had to give some consideration to mitigating the effect of being unable to carry out their normal maintenance regime.

Have a read of the report. Apparently water in the helmet was considered reasonably routine. I imagine it's pretty easy to spill some when taking a drink. As for not having a plan, they had done some testing on water leaks, but their testing had lead them to believe that the water would be turned to mist by one of the fans. Therefore they did have a plan for a fogged up helmet. This is one of the main flaws identified by the report: there were some incorrect assumptions made which meant nobody expected the exact failure mode that occurred, so didn't react to it quickly enough. Bottom line is: no NASA was not aware of a "drowning risk" with the suit, as the OP alleges. In fact the accident was caused by the fact that they didn't think there was any risk to the astronaut's life.

I didn't mean the cause of the accident was "typical stuff" I meant that the patterns of behaviour and causality were typical. All big accidents are caused by a string of tiny mistakes that all align to cause an extraordinary event. The concept is known as the Swiss Cheese model, the idea being that when individual small holes in layers of process line up just wrong (like the holes in slices of Swiss cheese) you get a great big hole right through the organisation that calamity can pass through. Normally things will get caught by one of the layers of processes, but when the holes align... My point was, the patterns that led to this failure are pretty typical of what you see in any accident.

What do you do for a living? Do a lot of investigation of engineering incidents? Because what I read in that report sounds like pretty typical stuff; a combination of people's attitudes, common practice not quite aligning with the policy, people not identifying risks quickly enough, bad assumptions and judgement calls that came back to bite them. Every investigation turns up a string of causal factors, that's just how accidents happen. This doesn't necessarily mean everybody involved is incompetent, it might just mean they cocked up. Everybody cocks up sometimes, I've done it myself. Now I'm not saying cocking things up that put lives at risk is a good thing. But incompetence is a big call. I haven't read the report in any great detail (these things are invariably as dry as the Pharaoh's crackers) but I didn't spot any smoking guns. It's unlikely to do much for the careers of some involved, but it doesn't sound like their conduct should be dealt with by "arse in a sling" rather than "learn from your mistakes".

I've only skim read the report, but it sounds like they weren't aware of it as a known failure mode, and had done ground testing that lead them to believe the system would behave differently. There was water identified in the suit after the previous EVA, but it was thought to come from a drink bag. Sounds like more a case of assumption being the mother of all cock ups, rather than negligence.

A lot of the time it's going to depend on your Rules of Engagement (RoE). In anything less than a hot war it's possible that the RoE might demand a visual ID before engaging. However, in a full-on war where there's an exclusion zone that civilian traffic have been notified of then the failure to squawk the right code on IFF is enough to get shot at BVR. Certainly pretty much any RoE will allow you to defend yourself, even if you weren't allowed to shoot first. This kind of thing happens enforcing no-fly zones a fair bit. NATO shot down a few Iraqi aircraft at long range while enforcing their no-fly zone over the years, including at least one I know of that was purely because a MiG-23 locked up an F-16. Sure, it's always an arms race between sensors and countermeasures. The Israelis are very competent, and they've faced plenty. Don't forget that a lot of SAMs are modified versions of radar guided air-to-air missiles, and you wouldn't dispute their effectiveness. 3-4 seconds is plenty for air-to-air work. That's enough for numerous bursts, and if you get lots of chances to shoot and can't finish it then both you and your enemy should consider other lines of work IMO. In a dogfight against a manoeuvring target your opportunities to shoot are only going to be a fraction of a second. If the enemy isn't manoeuvring then a good burst of a second or so will shred them, guaranteed. The gun may have a lot firepower, but 99.99% of the time it's dead weight, so throwing in vast amounts of ammo isn't a great idea.

Indeed. That's not a good reason not to have one though. Cobblers. I used to be an armourer, a weapon specialist. I know a thing or two about aircraft weapons. They can hit manoeuvring targets, it's what they're designed to do. Some of the early ones were almost useless (eg: early models of the AIM-7, AIM-54s fired at anything smaller than a 747) but modern ones are very effective. So do short-range missiles. So do guns. Nothing hits all the time. That's just life. I question that number, but a quarter of 100km is still 25km ie: outside the range of anything else. Everything is more sluggish at low altitude. Your target won't be moving as fast either, which means he has less chance of escaping the missile. Anyway, at under 2000ft you're not likely to be in a BVR engagement, if you're down in the mud you're looking at bouncing or being bounced. Fighters looking to mix it up operate way up high. Not really. As I mentioned above the radar will slave the seeker onto the target and it'll get a tone straight away. It could be off the rail PDQ. Fighter pilots lurve the gun, because it's noisy, angry and you can only use it effectively if you've outflown the other guy. The gun is difficult to get kills with, it has short range and you have to point your aircraft at exactly the right patch of sky. The like the gun because it's hard to use effectively, so getting a kill with one shows skill. Once you're in a turning fight you're probably close enough to use the gun, and the dogfighting mode on every type I've seen enables guns and IR missiles simultaneously. In reality pilots will use both, if they can get a lock with an IR missile on a dangerous enemy they'll bloody well use it instead of fannying about trying to turn it into a guns kill. Having said that there have been cases reported where pilots have declined missile shots and closed to use guns (eg: Six Day War) due to how badly their opponents were outclassed but it's only reported on because it's so unusual. War is generally pretty unforgiving to those who pass up an opportunity to stomp the other guy.

They were a marketing company (still are, in fact). KSP was their first game.

Practising hot swaps (ie: refuel, rearm and new pilot without shutting the engine off) is routine for operational squadrons, the ability to fly back-to-back sorties is something every aircraft can do. If you're suggesting that an aircraft could be designed that would do this normally during peacetime, then you're barking up the wrong tree. Commercial airliners (for which time on the ground is money lost) don't even spend half their time in the air. Military aircraft are thrashed much harder, so need more maintenance. In short: cannot be done. Lol, how is radar either unnecessary or too hard to maintain? As much as pilots love the gun, it isn't used a great deal. Passive sensors are already pretty good, there is a limit to how good you can get IRST for example, as it's main limits are already things like atmospheric conditions that you can't really do much about. Short range missiles are useful at short range, but they're just ballast if you find yourself in a BVR fight. Lacking long-range weapons limits the strategic and tactical usefulness of an aircraft. Basically what you're sugesting is a 1950s-era fighter. Or maybe something like a Hawk 100 (small, simple, manoeuvrable, no radar, 30mm gun and a couple of IR missiles). It should be noted that even the Hawk variant that is sold as cheap and dirty fighter (Hawk 200) does have a radar, and there's a reason for that. Radar is actually very useful in a dogfight. It's the radar that gives the weapons system accurate target information so that it can generate HUD symbology. Without the radar on you're limited to a very basic lead-computed optical sight for gunnery, which is far less accurate (it's essentially what WW2 pilots had). Radar is also used to expand the useful envelope of your IR missiles. Without radar your missiles are limited to targets on-boresight. Early models of missiles like the Sidewinder had exactly this limitation, and it was one of the main reasons they sucked. It turns out the enemy is often reluctant to placidly sit right on your nose for you. Many were fired to no effect. I get what you're trying to advocate: next-gen fighters have too much "gold-plating" and take too long to develop. But the answer to that is not to turn the clock back 50 years. Aircraft like the Gripen are good examples of a modern well-armed, well-designed, multirole that don't cost the Earth. It's designed to operate from rough fields, and be maintained by conscripts. It has a good radar, it's datalinked, lots of good weapons (soon to include the new Meteor ramjet BVR missile) and the sticker price is pretty reasonable. The only reason it hasn't done better in the export market is that the arms market is unbelievably crooked.

Sure, but what else are you going to do? All the options for replacing an old fleet have drawbacks. You either keep thrashing your clapped out old fleet, or you choose a similar type to your previous one and risk getting leapfrogged technologically or you accept a more complicated aircraft that you buy fewer of and is more complex. The equation is going to be different for different countries with different levels of threat and budgets. I actually quite like the idea of a stealthy version of a proven type like the Hornet, I think there would be loads of countries that it would suit. Countries like Australia that can afford a reasonably modern type, already operate F/A-18s and for whom F-22s and F-35s are probably excessive would have been interested I'm sure.

It's one part of a two-part puzzle. Eventually you'd want to be able to move that mind into a new body of some kind. Once you've done that then you've invented cheap, fast interstellar travel. That seems quite useful to me. Even before that point you've still got the utility of a very human AI, as well as an amazing research tool for learning about the brain, psychology, etc.

I wouldn't go that far. Many of the air forces and navies that want to operate the F-35 have pretty competent aircrew. Even if they were struggling to keep their hours up they'd still have their act together better than most opponents. It's not even operational, it's too early to say what sort of sortie rates it will achieve.

Well, the western nations have been fighting some asymmetrical fights lately, but that doesn't make it a rule. Even for the western nations conventional wars against unexpected opponents do pop up (Falklands, 1st Gulf War). It can and does happen whenever two well-equipped nations fight. The largest tank battle in history? The first Gulf War. The most recent war involving both tank battles and air-to-air (even some naval) would probably have been Ossetia in 2008. It simply doesn't make sense for them to ignore aerial warfare either. It's the decisive arm in several types of warfare (deserts, naval) and is crucial in every other type of conventional war. Even in guerilla warfare the price of drones has fallen through the floor, without air superiority you're handing your enemy the opportunity to do aerial recce against you. Dominance of the air is still extremely useful in low-intensity fights. Besides, just because your last war was brushfire, doesn't mean your next will be. Tooling up to fight the previous war is a classic mistake. Fighters almost always have some kind of friendly radar backup (AEW, ground, naval) but even when they don't you might be surprised how often they operate with the radar off. There are passive sensors you can use (ESM/RWR, IRST, Mk1 eyeball) and tactically it's often wiser to stay quiet. You can be spotted from a long way off if you've got your radar on, so if you don't want to give everyone your position you'll leave it off. If they were doing something aggressive like a fighter sweep or a barrier patrol then you're quite right, they'd light up. Sometimes you want to be sneaky, sometimes you just want to go noisy and tear around smashing stuff up.

The critical technology, such as the precooler, is already patented. REL might allow people to produce their stuff under licence, but anyone that tried to copy it would get the pants sued off them.

Pretty much. Dreaming goes on during REM sleep, when your brain is closest to wakefulness. You go through several waves during a night's sleep, where you go from the REM state to other phases during which you don't dream. You only spend an hour or two dreaming in a night. A lot of it is to do with organising memory, if you're a student you'll find you remember things a lot better after a night's sleep, which is why all-nighters before exams are a bit pointless.

There's a reason you need an explosion to trigger a secondary or tertiary explosive. Det cord (which is how you often set things off) is typically about 7000m s-1. Back to the drawing board for your theoretical high-temp det I'm afraid. High pressure blasts of liquids are actually used in bomb disposal because they disrupt IED components without triggering the explosives, they're called disruptors and are powered by substantially more energetic sources than a hot wire. That's interesting about that high-temperature explosive though. They do all sorts of weird stuff in mining that I don't pretend to be super gripped-up on. I do note that the paper is only from 2012 and they make it clear they're talking about a product still in the research phase, so I wouldn't pin too much expectation on it.

Er, it sort of is. All electrons, protons and neutrons are the same. Granted, disassembling the atoms and sticking them back together is wildly impractical, but it's not actually impossible.

Personal experience. I'm ex-military, I was an armourer on fast jet squadrons for several years. I've seen the tactics live during big exercises like Maple Flag, and on more active deployments like INTERFET. I've ridden along on DACM sorties, I've stood in a hole with FACs as we've brought strike packages onto the target through a mess of fighters. I wasn't a fighter pilot, but they were my colleagues. Happy days, but behind me now. I'm actually a bit sceptical of this kind of armchair generalism anyway. Real-world engagements only partially come down to the technical details of the equipment each side is using. There are a million things that pop up in the real world that change the variables: local conditions, tactics, training, weather, RoE, strategic issues, and good old fashioned low cunning and subterfuge. Hell, even luck. Stupid things happen in real wars. Critical equipment breaks at the wrong time, orders get lost or misinterpreted, people get scared and bottle it, or they just balls up simple things. Even on exercises I've seen aircraft that on paper shouldn't stand a chance get loads of kills on superior forces. Violence is inherently chaotic. You can't really extrapolate from paper statistics and performance during exercises conducted under quite artificial conditions to real world performance. Neither the F-35 or the Typhoon has seen any action, they might both be **** for all we know. Plenty of aircraft that were thought great in peacetime have been found lacking in combat.

It's pretty normal to operate things like a barrier in noisy mode. As I said, sometimes you don't want stealth, you want everybody to know you're staking a claim on a certain space, and aggressively use of active radar is a pretty intimidating way to do that. Even stealthy aircraft will think twice about diving into a wall of active radars, unless they know they've got them outclassed. It's not just RWR. Just opening the bay doors is likely to cause you to get tagged by the local AEW, they'll either hand over the target data to the fighters or they'll remotely launch the volley themselves. You're going to have missiles going in both directions and both sets of fighters hauling arse on full ABs within a few seconds. BVR engagements are like a dance, it's all coordinated by the fighter controllers in the AEWs or on the ground. It's not left to the individual pilots to coordinate maneuvers. The first shot element of surprise would count for more the closer the F-35s snuck in (risking detection), and very little at long ranges. Stealth becomes decidedly less useful after you throw it away by engaging, in subsequent volleys having better weapons, tactics and/or better AEW will be more decisive. When facing a well-equipped enemy (ie: somebody with AEW and/or an integrated air defence system) a stealthy fighter really needs to be able to strike a knockout blow with that first shot, or they become pretty ordinary. With modern fire and forget weapons they'll always return fire before taking evasive action. Why would they not? It'd be mad, you'd just be allowing your enemy to continue closing the range and fire again at a higher percentage while you're preoccupied with not exploding. By returning fire you force them to turn and run.

Is that a typo, or have you been consulting the world's most optimistic actuarial table?

I would include AEW as well. Modern fighters are part of a network that shares sensor data, they can even hand over control of their weapons systems to the controllers sitting way back in their AEW aircraft.

Probably not as much as you think in the real world, short range fights can and do happen regularly, for a number of reasons. Besides, with the imminent arrival of Meteors Typhoon is a very dangerous animal BVR. An F-35 can't actually engage without lighting itself up like a christmas tree on radar, at which point it would face a volley of ramjet-powered return fire, both sides would turn tail and try to outrun the missiles. Until the F-35 has a ramjet weapon Typhoon has a better chance of surviving the first exchange, growing moreso the longer the engagement range. That's going to affect tactics, the F-35 would want to get reasonably deep inside their AMRAAM range before they shot, max range engagements wouldn't be good percentage for them. That means in practice it would take more F-35s to cover the same area against Typhoons, and lessens the impact of their stealthiness. Besides, stealth isn't even useful for everything, there are times in air-to-air you're going to have your radar on. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the Typhoon myself, it's lack of stealth is a huge flaw. But I don't think there's likely to be a decisive gulf in capability between Typhoon and the F-35.

Well, they've got to make money somehow, they'd be mad not to capitalise on their IP. Likewise if they manage to get SABRE into production I suspect they'll go looking for buyers straight away, and use that money to fund further SABRE & Skylon development.

File a bug?