StrandedonEarth

Case in point: The F104 Starfighter, aka "Missile with a man in it." The engine does more to keep it aloft than the wings do. I imagine it has the glide characteristics of a brick.

When life gives you lemons, put a copper nail and a zinc nail in one, connect those to a flashlight bulb, and LET THERE BE LIGHT! Want the light to be brighter? Hook up MOAR (lemon) BATTERIES in series! (just don't burn out the bulb with too much voltage).

Apparently the center core of an F9H will be different than the single stick F9 or the F9H side boosters (which should be the same design). Which is a bit counter-productive, as one would hope that boosters that have seen a few flights would be flown expendable in the core, but I guess the core has to be built stronger to handle the extra loads / heavier payloads At any rate, I would expect that any boosters flown in expendable mode would be quite experienced and would have already had their share of ups and downs.

"Don't be a show-off. Never be too proud to turn back. There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots." – E. Hamilton Lee, 1949 When I went searching for whom that quote was attributed too, I found it on the website oldboldpilots.com, which also had this gem: "After all, there are more aircraft in the ocean than submarines in the sky!"

Ah yes, the ultimate challenge is docking to a dead ship (batteries died, forgot solar panels) that is tumbling through space. It mostly amounts to getting nice and close and lined up with where the docking port is going to be, then jabbing the throttle as the port comes around

Looks yummy!

Looks tasty...

The first time took forever and gobs of monoprop. Now I can glide a massive tanker into a space station dock in one approach. Again, a reasonably balanced RCS and an alignment mod such as "Navball Docking Alignment Indicator" (simple and effective) or NavyFish's "Docking Alignment Indicator" (more info, separate window) work wonders. The key is learning how to, as I put it, fly the navball. Once you become one with the navball, everything becomes much easier. With NDAL, you don't even have to look at the ships, just the navball. It also helps to rotate the target so the docking port is facing the approaching craft. Right-clicking on docking ports (on your current ship and the target) and choosing "Control from here" and "set as target" as necessary works wonders.

Darwinawards.com. People improving the gene pool by removing themselves from it

I like seeing a huge super-heavy-lift-rocket being built. The downside of SLS is the price tag, but at least it's not my tax dollars. I hope that payloads get funded for it, but that's a tough sell in the current economic climate in the US. I wish that people would realize that when they want services it takes taxes to pay for them, but then people don't want to pay the taxes. People want their cake without having to pay for it, and it just doesn't work that way.

"Help Fight the Population Explosion, Support Your Local War" - Mad Magazine

Take your pick...

Wow, nice! Have fun! Now, can someone lend me $2199.99 with no real expectation of getting it back? Then again, I need to replace my car more than I need to replace my PC...

Put it into a Niven-esque stasis field when it's just about to blow. When you want it to detonate, turn off the stasis field.

Shooting down an airliner?

I don't think that's a good motto for an airline...

My favorite variation is "Common sense doesn't grow in everybody's garden."

lol, yup, totally. I really have to watch for that...