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Nasa plane to try Mach 7 flight
- Thread starter iGav
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That would really be fantastic, I have to admit that I'm really shocked by the retirement of supersonic flight in commercial airlines. When's the last time we tooks steps to make travel slower?
It would have been especially nice on my last flight, as woman with her 3 young children were packed into 2 seats directly behind me, kids kicking my seat, crying, screaming. I put my seat back as far as I could and convinced the woman next to me to do the same just to put them in as much discomfort as I possibly could. Meanwhile the woman did not say one word to shut her kids up, I hate people like that. Lady if you're reading this, shut your kids up on the plane, tell them not to kick my seat, or better yet DRIVE!!!
very nice news i was going to post it on my own but i had to go shopping before shops close 
i guess it will take long to be regular used in passenger planes
but there is no doubt (IMHO) who the main sponsor behind this is : US airforce
they would love to have a fast reaction time airplane (espaccially bomber) which can reach it's targets within hours..
i guess it will take long to be regular used in passenger planes
but there is no doubt (IMHO) who the main sponsor behind this is : US airforce
they would love to have a fast reaction time airplane (espaccially bomber) which can reach it's targets within hours..
davecuse said:
Are you serious? That seems to be one of the rudest comments I have heard here... Lets see, instead of helping the situation by putting forth a bit of effort, you decided to convince someone else to help you make the situation worse for everyone. Great idea! I can't wait for the time you sit next to me any my family!! Have a great day!
The B-52's in the air...
Another use they were talking about for this type of propulsion, is for cruise missiles, although I'm not sure how plausible that would be because, of altitude requirements, and the fact that these things have to be going pretty fast to move on their own power.
Another use they were talking about for this type of propulsion, is for cruise missiles, although I'm not sure how plausible that would be because, of altitude requirements, and the fact that these things have to be going pretty fast to move on their own power.
G4scott said:
perhaps but they need the b-52 for launching them
but the B-52ies ar excpected to fly untill 2035 (or was it 2037)... where the B-52,B-1,B-2 should be replaced by one single type of aircraft
kevin49093 said:
Hell that's nothing, I would've probably screamed at the woman, and if that failed, complained to whomever was in charge, and have their seats moved to cargo area.
The important part of the story is that this will not only lessen the cost to Orbit if successful but will simplify it. Instead of gigantic chemical boosters we can have a jet/scramjet/chemical booster hybrid that wont have to carry so much of the oxidizer. I hope this works out because we really need a jump in the technology to obtain orbit. for the most part we are using the same basic technology of V2 rockets from WW2. Its time to start exploring other avenues that will be cheaper,safer and less complex. I wonder how that Australian scram jet program is doing.
kevin49093 said:
Which would annoy you more....
a) Having your flight delayed 3 hours, then boarding to find 2 small children stuffed into the seat directly behind you screaming and kicking your seat for the entire flight, while the mother does not say one word to settle them down or explain that it's very rude to make someone's very expensive flight absolutely miserable.
b) Having the person in front of you put their seat in the resting position?
In my mind putting my seat back is part of why I chose to fly rather than drive. If I get a little chuckle out it.. all the better. I would hope that if you choose to travel by air with your family you exercise some authority and remind them that it's not courteous to kick the seat in front of you, also please for love of everything good make them pipe down! It is not my responsibility to keep someone else's kids in line.
That's just my $.02
Dave
Just to let you know the flight was successful. way to go! Awesome. they report 5,000 miles an hour and a ten second run. this really opens the door.
Dont Hurt Me said:
About time they got it to fly. The team from Brisbane uni, in Australia flew theirs over just under 2 years ago.
Well, then, Apple should've put a G5 into the plane so, for once and for all, they could get rid of that dumb Dell whining over "world's fastest computer".
davecuse said:
Sure it gets annoying when someone is crying or carrying on behind me on a plane. But I don't think I have ever wanted to make the situation worse. My kids have had their tantrums on planes before (LA to Sydney!), and we try to control them the best we can, but they are kids! Try as we might, we can't always get our kids to "pipe down". They do what they want, when they want. We just try to control them, and help them pick quiet activities. (I'm not saying that if they want to run down the aisle and scream or kick seats, we let them!)
I also don't think it is your "responsibility to keep someone else's kids in line." But if you are ever faced with a situation like that, it takes far less energy to turn around and ask (nicely and honestly)if they would like it if you watched or played with one of their kids because it looks like their hands are full, and that soem people might be trying to sleep. (could you imagine traveling with three little kids? it sucks!) It is't your responsibility, but it is a nice thing to do that could easily help everyone out.
This reminds me of the time we had a sick kid in a hotel room. He was crying cuite a bit at about 7:00 pm. The front desk called and said we had to make our kids quiet down because they had a complaint. Needless to say, the head offices comped our stay when we told them about it...
takao said:
It definitely will take a long time. We first broke the sound barrier on Oct 4th, 1947. It took well over twenty years (Late 1969) for the first flight of the concorde, and that flight didn't have any passengers. I would say that if this technology was going to turn commercial it would take thirty years for the first scheduled flights, and possible a total of fifty years before they are widely available for the average air traveler.
kevin49093 said:
That sounds like a very nice solution, but what if the lady behind says "Yes, thank you so much, these kids are really a handful." then proceeds to tell little Johnny and Jane to come up a row and annoy me face to face.
That's a risk I'm just not willing to take.
The fact that her kids were crying screaming and being generally obnoxious wasn't what shocked me... It was the fact that she did not say one word to them the entire flight. Not one single attempt to try to calm them down, she was just sitting there reading a book, while her hooligans were making everyone else miserable.
kevin49093 said:
Then you abused the system, and got some people who I happen to know are only trying to do their jobs and keep everyone happy in trouble, all because you have to take your kids places with you. Honestly, I don't think I'm ever going to have kids, and a big part of that is that I don't want to turn into someone who thinks that the whole world has to revolve around my inability to control my spawn. You even say, outright, that "we try to control them the best we can, but they are kids! Try as we might, we can't always get our kids to "pipe down"."
Well, tough luck. Your problems controlling your children shouldn't be inflicted on everyone in an enclosed space, just because it's more convenient for you. In the plane, in that hotel, and anywhere else you take them, those children are your responsibility and your headache, not mine. The minute they start to do anything to me, you've crossed the line, because you are their legal guardian and responsible for their actions until they become old enough that the system considers them responsible for themselves. If you haven't discovered an effective way to get your kids to pipe down (reading material worked just fine, when I was younger), then you probably shouldn't be taking them out in public.
You know what another nice thing is, though? Not punishing everyone around you by bringing your unruly offpsring somewhere you already admit you know they might make a ruckus. Do you take them to the opera? Do you let them run around in a library? Why is the plane any different? It's not your only means of transportation, though it is one where you have at least a moderate social responsibility for being courteous to your temporary neighbors.
As a service industry worker, one who's had people like you inflict hell upon me for not wanting to just grin and bear the various atrocities carried out by undisciplined children, I hope that you someday learn to parent effectively. It's another of those things that would help everyone.
I think Heinlein had a damn fine idea, myself, especially for unmanned cargo launch and retreival. We pick a mountain range near the equator, build a ten mile track that faces along the direction of rotation, and combine earth's momentum with magnetic impellers to railgun ferrous cannisters into space. The cannisters, at first, are carrying parts for the second stage of the operation, but soon after start to carry manufactered goods to be used in the intermediary space station. I could see a kind of railgun/scramjet cooperative system, where we throw them hard enough to get the compression for the chamber, then boost out to orbit and use chemical rockets for maneuvering in space.
The second stage is a skyhook, a chain-drive on a massive scale that hangs in geosynchronous orbit and lifts people to the launch facilities that allow transfer to other stations, the moon, and so on. We build it by launching parts up the well with the railgun, and then starting a couple of zero-G factories to produce the rest. After a while, the factories pay for themselves with materials that can't be fabbed in gravity, and we have a pretty reliable source of transport for leaving Earth without traditional chemical rockets. Space travel is another matter, though...
thatwendigo said:
How is complaining about a phone call at 7:00 pm about a crying kid abusing the system? I would understand if it was at a time that people would be sleeping, but not in the early evening like that. Our complaint was not that we got a call, it was that the front desk worker very bluntly told us that we needed to stop our kids from crying. You can't always do that!
"Inability to control my spawn"? wow.. that's pretty a pretty cold comment. I don't think I have ever said that the whole world (or even a part of it) should revolve around me and my kids. I said that people should realize that kids can be tough at times.
I agree that there are some people who drag their kids everywhere and do not want to change their lives because of thier kids. We do not take our kids anywhere that might cause troubles if I can help it. We don't go out to dinner, movies, operas, or libraries, but we do have to take them on planes to visit family overseas. (If you say that is wrong, then I have nothing else to say.)
You "hope I learn to parent effectively"? Please, insult me a little more next time! My kids are very well behaved. They have two of the best parents in the world. I thik it is you that needs to learn a bit more about what it is really like to be a parent.
I guess the major difference between you and I is that I can deal with a bit of noise from kids. I realize that they are kids, not grownups who can't always just sit still, read and be quite for an extended period of time. (our kids are 28 months, 14 months, and 7 days)
kevin49093 said:
Whether or not you realize it, people who follow all kinds of schedules are in hotels, especially near airports. You might not have been in one with international travelers, but the principle is the same. Your child is causing someone else, a person who is a fully cognizant moral agent, discomfort. Maybe they're a businessman with an important project to work on, or maybe it's someone who's been driving all day and just wants to rest... No matter what the other circumstance, they have as much right to silence as you do to bring your kid with you, and you're the one committing a noise violation if someone in another room can hear you.
Sorry if you don't like it, but no matter how much parents wish to alter the balance of responsibility, I do not have to put up with your child's noise when I'm not on the clock.
People realize it, and we give you leeway for it. Patience only goes so far, especially when I don't have the emotional clouding you do in regard to said noisemaker. Any claim that others should change their behavior just because you have a kid is foisting off responsibility from your own shoulders. A perfect example would be if I was talking to other adults in a public space, peppered my speech with some words you'd rather your offspring not know, and you get mad at me for it. I'm not the one who took them into a situation I couldn't control.
Also, my original comment was meant as a comment on my own likelihood of parenting, not at you. I saved that for later.
Here's a nice story for you: When I was four, my family had to cross the country for a funeral. I behaved the whole way, staying quiet on the place because that's what I had been taught was the polite thing to do. I read, talked to my parents in a reasonable tone and volume, drew, and talked to the flight attendants. There weren't any problems with me.
Why can't you do that with your kids?
I've been helping to raise my siblings since I was five, which has included changing my youngest siblings' diapers at night, cooking and helping keep the pantry stocked, cleaning up, doing laundry, shuttling people around our family's busy schedule (when I was old enough to drive), being sure that homework was done, and quite a lot of the other responsibilities. My role didn't get as concentrated until I was around 10 or so, but that's when my mom's career really took off and I needed to step in and keep things running. It's only been in the last two years, since I moved away from home, that I haven't been active in raising children.
Oh, and one of them is autistic.
So, who needs more experience? I've been doing it for eighteen years.
Let me repeat myself:
I have helped raise an eighteen year old, and a pair of twelve year olds. One of the youngest is autistic, which makes him far more difficult to deal with than you could imagine. However, I can get him to behave, without resorting to threats, spankings, or any other kind of trickery that parents often resort to.
It's funny how this thread went from about a NASA plane to about parenting responsibilities.
On the plane topic. I read in the newpaper today that the plane goes 1.5 miles per second. That puts in more everyday figures compaired to it going 7 times the speed of sound.
On the plane topic. I read in the newpaper today that the plane goes 1.5 miles per second. That puts in more everyday figures compaired to it going 7 times the speed of sound.
Congratulations NASA. This is great news for the future of Passenger travel.
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43_soars_feature.html
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43_soars_feature.html
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Dr. Zauis said:
My fault I guess, sorry everyone.
Dr. Zauis said:
That's really fast, I personally think that space exploration is going to see a boom similar to what personal computers have in the past 10 years. It's human nature to explore, history has shown that. I think we're entering a pretty exciting time. If you sit back and just think about everything that's going on right now, it's really mind boggling. The human genome is mapped, nanotechnology, we're moving away from petroleum to a completely renewable power source, information flows as freely as water, I have the world's knowledge at my fingertips.
In the big picture of things, I think that we are on the verge of writing names in the history books that will parallel Magellan, Columbus, and Drake. Maybe I'm putting more stock in the space program than I should be, but I don't think so.
davecuse said:
Thanks davecuse. I really didn't mean to get all worked up. I was just trying to make the point that sometimes if we act with more responsibility than others (i.e. the lady who did nothing on the plane) then it can sometimes help others as well as your self. I didn't think it was her right as a parent to let her kids be out of control.
As for the article. My students are going to be hearing quite a bit on this as soon as spring break is over!