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Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#131

Post by jacquesm »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #116

Wife and I stopped in at Edwards AFB perhaps around 2000? Maybe 1998 or so.... Have to dig up the photos to be sure. The armed guard let us on the base so we could head to Dryden Flight Research Center (now the Armstrong Flight Research Center). In those days I figured you just tried to do a thing until someone said you couldn't. It didn't occur to me that there would be a problem driving in to Dryden. The guard aske…

Interesting that they'd allow you to make photographs while they were towing classified hardware around.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#132

Post by vl »

quietthrow wrote: post #76
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes from the military budget; they can light Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills as a rounding error. The US Navy has 11 large fleet aircraft carriers, 9 assault carriers, when the rest of the World considers two carriers to be a lot. Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies, the Pentagon/The Congress spends a Trillion USD on a new manned fighter we don't need just to shovel pork into as many Congressional d…

Yet heavens forbid if we spent a little more trying to fix healthcare. This all is thanks to mentality of fear which has deep roots in American consciousness. At the nation level - what if somebody attacks us to at the family level there all kinds of crazies here let’s not let our children play outdoors in the neighborhood without supervision- it’s a fear based society.

If you think about it, then it’s clear that in free society healthcare will capture all excess money. Essentially you can spend unlimited money on life extension, and people are genetically pre-disposed to fear death. There are some nuances, but essentially healthcare is only going to grow and will continue to be and become overly-dominant sector of US economy. Ironically, if it’s de-regulated, it will capture excess money more effeciently.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#133

Post by TeMPOraL »

eecc wrote: post #119
justinator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess, but ISIS still seems to be a thing. Or in geek-speak. We have the Death Star, as we are the Empire. The Empire still lost.

Yup, and it’s so ironic that the Rebel heroes are a ragtag collection of desert-dwellers led by warrior priests of a religious sect.

Except in this take, I'd still prefer the Empire to the Rebels. Star Wars tells its story through the lens of the Rebel propaganda.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

ajuc wrote: post #124
justinator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess, but ISIS still seems to be a thing. Or in geek-speak. We have the Death Star, as we are the Empire. The Empire still lost.

Any complex system eventually breaks down. If not this rebellion then the next. Or the one after that. The system accumulates damage over time, maintenance can't fix everything, eventually it's not worth it to keep it operational. Looking at Trump and Biden I'd say that time is near.

In theory, repair and creating something anew are equivalent processes; at the detail level, they both involve the same act of tearing out old pieces and inserting fresh ones. So I sometimes wonder what is it that eventually makes killing and starting over preferable to maintenance? Maybe we should address that somehow, as redoing things from scratch seem unnecessarily wasteful.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#135

Post by vl »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #48
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

This comes from the military budget; they can light Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills as a rounding error. The US Navy has 11 large fleet aircraft carriers, 9 assault carriers, when the rest of the World considers two carriers to be a lot. Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies, the Pentagon/The Congress spends a Trillion USD on a new manned fighter we don't need just to shovel pork into as many Congressional d…

>Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies.

Did you have a chance to compare US schools to other countries’ schools? By any other standard US schools are lavish. The only reason schools have bake sales to raise funds because of bureaucracy and because parents will pony up anyway.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#136

Post by pferde »

tim333 wrote: post #122
justinator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess, but ISIS still seems to be a thing. Or in geek-speak. We have the Death Star, as we are the Empire. The Empire still lost.

ISIS got fairly wrecked though.

Not wrecked, they just relocated. They seem quite happy over in sub-Saharan Africa.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#137

Post by XorNot »

vl wrote: post #132
quietthrow wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet heavens forbid if we spent a little more trying to fix healthcare. This all is thanks to mentality of fear which has deep roots in American consciousness. At the nation level - what if somebody attacks us to at the family level there all kinds of crazies here let’s not let our children play outdoors in the neighborhood without supervision- it’s a fear based society.

If you think about it, then it’s clear that in free society healthcare will capture all excess money. Essentially you can spend unlimited money on life extension, and people are genetically pre-disposed to fear death. There are some nuances, but essentially healthcare is only going to grow and will continue to be and become overly-dominant sector of US economy. Ironically, if it’s de-regulated, it will capture excess…

And this children is why you should go bankrupt if you get appendicitis...

Every other developed country on Earth gets more down while spending half as much per person. Your system is just corrupt garbage.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#138

Post by herbstein »

_8j50 wrote: post #62
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

Enlighten a simpleton here please, why do "we" need to leave the planet. I am far from a space nerd but I do know that neither mars or any solar object other than other is known to contain climate that is better or would even come close to earth's climate even with no polar ice caps and extreme global warming. Wouldn't it be cheaper (more humane as well) to "colonize" earth? For the next 100 years,even with full on w…

Robert Zubrin has what I consider a great, comprehensive answer to why we should go to Mars. But ultimately it generally applies to all space exploration.

https://youtu.be/j2Mu8qfVb5I

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#139

Post by kristopolous »

shockinglytrue wrote: post #3

The press around the X-37B continues to perplex, it's particularly disappointing to see this "super secret but let's talk about it constantly" article using the word "very" 3 times. I think it was drilled into me by the age of 12 to avoid "very" in written English in order not to obviously oversell, and yet here it is from a professional writer working for the BBC

I always assumed there's a chosen public facing secret plane with some PR management to represent the secret program in general and there's numerous other behind the scenes secret crafts without the PR.

I also assumed many of the silly rumors of antigravity or whatever planes are intentionally manufactured as part of the PR so if some information of an actual plane leaks it'll be buried with the noise.

This way, the formal channels could say "oh nonsense, that's just silly rumours, The Official Secret Plane is this one over here".

It also puts outsiders at a true zero knowledge position since there's no indication as to what is and is not nonsense.

Then you could have say, a top scientist defecting, taking all the secret plane information with them, write detailed books and lectures exposing all of it and people would just be like "oh, look at that silly conspiracy kook over there! how goofy"

Pretend it's already happened and there's scientifically sound diagrams, correct math, etc... Nobody would be able to find it among the garbage.

At least that's how I'd structure it.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#140

Post by RobertoG »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #133
eecc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and it’s so ironic that the Rebel heroes are a ragtag collection of desert-dwellers led by warrior priests of a religious sect.

Except in this take, I'd still prefer the Empire to the Rebels. Star Wars tells its story through the lens of the Rebel propaganda.

I think the GP is talking about Dune instead of Star Wars.

We all know what 'the spice' is.

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