Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason you don't get flying cars, is the very same, you cant make a lot of other technology. People will want to invent the flying car parking house. And they kind of did - on the 11 of September 2001. You can not hand technology over a certain level to a infantile (nicer sound then retarded) species. Its that simple. Its already madness to allow wealthy citizens into space. Tesla and Amazon are one freight fligh…
> Its already madness to allow wealthy citizens into space. ?? > filled with tungsten rods, away from becoming there own nation - with non-nuclear deterrence. In WW1, they tried dropping flechettes onto troops. Didn't work. As for becoming a nation, that's hardly going to work without the launch/recovery site being part of that nation.
The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#682The F-35 was always over-ambiguous.
You may end up with something that can not fly far, can not fly high, can not carry a big payload, can not dog-fight, has an insane maintenance requirement and may, or may not be invisible. No plane can be invisible by definition. It may or may not be invisible on specific radars. The F-35 was not build to fight Iraq or Iran. I was build to fight China or Russia. This makes it a big bet.
As far as I know "Superiority" is required reading in MIT Engineering programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#683The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…
SR-71 was based on the existing A-12 design. Plus it didn't have a bunch of missions. Much less opportunity for feature creep when it has one purpose.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#684So when can we get our tax refund?
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#685The contractors of these projects know they can lock in long term deals for a ridiculous amount of money and take their time building and then after so long they end the project and then repeat.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#686Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is far from how I learned it I'm also not from the US, and I was similarly surprised when I found their position on this piece of history differs with how it's learned in pretty much the rest of the world. Speak to someone outside the US about the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: most, if not all, will say it was a terrible thing, almost a war crime. In some (Western!) countries the consensus is that it was a…
It may have been a war crime, not sure about that, it was never officially a war crime, so it is what it is. My understanding is basically the following: Right before the bombs were dropped, the US was in a situation where they were trying to end WW2 and they did not want the Soviets to invade Japan (which they did anyways). Before Trinity, the US was bombing the hell of out of Japan already. ~100K Japanese died in T…
This is a short version of what may be taught outside of the US.
Japan knew it had lost the war. The only question remaining were the conditions of surrender. Japan hoped that they would be able to negotiate a conditional surrender, with the help of the Soviet Union. Then the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, on August 8, 1945, by invading Manchuria, forcing Japan in accepting an unconditional surrender.
To quote wikipedia: "The Soviet entry into the war was a significant factor in the Japanese government's decision to surrender unconditionally, as it made apparent that the Soviet Union was not willing to act as a third party in negotiating an end to hostilities on conditional terms" [1]
Another quote: "The Japanese army went so far as to believe that they would not have to engage a Soviet attack until spring 1946. But the Soviets surprised them with their invasion of Manchuria, an assault so strong [...] that Emperor Hirohito began to plead with his War Council to reconsider surrender." [2]
Personally I don't think we will ever know why Japan War Council members made this decision. Even if the members were still alive, we (humans) have a tendency to rationalize decisions after the fact. Between nuclear bombs, that new war in Manchuria, loss of lives, and ultimately loss of hope, reasons to surrenders were aplenty.
US will push the US narrative, and dismiss the Soviet Union. Russia will do the opposite. I'm neither American nor Russian so I don't really care one way or the other.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_War
[2] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviets-declare-...
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#687Earlier quoted context omitted.
You misunderstand the purpose the F35- it is a jobs and pork program first and foremost, like SLS. It has the side benefit of keeping people trained to build this sort of thing, so SpaceX can hire them. We can build cool shit, but our government and most companies don't optimize for that.
> We can build cool shit, but our government and most companies don't optimize for that. ARPA was always kind of a jobs program, but nonetheless it created the internet at the same time as NASA was putting a man on the moon, the government was successfully building the interstate highways and Bell Labs was Bell Labs instead of whatever it is now. Today we get the F-35 and the Big Dig and whatever other money furnace…
Fusion in particular has never been funded in line with project requirements, we are significantly below projecting "fusion never" levels and that's exactly what we've gotten.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusi...
So it's different from those other projects.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
We already have flying cars. They're called helicopters. They're very expensive to operate, mainly because of the very high maintenance costs. Those high costs are due to the fundamental problem that helicopters cannot survive losing a blade.
blades are too expensive. We need a powerful new powerplant that can direct a stream of deficient energy in sufficient quantities to enable flight. Powerplant doesn't yet exist, and my energy converter doesn't, either. In the 50's it wasn't imagined that commanding computers would use so many resources, rather human ingenuity would be directed towards revolutionising existing technology. This is yet to materialise. S…
"directed energy stream of sufficient quantity" sounds like a jet engine, which exists.
if you're proposing something more powerful than that... that sounds like a fantastic weapon. Someone get the Pentagon on the horn, let's get this shit funded!
With apologies to Larry Niven: "A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive."
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the issue is if you are going to order a million toilets, then moving all the risk to the contractor is fine. If you are asking for innovation and R&D, then the contractor already has a ton of risk. Add in requirements to make a fighter suitable for all branches of the military, and the risk is gigantic. In that environment, you need to remove risk from the contractor. This is why R&D projects can't be treate…
So don't do it fixed price but do cap allowable profits to 3-5% or so. That was how Apollo program was run.
OK, but that's still a cost plus contract. I don't think the size of the percentage in the "plus" is what explains the failure of the F35.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human pilot optional. I would argue that physical humans are not the limiting factor in bomber performance, and the thought of a Kubernetes cluster autonomously flying around with nukes scares the fuck out of me. In addition to the philosophical implications there's also political reasons to go with a hybrid approach.
> the thought of a Kubernetes cluster autonomously flying around with nukes scares the fuck out of me I get this, but I also wonder if the same kind of bugs or unintended behavior in a software system aren't just as likely in the protocols, procedures, and chains of command we build for humans to deploy that weaponry. You've got AI doomsday (a la "War Games") on one hand, and bureaucratic doomsday ("Doctor Strangelov…
The bureaucratic doomsday of Doctor Strangelove happens because the Russians have built their own 'Dead Hand' retaliatory 'AI'.