#2 2011-08-12 10:51:37
Uh...who knows, and who cares??? That's why it was a "test" flight.
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#3 2011-08-12 11:05:09
Roger_That wrote:
Uh...who knows, and who cares??? That's why it was a "test" flight.
Insomniac asks a valid question. I'd say US news organizations got beat on their own turf by domestic assignment editors asleep on the job.
Well written story, good find.
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#4 2011-08-12 11:07:25
Heard about it on the Beeb. More wastage, and for what, delivering a nuclear weapon somewhere in an hour?
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#5 2011-08-12 14:09:50
It's on CNN - of course the CNN article didn't talk about delivering a nuke, it's worth noting that the Minuteman III travels at Mach-23 and this thing does Mach-20. Doesn't look much like a weapons delivery platform to me.
If we want space flight, this is important research.
Last edited by Emmeran (2011-08-12 14:21:09)
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#6 2011-08-12 16:12:13
And delivery from one point on the earth to another point on the earth 21,000 km's away takes significantly longer than an hour as the parabolic flight, even in a low extra-atmospheric flight, is quite a bit farther than the ground great-circle distance.
We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight.
Yeah, no kidding. Control during hypersonic flight is tough as the air doesn't exactly act like a fluid at those kinds of speed.
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#7 2011-08-12 17:45:10
choad wrote:
Roger_That wrote:
Uh...who knows, and who cares??? That's why it was a "test" flight.
Insomniac asks a valid question. I'd say US news organizations got beat on their own turf by domestic assignment editors asleep on the job.
Well written story, good find.
American news outlets kill or ignore stories for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is in order to have time and space for puff pieces on products also owned by the corporations that own the news media.
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