Because there are a lot of FAA regulations on how things are done. The seats cushions are all velcroed on and made of non-flammable materials. In fact, everything that is “attached” to the aircraft has to be burn tested before it can be accepted for use in the aircraft.

Two planes left, then Grumman will be out of Naval Aviation. So sad.

The team directors are blaming the motorcycle.

I’ve been in races where pedestrians have wondered on to the closed course and have been hit. Guess who’s at fault, not the cyclist.

Obviously you never raced in a bike race. You are allowed to use the entire road as determined by the race organizers. People will pull out of the pack like that all the time because support vehicles aren’t supposed to move through the pack at that kind of speed.

Not according to the rule book, all vehicles have to yield to the riders.

It is not on the cyclist. UCI rules basically state that the riders have the right of way. All vehicles have to yield to the riders as to not assist or impede their progress.

Cost - plus = project creep. AF will define what they want now, Northrup builds what the AF wants, AF then wants more capabilities, Northrup adds capabilities in, AF wants more, Northrup adds more, Senate asks Northrup how much it going to cost and freaks out that it is now 10x the cost and blames Northrup for being…

NTSB prelim report:

Actually I’m a flight test engineer. In fact we’re testing a Bell 407 this coming week, a longer version of the crashed helicopter.

Not speculation. I work in the helicopter industry. It’ll be at least a year before the official report comes out. Don’t believe me, go pull some final reports off the NTSB’s site.

What’s shocking is the McLaren F1 built 20+ years ago is still lighter by over 100 lbs.

By the time FAA & NTSB is done with the investigation, it’ll be at least 1 year w/no fatalities, 2 years w/fatalities, no one will remember the incident.

All the stuff I’ve been involved in required producing the material certification documents to prove what materials you used. Can’t do that with stuff you get from the local hardware store.

...and flip the cart over and end up lying in the middle of the parking lot with milk spilling all over the place.

Doug did it. http://jalopnik.com/i-raced-my-hum…

Real world testing will always be around. There is a saying, “Garbage in equals garbage out.” If your computer models aren’t set up correctly, you will get an incorrect result. This is where real world testing comes in to validate the computer models. It doesn’t matter if you are doing a stress analysis or a flow…

There really isn’t a need for regulations. The industry already supports being fuel efficient. Being more fuel efficient means you burn less fuel per hour, which requires you to carry less fuel, and allows you to carry more paying passengers. Every time a pilot preps for a flight and computes the weight and balance,…

That should be US designed helicopters. Airbus builds helicopters here, the ones designed by the Krauts spin counter clockwise, but the ones designed by the Frenchy spin clockwise. It’s funny to watch military guys transitioning to an Astar. Some of them are ingrained to push on the left pedal as they pull up the…

A lot of ballast with steel plates bolted down and also ammo cans bolted down filled with lead shot bags. We were testing in a S-92 and had the entire cabin aft of the rotor stacked with ballast to the maximum floor loading. It’s quite the workout for us engineers who sit behind computers to move that much weight.