Just keep whistling past that graveyard. This is about the third or fourth Gawker network article I’ve seen this week that celebrates how completely some pundit has dismantled Trump. And yet, for some reason the full weight of minor league former kinda-famous people’s scorn has failed to derail his candidacy! Could it…

I’d seen that before but forgotten about it. Yet another VTOL design that doesn’t require all sorts of Transformers nonsense that adds weight and complexity.

I think the tailsitter has a huge advantage here, too. Set the CG for level flight, and you’re done. Because in a hover or vertical flight, where the CG sits along the thrust axis literally doesn’t matter; as long as the center of pressure is below it, it will be inherently stable.

OK, so make it a tail-sitter with two large diameter ducted fans then, if you insist on throwing away efficiency via an additional mechanical-electric-mechanical transmission step and losing the advantage of 100% centerline thrust. And if your cargo isn’t secured well enough or can’t tolerate being tipped 90 degrees,…

This is a PROFOUNDLY stupid design for an unmanned VTOL aircraft. It’s complexity for the sake of complexity - not one tilting wing, but two, a turboshaft/electric drive system, and twenty four dinky little low efficiency (because they’re small, and there are so damn many of them) ducted fans.

And that’s why, at the gun stores I worked at in my youth, every firearm went into the walk-in safe in back every night.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

Opposing traffic at 0:23. Blind corners start 10 seconds later.

They’re both idiots, riding into the apex on blind left hand turns. Hard to watch.

I would, except I’m in the same line of work, and when I see a talented writer’s efforts marred by something so central to the job and so easy for him to correct by himself, I’m gonna say something.

Dude. Seriously. Proofread your stuff JUST ONCE before you post. At least proofread the title. I know you are in a publishing environment where literally nobody gives even the tiniest shit about quality, but you should care for yourself.

Especially since we already have a solid high-speed rail plan underway that’s traveling almost the same route.

Would have been cool to know that there was a “holy shit” in there before the words actually came out of my speakers...

Be your best you, Tyler. Proofread, because nobody else is gonna do it...

I commuted for two years, 180 miles a day round trip between San Diego and Santa Ana, in a hand-me-down ‘84 Fiero. The Iron Duke 4 was rated at 85 horsepower ‘at the brochure’ and when strapped to an automatic transmission, it meant that the throttle needed to be all the way on when you weren’t coasting.

I was thinking the same thing. Strictly badge engineering. If you want to see a marine engine with an actual automaker connection, I suggest this:

I think the torque reaction you see is from the (still driven) tail rotor picking up speed as the engine spools up, while the rotor is just freewheeling.

It’s not framerate - note how little energy the rotors have when they hit the water.

Consensus on Reddit among (self-identified) helicopter pilots is that it wasn’t VRS, but instead a drivetrain failure. Watch the video and you’ll see how little rotor speed there is when it crashes, and you can hear the tail rotor RPM climbing.

I’m not blaming you for using vague terms like “fry” when it comes to the effect of cyberweapons - it seems to be pretty common when they’re being discussed. I’m more interested in what they actually do, rather than whether or not they exist and are being deployed.