It absolutely destroyed the car, for sure. I think any barrier medium, whether sand, water, or the nets, is going to tear the car apart when you’re trying to dissipate that much energy in that short a distance (they’re at the back because you’re out of room and have got to stop that car NOW).

That's essentially what the kevlar nets do at the end of the gravel trap. Goal is to gradually slow the car down, at slower speeds the cars dig into the gravel and stop. This was close to a worst case scenario (I guess worst would be full throttle run, but you'd have to have: 1: throttle hang, 2: fuel pump cutoff…

Um, no injury here. Nor in any of the new shutdown configurations since Scott Kalitta’s death where he hit an piece of construction-type equipment at over 100 mph after running through the old smaller sand trap.

Actually I think that's just oil dry from a previous oil down cleanup. Brakes are carbon-carbon and help, but there's just more energy from a 300 mph run than they can manage. Engine braking from a 500 cu. in. engine spinning down from 8,000 rpm helps a bunch.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_…

Typically vertical surfaces are canted "inward" to reduce RCS visibility at the cost of high alpha capability, outward to improve high alpha capability at the cost of increased visibility.

I can give you a big contributor in two words: high alpha. In that, YF-23 did not have high alpha (angle of attack) capability. Why? Because they didn’t have thrust vectoring capability. You can see how the bottom has no ability to deflect exhaust downward:

They use them all: SAE (e.g. altitude in ft., pounds of thrust), maritime (speed/distance in nautical miles), metric (temperature), and bureaucratics (performance metrics on generation of metrics, I kid you not).

True. But the airframe systems won’t be; in fact high altitude cooling becomes a significant issue. Climatic testing demonstrates the subsystems ability to withstand cold soaking (and heat soaking) to those specs.

Specs are usually down to -20C for operation, -40C for storage. And yes, they do put pilots/maintainers in the birds to operate all of the appropriate systems (some don’t, like radar systems, due to radiating constraints). Imagine an F-22 at full AB, exhausting through the ductwork, while the refrigeration systems are…

That's a nice adaptation, thanks for sharing. I've never been a big DB fan, but "A Space Oddity" was a big piece of my musical "growing-up." I've always been curious if there's any relationship between this piece and the movie "Marooned", but I've not been able to find anything, nor any kind of attribution.

Is there a *good* history of the F-117 out there? I ask from the standpoint of someone who has collected a lot of military aviation books over the years and find it a bit disheartening that we’re seem to gone away from the definitive histories of significant aircraft.

Find a sponsor, no matter how small, with the initials MLB.

Like Texas giving 250 million to COTA as a subsidy?

The big difference between aerobatic/airshow pilots and military pilots is the g-load *and* the in-cockpit workload while under that g-load. Aero pilots subject themselves to extreme g’s, and transition those g’s in extreme manners. BUT, the duration of the exposure to the g-loads is very short, on the order of a few…

The ISS very likely won’t exist in ten more years.

Agreed. I just don't know what Vne is for that airframe (probably so far from original design that published Vne isn't valid) and wondered if the 220 kts. at whatever altitude number is derived from something like Vne or if that's the actual cruise speed limit.

Pretty sure that's a typo, more likely 220 kts. @ 20K ft. Also, I agree that the limit is probably an airframe limit, not a power limit.

Has it flown? It’s possible to be viable as an experimental aircraft, MAYBE. But I see no viable market as a certified product. As one who built a Long-Ez flew it all over the US and to the Bahamas over 15 years and 600 hours, the runway requirements are significant, gross weights are limited by single engine stall…

In the first round of the Chase winners don't get a "bye", but they are rewarded for previous wins: 3 pts. / win is added to the new baseline. So, Johnson started with baseline + 12 pts, while Gordon only had the baseline. Since once you're in the chase a win automatically advances you to the next round that bonus…