He does know that the C-32 is not actually designated for the Vice President, right? That’s pretty common knowledge. I mean, I know he was Marine Corps, not USAF, but he was a *journalist* in the Marine Corps, so you’d think he’d have at least a passing familiarity with some of the better known elements of the VIP…

Man who flew a desk for four years whines about a 24-year national guardsman not being military enough. Vance is funny, in the same way RFK, Jr is funny.

I’m really skeptical of this report that’s getting echoed repeatedly without anyone ever attempting to verify it. It’s all coming from one guy, Eric Berger, who cites mysterious unnamed sources as saying Starliner is incapable of autonomous undocking and reentry. (Which would be pretty surprising, since nobody has…

I am slightly embarrassed at how long it took me to get that. :-D

That thing is monstrous, useless, expensive, and impossible to store. It’s also an absolutely gorgeous piece of art deco styling.  If I had billions of dollars, I would want it.

I thought so too, but that’s what my brother said.  Mind you, he was pretty sleep deprived by that time, and trying to wrangle two young kids, so I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if some details were muddied.

You’d think -- but my brother had to deboard from his Delta flight when it got cancelled because they couldn’t find the pilot.  No idea how it got so far that they were loading the pax without a pilot identified.

Wipers that detect rain exist, and are notoriously unreliable. There are a bunch of problems. Cars with automatic wipers exist, for instance — they have sensors that detect wetness on the windshield. They’ll turn on the wipers and the headlamps automatically. But they don’t always reliably detect the rain, and they’re…

It is orbiting in a heliocentric orbit, lost to tracking.  Not a lot more to update about it.

It all comes down to the tyranny of the rocket equation. Every bit of mass you put up requires propellant to put it up there — and the propellant *also* needs to be lifted, so you need more propellant, which in turn needs to by lifted by more propellant, which means you need more propellant, so oh by the way, you’ll…

They don’t always fly with missiles loaded (and “armed” isn’t limited to missiles, since the F16 does have a cannon). It all depends on the mission. Since they only dropped tanks, I am quite certain they had no missiles on board. In an emergency, they would have jettisoned absolutely everything.

“When was the last time you turned your headlmaps on or off using a switch?”

“Also, the touchscreen interface of a phone isn’t a “necessary evil,” it’s a choice that reflects the consumer preference for screen size over a physical interface.”

Mileage varies for everyone with bifocals/progressives. It took four years before I found a frame design/reader placement that worked for me, and even then, I still slide them up and down my nose to optimize them for different tasks.  I’m on my laptop right now, so they’re about halfway down my nose to get the perfect…

I never had eyes that this worked well for; I got glasses at age 6. Lots of interior lights are a problem for me when night driving because they cause interior reflections on my eyeglasses. Contacts help a bit, but they don’t correct my astigmatism as well as eyeglasses do and I’m fussy about my visual acuity. I…

Well, it isParis, after all......  Seems to me they’re getting an authentic experience.  :-)

I guess I should be more clear. They jettison the tanks so that there’s less fuel on board when the plane comes down. It’s not about saving the airframe; it’s a decision based on the assumption the aircraft may be about to lose control and crash. The idea is to limit the devastation at the eventual crash site by…

Yes; the choice is “possible small explosions” versus “one really big explosion”. If it was carrying missiles or bombs, the hope would be to have them drop and hit the ground relatively intact and not ultimately cook off and explode in a burning aircraft fire.

They do have to be able to do that in an emergency situation. And that’s not all they can jettison. They can jettison all stores at once and get a completely clean jet in seconds, which is important preparation for an emergency landing so as to minimize the explosion at the site of their eventual possible crash. So,…

Well, for a long time, ambulances were pretty much the same vehicles as hearses, just with different trim.