I took this shot on Tuesday morning. Supertug in action!

Surface finish. For durability and inspectability you need smooth surfaces that you can't quite get from AM.

to learn

Yep. Lots of effort in that arena. About half of the presentations at the conference I attended this week were on space applications. Orbital is using AM on their cube sats and there are a lot of benefits in weight savings and time to fab for satellites a in general. think structures with integrated coolant and…

indeed, it is inefficient now. The way you make it more efficient is to push the technology. One of the US vendors at the conference showed a 7ft diameter printed forward bulkhead for an Orion sized space craft they were messing with. They are looking at larger structures as well.

While there is some obvious inspiration with the Y-20, the Chinese are pushing some technologies farther than we are. I was at a additive manufacturing (3D printing) conference and one of the OEM speakers showed this image of the a printed aft bulkhead from the fighter. China is working to be a world leader in the…

please let me try!

Lion Air hit a cow a few years ago. US carriers have hit deer. It happens.

This isn't going to end well. Maybe they were going to make an example of him, but he could have appealed and probably would have gotten something out of that. Now he has flipped the law off with both fingers, openly admitted to running from the court system and is going to rub it in their face in the media. Their…

crossover?

I saw those too. Airborne sexy.

Have you seen the copper in person? Not too bright, but awfully sexy.

Endurance racing is a different beast. Its pretty much expected that you pack your own. Indycar at road courses is also pretty much wide open. Indy for F-1 let you bring a small cooler, same as they did for the 500. For us, we just didn't want to spend $8 for a coke.

great idea, but the NIMBYs are really thick around PDK even though it has been an airport since 1940. They have curfews to control noise.

scanners are awesome, but not much use at F-1 anymore. You can still pickup the broadcast feeds though and that is handy. At Indy in 2005 when Michelin pulled out the scanner talk pre race was awesome. DC was pleading to be allowed to race during the recon lap.

the areas with the most business travelers would be 35+ min away with no traffic.

its 35 minutes from Marietta and longer from east Cobb and Roswell. Seems further out than what would be ideal. Also, it would be interesting to see how long it would take for the NIMBYs to come out when the big jets start departing frequently.

I read it cover to cover flying from Christchurch to Singapore in August. Just finished the audiobook yesterday. Been listening to it on the way home from work. Either way is excellent.

This book is a bit trendy now, but its treatment of Mars as a real place, with real, understandable risks and conditions was quite refreshing. The planet isn't a mysterious creature with unknown threats, but problem solving around the real conditions is quite interesting. Also, it does a good job of showing problem…

Awesome write up. Sounds like a great adventure!