A reasonable plan, but I think they could develop a dedicated light weight lander pretty easily and maybe bring a second crew member down to the surface. No need for them to remain in orbit because if they are using the Russian model for docking it is all automated anyway. Remember that the pressurized cabin of the…

If you can get a race scanner. While F-1 has gone digital, many series are still analog over the air. Few things are more fun than hearing the teams go nuts over the radio. You may also hear interesting things. I heard Mark Webber pleading to race at the USGP during the warmup lap when the Michelin tire thing…

I'm sure there are some sharp sole looking into this, but some flotation bags under/around the fuselage to get her up and some kind of skid to rest her on seems like they would be in order.

Everyone in Asia has them. When we were over in Tokyo and Singapore last month they were everywhere.

That was terribly violent. Especially how the nose dug in. Briscoe seemed stunned, and he had every right to be, as he is supposed to pop his visor to show the safety team he is ok. He didn't seem to be able to figure it how to do that.

I’m pulling this from memory, so grain of salt on some of the details, but I remember that one of the tricks it's the 727 was partially popping the Kruger flaps at cruise to get a few more hundredths of Mach number during cruise. I wonder if they are looking at the efficiency increases from changing the geometry of…

Several studies were conducted around using the Shuttle’s tank as a part of a station. I’m disappointed that it wasn’t tried. Since the tank was so large and would be clean on the inside it seems like it would have been ideal. Getting that kind of mass and volume to altitude is hard and it is a shame that they were…

1) If you could say something to all the beginning drivers out there what would it be?

Those pre-WWI racers are amazing to see. Just brute force engineering. Getting your head around how fast they went and the quality of the roads at the time is a challenge.

I would agree. One the best motorsports events I have attended hands down. So much asesome on display.

They made a movie about classic hydroplane racing? Hmmm...

Absolutely. The point I was trying to make was that commercial aircraft also employ new technologies and some of them are not as ready for prime time as they could be. They may ,wet acceptable levels of safety, but they might miss the design goals.

Also looks like he might have hit his head on the ground a few times while running form the cops.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of ADs out there with no terminating action. There are components that the industry has been demanding be fixed for decades. There are articles flying on commercial aircraft every day that don’t meet their original design requirement for reliability. The air carriers compensate by…

The thingy that goes from the hub to the outer rim, wouldn’t that be a spoke regardless of it being forged, carbon or traditional wire?

A and B aren’t always eager to push suppliers too hard. Fixing issues on an in-service aircraft means less resources to work on developing the next gen.

We have a Cooper S and an Evo VIII as our family cars. We get by just fine. The kids have made it past the stage where people think they need a bunch of gear to get by. We’ve done some road trips with the cars and it is fine.

Neither A nor B are immune to that kind of thinking. That said, they are usually pretty good about getting fixes in the pipeline as they come up. Now the sub-tier vendors are a whole different story. Unless they get slapped around hard they are happy to let under performing items roll.

You think civil aviation doesn’t work that way? Hmmm

Easy breezy on that one. Several iconic cars.