If you’re lifting to technical failure and under 10 reps they’ll get you within 5-10% in my experience, particularly if you get 2 reps out and get stalled part way on the 3rd rep (or some similar situation). If you’re cranking out 20-30 reps you’re using different energy systems and the calculators won’t work. Every…

I was under the impression that the September 5th launch was the first re-use launch. Regardless, watching the video makes it seem like the cause of the explosion was related to the fuelling, rather than the rocket itself, so that’s certainly a small plus for SpaceX if it happens to be the case.

By “proprietary parts” you mean Toyota drivetrain parts that are readily available, and race parts that any decent fab shop can whip up for you in a weekend. The body panels are crazy expensive to replace, sure, but any good fiberglass shop can manage. It’s not like the bodywork was particularly high quality in the…

Everyone who has tried to launch a rocket twice. The twice is important here.

Actually...

I was shocked anyone made it up our hill. It was 300' (tape measurement) at almost 100% grade, I had to crawl up half of it, but we had 2 cars make it. A light Baja car with good CVT tuning can crawl up quite a lot.

I wish we’d had a hill like that for Baja SAE California. Our hill did pretty well, but this one looks better.

That’s exactly how I read it.

I got a set of factory alloys for my Mazda 2 to upgrade from the steelies the car came with, the full set was the cost of one Enkei RPF1 and came with brand new OEM tires. Then I put my autocross tires on the steelies.

Scrolled down looking for a listing for Materials Engineer. Did not find it. Damn.

I would erect a 20' tall, bright orange fence bordering that neighbors property as a gigantic FU. Letter of the law, right?

I could actually see the justification in a few motorcycles, being a motorcycle gear company and all. The limo and last minute flight, also probably sort of ok if everything else is going well (not prudent though). The strippers and Vipers, harder to justify.

Racing at this level is so mind-bendingly expensive that I don’t think the cost difference will be noticed if there is one at all. The SCCA magazine had an article a while back about what you can expect to spend to participate in a race weekend for various amateur classes and series’, it went from a few thousand for…

The hundreds of suppliers spread across many thousands of miles and multiple countries? I doubt that they’d want to incur that sort of expense.. I’ve worked in these facilities, and each of them is very specialized and generally not conducive to showing off. Going to the assembly plant works best for a low-overhead…

This is very true. I try to tell people about what I do at work, and always end up just trying to redirect the conversation to something else. It’s interesting if you have my background, but without that it’s really not very interesting at all. They do a good job for the most part, but I sometimes cringe at the…

That’s mostly done at outside parts suppliers or other plants. The actual factory mostly just assembles all the parts together into the final product. An all-inclusive, vertically integrated facility would be the size of a moderately large city, and would use an unsustainable amount of resources for any single…

Eh, mostly it’s just work after a while. I actually watched an episode that I recognized, halfway through, as the propane cylinder plant where I had interned under the metallurgist in college. I then went back and rewatched it and kept hearing “facts” that were “incorrect” or “horrifically oversimplified”. Still cool…

Try and get a ride in an Elise/Exige sometime. The shell seat is 6" below the super side side sill, and you’re ass is 2-3" off of the pavement. I’m built like a rail and it was a struggle getting out of the car after 5 minutes of gridding and one autocross run. I want one so badly, but just for the purpose of driving…

I’ll spot them the tires, as those are crazy easy to change out and you should choose the proper tire for how you’re using the car. Motorcycle mags always swap tires for track comparisons to keep the grip consistent between bikes.

They need to let you map out your own route and upload it to the Maps app directly. Some of us enjoy interesting, winding roads that aren’t the fastest route from point to point, but also like turn by turn navigation in our cars. You can build routes in the desktop version of Maps (My Maps specifically), but instead…