When my brother was in the Boy Scouts, my dad and I helped him design his based on everything we learned not to do with mine. We settled on an airfoil shape because a rounded front with a tapered end is actually more aerodynamic than a wedge shape. Also, the airfoil would produce a tiny bit of lift. You normally want…

With ever evolving safety, fuel economy, and emmisions regulations tag teaming up to curb stomp the fun out of cars, it’s very difficult for engineers to keep a car like the Miata on formula, or any fun car for that matter. We kind of saw that with the NC. Crash safety regs kept adding weight, CAFE regs hurt HP, and…

And their amazing self disassembling gearboxes.

tub ∈ {race car}

Mr. Clarkson, what was your reaction after watching the last Top Gear episode with you in it?

Watkins Glen: the destroyer of dreams.

I guess Maverick didn’t take Charlie to bed, then.

At least they were pink and not “Black Ice”. I don’t think he could deal with that much freshness.

It’s a movie about the Navy, so....

Realistic Top Gun 2: Maverick is retired and works as a consutant for a defense contractor. He also has his own military blog where he spends most of his time exposing “Best Pals With Chris Kyle Seal Team Six Delta Force Black Ops” stolen valor super soldiers and writing posts about how Obama is destroying the…

I wonder if the pine tree air fresheners represent his “kills” on the street? Or something.

This isn’t exactly something new, though. They had this same problem at Indy. The oval track aero kits need some serious scrutinizing.

The Mustangs would have had a more competitive weekend if the #15 Shelby GT350 hadn’t jumped the restart.

Looks like those Stevenson Z/28Rs are finally going to have a worthy adversary.

I know that this is a tad bit off topic, but I find it rather ironic that the Iraqi Air Force trains in the US. While in the US, the Iraqi Air Force operates under something known as a Status Of Forces Agreement, or SOFA for short. One of the many items in this agreement states that if an Iraqi service member…

Yeah, because the F-35 program doesn’t have enough on its plate as it is.

This is actually the kind of thing that he likes: fielding things cheaply and quickly. It’s when a weapons system is 10 years and $10 billion over budget with no possibility that the system will be fielded without another 5 years and $5 billion that he tends to poo poo it.

Well isn’t this a blast from the past! You might remember me as Pistol Pete from the SDC message boards way back in the day. I really miss taliking to people who actually knew what delta-v was.

What is theoretically possible and what is practically feasibly aren’t necessarily the same thing. 13.8 MN of force is hard enough to control when everything is going right.