F-16s to shadow a blimp that’s traveling at probably 20mph tops? Reminds me of this Simpsons episode.

Who would even do maintenance on this thing? Can’t exactly take it to your local Soviet military vehicle dealer.

This reminds me of being 10 years old and zigzagging through the neighborhood with your bud on bikes. Except on multi-million dollar, multi-ton bikes at several hundred miles an hour.

By using the lowest and thickest part of the atmosphere to lift the wings of the mothership, instead of forcing the sheer power of the rocket to push through it itself, you can save on a lot of fuel (and thus, money).

I wondered the same thing. Most likely they need them for stability and to have the horizontal and vertical tails. A flying wing is hard enough to design without slinging a big rocket underneath it. Flying wings are very sensitive to CG location, which would change significantly when the rocket is dropped.

It’s four smaller motors instead of two larger ones. Transition between hover and forward flight is challenging (as proven by all the Osprey crashes), and you get a lot more stability with four motors.

The mass and cost penalty of adding more electric motors is a lot less than with a turboprop because they are much…

Forget the shoes, why is this woman posing with a dish of meatloaf?

Question. If the pilot forgets to pull his legs back before ejection, will he be landing on stumps instead of feet? Looks like his legs are pretty far under there.

This is exactly the comment I came here to see. Now that I have found it, I am leaving. Good day.

Every modern commercial jet is subsonic and has swept wings. You get the same wing area (dictates lift and thus max weight) but less frontal area (less drag).

Are these kinds of turns actually realistic for a battle situation? Seems like any aircraft not strapped down would go tumbling into the water, thus rendering the carrier useless. I would think there would be a lot of things not strapped to the deck if it was involved in an engagement.

That extra large tube must be for launching the latest in missile tech:

I wish China would do this... maybe it would make it us competitive about human spaceflight again. Maybe it would change NASA’s “Evolvable Mars Campaign” into just “Mars Campaign.” The “Evolvable” part is short for “we don’t have enough money to actually get anywhere, so we’re just going to keep doing little studies…

As a aerospace structures engineer, I can tell you that large windows are the devil. They disrupt the natural load path in the fuselage and make the design more complicated.

There are also numerous other challenges with a flying wing passenger jet, such as the large motions that would be experienced by those seated…

Those Contigo mugs are awesome. Mine suffered a 20mph tumble off my car roof, and is still leak proof.

Those Contigo mugs are awesome. Mine suffered a 20mph tumble off my car roof, and is still leak proof.

“max performing the carbon fiber jet like it was an F-15”

Buddy of mine is a rescue swimmer for the Navy, and deployed to support these trials. I see these videos and imagine him getting to watch this stuff all day, from the boat and his helicopter. Meanwhile I’m sitting at my desk ):<

The pilot “Size” was like “first 4 in a row were perfect, /micdrop Imouttahere.”

Buddy of mine is a rescue swimmer for the Navy, and will be deployed to support these trials.

Awesome article. I’ve been using a Logitech gaming mouse for several years now for programming. I mapped things like copy, paste, indenting, and commenting to the special buttons. Looks like there’s a lot more I can do beyond that.