During my flight training, I was always taught that a highway or paved road was the last place to land in an emergency. For one, power lines tend to cross paved roads and by the time you can see them, it's too late to avoid them. Another is that it endangers others on the ground. Many pilots lose their lives trying to save the plane in an emergency. The best advice I got during my training was that when the plane quits on you, it's now your life boat. Use it to save your life, don't risk yours to save it.

During my flight training I also worked at a small GA airport. I got to know a lot of the pilots there. One owned a construction company and would often fly over his construction sites to survey them from the air. He came out that morning, I filled up his plane and he never returned. I didn't think much of it, although he rented a hangar from us, he also had a private air strip too.

A few days later, I found out that he was killed making an emergency landing. While flying over the construction site, his engine quit and he tried to land on a road. A car pulled out from a side street and he pulled up to avoid it. The landing gear snagged a power line, which caused it to nose dive into the ground and rupture the fuel tanks. It caught fire, and people tried to get to him to pull him out. They said he appeared to be alive and trying to get out, but the fire spread too fast.

The way I found out was a bit shocking. Investigators from the NTSB showed up to review our fuel and maintenance logs. We have to perform daily tests on the fuel and equipment, and I was the one that did those tests the day he was killed. It wasn't the fuel that caused the engine to quit, but that thought that maybe I screwed up the test and caused it and knowing he probably burned alive haunted me. That's something I'll never forget.

Ok, that makes some sense.

Maybe, maybe not. It could carry armor penetrating explosives…shaped charges don’t have to be huge. They just need to shoot a stream of super heated metal through the armor into the explosive storage area or fuel tank, not a huge amount of it. It wouldn’t penetrate a modern tank’s front armor.

Also, Russian tanks don’t have AC, so usually travel with all their hatches open. Put this through a hatch, dead tank crew if not dead tank.

It would be great for 95% of that convoy outside Kyiv.

Edit: I wonder what a few dozen hitting all at once from different directions could do.

As I understood it, the Veron was designed with specific tires that could handle it's top speed for 15 minutes (when new), so the fuel tank was designed to have enough fuel for top speed for only 12 minutes as a safety feature.

I'm surprised that thing isn't just going airborne. Maybe it's the thing on the bow that is holding it down, fuel tank maybe?

Before the space shuttle would launch, the main engine would ignite first. After six seconds the two solid rocket boosters would ignite and the shuttle would launch.

The six second delay was necessary because the main engine ignition would rock the "stack" or the entire assembly of the shuttle, fuel tank and boosters forward. It took 6 seconds for the stack to return to the upright position.

This 6 second period of sway was referred to as "twang."

Figured I'd pass that little bit of info on to you in case you're ever asked about twang on a radio quiz show.

You'd want to match weight distribution so clusters of Li cells around the engine compartment and fuel tank might work well.

Yep, the name comes from Dakar, Senegal (In Africa), when the race, the Dakar Rally, was originally ran from Paris to Dakar. It's now held in South America, yet retains the legacy name.

These are specially built off road vehicles, Kamaz is the manufacturer in this example. Like many races, there are different classes of trucks that compete in the Rally, alongside dirt bikes, quads and cars.

It's basically Mad Max and I encourage folks to check out highlights of it, or the similar Baja 1000 race.

Interestingly, the truck class includes support trucks that don't actually compete, but assist competitors stranded in the middle of nowhere.

This Red Bull sponsored Monster (energy drinks!) has right around 1000hp and a 265 gallon fuel tank if I recall correctly. Road trip!

Thanks

If you're interested, the results are availble here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_German_Grand_Prix

Only 7 cars were classified as finishing:

1 Rudolf Caracciola (DEU),Daimler-Benz AG/Mercedes-Benz W154, 22 laps 4:08:41.8 (!)
2 Hermann Paul Müller (DEU),Auto Union/Auto Union D,22 laps +57.8
3 Paul Pietsch (DEU),Officine A. Maserati/Maserati 8CTF,21 laps +1 Lap
4 René Dreyfus (FRA),Ecurie Lucy O'Reilly Schell/Delahaye 145,20 laps +2 Laps
5 "Raph" (FRA),Ecurie Lucy O'Reilly Schell/Delahaye 145,19 laps +3 Laps
6 Robert Mazaud (FRA),Private entry/Delahaye T135CS,19 laps +3 Laps
7 Leonhard Joa (DEU),Süddeutsche Renngemeinschaft/Maserati 4CM,19 laps,+3 Laps

The rest were retirements except for one disqualification:

Ret Tazio Nuvolari (ITA),Auto Union/Auto Union D, lap 19 (Engine)
Ret Rudolf Hasse (DEU),Auto Union/Auto Union D,lap 12 (Accident)
Ret Georg Meier (DEU),Auto Union/Auto Union D,lap 11 (Broken front stub axle)
DSQ Adolfo Mandirola (CHE),Private entry/Maserati 6CM,lap 10 (Disqualified)
Ret Luigi Villoresi (ITA),Officine A. Maserati/Maserati 8CTF,lap 7 (Fuel tank)
Ret Manfred von Brauchitsch (DEU),Daimler-Benz AG/Mercedes-Benz W154,lap 6 (Leaking tank)
Ret Heinz Brendel (DEU),Daimler-Benz AG/Mercedes-Benz W154,lap 4 (Accident)
Ret Hermann Lang (DEU),Daimler-Benz AG/Mercedes-Benz W154,lap 3 (Engine)
Ret Raymond Sommer (FRA),Private entry/Alfa Romeo Tipo 308, lap 1,(Engine)
Ret Hans Stuck (DEU),Auto Union/Auto Union D,lap 1 (Fuel pipe)

Interestingly, in this video at least, he was firing a .22lr Ruger MkII, about as low powered a pistol as you can get. .22lr has a hard time going through inch thick plywood (when fired from a pistol). This is different than the alleged .357 magnum, .38 special, and .380 ACP the random lady was calling out.

The gun range guy is incorrect. Some people always get on target with static shooting. Those destroyed walls in his range will (in my experience) be from beginners. Even then, there are degrees of off target. You can miss significantly to the sides of most targets and still safely hit the backstop. You have to be shooting incredibly wide or high to miss the backstop.

Noise is a big issue here. Suppressors are legal in Florida with the right permit - he should get them for all his firearms.

Safety is an issue as well, if the entire wall area he firing into is not thick enough to stop his strongest firearm then there is serious risk of injuring someone else. He should build a mini steel and concrete reinforced range.

Fuel tanks don't automatically explode. MythBusters did this in two episodes, and you need a tracer round fired from a long distance to ignite a tank's fuel.

Regardless of the legalities or not, if his neighbours are scared and annoyed, (and regardless of whether or not it is a rational fear), he should be considerate of his neighbours and their concerns and do more to alleviate their concerns.

The title is a little misleading. It should read: Russian aircraft with a HUGE rocket fuel tank on its back. It's not a huge tank of fuel.

The four mountain peaks on the corners of the fuel cell are where the lift pumps gather fuel and pump it into the central fuel collector... from there a high pressure pump feeds the engine.

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/renault-technical-feature-fuel-systems-on-v8-era/

The 40kg of fuel in this simulation represents about 25% of the full fuel load at the start of a race, 58 litres, compared to a full fuel tank which has 160kg/230L

I wouldn't say a tech demo has to center individual effects necessarily (as in enumerating and highlighting them) necessarily, but it does have to run in real time on *something*. I'll accept a little give-tand-take there (like it was rendered at half-real time and sped up for the video or something). Otherwise, it may as well just be raytracing. It's obviously all hand-animated too anyways, so whether or not its rendered real time is almost moot.

That said, apart from some questionable art direction, it does look pretty cool. I look forward to the time, 8 or 10 years from now, when cut-scenes rendered in real time look like this.

Fancy rendering effects are great and all, but we need more physics stuff if we're going to advance gameplay. Not just solid-body, stuff tessellating with the bits bouncing around, but actual modeling of of environments taking into account the physics of how stuff works. Entire levels built of structures that obey the laws of physics made of materials with realistic properties. Wires carrying current, pipes with flowing water, load bearing beams and framing, fuel tanks with flammable liquids and gasses... that sort of thing,

I want to play a game where my imagination is the limit. Apologies for the rambling. Had a couple glasses of wine. Anyways, you know what I mean,

I love how Jon points out that we are a nation of overreactors while at the same time he too is overreacting (along with the rest of the media). Guns are used in less than 10% of violent crime, yet that's all the media is concerned about. Jon and the media are both overreacting about so called assault rifles as well. Only 3% of crimes are committed with any type of rifle, and "assault rifles" are only a small sub-category of rifles. Why is the media only focusing on less than 10% of violent crimes (those that only involve guns), and why put so much of that focus on the least used type of gun to commit violence? Mass shootings barely make up 0.1% of all murders, yet it gets constant media coverage for weeks after it happens. If we do something to cut down on ALL violence, gun violence will also drop.

Jon also gets a lot of his "facts" wrong. The CDC has an average (1999-2010) gun homicide rate of 12,807 per year and an average accidental gun death of 758 per year, that doesn't add up to 30,000. There is no epidemic of gun violence either. Violence, including gun violence has been on a steady decline every year.

He was almost about to make a good point about gun control with the comparison to drunk driving. Drunk driving deaths were reduced through common sense laws, stricter sentences for drunk driving offenders and educating the public, not by banning alcohol or cars, or imposing ridiculous limits on cars like reducing the size of fuel tanks so drunk drivers would have to stop and refuel more often. When has banning anything ever solved a problem? We tried that with alcohol already, it didn't work. Drugs are illegal, and hows that war on drugs going? I don't use drugs, but I'm all for legalizing and regulating them. It's our generation's prohibition and it needs to end because all it's doing is causing more crime than it's preventing.

The argument that muskets were all that was available when the constitution was written is ridiculous. When the constitution was written they also didn't have radio, TV or the internet, so should we limit free speech and freedom of the press to only newspapers and soap boxes?

I'm willing to have a common sense discussion on how to reduce not just gun violence but all violence, but I'm waiting for the "anti-gun" side to show up with some common sense instead of fear and ignorance.

Guns are already highly regulated, but I'm not opposed to any new regulation as long as it will keep guns from criminals, include harsher punishment for criminal use of guns, and doesn't put any added burden on responsible gun owners. The current legislation being cooked up (what little has been revealed so far) is completely insane.

And by the way (since Jon brought up Mr. Belding), in 1997 at the Pearl, MS high school, it was the school's assistant principle with a gun that stopped the shooter. This was reported only in local papers. Only one national media network covered it, NBC, they mentioned it only twice, and then it was forgotten. Under the law the assistant principal was considered a criminal for having a gun in a gun free zone, yet if he didn't have his gun in his car that day to stop the shooter, the shooter would have been able to carry out his plan to drive to the junior high and kill more students while police were responding to the high school.

Not all of those were missiles, mind, at least one or two of them were the spare fuel tanks, which are often dropped once they are empty.

They have to refuel in the garage before the start of the race, and then carry enough fuel for the whole race.

Since the weight of the fuel carries a time penalty, nobody actually carries enough fuel to finish the race flat out, they always have to spend at least some time saving fuel (lifting off the throttle early on corners, turning down the engine etc.).

When the Virgin team first joined, they discovered that they hadn't designed their car with a big enough fuel tank, so just getting to the end with the engine turned down was a major challenge for them until they introduced a redesigned car.
>> ^st0nedeye:

How do they refuel if they don't....refuel?