I immediately wondered that; a low yield dirty bomb, at say, the UN on the Upper East Side would be a different EMP profile, I presume, from a higher yielded ship born bomb inside, say, a container which had cleared customs in Pakistan, and that would be different from a high altitude air burst, right? So, and the physics seems calculable if annoyingly in my past--you should be able to calculate a range of EMP from various yields?

The "Quora" answers are: a ground-based (ship based?) lower yield weapon has EMP effects of note to the 3 mile range.

An airburst would be a different issue. "Starfish Prime”. In this high altitude nuclear test, carried out in 1962, a 1.44 Mt warhead was detonated at a height of 400 km. Electrical damage, including burning out hundreds of street lamps was caused in Hawaii - about 1500 km from the point of detonation.

By contrast there was no direct blast damage at all at that range.

The maximal electric fields induced in the Starfish Prime EMP in Hawaii were estimated at 6 kV/m. At high latitudes the value could easily be ten times higher.

For electrical equipment to be damaged by an EMP from a nuclear detonation, the detonation point must be above the visual horizon.

A large yield weapon detonated 400 km above Kansas would have an EMP that extended across the entire continental US, but the ground intensity pattern of that EMP would be peaked towards the South of ground zero, it would not be symmetrical."

The U.S. doesn't fight hand to hand ground wars against governments.
China won't be fighting a guerilla war.

China has men, not current equipment. Remember Saddam...he had WAY more tanks, we hardly lost one because ours are infinitely better. Same goes for Chinese, rifles don't beat high altitude bombers.

Kuwait. Iraq.

Everyone loses to those goat farmers, they're called the graveyard of empires for a reason. Russia lost big time, and are so dumb they're poised to try again. We lost the day we went in with troops instead of an assassination squad.

Your video, A dancer falls from a dance pole at a high altitude, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

It's not IN a vacuum. the pressure is just very low, like a high-altitude jet airliner. The skis the pod runs on aren't even electromagnetic, they use micro jets of compressed air, like an air-hockey table.

As for Thunderfoot, I get he likes debunking things like those retarded snake-oil "smart pavement" people. However, saying Musk is one of them is ignoring what Elon's already accomplished. I can GUARANTEE Elon Musk has dumped more money than Thunderfoot will make in his lifetime in engineers and pure scientists just to see if it was FEASIBLE, let alone possible.

The F-35 can do everything better than any other plane. It's weapons are better, it's senors are better, and it's communication and situational awareness is much better. Thanks to the stealth, it has better survivability.

The only area it has some disadvantages in performance are the acceleration and maneuverability. Which is a small disadvantage, it still accelerates incredibly fast, just slower than a lighter plane, which is just physics. But it's not a slouch by any means. Plus the maneuverability is still being worked on, it's all fly by wire and they can do some really magic things with those systems once it's all tuned. They haven't started pushing it to the limits yet from what I've heard. (and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this whole "our plane sucks" thing was another tactic of spreading misinformation).

Here's the other thing. The F-16 can out maneuver and out accelerate the F-35. But every Russian fighter can out accelerate and out maneuver the F-16, anyway. Yet the F-16 always comes out on top. Why is that? Superior sensors, weapons, comms and tactics.

The F-35 is the best plane to achieve air superiority, because not many pilots have a death wish. Air combat is about survival, not about kills. Even in the Gulf war, the Iraqi's didn't want to fly against the F-15s because they knew they'd get just get shot down. They never even took off. So imagine how they would feel against a plane that can't be detected, let alone locked onto. A plane that can lock onto you and fire without you knowing. Not a good feeling knowing that at any moment you could explode without warning.

The A-10 is bullet proof, but not missile proof. It's a sitting duck against shoulder mounted IGLA's. Only the cockpit is bullet proof BTW which is great for the pilot, but not so great for the rest of the plane

I agree that the F-35 for the current war is overkill, but electronics and technology keeps getting cheaper day by day, and in 10 years time, even the current enemies will start buying more sophisticated systems. It's better to be prepared. As being reactionary like in WW2 and Vietnam was quite costly to the lives of allied forces. The F-35 will probably be in service for another 30 years, so it needs to try to meet as many requirements as it can for that time period, until the next plane comes out shooting lasers instead of missiles.

Also close air support these days is already done mostly by soft skin planes like the F-16. So not much difference there. Apart from the expense I guess. It's not low and slow either. You have a plane fly at such speed and high altitude the people on the ground never even know about it.


If you feel like it I'll give you a game of DCS World some time. It's a free flight sim (also used to train US national guard and other nations too). It really demonstrates the value of good sensors and weapons over flight performance

Now when it comes to being a waste of money, only time will tell. I guess either way it's win win though, because if there is no conflict that needs this plane it's only a good thing. And if there is a conflict we have the plane ready. But for the time being it really does seem like it's a waste of money. A lot of money, especially in a time of debt.

About the X-1 being the first manned vehicle to break the sound barrier: there are records of Bf 109Fs surpassing 950km/h TAS in a dive when they tried to solve the issue of elevator and aileron lock-ups at very high speeds. I wouldn't call it far-fetched to assume that both G10 and K4 could surpass Mach 1 in a high-altitude dive without the wings shearing off. Alas, no proof. Just an interesting bit of aviation.

We have high school students sending cameras into space. Testing the air at 30k would cost < $500/balloon. If all of the chemtrail theorists put in $100, they could EASILY afford to acquire the 'proof' they needed.
1) Decide what chemicals you want to test for
2) Select a way to test for those chemicals in the air. (active vs passive?)
3) When "Chemtrail" spotted, send up 50+ Weather Balloons in vicinity w/ chemical tester across range... 1 per half mile = 25 mile spread. (it takes 30 mins to climb to 30k feet)
4) Retrieve devices.
5) If no chemicals were found, either:
A) Dispersal of the chemical via chemtrail is terribly inefficient, absolutely no reason to worry
B) No chemicals were found

OR... and here is the brilliant part. Monitor chemicals on the ground. If they are in high enough concentration to have an effect on the human body, they'll be high enough to detect on the ground.

Testing that contrails are nothing but H20 would require a high-altitude drone or just charter a flight. It isn't that difficult to test, but the chemtrails theorists wouldn't trust a non-chemtrails theorist (otherwise they'd be over it for now).

Uh... WTF? Have you seriously never heard of the Dresden and Hamburg firebombings? In the Hamburg case the U.S. actually set up a fake German village as a test run just to see how many houses they could burn down. The fact that entire mock village was destroyed was seen as a massive success, not a reason to go back and figure out a more humane way to do it.

As far as Japan goes, even today a large part of Japan's economy depends upon small to mid-sized businesses that often double as people's homes. The government didn't "place" them there, these were people's day-jobs. Just like in the U.S., factories that once produced consumer goods were forced to make military materials to support the war effort.

The U.S. used firebombs for two reasons: first, firebombing meant precision bombing wasn't needed so the planes could fly at a high altitude out of shot of anti-aircraft fire and second, they knew damn well they'd be roasting Japanese people alive. Nobody cared. The war had gone on for so long that the U.S. was willing to do anything to end it quickly, particularly when they saw Russian swooping in to consolidate Eastern Europe. After Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, the bitter island fighting in the Pacific, the kamikaze attacks, and the stories of escaped or freed POWs, it's pretty safe to say the American military wasn't looking at the Japanese people as humans anymore, just enemies to be defeated by any means necessary--including nuclear weapons.

If it doesn't make the Star Wars laser cannon sound every time it fires, we have failed as a species.

Alternatively, if this is mounted on planes, I expected the announcement of this technology to be shown off better. I mean, where is the house full of unpopped popcorn that we can cook from high altitude? That would've been impressive.

I thought you were having some fun but I still felt it needed to be addressed, it's an oft repeated prejudice. Anyways I still contend that Ultramarathoners are tougher than anyone. Running 24 hours at a time...sometimes in high altitude with little oxygen or in 120 degrees through death valley. They're the toughest people on the planet in my view. It's one thing to play through pain, it's another to do it for hours upon hours. That's just my opinion, the voice in my head is the only thing that holds me back.

The mission generally dictates the engineering and design of a mechanical system. The Buran and the Shuttle are prime examples. The new X-37 resembles both in general shape because a reusable "space plane" needs certain specific physical characteristics.

The Mig-25 looks like the F-15 because both were originally designed as high altitude, high mach interceptors. The demand placed on the system by the overly large engines dictates the shape.

The basic principles of radar "stealth" dictate certain shapes to be effective. The Have-Blue shape was effective against high frequency radar through deflection. As materials technology advanced, e.g. radio absorbing materials, more aerodynamic shapes could be implemented and still retain "stealthy" characteristics, if not improve upon them.

All the F-22 vs Pak50, M1a1 Abrams vs T80 videos are funny. The 1 versus 1 advantages are fun to debate, but its the entire system that wins or loses the fight. In the same vein, its common knowledge that German armor in WW2 was vastly superior to American armor in every technical way. Similarly, German fighter aircraft were more maneuverable than the P-47s and P-51s that they fought. Unfortunately for the Luftwaffe, this superiority was not enough to defeat the allied system as it rolled east across Europe.

The term 5th generation does not define the aircraft themselves, but the system they belong to. If you read wikipedia, this does not mesh, but the wiki values maneuverability (which is inherently limited by the pilot), stealth features (limited by current materials and design), advanced avionics (what does this mean?) and multi-role capabilities (we have had this since the 1980's). The key to 5th generation fighters and its defining characteristic is the ability to integrate the new fighters with every other piece of war equipment in the theatre, not just in tactical use, but the total meshing of sensors and 2-way data links. Its the difference between a war of attrition and a war of "look first, shoot first".

The Russians appear to be building an excellent stealth fighter that looks sexy as hell. The Chinese are doing the same. What they both lack at the current time is the "backend" systems to make these new 5th generation-esque vehicles fully capable. The Pak50 and the J20 won't be sharing targeting data with their Navy or other ground forces anytime soon.

What's "not cool" about it? The plane is designed to fly in and out of remote airports with short unpaved runways. It's basically using the propeller as an air brake which allows for a near vertical descent without building up excessive airspeed. Sky diving operators use it because it can make it back to the airport before the sky divers hit the ground and be ready to go up again. Other planes would take several minutes to safely descend from high altitudes, using more fuel and time.

>> ^deathcow:

They must be talking about using space to get from Europe to Australia, as friction is a real bitch otherwise.

Possibly, although I think its somewhat more likely they'd just be flying at very high altitudes where the atmosphere is very thin.


From what I read on wiki it seems the engine is basically rocket/turbine hybrid. They use liquid hydrogen as fuel but instead of storing oxygen they suck it out of the air. The problem the cooling fixes seems to be related to supersonic airflow. Turbine engines need subsonic airflow to work properly so they use a ram, a cone on the front of the turbine, to slow the airflow before it enters the engine. This heats the air entering the engine up a lot, hot air takes up more space and so its difficult to get enough oxygen to the hydrogen fuel. Cooling the air after it passes over the ram lowers the air pressure and allows more air to pass through the engine. Scramjets approach this problem a different way in that they can operate with supersonic airflow, although they have the limitation of not working subsonic.

Anyway. Its quite fascinating. I don't think we'll be seeing commercial aircraft using this technology anytime soon though. I'd be pretty nervous about flying on something that is basically rocket powered. Space tourism maybe? If it can fly to high altitudes with the turbine and then switch seamlessly to using onboard oxygen it could be a much more efficient way of getting into space without using onboard oxygen the whole way up.

Oh, and RIP Concorde. I used to go to school under their flightpath out of Heathrow. 11am on Wednesdays they used to rattle the windows passing over.

if they fell, would it be a tragedy?
because to me, a tragedy is something negative, but unexpected

skyscraper construction is similar, but they (usually) plan for things like slips/falls/etc... and try to mitigate the situation through safety equipment and procedures... hopefully to the benefit of not just the worker's lives themselves, but their families and friends

that's not to say high altitude construction doesn't have it's share of deaths by accident, but those to me are actual tragedies... because most likely steps were taken to prevent whatever happened from happening

no safety equipment used by these adrenaline junkies

and when looking at the phenomenon of adrenaline junkies, I believe one must look further than just the safety precautions taken to determine whether the term "tragedy" is applicable... what is the reasoning behind taking the endeavor at hand? is it solely personal (selfish) reasoning, or are others included in the reasoning (especially friends and family who have no option but to watch and hope for the best)?

that statement is the reason that "tragedy" is applicable when a father from some tribe in africa gets attacked by a lion while hunting for game... and it isn't applicable when it's a lion tamer putting his head in the mouth of a lion for show...

in fact, the more one "tempts fate" solely for selfish/personal reasons... the less I think "tragedy" applies

these guys in the vid, if they fell, it wouldn't be a tragedy... it's kinda weird to expect people to care more about your own safety, than you yourself do... and I'm not saying people caring is a bad thing... its a good thing... in fact, it shines a more selfish light on the original person in the first place... ESPECIALLY if these people caring more than they do themselves, are known... such as friends/family

>> ^quantumushroom:

Was the Kenyawaiian's golf game disturbed by the sound of a Gibson guitar? That's all the excuse these lawless eco-thugs need these days.


To paraphrase Judge Dredd, "They are ... the law".

Seriously though, good woods for quality guitars are becoming increasingly rare and valuable so this is no light matter. The good resonating woods come from old-growth forests in high altitudes and as such are ripe for exploitation in developing nations. However, as this is likely to be done on the blackmarket in these nations they are just as likely to be harvested in an unsustainable way thereby cutting future guitar making off at the knees. So proper regulation would make sense unless you are the type that thinks "Oh, Indian tigers are almost endangered now. I'd better go get me one before they become extinct".