Agreed, it was an impressive flight. I think I've seen similar in Formula1 and similar racing, but not if you multiply for scale.
I think because these were (allegedly) kids, the carts and the drivers were extremely lightweight with large flat bottoms that act like a wing (the cars' bottoms, not the kids') unlike most open wheel classes (like my off road racing buggy), but the speeds were still pretty high. (EDIT: Also, no suspension to soak up the sudden upward thrust) Everything came together just right to launch her. Damn fine recovery on her part....even if she couldn't continue for long.

A matter of scale, distance & speed. (assuming we are talking about electrically driven engines like ion drives or the proposed EM engine.)

If nothing else, the sun gets weaker the further away you get. Out at the edges of the solar system it's almost negligible.

Given that mass directly effects net thrust & fuel range, smaller craft working in the inner solar system may well be better off sticking with solar over a bulky reactor.

Larger and or longer ranged ships should start to favour fusion reactors and such.

Unless of course they manage to miniaturise the fusion apparatus, or perhaps harness quantum effects like matter/anti-matter. etc. etc.

Surface area to volume ratio also starts to shaft solar power the bigger the ship gets too. The panels would have to get exponentially bigger along with the ship/engines.

I couldn't tell you exactly where, but there will be natural tipping points between the practicality of one over the other.

Edit: The calculation would mostly be the ratio of energy produced to mass of the generating apparatus. The point where a fusion reactor (inc it's fuel) can produce more required power per unit of mass than solar cells (and associated gubbins), is the point where it becomes more efficient for most spacecraft.

Though solar still has a clear advantage where indefinite operational duration is a factor. (fusion requires fuel, albeit in small quantities)

LOL I can't be a pig and Sarah Palin at the same time. Make up your mind

Those are all valid criticisms, but nobody apart from the flight engineers and test pilots truly know whether this plane is a lemon or not. If it does everything it's supposed to do, then it's exactly what the military asked for, just 10 years too late....

Any suitability and fit for purpose criticism that anyone has ever come up with for the F-35 also applies to just about any piece of military equipment that has been created in the last 70 years. Engineering is a balancing act, and an iterative process. Almost every aircraft, and vehicle in the military today was built to fight a soviet army. Luckily that never happened. But that means that most aircraft and vehicles in the military today have been grossly modified to make them fit for a different purpose. The F-35 will probably go through this as well over the next 30 years, because it's a normal part of the life-cycle of military equipment. Almost every plane dropping bombs now was previously designed as a fighter. But nobody ever calls them out for being mutants like they do with the F-35, they call it additional capability. The F-35 was born with these capabilities instead of being added over time.


Expensive: I'll agree. Could the money have been spent better else where? Definitely. You could argue that the cost is tiny compared to that of a full scale war, maybe F-35 is a good deterrent. Air superiority is the key to winning a war. If you're going to spend money then that's where it should be spent. When the oceans rise enough, is a country like Indonesia going to lash out and try to take land and resources for their civilians? Maybe. I doubt all 200 million of them will just stand there and starve. (Ok I'll concede, this does make me sound a bit like Palin. But hopefully not as dumb )
They could have probably made 3 different stealth planes for 1/2 the cost, but that has it's own strategic downsides. You have to have the right assets in the right places or you have to spread them quite thinly. With a multi-role plane you have all of the capabilities everywhere. Just a matter of a loading it with different weapons.

Not needed: Time will tell whether this is the right plane, but new planes are needed. And they absolutely must have stealth. Within 10 years, weapon systems will be so advanced that if you are spotted, you're as good as dead. We are currently dropping bombs on fairly unsophisticated enemies, but wars tend to escalate quickly. You just never know either way, and it's better to be prepared for the worst. There are plenty of countries with very good planes and pilots that could get sucked into a conflict. If you're really unlucky you could be fighting US made planes with pilots trained in the same way, and you don't want to be fighting a fair fight.
Further still, Russia, China and Japan are developing their own stealth planes, which pretty much forces everyone else to do the same thing.
Especially if Donald Trump gets elected. You never know who that crazy asshole is going to provoke into a war

Doesn't work: It's still in development and testing.

Overtasked: It does the same stuff the aging multi-role planes (that were originally built as fighters) do. With the addition of stealth, and better weapons/sensors/comms. Small performance variables don't win wars, superior tactics and situational awareness does.

Underpowered: Almost every plane ever built has had it's engines upgraded to give it more thrust through it's life. And engines on planes are almost a disposable item, they're constantly being replaced throughout the life-cycle of the plane. Like a formula one car.
The current engine, is already the most powerful engine ever in a jet fighter. It is good enough to fly super sonic without an afterburner, which none of the planes it's replacing are capable of.

Piloted: Agreed. But who knows, maybe a Boston Dynamics robot will be flying it soon

Test Failing: That's only a good thing. You want things to fail during tests, and not in the real world. Testing and finding flaws is a normal part of developing anything.

Fragile: That can be said for all US aircraft. They all need to have the runway checked for FOD, because one little rock can destroy even the best plane. Russian aircraft on the other hand are designed to be rugged though, because they're runways are in terrible condition. But in reality, all sophisticated equipment needs constant maintenance, especially when even a simple failure at 40,000 feet becomes an emergency.

Quickly Obsolete: Time will tell. Perhaps it would have been better to keep upgrading current planes with more technology like plasma stealth gas that make then partially stealthy, better sensors and more computing power. But by the time you've done that you've got a plane that's as heavy as F-35 anyway, and not as capable. Although it might have been cheaper in the long run.

Like I said in my previous comment. All of this doesn't make an interesting story so you'll only ever hear the two extremes which are "the plane sux" vs "it's invicible!!11" depending on your media source.

That's been refuted now http://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

If you read the comments there, it's clear that it wasn't a performance test, but a fly by wire program trial and tune.

But of course that doesn't make head lines like sensationalism.

EDIT: Looks like Arse Technica also ran follow up story:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/07/f-35-project-team-says-dogfight-report-does-not-tell-whole-story/

Even still I would still expect a F-16 which weighs less than 1/2, and has a better thrust to weight ratio to be fully capable of waxing the F-35 in a guns only dog fight. That's just physics. I'd also expect an even lighter and zippier F-5e to do the same to the F-16. And people did have that critism back in the early 70s.

But as I've said above many times. Dog fights haven't existed since WW1.

Look, it's really simple. The question was, "Will the US military obey unlawful orders."

I pointed to one proven instance where they absolutely did just that. I didn't bring up rape or any of that, you did, but it actually makes my case even more solid. Not only did they OBEY those orders, they took them several steps further on their own. Abu Ghraib is an excellent example because there was a court case and therefore there's a lot of documentation.

There are a ton of other examples, especially from WWII onward, firebombing major German cities, nuclear attacks on Japan, use of Napalm in Vietnam. Treatment of POWs.... It's a very long list of debatable war crimes, many of which are poorly documented. If you want to pick one as a better example, go ahead, but building up straw men to attack when you seem to essentially agree with the thrust of my argument seems petty and ridiculous.

Everything is wrong with that title.
Not a particularly 'sexy girl' to me, more like 'girl TRYING to be sexy'....and really should be 'girls'.
Not all Korean.
Not a 'hot dance' either, more of a train wreck of gyration and ass thrusting.

I can not dig it.

No good reason for it. But Psy's videos make me happy, and that's plenty good enough.

edit: One criticism, didn't have enough happy pelvic thrusting man. That never gets old.

I doubt it. Drone propellers are pretty wimpy on purpose and eagles drop flying thrust kicks on other (heavier than drones) animals all the time.

It totally fucked that shit up though.

This is nice, but I feel a little bad for the kids who grow up with the parents who thrust them into that life.

Because, per the description, only the two inboard engines on an A380 have thrust reversers?

Videosift hates it when I present stuff like this..

Here's a second video of Gruber explaining how they crafted the law in such a way that they could increase the tax on anyone whose health plan is deemed to be "too good," the so-called Cadillac tax. This would discourage people from getting good/robust health care plans that are better than whatever Obamacare is offering. If your employer or union, for example, offers you a good plan, you get taxed, so as to punish you for being "privileged" (unless, of course, you are a federal employee, in which case you can have as good a health care plan as they come, paid in full by The People).

And here's a third video expounding upon the thinking in the original posted above. Same idea, really: the "stupid" and/or "uneducated" American voters were crucial to passing the UnAffordable Care Act known as Obamacare (whose main thrust has always been, steal from the young, give to the old).

Yeah there are slap bands out there, but they don't work like this is presented to work. The arms would have to bend in multiple dimensions, and then straighten out and be able to provide a stable flying platform. The closest thing I think of for doing something like that is the "bendy" character toys where the metal wire is co-molded inside the body. That is a very heavy solution.
I misspoke on the 2" square, it is 2" x 2", so 4" square. I'm not sure that I agree that theirs is 6" x 3", but even if it is that would mean that the prop size would have to be about 1.25" and that doesn't work for a 6" x 3" vehicle. There isn't enough thrust and the motors at that size don't provide enough RPM's for that kind of weight.
On the electronic side, they show it connecting to a smart phone with video feedback. That means you have to have bluetooth at least, or a 5.4ghz video system if you want more than 30' range. or it has to have a Wifi TX on it. All of those thing require power. Sure it could analyze the video signal to determine subject matter, and provide guidance but you have some very serious issues there. If you do it on board it requires some processor power (More drain), if you do it on the smart phone app it will create lag.
Your phone has over 1,000 mAh in it (1440 in Iphone 5), that is a TON (4-10x) more than what this thing would have. Battery technology may be a big research project right now, but there isn't anything on the horizon that will get them to where they need to be. Most of the tech research is in sub 1C rated batteries for things like full size cars. Something like this needs a 10C rating minimum if not a 20C rating. Unfortunately most of the upcoming technology can not handle drains that fast. Things tend to go "Boom!". When you do something small, and even 6" x 3" is small, you have very serious power vs weight issues. It all comes down to issues of power density, and nothing exists today that will give it to them as they would need..

So right now these guys need to figure out:
1) A new light weight material that can lock rigid but also bend as needed in multiple directions.
2) A new battery technology that allows them to get the power they need, for a 6 axis gyro, 4 motors, control board,a RX, a HD camera and some sort of VTX while reducing weight. How long it powers all of that would be open, but if it is under 10 minutes I think people would be a little disgruntled. Right now people are wanting the video quads to get about 30-45 minutes of flight time on the 5200+mAh batteries.
3) Write code that allows them to analyze video in real time so as to provide object tracking and avoidance without lag while capable of running on a smartphone. It would also need to return to home when the battery runs low. That would be a little tricky on a cliff face, or if you are riding a bike through a forest. Another issue is that they tilt the camera down, they don't say if this is actuated, or done by hand, but it could lead to serious issues with programming object avoidance if you can't see anything above you.
4) Since they show the image as HD on the phone screen, they would also need to come up with a new way to broadcast HD video wirelessly. Right now that system costs $40K and is rather large.

All in all it is a dream product that people are going to get suckered into funding it. Some tech may come out of it that could be monetized, but I don't see the item coming out in this format, at least not in the next 3-5 years. You'd be better off going with AirDog.

Not only did the german ship seem dangerously close to the bank to begin with, they seem to have overcorrected a massive amount when they had plenty of time to reverse thrust.
At the same time, it didn't seem like the Singapore ship even tried to evade an obvious vector of collision. Crazy.

Just to play devil's advocate here, the poses of the male and female covers are actually quite different, in my opinion.

Spiderman is lying flat against the surface of a globe with his body pressed against it. I haven't seen any gay porn that depicts models (admittedly I'm not one to peruse much gay porn) in this way in order to evoke sexual feelings.

Spiderwoman on the other hand is simply kneeling on a rooftop and has her ass thrust into the air, with back arched and head raised. As a hetero male, that's imagery I see used to evoke sexual feelings in Sports Illustrated, Playboy, etc. It does totally looks like she's presenting her ass to me specifically because there's no reason for her ass to be up in the air higher than her head (in Spiderman's case he's upside down so of course his ass is going to be over his head).

As far as the rest of his argument goes, I'll simply say this--people are not upset about the sexualization so much as people are upset that when men get sexualized in media it is often in a manner that is idealized by men themselves (i.e. muscular, ripped body) and when women get sexualized... it is often in a manner that is idealized by men themselves (i.e. big boobs, unrealistic body figure, etc.) because it is the men who often control authorship in the media. Of course you're going to alienate potential women readers if you don't present them with an idealized version of themselves but instead give them an idealized version of who men want them to be.

It's a simple thing to cover the blade with a net so you can't fall into it, or so it can't fall onto others.
Stuff on the ground being blown around is only a minor issue when it's near the ground at takeoff and landing. This isn't a ground effects plane, it flies. That means any place a helicopter can take off and/or land would be more than safe, as would any field, clean street, parking garage, any place that's clean or free of people and glass should be fine. It's only about 400lbs of thrust spread over (estimating) about 12 sq. ft., so less than 40lbs of thrust per sq. ft. , or less than 1/3 lb. of thrust per sq. inch MAX. I doubt that can create a 'bullet' out of anything. It would take just a tiny bit of common sense to make this issue a non-issue, if there's an issue at all.