Airboats (used in swamps) also have Hugh Jass fans in close proximity to the human driver - that problem has already been solved.

And because they are lighter, these would need less downward thrust than a helicopter, but I agree that debris propelled by downwash could be a hazard. (but even the entire fleet of huge Chinook helicopters' downwash only caused a few minor injuries over past several decades in service.)

Very provocative controversial video worthy of a *discussion (so I won't discard), but it is definitely snuff, so I'm redacting the video.

I didn't realize he was holding a knife, but it does seem he was. Not only did the officer(s) yell at him to drop the knife, but the guy with the red-and-white-striped shirt yelled at him "Come on, drop it, bro!" (at 1:38) immediately before the officers started firing.

Seems obvious it's suicide by cop. The officers should not have used a TASER if he was holding a knife and approaching them. Deadly force is definitely necessary in that case. In fact, I think the officer on the left may have even let him get too close as it is. If the guy did want to attack them and wasn't just looking to die, he could have thrust forward and stabbed the officer while he was getting shot.

I think they were hoping to get thrust from the hydrogen to propel the bottle like a rocket. Instead it just blew up

OK, I can understand that. I suppose the proper response depends on the level of assault, and maybe a little ass humping doesn't quite reach a level where violent response is required...until it escalates with a painful grab/thrust/grope.
If you didn't intend to make it an 'either/or' situation, I stand corrected, so long as violent response isn't just off the table when it IS warranted.
I totally agree, women (girls) should be taught to speak up loudly and instantly when this happens and it would cut down 99% of it (there will still be those few looking for that, or immune to embarrassment).

I agree that what Snowden is saying here is important -- and I personally agree with the concept fully. BUT, that being said, I don't necessarily think that NBC is guilty of "censoring" him here as a result of some hidden nefarious agenda.

The whole interview posted here is 43 minutes long. I'd guess that it is has been trimmed of some comments from Greenwald and probably the other journalist that it was mentioned made the trip to Russia with NBC. Tack commercials on top of that and you have what I'd assume is a 1 hour show on TV.

I'm sure that NBC recorded *way* more interview footage than could be crammed into a single hour, and I'd wager that his comments here didn't make the cut not because of censorship or in an effort to alter the thrust of his message, but rather simply in an effort to fill the time allotment of the show with the most interesting and relevant content possible (as judged by NBC).

So, while I'd jump at a chance to legitimately criticize the media in general and NBC specifically here, I don't think that accusing them of censorship is particularly fair. On the other hand, I might disagree with NBC's choice to cut this particular content because I do find it very interesting and relevant personally... And that in turn makes me wonder what *other* interesting stuff didn't make the 1 hour cut!

When he gets out of the water he uses a pelvic thrust to blast all the clothes off... oh wait, that's a different, equally believable video.

Waaaay better than Cracklemore-That wanna-be gangster schtick is a one-hit-wonder fart in the wind compared this cat's video. Personally love his humping the static television and blowing his gf's clothes off with the pelvic thrust.

Inspired shit Maynard

(some spoilers here, although not really anything that wasn't in the video)
I thought it was quite good. Not great, but quite good.

That being said, the one thing that I was sure that an "honest trailers" spoof/take on it would include was left out: I lost count of how many times the last propulsive jet before they ran out of thrust in whatever system/mechanism they were using was just enough to get them into "precarious grab, slip and bump off into another precarious grab".

Gorgeous George jets around as carefree as can be -- fetching bolts, unhitched and drifting Sandra ... even the corpse of "man down in the first 5 minutes". He or others talk about how he is going for the record longest spacewalk many times. But then, when they really need it, "oh, sorry, I've just got enough juice left for one more burn".

Same thing repeats for the Soyuz, the Wall-E extinguisher, and conceptually in many other instances.

That is the aspect of the flick that stood out the most for me as begging for a good send-up.

That's weird. Vectored thrust?

I doubt it has enough thrust to move of its own at all - even on smooth Tarmac. I agree, @artician - poor soul.

I have seen my share of fundamentally flawed projects, though - my old man kept building a humongous "winch" of some sorts, which was supposed to be used to excavate soil for building the foundation for a house. Problem was, of course, that the darn thing (apart from being useless) was so big and heavy that we'd need an excavator anyway, just to move it around - and then it would be much better, safer and faster to use said excavator to do the actual digging.

Hmm... underwhelming amounts of thrust generated.

That's almost exactly what I just said 17-18kg in earth terms. Do you think laid on your back you could easily throw a 17kg object 1.5-2m upwards?

He's not doing a push up he's trying to jump upright. Launching nearly 20kg of weight far enough to get to your feet would take some doing that way I'd say. Just lifting 20kg with the arms alone is an effort never mind throwing it which is effectively what's happening here.

This is part of the reason I defaulted to thinking in terms of rocketry as it's not as simple as just someone trying to lift something, they are trying to propel themselves 1-2m upwards with only a thrust from the arms. Much better to wiggle around/push up to get to your knees so one could bring one's legs muscles to bear (made very difficult by hard to bend suit).

Frankly I think it would be a total pain in the arse getting back upright. If it weren't for the suit you could easily push up to your knees and then straighten your legs but the inflation is going to make that very hard work (but doable after a struggle to one knee as other video footage proves).

The alternative however which sparked this whole argument i.e. lay on your front and push off with your arms. That I think would be considerably harder than you are making out. Throwing a 17kg weight with only your arms over 1m in height is not what I'd call effortless.

My old CRT monitor probably weighs about 20kg, it'd take everything I had to throw that over 1m up into the air. Without the power of your thigh muscles and the rigidity of your spine 20kg is quite a lot really.

How high can you "jump" with only your arms? (like those super push-ups where you clap your hands in between to show off) maybe a foot or two if your really really strong? So with the extra weight of a suit and reduced gravity multiplying the result by 6 under lunar gravity, 6feet is probably just about attainable for someone in peak physical shape. But it's defiantly not what I'd call easy!


Re: conspiracies The only one I really take at all seriously any more is the idea that 2001 (esp the book) was perhaps (very) loosely based on actual events. I have time for it simply because of Arthur C. Clarke himself who was going to give an interview (which he rarely does) on Project Camelot of all things but died about 2 weeks before it happened. If you know anything about project camelot you'll know whatever he had to say was going to be mental but then again he was very old and eccentric and plenty other people involved in the space program have "jumped the shark" so to speak. (Edgar Mitchell talks about aliens on a regualr basis, Buzz Aldrin has spoken about monoliths on Phobos, pilots being followed by "Foofighters" in WW2 etc. etc.)

But it's basically wishful thinking on my part, the story and implications are remarkably plausible for what they are but that is all they are. Combined with the whole Jack Parsons/Alastair Crowley connection to the JPL my creative juices start flowing. However the obvious counter argument i.e. that the world is largely run by genuine lunatics is never far from my mind either (look at the whole "men who stare at goats" thing).

I'll listen to anyone and some I'm even prepared to believe on their own terms but I have to defer to actual evidence where it exists (or does not exist). Consequently while I'll listen to someone like John Leer talking about stuff that would seem outlandish even in a science fiction story, people why claim the moon landing was a hoax tend to get the cold shoulder as it's pretty demonstrably not true/hard to believe.

I realise that's kind of backwards but willing suspension of disbelief is a lot easier when there's really no tangible evidence either way. (why I suspect huge incomprehensible delusions like those espoused by many religions get so much traction. It's easier to believe the big lie than the small one)

Jolly entertaining though regardless

Actually I'm about as English as they come but crucially I spent my advanced academic career studying Philosophy and rhetoric (lamentably only to Hons. due to laziness) and consequently have an ingrained habit of arguing around a problem rather than relying on established parameters (not always entirely helpful when discussing more day to day matters as I'm sure you've by now gathered but it is essential to working with advanced epistemological problems and so serves me well none the less). I'm also prone to poor punctuation and odd patterns of grammar when I'm not going back over everything I write with a fine tooth comb which has likely not helped. (A consequence of learning to describe tangent after tangent when trying to thoroughly encapsulate some conceptual problems with language alone)

That said, while I may have gone around the houses so to speak I think my conclusion is entirely compatible with what I now understand your own to be.

I didn't want to describe my original counter-point by simply working with the idea that weight is lower on the moon relative to the earth (though I did not try to refute this either) because that would not illustrate why a 2-300kg man in a space suit still takes some shifting (relatively speaking) even if there were no gravity at all. (Would have been faster to just crunch some numbers but that's not what I specialise in)

Sure you could move anything with any force in 0G (which I do understand is technically relative as every object in the universe with mass exerts gravitational forces proportionately (and inversely proportional to the distance between)) but the resulting velocity is directly proportional to mass vs force applied. Weight here then, can be seen as another competing force in the equation rather than the whole thing which it can be convenient to treat it as for a simple calculation (which is what I think you are doing).

To put that another way I was applying a different/deeper linguistic/descriptive paradigm to the same objective facts because that's what we philosophers do. Single paradigm approaches to any subject have a dangerous habit of making one believe one possess such a thing as truly objective facts rather than interpretations only (which are all that truly exist).


In other terms weight alone isn't the whole story (as I assume you well know). Overcoming inertia due to mass scales up all by itself, then gravity comes along and complicates matters. This is why rocket scientists measure potential thrust in DeltaV rather than Watts, Joules etc. right? The mass of the object dictates how much velocity a given input/output of energy would equal.

Gravity and thus the force in newtons it induces (weight) in these terms is an additional force which depending upon the direction in which it is acting multiplies the required DeltaV to achieve the same effect. Moreover when concerning a force of inconstant nature (such as pushing up/jumping or a brief burn of an engine) brings duration into play also. (the foundations of why rocket science gets its fearsome reputation for complexity in its calculations)


Man on the moon lies on the ground and pushes off to try and stand back up.
This push must impart enough DeltaV to his body to produce a sufficient velocity and duration to travel the 2 meters or so needed to get upright so he can then balance the downward gravitational force with his legs&back and successfully convert the chemical/kinetic energy from his arms into potential energy as weight (the energy he uses to stand up is the same energy that would drag him down again right?).

One could practically speaking reduce this to a simple calculation of weight and thrust if all one wanted was a number. Weight would be the only number we need here as it incorporates the mass in it's own calculation (weight = mass x gravity)

But where's the fun in that? My way let's one go round all the houses see how the other bits of the paradigm that support this basic isolated equation function and inter-relate.

Plus (and probably more accurately) I've been playing loads of Kerbal Space Programme lately and have ended up conditioning myself to think in terms of rocketry and thus massively overcomplicated everything here for basically my own amusement/fascination.


Basically few things are more verbose and self indulgent than a bored Philosopher, sorry .


Re: Your challenge. (And I'm just guessing here) something to do with your leg muscles not being able to deliver the energy fast/efficiently enough? (as your feet would leave the ground faster/at a lower level of force?). This is the only thing I can think of as it's easier to push away from things underwater and it certainly looks difficult to push away hard from things when people are floating in 0g.

So lower resistance from gravity = less force to push against the floor with?

Warm? Even in the Ballpark? (Regardless I'm really pleased to discover you weren't the nut I originally thought you to be! (though I imagine you now have some idea what a nut I am))


If I got any of that wrong I'd be happy for you to explain to me why and where (assuming you can keep up with my slightly mad approach to syntax in the 1st place). I'm an armchair physicist (not that I haven't studied it in my time but I'm far from PHD) I'm always happy to learn and improve.

Thanks for posting this! I lived in Mountain View for three years and Daly City for another two after that, and always used SFO for my travel needs. I recognized all the landmarks they showed in the video! Very cool to see them from the cockpit.

Oh, and I know I'm a horrible person but I spit all over my screen laughing out loud when the computerized altimeter started calling out "Retard! Retard!" when they got low to the ground.

According to trusty google, it's a reminder to the pilot to "retard" the thrust levers back to idle so that they can be engaged in reverse thrust if necessary on touchdown.

I started the video, and seconds after I had read your comment, they all thrust their right hand up in the air.

So... yeah.