The booster is not orbital. It's on a ballistic, suborbital flight just as for the Blue Origin booster. The second stage goes to orbit and note that they are not trying to recover that one at all, let alone land it.

In fact, the SpaceX booster does several deceleration burns in space, and so experiences less aerodynamic stress than does the Blue Origin booster, which actually flies faster, according to the article I linked above.

I appreciate that his intentions were cute, but (if I had a daughter) I'd be inclined to assume malicious intent and go ballistic.

Thanks goodness I don't have a daughter. I'd be one of those helicopter gunship parents.

Where's the power source? Other railgun videos I've seen require very large external power sources like arrays of car batteries to get through half a foot of ballistic gel. I think this is just a standard rifle in a costume.

Idiot. Should have painted a Confederate Flag on the roof. Improves the ballistic properties.

Its a matter of chicken vs egg. They don't need huge military expenditures because security is provided by the US. But if they and all their neighbors had to provide sufficient defense, mostly against the people who are most likely to invade them (i.e. their neighbors), you get an arms race like you have with India/Pakistan, North/South Korea, Iran/Saudi Arabia. The indirect savings and the refocusing of capital and human resources away from the military in all of these allies countries makes the world a much safer place, since war no longer becomes the go to solution for states to resolve differences.

US bases do fall into 2 categories. Allies who don't want to get invaded again, and enemies who lost and became allies. As for Kuwait, that didn't work out well for Iraq, and Kuwait is still independent and an ally. Ukraine has no US bases, Russia would go ballistic if there were (surprisingly appropriate use of the word). ISIS is the anomaly, but right now you can put that down to the fact that Obama really, really doesn't want to put US troops on the ground (think he would hesitate if ISIS invaded England or Australia for example?), and that Iraq's military is trying to handle this as much as possible on their own and clearly having trouble.

I don't know if we need all 800 bases currently or if some are just vestigial. I'm not qualified to give an opinion on the necessity of them, though

I'm obviously making a big leap in my assumptions, but they're based on the limited hard evidence presented to the court. I am assuming Lardass was not just "driving poorly," but using intentionally dangerous aggressive maneuvers and smiling while he did so.

It is not likely that a father would go so ballistic and try to reprimand someone over their simply not driving very well. If Fatfuck was putting people in danger, I would not consider it unacceptable to approach and question his driving behavior.

I've been on the receiving end many times of douchecocks intentionally swerving into me, slamming on brakes in front of me, etc., and it is definitely something that warrants some kind of response.

If, however, the douchecunt really was simply driving poorly (e.g., failed to signal a lane change, took a couple of seconds to go when the light turned green, wasn't wearing his seatbelt, etc.), then yes, the father is completely at fault and out of his mind.

But based on my Sherlock Holmes-like skills of deduction, my guess is Comicbookstoreguyfromthesimpsons was a huge prick and intentional instigator. With a smile.

Really?!? To you and @Magicpants...exactly what should they have done that they did not to de-escalate the situation. Turn off all cameras because baby asshole doesn't want to be filmed? You do know that 1)there was more than one person filming him and 2)there are also security cameras everywhere, so he's on camera anyway.
Numerous people tried talking him down, with no luck. When someone is going nuts and threatening you, recording them IS the right thing to do...always. If they're the kind of infant bully that goes ballistic because their inappropriate behavior is caught on tape, that's 100% on the infant, not the people calmly and silently filming his outbursts, not on the people that try to stop him from beating up an elderly man. Just WOW!
It's simple to tell who started it, it's the one who's going insane about being filmed, and he's being filmed because he's already been going insane. He would NOT have been being filmed by numerous random strangers if he wasn't already causing a drunken scene.
Dude's an asshole, a baby, a homophobe, racist, batterer, and an idiot...yet some here seem to be on his side. Hmmmmm. Let's think about that one.

Shows pretty well how two person can't talk about muslims without one of them accusing other to be a racist. It happens on anti-racist rallies too, you put 10 people who are all opposed to racism in to the same room and 10 minutes in someone is already labeled.

Weirdly, this infact made me respect Ben Affleck. He is on the good side of the battle, misinformed but i can recognize that fury that comes when i suspect someone starting to veer the discussion to topics like "why all muslims yada yada yada". I go fucking ballistic, i see blood of the innocents in the gutter and i wanna kill that nazi before it happens again.. It is the same fury that rises on me when people link Israel and Judeism to the same category. But both Israel and muslim world require criticism in order to progress. It is just very hard for people on the "same side" to talk about those two subjects without responses like we see in this video. Racists know this very well and it is because of bigotry we can't criticize nations and cultures objectively, we need to spend most of our time to explain why criticizing is not bigotry, how questioning catholic church and their views and islam and their views is EXACTLY the same thing. The less we talk about the actual subject and more about why we aren't talking about the actual subject, guess who wins?

And it IS frustrating since we can't get anything done. Fucking racists and yes, i can identify racism towards racists in my on views and i have to think about that too (how racists are just humanbeings yada yada but that's my problem..). So maybe i should just say fucking quilt over actions and views hold by few is preventing us from honest discussion.

Let me aim a couple of ballistic rockets at your house and let me hear you defend me because my rockets suck.

lol what a convoluted sense of logic you have, absolutely pathetic

...ballistic marshmallow and ballistic chocolate...only you, Ant.

Happy Easter to you.

Asked the same questions last lite...thinking it may be some ballistic charge to free that projectile from the casing we're seeing flying-off of it before it becomes simply that sonic missile of doom...But wtf is that cat loading into the back of the thing prior to firing is my quandary...doesn't really look anything like the fired projectile.

WTF, Where was his pride. If that happened to me I would go ballistic at being humiliated for their amusement. The worst part was the; "Here's a thousand dollars Pizza Boy." Jeez,what next, "now go get your f*kin shoe shine box?"

From one of the news links:

"PTSD is never a defense or an excuse," said [Psychologist Dr. Michael] Mantell. "It may be an explanation."

He has PTSD, and that causes him major issues. However, this is merely an explanation and not a defense or an excuse because he's still not completely a puppet to his disorder. I've known people who have fought and have PTSD, and they do not do things like this. The wounded woman filming this incident likely has PTSD, and she certainly didn't respond ballistically.

@bareboards2 Stop feeling so bad. He is not completely without control of himself or the situation. Assholes can have PTSD too.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I'm thinking this won't deliver to Australia. I'm holding on for the Amazon Prime Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

Just an educated guess but I suspect it's a tiny correction for wind drift which has been exaggerated by the camera angle.

The effects I think your referring to are called the "Coriolis" effect and "Gyro drift" and while they would have a similar effect this is seems like far too short of a range for them to come into play even at the relatively low velocity of that shell. That said its possible that with such a big round like that sabot "gyro drift" and maybe some sort of torque effect from leaving the barrel might be at work...

Gyro drift is due to the fact that the spinning bullet/shell starts to be pulled out of line by gravity causing the originally stable oscillation to slowly get knocked out of whack dragging the nose of the round out of line causing the round to pull slightly towards the direction it's spinning (though with a stable modern round this is very very subtle and only really comes into play at at least 1-2mile plus ranges).

The Coriolis effect is due to the fact that the earth itself is spinning. Over very long ranges the earth itself moves relative to the path of the round and so for 1-2mile plus shots one may need to compensate depending on the velocity and ballistic properties of the round. (this is why snipers tend to operate as a team because the maths and reference material necessary to account for all this plus standard bullet drop, variable wind conditions, atmospherics etc. etc. as well as maintaining situational awareness is a big ask for one person.)

Like I said though it seems unlikely they would have such a pronounced effect at such a relatively short range, the camera angle is definitely exaggerating what ever is going on there.


EDIT: I just watched it again, pretty sure it's just the camera angle (camera is slightly off to the left) I think the shell looks like it's actually travelling dead straight.