LostCosmonaut

Since any hypothetical multirole F-106 (or derivative thereof) would most likely be used in lieu of Phantoms, it is somewhat pertinent that Iran has been getting some use out of their F-4s lately; http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/breaking-iranian-f-4-phantoms-wade-into-the-anti-isis-1665411308/1665479531/+damon

Pantherfibel.pdf M4A3 Manual

The point about span loading would explain what I've heard about the -106 bleeding energy in turns. As far as being a bigger Mirage III, that seems like it'd be pretty already. From what I know, the Mirage III was an alright plane (which underwent quite a bit of development throughout its life). That also brings to mind export possibilities (though any export variants would have had to have had the SAGE equipment removed or not fitted in the first place).

The F-106 (bane of Canadian nationalists everywhere) had a quite long and successful career as an interceptor. However, could it have been turned into an air superiority fighter or multirole aircraft? Consider the Following F-106 wing loading at MTOW: ~309 kg/m^2 F-4 wing loading at MTOW: ~569 kg/m^2 F-106 Thrust/Weight Ratio (At MTOW with full afterburner): ~.576 F-4 Thrust/Weight Ratio (At MTOW with full afterburner): ~.578 While this is a very cursory examination, the low wing loading of the F-106 indicates that it would have good turn performance. I have seen anecdotal evidence confirming this, although I have also heard that it lost energy very quickly in sustained turns (I have heard similar about the MiG-21, which also utilized a delta planform). One of the primary issues I see with turning the F-106 into an air superiority fighter was its weaponry. To put it charitably, the AIM-4's perfromance against maneuvering targets was ass. Most likely, modifications would be needed to enable carriage of the AIM-9. I have no experience on the matter, but I do not see any unsurmountable obstacles. As far as air-to-ground munitions go, the F-106 is somewhat lacking in payload compared to aircraft such as the Phantom. However, at least theoretically; Overall, while it wouldn't have been perfect, in a world where the Phantom doesn't exist, or isn't used by the USAF, the -106 could have been made into a passable multirole aircraft.

True, although if a Falcon 9 is at extreme angles of attack in a flight regime where the fins have effective control authority, the RSO is probably going to get involved soon.

Having seen this film earlier today, I'm fairly certain he did not (not that I was particularly paying attention). I'm going to commit heresy and say that while this film was by no means perfect, I did find it entertaining. Better than the short bits of Gravity I've seen in any case. While it is true that the movie gloriously shat all over scientific plausibility, I don't get the feeling it was trying be some sort of super-duper scientifically plausible thing (like Gravity claimed to be), so I can excuse that. The cliched message about love and/or environmentalism was also a bit annoying, but overall, I though the visuals were pretty good, so I managed to ignore that too. I wouldn't recommend actually paying to go see it, but if you're willing to abuse copyright law, there are worse things to waste a couple gigs of hard drive space on. If somebody releases an edit where all of Matt Damon's lines are changed to "MATT DAMON", I would recommend at least seeing it on netflix.

I have a degree, but no actual working experience. Nevertheless, I shall try. So far as I know, the main benefit of grid fins (as opposed to normal fins) is that the moments on the control surface are much lower, due to the shorter longitudinal axis of the fins. This means that your control actuators can be smaller, thereby saving weight (a pretty big deal on a launch vehicle). I believe the Soyuz launch abort system also used grid fins. Fakeedit: wiki confirms

Added some documents provided by T___A http://militera.lib.ru/explo/chertok_be/index.html

Post cool pictures (including art) of aerospace object here.

For those of you who are not familiar with him, Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer and author of some note. He is probably best known for his advocacy of the 'Mars Direct' proposal, although he's also done quite a bit of work in the nuclear spacecraft propulsion field (he's the guy that came up with the NSWR). His wiki page says he's also written on other vaguely political topics, but I'm not familiar with them. Personally, I find his work on spacecraft propulsion highly interesting, and it's good that we've got somebody putting forth cogent ideas for space exploration. However, I feel that some of his ideas are a bit too optimistic, especially in regards to his Mars Direct approach. I feel that it would be more optimal to gain more experience with long term off-planet living in a location such as the moon before proceeding to Mars, while also using that time to mature techniques such as nuclear rockets to actually get to Mars. On a related note, I showed his NSWR paper to a guy I know who has some not insignificant knowledge of nuclear physics, and he was a bit skeptical. Still, in my opinion, it's infinitely better to have somebody be a bit overoptimistic about how well their ideas will work, and keeps push them forward, then a bunch of limp wristed pessimists who are afraid to send anyone beyond LEO because it might cost a few million dollars.

No problem, thanks man.

Go on. (I know slopes fuck with early HEAT rounds.)

I seem to recall hearing somewhere that sloping actually increases effective armor more than line of sight thickness, due to yaw effects on the projectile. How is this affected by materials quality, projectile velocity and the like?

Links aren't working for me either.

Silkworm's just a hopped-up P-15 right? Shouldn't be too hard for any modern CIWS system.

Many would agree that biodiversity should be preserved. Even an avowed non-hippie such as myself thinks that efforts should be taken to protect the natural environment (within reasonable limits). Considering that we are currently in the midst of a mass extinction event (at least according to some), preserving endangered species is a part of protecting the environment. However, do all species have the right to life? Even things like mosquitius malarius, or Branta canadensis? Discuss.

A goon called The_Fluff went archive diving, and found blueprints for a Swedish tank destroyer / gun carrier concept;

It's pretty cool, and useful; http://navweaps.com/

Amongst some corners of the internet, there is much whinging over the fact that there are no longer any battleships in active military service. Once one discards the more puerile arguments such as "battleships are really cool", the primary argument in favor of their retention is their usefulness in providing artillery support to amphibious landings and other ground operations near coastal areas. I'm not an expert on naval matters by any means, but it seems to me that naval gunfire from modernized, quick firing 155mm guns would be sufficient - due to the advent of increasingly accurate targeting (and even precision guided artillery rounds), having a 406mm gun is no longer necessary. At the most, something in the range of 203mm should be fine. However, I'm just some random guy on the internet talking out his ass. Do we, in fact, need battleships to fill some gaping void in our force projection capabilities? Or not only is their role wholly obsolete, but it has been so for the past several decades?

Do you have any information on Chinese heavy tank projects (such as the 113)?

Primary issue is avoiding dumping SRBs on land.

Recently, the PRC publicly displayed the J-31. Not a bad looking aircraft Based on what I've heard, it appears that the J-31 is intended to fill a somewhat similar role to the American F-35; a multipurpose medium weight fighter. Much noise has been made about the similarities between the J-31 and F-35. While I would be highly surprised if the PRC hadn't obtained classified information about the F-35's design, I doubt it's an exact copy, as some claim. Rather, I think it's a case of convergent evolution; any aircraft designed with low RCS in mind will have certain features, as a friend of mine explains here. Especially sharp eyed observers will note that while the F-35 only has one engine, the J-31 has twice as many. I'm not sure whether this is a deliberate design choice, or because China has yet to produce an engine comparable to the F135 (which powers the F-35). However, I suspect it's the latter. Historically, Chinese jet turbine design has been behind the US and other western countries. The primary evidence of this is their usage of Russian engines in many of their military aircraft. For instance, the J-10 is powered by the AL-31, the same engine that powers the Su-27. So far as I know, the J-20 prototype also uses a version of the AL-31 (although the production aircraft are supposed to be powered by a domestic engine). I highly doubt that the Chinese would use a foreign engine on such sensitive military projects if they were confident in their abilities to produce a good enough engine domestically. Also consider the Y-20, one of the PLAAF's recently developed transport aircraft. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pJtp_S43XaU/UQvR8gQyf7I/AAAAAAAAAl0/dNTxSE8Llec/s1600/y20.jpg Despite having a modern airframe design, the prototype still uses same Soloviev D-30s as the Il-76. While the Soloviev isn't a bad engine, it's a bit dated (anecdotally, it's also quite loud). Not what I would put on my brand new transport aircraft. While the production version is planned to use an indigenous high-bypass turbofan, this is still an indication that the Chinese are slightly lagging in engine design. Of course, design of high performance turbines is hard (citation needed). Just because the PRC isn't quite on the same level as the US or Europe doesn't mean that their engineers are idiots.

Minor issue with that; the Air Force was planning on launching shuttles into polar orbit (to overfly the commies) out of Vandenberg AFB, and 1,000 miles west of Vandenberg AFB is the Pacific Ocean (also, the vast majority of Soviet satellites orbit at high inclinations, so you probably couldn't launch out of Florida to intercept). Naturally, after insisting on this requirement, the USAF proceeded to launch a grand total of 0 shuttle missions out of Vandenberg.

Added.

The point that the crossrange requirement caused problems is an important one. One of the documents I have laying around mentions a 1,000 kilometer crossrange requirement. Naturally, that's going to increase your wing area, which increases your weight, which increases the mass of your launch system, etc. If you can somehow convince the Air Force to ditch that requirement (STS never did the kind of mission that required it anyway), I'd recommend something with a shape more similar to the X-24 or L-301. Those will still give you enough lift to get you in the general vicinity of a runway, and cuts out most of your extraneous dry mass that would go into the wings. Having less sharp leading edges also helps with heating (heat transfer rate at hypersonic speeds is proportional to 1/sqrt(radius)). If you've got a lighter vehicle, you can either stick it on a smaller launch system, and that could get rid of the requirement for parallel staging. 14 astronauts saved. Alternatively, you can do like Sturgeon mentioned, and make the thing a lot more robust using your extra weight. Personally, I'd also recommend decoupling the cargo carrying and astronaut transport roles. Stick your big payloads on expendible launch vehicles, and use the reusable vehicle as your crew taxi. Alternatively, do it the other way around, and use the reusable unmanned launcher to work out the kinks in reusability. Speaking of which, I would have personally done something like the X-37 (as a resuability testbed) before the shuttle. Use a smaller, less expensive, and unmanned vehicle to get our procedures for reusability down pat.