2 major science breakthroughsFollow

First one, the scramjet, was launched yesterday and broke the world speed record by flying 7,000 mph. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6504898/

The second one is the anti-missle defense where an airborne laser shoots down in inbound ballistic missle. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6473144/

Totem

I thought I remembered reading a while ago that missile defense systems werent allowed because of something we signed. (vague I kno)

I donno ill try looking around for it. But the whole Idea was that if a nation thought it could protect itself from retaliaiton that it wouldnt worry as much about using nuclear weapons. you kno the whole mutual destruction thing.

Stuff like that is extremely important to us. The defense system in particular. If you are on the side that says Iraq was a threat and did have WMD ready to fire, then this would keep us from having to actually go over there. They can just shoot em down as they come. That rocks.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty we signed with the USSR/Russia.

Alright whose up for a little salvage diveing?? Any one got any crash(pun unintended)space on the left coast, I'll come out for a visit. I bring my own tanks.

All that money wasted... they could at least have taken out another fishing boat...

Scramjets are cool! Back at Embry riddle when i was in aerospace engineering a bunch of us tried (as a mostly theoretical and somewhat pointless excercise) to figure out how to make a convertable turbine to scramjet engine. We figure the scramjet part is easy, just build an afterburner can that could reconfigure to a compression scramjet. The engine part would be harder. making a turbine with retractable turbine vanes would add something on the order of 1/3 more mass to the engine. We finally settled upon a shroud that would cover the center section of a bypass turbine, leaving the outer channel as an air inlet back to the scramjet portion. It could work with some rerouting of the airflow around the thrust stage of the turbine I think. The conversion might take too long though. You would need to kill the engine, get the baffle in place on the turbine section, and still maintain enough speed to ignite the scramjet, prefferably without losing control or altitude.


The other idea was a massive engine compartment like the xb-70 with two wngine channels, inner for turbine, outer for scramjet, and just a swing baffle between them.

I understand most of that... namely the "and," "the," and "is" parts

Trekkie

Can it even be manned at that velocity? I'm not sure about the limits of a human body under that kind of force. Hey Kaolian, any idea about that? Anyone for that matter?

Velocity doesn't affect the human body, only acceleration.

Although I guess every time the plane turns, that causes acceleration.




Edited, Wed Nov 17 14:11:04 2004 by trickybeck

I'm not so sure about this one.



i think it burnes it as it takes it in, so no go.

Now if they can find a way to store that energy for later, now that would be a money maker.

Let's not forget the particle accelerator for breast cancer treatment...



Do people not realize the earth is traveling at thousands of miles per hour around the sun, not to mention rotating on an axis? We're always moving, it's just that it's constant so people don't notice it. We can't detect velocity with our bodies, only acceleration.

Edited, Wed Nov 17 14:48:25 2004 by Keibah