Posts by Domster

Amazon boss finds Apollo 11 engines on seabed

BIG Engine

I think the AJ-260-2 is the biggest rocket engine ever built, although it never flew. It was a 260 inch solid rocket motor built to determine if they could replace the Saturn V first stage with a single solid booster. The motors tested were half the height of the real ones but still produced over 17000kN of thrust the full size motor would produce twice as much thust. Apparently when they test fired it you could see the flame 50 miles away. The link below tells more, the astronautix website has everything you need to know about space flight.

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/aj2602.htm

NotW accused of hacking Milly Dowler's voicemail

Accessory to murder....

Levi Bellfield the convicted murderer of Milly Dowler lived a few hundred feet from where she was last seen and was seen driving a car a half hour after she was last seen. His behaviour in the days after the abduction was highly unusual and was one of the reasons he was convicted. The police didn't interview him at the time even though they knocked on his door 17 times. Why did they give up the house to house interviews, why weren't they more thorough. I am wondering that some police officers thought that Milly had run away because of some family problems and the deleted voice mails confirmed their unfounded suspicions that she was still alive. So they gave up looking for a local killer. Her dad was a suspect for while. With the heat off Bellfield he was free to kill twice more. A public enquiry is essential to determine what influence the voice mail hacking had on the police enquiry and whether Bellfield could have been caught earlier. In anycase NOTW has blood on its hands.

US Marines splurge on Brit troops' armoured pants

Imposter

Will the real Lewis Page please step forward, the writer of this article is obviously an imposter.

SpaceX unveils new Falcon Heavy rocket - WORLD'S BIGGEST

@Caladain

I meant Falcon X and Falcon X Heavy will use the Raptor LH2/LOX engine.

Hydrogen

If hydrogen/LOX engines are so old fashioned how come the second stage engine of the Falcon Heavy will be a hydrogen/LOX, it's called Raptor. The Saturn V had a first stage LOX/kerosene engine and the 2nd and 3rd stages were Hydrogen/LOX engine. A hydrogen/LOX engine has a better specific impulse than LOX/kerosene engine. Ares was cancelled because it was too expensive and was running into development difficulties. Once again Mr Page has got his facts wrong.

The big problem with manned space flight is it is very expensive. There is more money to be made on earth than in space. I would like to see some real figures as to the supposed benefit of manned space flight. Talk of space elevators and asteroid mining would require huge investment over decades for a doubtful return. I am not against space exploration using robots, indeed most of what we know about the Universe and our solar system comes from robots. I am looking forward to 2015 when the New Horizons mission passes Pluto and I would love to see a rover land on Titan but its unlikely in my lifetime if we continue spend money on manned exploration.

UK's Reaper flying hunter-killer fleet 'to double'

Brimstone

Actually the Tornado cannot carry Hellfire missiles, no fast jet can. The Tornado actually carries Brimstone missiles, which look like Hellfire missiles but share no parts. The Brimstone has a British designed guidance system, warhead and rocket motor. Originally designed as an autonomous anti tank missile, it can be fired in salvos, with each missile independently searching for a target using an advanced milimetric radar. It apparently can tell the difference between a tank and say a car or truck. In 2009 an urgent request by the MOD for the addition of a laser seeker to the missile was implemented by MBDA in good time. The missile has been used to great affect in Afghanistan against snipers in buildings, where its small warhead minimises collateral damage and against tanks in Libya.

Nobody else has a missile as sophisticated as Brimstone for killing tanks, not even the Americans, whose own dual seeker mode missile is stuck in development hell. A British Military success story, eat your heart out Mr Page.

Discovery on countdown for Thursday launch

Fingers crossed

I am off to Florida tomorrow to see Discovery launch.

Knife-waving knob nabs fat stack of jazz mags

Great!

Jazz mags? Nice.

US Navy's electric plane-thrower successfully launches an F-18

Black Buck sucks

The RAF was instrumental in forcing the Navy to give up it's carriers, saying they wouldn't be needed and that the RAF could do the job of protecting Atlantic convoys, etc, in the case of a war with the USSR. Then the Falklands occurred and the RAF were desperate to get involved so they sent some Harrier GR3's on the RN carriers and concocted the Black Buck raids. It has been estimated that the fuel consumed by the Vulcan bomber and its tankers would have powered all of the Sea Harriers for the duration of the conflict. The Vulcan which bombed the runway dropped a stick of 21 bombs and managed to hit the runway with one bomb using World Two era bombing technology. If the Vulcan fleet had been scrapped earlier then the money saved could have bought the RN a few laser guided Paveway 1 bombs and the Pave Tack targeting pod, which could have been used to close the runway as fast as it could have been repaired. It was fortunate that the Argentians lacked the means to repair the runway because if they had, they would have fixed it faster than the Black Buck raids could have damaged it.

MoD does everything right for once in Xmas shocker

More Tornado stuff

The RAF Lost 6 Tornados during the first Gulf War. Five were during low level attacks and one at medium altitude. Of the 5 that lost during low level attacks 2 were definitely shot down, 2 were probably shot down and one got blow up by its own bomb. So not a bad record. The Tornado was designed to drop bombs in all weathers at low level to achieve the maximum accuracy. If the Russians ever invaded western Europe, they would surely pick a cloudy day, when the American aircraft fleet would be unable to drop their laser guided bombs through the cloud, fog rain or snow showers. This is what happened in Kosovo and spurred the development of GPS guided weapons, which are unaffected by bad weather. So for Page to dismiss this brilliant aircraft so flippantly makes me wonder at the accuracy of the rest of his diatribe.

In the early 80s the RAF needed an anti-radar missile, the choice was the American HARM or the more expensive British ALARM, the RAF went for the ALARM missile. In Kosovo the Americans fired 100 HARMs against one missile site but didn't destroy it. The RAF fired one ALARM which due to its unique abilities, destroyed the site. So we can build good kit given half a chance.