Ideal for stealthy military drones
will massively cut the IR / thermal signatures of drone
and whose technology have they stolen to do it?
3849 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Nov 2014
reminds me of that episode where Time Computers offered a free PC to anyone who took out a two-year subscription to Supanet, their in-house ISP.
In fact it was an attempt to get rid of their unsellable stocks of IBM / Cyrix 333 processors - remember those? The ones which actually ran a lot slower with funny jumper multipliers which made them overheat and crash.
Turned into a money black hole as they all had to be replaced by setups using AMD 475 processors and new motherboards
"The RAF has scored its first air-to-air "kill" – where an aircraft downs an enemy aircraft – for almost 40 years..
"Forty years? but didn't they, during the Falkland's...""
Nope
The Fleet Air Arm scored all the air-to-air hits during the Falklands war, not the RAF.
Though you have to give the RAF credit - they strapped Sidewinders onto a Nimrod and went hunting for the Argentine 707 spy planes.
"So efficiency wise, it's no better than growing Barley, fermenting it and then distilling it to produce the same methanol, without the expensive Cerium Oven and CO2/Water capture contraptions. And I'm quite sure the Barley method tastes better too."
Not if its making methanol..............
I foresee a jurisdictional argument looming.
The UK is responsible for the foreign relations of the Isle of Man and channel Islands - so responsible for any tax treaties.
However the UK does not control the islands tax laws. We could be heading for a legal collision with the UK imposing laws on the islands, ending their tax haven status
Anecdotal tale from a former Seacat Master.........
Apparently when those catamarans dropped below 10 knots, the navigation system started reporting radar echoes at twice the distance they really were.
Software coding issue which at the time (around ten years ago) hadn't been fixed.
Must have been disconcerting at night in a storm
NaK
It needs careful handling, but a room-temperature liquid is always going to be safer than something you have to heat through several hundred degrees in the absence of oxygen or water.
I can remember talking to Callery Chemicals about it 30 years ago, and they had the safety aspects well sorted - it was used in several industrial processes. They were also supplying it for nuclear use at the time - but they wouldn't talk about that.
The Russians were touting it around at the same time - though we had extreme worries about using them as a source
Surprised at the use of sodium in the primary cooling circuit. Sodium-potassium alloy is a better bet as its liquid at room temperature so easier to handle - and has been used in reactors before
FWIW Thunderbird 2 was said to use either liquid Na or NaK back in the 1960's - the liquid metal took the heat directly from the aircraft's nuclear reactor core and dumped into the ramjets (used for supercruise flight) that ran along the two sidestruts that held the front and back of the aircraft together.
Chemical rockets were used for launch until enough air was flowing through the ramjets.
You misunderstand the scenario in the tale.
After release of the first satellite the booster continued to boost to a higher orbit, releasing the second military payload before tumbling back. The second payload isn't disguised as the rocket stage - that's just a diversion.
In both these recent episodes with the Long March 5, the problem has been with the booster continuing to burn after payload release - potentially allowing that second payload release
In ten years time when the whole western car fleet runs on Linux, it would be so easy for a foreign malefactor to disable the whole lot with one message via the inbuilt GSM. Would bring civilisation to its knees.
The Chinese right now are probably looking at how to weaponise car control systems.
Disable the west's phones, disable its transport - and they've won the war before it starts