Jump to content

Knight26

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    5315

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Knight26

  1. Knight26
    First impressions: The bit with the Falcon was cool. The bits with the new Storm Troopers showed promise, looked like a can of whoop was about to get opened. I definitely called how the new X-wing's S-foils openned. Overall, nice build up. Still hate that X-wing S-foil design, maybe it will grow on me when I see more. Really hate that republic pilots helmet, why is it digging into his cheeks like that? That speeder thing Daisy Ridley ride, WTF? That is hideous. What was the ridiculous looking protocol droid? The head looked like it wasn't even connected to that ball body. Light saber with light saber saber guards? That looks far more dangerous to the wielder than any other saber design yet. I will hold out hope that the story is good. The single bit of dialogue has me intrigued, could we be seeing an awakening of multiple new force users, en-mass? That could be interesting.
  2. Knight26
    A production YF-23 would has suffered similar issues as the F-22, due to it being the front running 5th gen fighter, but with some important differences. There area fundamental design problems with the F-22 due to its overall configuration. If you ever meet an F-22 pilot ask them how loud it gets when they open the sidewinder bay. F-22s have always flown with a tight leash as well in regards to using thrust vectoring or demoing the aircraft's maneuverability, there are reasons for this. Let's not even get into the oxygen system issues. Northrup, on the whole, is more willing to implement design changes based on obsolesce than Lockheed, especially to Avionics.
  3. Knight26
    I hate to burst any bubbles, but the reason we never sold the F-22 to other nations, beyond security, we knew it was flawed from the get go and didn't want that getting out. The F-22 is a marvelous piece of tech and an innovative stealth design, but has some serious fundamental flaws that are just now reaching public attention.
  4. Knight26
    After 20 some odd years of course you would try and domesticate some of the dinos. The Raptors are a logical choice because of their wolf pack mentality. Imagine replacing military working dogs with Raptors, really see your enemies Shatting themselves.
  5. Knight26
    You are able to absorb more Gs in a prone position then a seated or standing one. So the gimballed seat would actually lessen the load on your heart to pump blood so long as you were kept flat relative to the G Forces. For the sideways motion it helps as well by lessening any impact with objects to the sides. It would also help a lot with docking maneuvers.
  6. Knight26
    Overall yes, I just wish they had explained the propulsion systems better. I especially loved how the seats were gambled for G-Force compensation.
  7. Knight26
    Not going to happen, pre-internet design, and all the design files are locked up. THey would need to get physical access.
  8. Knight26
    Love the color scheme, might actually convince me to get one.
  9. Knight26
    The Tu-4 is the basis for the "russian copies" myth. Yes the Tu-4 was an unabashed copy of the, then, most advanced airframe in the world, the B-29 and it put the russians on an almost equal footing with the west technologically, but like with all things, the tech diverged and took its own path.
  10. Knight26
    I could see that, it also depends on the nature of the Ranger's engines, they could have a high rad output that is not wanted for Earth launches.
  11. Knight26
    I finally got to see the movie with weekend with my oldest. I loved it. But then I like intelligent movies. Were there parts that bugged me? Sure. Did they ruin the movie for me? Not at all. No movie, book, show, is perfect, they all have their imperfections and little holes but Interstellar did a great job of taking some pretty high level science and boiling it down to a level that the average moviegoer could at least grasp at. My two biggest nits: Brandt's little speech about the power of love derailed the story a bit and made it seem like it was Coop's love for his daughter that made him her ghost. In a way it was, but it was also a casual loop created by the future humans ensuring their own creation/survival. The Rangers/landers, while cool designs, how the heck did they have the fuel to make orbit, hover, etc... That was never explained properly, and if they could do that, why the Saturn-VX launch to get off Earth? Besides looking cool that is. A quick line of dialogue that they developed a minimally effective magnetic repulsion tech that could float the ship, and some kind of plasma engine would have been sufficient for me. Also Mann's freak out was largely unnecessary.
  12. Knight26
    The primary target of most Chinese hacking attempts isn't even the most classified stuff, which is kept on closed networks, but the research and early design drafts, which while classified/secret and even sometime Top Secret are more accessible on private company and military networks. What they are stealing is the research data that has allowed them to jump ahead to making two fifth gen fighters in a relatively short time. Everything of their's has been reverse engineered, or bought and built under license. Now, that is not to say that they have not made some innovative leaps and strides, but they have done so by stealing the research from other nations, the US, Russia, Japan, etc... Even the new model J-10B incorporates a lot of improvements seen elsewhere on other aircraft; new inlet shape, sensors, IRST, AESA radar, etc... They are doing some masterful engineering work, even on the J-20 and J-31 but when you get down to the brass tacks they are built on the same research that brought us the F-22, F-35, Pak-Fa, etc... They have just put their own hand into the design to come up with aircraft that while similar are very different. Back in the day, people said russian designs were just copies of American. That came mostly out of the Tu-4, which was a shameless copy of the B-29. What you really saw between the two superpowers was an arms race where one would come up with a design and the other would come up with a matching design. Or where one nation found out what the other was developing and came up with what they thought the best counter would be. The F-15 was originally designed to engage the MiG-25 before we found out that the MiG-25 was a strict interceptor, designed primarily to take down the SR-71, and not a dogfighter. But the research and design that the two nations did come up with aircraft, that while similar in design, were vastly different answers to the same role: F-16 & F/A-18 Vs the MiG-29 & Su-27. You could throw the F-14 and F-16 into that mix as well, since technically the Su-27 is more in their weight class. The thing is that while the designs share some similarities there is nothing about them that blatantly screams, we stole this design from the other. As opposed to the J series aircraft where the design theft is super obvious. J-2: MiG-15s built for China J-5: License built MiG-17s J-6: License built MiG-19s J-7: License built MiG-21s J-8: Started as J-7s modified with twin engines, later incorporated a front end derived directly from the MiG-23 J-11: License built Su-27s J-15: Modified J-11s reverse engineered from stolen Su-27K/Su-33 data. J-10A/B: Reverse engineered IAI-Lavi, which they bought, but still a reverse engineered design J-20: Developed indigenously from stolen F-22 and F-35 data, some design ingenuity of their own J-31: Developed indigenously from stolen F-22 and F-35 data, some design ingenuity of their own, since they did not have to compromise the design for VTOL and other considerations And that;s just the fighters...
  13. Knight26
    I was at a panel with Crichton in the mid 2000s where he spoke about the books and the movies. It it possible that he was mistaken in his timeline, but he did state that it was the studio that insisted on resurrecting Ian Malcolm. In a lot ways he described the development as being like that of 2001 where he had an idea of what he wanted and the director/producer Spielberg a different idea. That might be what he meant by it being more of a script novelization, in that the studio had much more of a hand in it. I'm also trying to remember the specifics of a 10 year old panel here. But Crichton did write the sequel book pretty much all due to the help Spielberg gave him getting ER made.
  14. Knight26
    The Chinese have been hacking every open network for years stealing all the military tech designs and secrets they can get their hands on. They are not even subtle about it.
  15. Knight26

    Hi-Metal R

    Knight26 replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    very cool, love the setup, what scale?
  16. Knight26
    Looks great, price speculation time
  17. Knight26
    Love it
  18. Knight26
    Crichton was a cool guy and a class act. If asked in private, he would admit that JP2 was all about getting ER funded. ER was his baby and a huge pet project of his that he wanted to get off the ground. After JP1 was such a hit in theatres, despite the changes from the novel, the studio, smelling money, asked him to write another and had some heavy hands in the writing process as a result. He admitted that the book was more a novelization of the script and bore little resemblance to any sequel he would have planned.
  19. Knight26
    Nicely done, definitely a hybrid mk1-2 cockpit for the POV shots, sloppy.
  20. Knight26
    That is beyond awesome, now take a ton of nice pics of it in both modes and mid transformation.
  21. Knight26
    A reasonably priced, even non-transforming 1:18 VF-1 I would buy, but it up with my 1:18 F-16, F-18 and WW2 birds.
  22. Knight26
    My really liked it, I was left meh...
  23. Knight26
    DH is right, with the comet on an inbound trajectory Philae will get plenty of power in the coming months, best to wait it out, power it up and try and locate it in the mean time to see if it can be re positioned. If not, do what you can on the spot.
  24. Knight26
    Looks like Philae has gone silent, for now at least, there is hope that it might be able to recharge its powercells over the next couple months. At least it accomplished its primary missions before the batteries ran dry. I wonder if they will set Rosetta to try and find it now, if they know where it is better then they might be able to right it once power is restored.
  25. Knight26
    Don't give up on it yet, they will do everything they can to try and right the little guy, but in the meantime they will get as much science out if as they can just in case.
×
×
  • Create New...