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Thread: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

  1. #1
    Resident 100HP water-cannon operator SXRguyinMA's Avatar
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    Default Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    Ok so get this. We (us Americans anyways) just paid for this sweet new hypersonic experimental glider that was launcehd today. It will cover 4100 miles in 30 minutes (approx 13,000 MPH). Cool right? Well here's the kicker...after its journey, it's to crasha nd sink into the ocean. WTF is with that? Shouldn't it land and be reused or something?

    Article here

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    Code Monkey NightrainSrt4's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    I'm having a hard time seeing the point in it. We making super speed Glider bombs?

    I wonder if they are at least going to clean it up out of the ocean. Reuse probably isn't a possibility, as hitting water at 13k mph is one hell of an impact, but at least clean the mess up.

  3. #3
    Stupidity feeds my children blueonblack's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    Well, NO. How do you expect us Americans to maintain our global reputation as wasteful consumers with thinking like that? That's just crazy talk.

    (I'd like to know how much of what ends up at the bottom of the ocean was outsourced from China...)
    “Do not trust people like me. I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like blood in your mouth. I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible, and when I leave you will finally understand why storms are named after people.”

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    Wait, What? knowledgegranted's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    To be quite honest, we are one of the only countries that don't do a TON of experiments like these. Look at Russia, they build about 30-40 experimental jet engines a year (and that's just jet engines).

    With the NASA program ending, I see no problem in these experiments. The research tax dollars need to go somewhere in development.
    It's like JFK announcing the moon mission. He had no expertise in space travel, and no way of knowing if it would work. He just announced "we're going to the moon" and then they made it happen because everyone was on the same page and working towards the same goal. If he had said "well, let's get some people in space, and we'll see how far out we can get, and if I find someone to make a rocket strong enough, we could possibly approach the moon's orbit and maybe land" it wouldn't have happened.

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    Will YOU be ready when the zombies rise? x88x's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    Quote Originally Posted by NightrainSrt4 View Post
    We making super speed Glider bombs?
    From what I can tell...yes. Yes we are... Why? ...umm... /shrugs

    Here's a much more detailed article about the project:
    http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/hcv.htm

    Apparently somebody decided we needed to be able to bomb people on the other side of the world really fast, so the obvious solution was to make a glider that would go up into space, accelerate towards the target at a poky Mach 3-4 and then drop mini-plane-bomber-thingies that would then in turn go and bomb things at speeds up to Mach 25. ...yeah, I'm still not really sure why...

    Apparently the end goal is that both vehicles will be reusable, but I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that they probably haven't finished either a) the autopilot and/or b) anything having to to with landing the thing, so their probably just trying to see if the plane burns up on reentry or something.

    My question is, if we can spend I'm sure an ungodly amount of money on crap like this, why are budgets all over the place getting cut?

    Personally I'm more interested in this thing:
    http://gizmodo.com/5522833/air-force...plane-launches
    Possibly a replacement for the shuttle.
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    Yuk it up Monkey Boy! Airbozo's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    Quote Originally Posted by x88x View Post
    From what I can tell...yes. Yes we are... Why? ...umm... /shrugs

    ...

    Apparently somebody decided we needed to be able to bomb people on the other side of the world really fast, so the obvious solution was to make a glider that would go up into space, accelerate towards the target at a poky Mach 3-4 and then drop mini-plane-bomber-thingies that would then in turn go and bomb things at speeds up to Mach 25. ...yeah, I'm still not really sure why...

    ....
    For your answer I will quote another part of the song in my sig (I left out the potentially incendiary religion references);

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    baaah. billygoat333's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    good ole Frank Zappa. As for this, this is retarded. How bout we dump that money into the stagnating and decrepit public school system?
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    Undead Pirate d_stilgar's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    I'm thinking a glider like that is one that will have pretty much no heat signature and perhaps very hard to track on radar. So we have a stealth bomber minus the bomber. It's actually a pretty smart idea although I'm not a big fan of war.

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    Measure once, curse twice nevermind1534's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    Quote Originally Posted by billygoat333 View Post
    good ole Frank Zappa. As for this, this is retarded. How bout we dump that money into the stagnating and decrepit public school system?
    I know that here, the state has been taking billions from the schools over the last few years. Half of the clases that I was going to take next
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    Resident 100HP water-cannon operator SXRguyinMA's Avatar
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    Default Re: Yet another good use of our tax dollars....

    Quote Originally Posted by d_stilgar View Post
    I'm thinking a glider like that is one that will have pretty much no heat signature and perhaps very hard to track on radar. So we have a stealth bomber minus the bomber. It's actually a pretty smart idea although I'm not a big fan of war.
    yea but with something moving through the atmosphere that fast - think about the friction and heat form the air itself. think the space shuttle on re-entry.

    also...what about all the marine wildlife that is surely going to die when that thing slams into the ocean? what about them?

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