David Hingtgen

Basically: if at all possible, they want to land in Florida. Ferrying the shuttle on the 747 back to KSC takes a lot of time, and a lot of money. Staying in space another 24 hours to hope the weather clears in Florida effectively costs nothing, and poses no danger. It was a 24-hour wait for weather, not to get the right orbital alignment. But, since Florida weather wasn't getting any better, and they didn't want the shuttle up there for days and days and days waiting around for good weather in Florida, they decided to just go for the next possible landing---Edwards. If the weather had been bad at Edwards on that orbit, they might have waited one more orbit, and then see if Edwards was OK, or possibly Florida would have cleared by then. If neither was clear by then, they would have gone to White Sands on that orbit. They can wait a day or two for better weather with no problems, but anything more is going to be taxing on the crew. They were already one day "late" to perform more experiments since the rest of the fleet is now grounded, and they decided to wait yet another day for Florida weather to clear---any more delays would have been 3 days over the expected return. Here's maps showing the tracks for all the possible landing tracks--various sites from various orbits. http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/crew/landing.html

Ace Combat 2 had their own take on it, having the "F-15S" which was more like a "Super Eagle" than anything---lots of little changes, but it has the canards, which are the main point. The first F-15 with canards was the "Agile Eagle". Next, adding 2D thrust vectoring was the F-15S/MTD---this is in Ace Combat 4, but mistakenly called the F-15ACTIVE. Also in Air Force Delta Strike, also called the F-15ACTIVE. It is also in Ace Combat 5 with the correct name. Finally, there is the F-15ACTIVE, which is like the F-15S/MTD but has 3D vectoring. Technically it's the NF-15B ACTIVE. Most everyone confuses the two, despite being really easy to tell apart, since nearly every website mis-labels the pics. Interesting note, it is all the exact same plane modified many times---the original TF-15A prototype, #71-0290. Better known as the very first F-15B. The canards are actually F-18 stabs. S/MTD=Stol/Manuevering Technology Demonstrator ACTIVE=Advanced Control Technology for Integrated VEhicles

1/18 orbiter would be nearly 7 feet long, the whole shuttle would be over 10 feet.

I'd join, but I'd quickly become known as "that guy who only points out all the errors on the models". I'd buy an F-14 in an instant from them, if it actually was accurate to a specific type, and not a mish-mash of various Tomcat parts. (Their Hornet is neither A nor C, their F-16 is kinda a C-Block 25 but not quite, etc) I wouldn't be surprised if their Tomcat had parts from both 1975 and 2005...

I considered bringing up SpaceShipOne, but basically: That's about the only ship that method will work for. It's no faster than an SR-71. Think of it as a really, really slow space shuttle that cannot orbit. Far slower, far less energy to bleed off.

Geostationary things tend not to ever come back. They don't worry about re-entry. And it doesn't take a lot of fuel to stay up---they are up very high and so gravity only has a slight effect--it takes years for their orbits to decay. Only a few nudges every once in a while, if that. Shuttles are often used to help "nudge" satellites back up, giving them a few more years of use. After a couple decades, they all fall down and burn up. All the GPS satellites are a good example. They're not burning tons of fuel 24/7 to stay up. They'll come down, eventually. Will take many years, and their small fuel supply can nudge them back up a few times---but they'll need replacing eventually, once they burn up on reentry.

You can't "slowly" come down. Basically---To stay in orbit, you have to go fast. If you slow down a LOT, then you'll come down FAST. Which of course, "friction from dropping straight down" is just as bad as "friction from a 40 degree angle of attack". There is a narrow band of re-entry angles where it is feasible. Too fast/steep, you'll burn up even worse, too slow/shallow, you won't slow down enough and will bounce back up into the atmosphere. Basically--the shuttle comes down the only way it can. A certain rate, at a certain angle. If you try to slow down a LOT prior to re-entry, you will simply DROP through the atmosphere and burn up due to hurtling downwards through the atmosphere, as opposed to burning up due to hurlting forwards through the atmosphere. The shuttle comes down at just the right angle that it can bleed off speed/energy at just the rate that it can withstand the heat. Other angles are either too hot, or won't bleed off the speed. Now, things like the Apollo capsules etc. do slow down a lot in orbit, but then come down FAST, almost vertically compared to shuttle. But that's because they're one-way trips, and cannot be reused. They get REALLY hot and vaporize most of their heat shield--because it's a one-time sacrificial heat shield. The shuttle is designed to survive re-entry and not vaporize its bottom half every flight. Thus, it has to take a more shallow approach than a Mercury/Gemini/Apollo re-entry.

If you took a lot of fuel up with you, you could burn it just before re-entry and slow down a LOT. The shuttle has only enough fuel remaining in orbit to slow down from Mach 25 to about Mach 22. To slow from Mach 22 to Mach 0.2 or so, it uses the atmosphere. But taking up that fuel with you would mean you have no weight/room for any sort of payload. You'd go up into space, do nothing, burn your fuel in the retro-rockets to slow down, and come home. Kinda pointless. It's not the power of the rocket, it's the fuel and economics, and how it relates to payload.

That's kind of my point---with no friction, you don't slow down. If you try to come down "nicely" and not heat up----you'd be coming straight down at 17,000mph. Not good. If you want to slow down so you can actually land on a runway, you NEED to bleed off the energy somehow. If you avoided all friction on the way down, the shuttle would arrive at the runway going Mach 25 with 2 seconds to go... Also--you can't really "hover" quite like that and come straight down. The Earth is rotating at about 1,000mph. Always have to take that into account. You have to go 25,000mph just to escape gravity. AFAIK a shuttle actually controls its altitude by its speed. Speed and orbit are utterly related. It's not like a plane. You can't simply "push up" on something in orbit and have it stay there--you will need to adjust its SPEED or it will come back down to its previous altitude/orbit. Conversely, if you change its speed, you will change its altitude. I have never really understood it, as it is literally rocket science and LOTS of math.

Basic transfer of energy/heat. (Very poor terms for physics will follow, but I'm pretty sure of the concept) To send a shuttle into space, you need to use massively powerful rocket engines to accelerate it to Mach 25. To get back down, you need to bleed off all that energy it has. Best way to do that is to convert it into heat--the shuttle USES the friction of the atmosphere to bleed off the speed. No different than how your brakes slow down your car--they convert the energy of motion into heat via the friction of the brakes rubbing against the wheel/disc/drum etc. That's why brakes get hot. Shuttle doesn't have brake pads to rub against a disc, etc, so it uses its tiles to rub up against the atmosphere. Same result--lots of friction, you slow down, and parts of the vehicle get hot. In other words--you need to basically "get rid of" all the energy you used to put it into orbit in the first place. Coming in at an angle and heating up is among the best ways to do it. If you want to come in very slowly and avoid friction, it'd take forever and a day to get back.

In a word---yes. Foam has always broken off, but it's never caused a problem---until Columbia. Shuttles have also lost tiles on every flight, but it's never been a problem---yet.

On the other hand, I've read on other aviation forums that foam has been a problem since day one, to the point that the first few flights had nets set up under the shuttle to catch it all, as it flaked off all day and night prior to the actual launch. Thus, new foam is actually better. In summary: foam's always broken off, only once did it ever actually damage the shuttle, but it was fatal damage. Common scenario 2, most often exhibited by the FAA, the so-called tombstone method: Let a problem go until it results in fatalities. It's a known problem, always happens, but nothing REALLY bad ever happened. Until now. Fix it only after something really bad happens. Common scenario 2, version B. Take the above, but be sure to have a similar problem in a similar system. People have died because of failures of the first system, but since the other, similar system has never actually had a serious problem, don't bother fixing it, even if the fix for this system would be similar to the fix for the first system. This just happened with Discovery. There are 2 types of foam "ramps" on the tank for aerodynamic purposes. "PAL" and "bipod". They serve a similar purpose, and are made in similar ways that make them rather unique among all the foam on the tank. One broke off and lead to Columbia's destruction. So they fixed that one. The other, similar foam ramp was left as is. Guess what? That's the one that broke off for Discovery's recent flight. "Never fix anything until you have to, even if nigh-identical parts have failed identical ways and caused deaths". It's to the point that if "system 113, 114, 115, and 117" all failed in a row, they'd replace them, but never even consider taking a look at system 116...

It seems that MR will re-release the Mace Windu *mini* later this year, so if you want one but don't have it, don't go paying Ebay prices for it. Sumdumgai--how's the normal mini Sidious? I'm thinking about getting it. I've read the paint is like prismatic purple or something. Really doesn't photograph well.

Meteor has an entire new line devoted to vintage aircraft nose-art decals: Go here http://www.meteorprod.com/cgi-bin/meteorsearch.pl?newsearch and search for "pyn" and you'll get them all. They are fairly expensive though.

Can't tell if they're going for "realism" like the first TMNT movie, or just "the current cartoon in semi-realistic CGI". Hardest TMNT catch-phrase/word to spell: "Gnarly".

I'd take an F-14 if it actually was any particular type of F-14. Their F-18 is an "Early-late Block 10/26 F-18A/C/A+". If they'd simply made say, an F-18C, it'd be nice. But it's a mish-mash of parts, as if they referenced photos of any and all Hornets, not modeling any particular type. Plus it has too many nose gear doors. How do you mess THAT up? 3 is not 4, a two-year old can tell you that. Same for the F-16. It's pretty close to a Block 25. But not quite--and that's really off since they tend to release them as Block 40/50. If they'd actually made a Block 40 or 50, it'd be great since they're nigh-identical and would work very well for what they paint them as. So if they made an F-14, I'd expect it to be a Block 70/Block 150 F-14A/D mish-mash of parts. When you get to 1:18 scale, little things become quite obvious. I mean, most of these things are easily visible in 1/72 scale...

Actually, airliner engines are far more reliable than fighter engines. They have to be. Basically: 300 passengers on 14 hour flights, hundreds if not thousands of those flights around the world, 24/7. Versus say a few F-14's on patrol, with 2 people each, as needed, on 2 to 4 hour CAPs (and that's stretching it). Far more lives are at stake with the airliner's engines. And you can't eject from an airliner. A PW2040 and a F119 have the same power, but the fighter's engine runs far faster and hotter, because it has to get the same power in like 1/10 the size and weight. You trade reliability and maintenance ease for the ability to get the same power in a much smaller package. It always comes down to space and weight on a plane.

If we go for the "maximum similarity with the F-14" like we usually do with the VF-1 and VF-0, I would say the VF-0's nose pitot is for alpha, not airspeed. Or it could very well be for multiple things, like the F-16's.

Wonder how long until we get the VF-0D? I much prefer the D, S reminds me too much of a VF-1, especially in Roy's colors.

Forgot to post: While the board was down, the Quad City Airshow was going on, and I of course went. Main attractions were the Thunderbirds (5 planes, not 6 due to illness---some formations simply have a "gap", some asymmetric, some modified) and a Super Hornet demo. Despite having the T-Birds, USAF sent almost nothing for static displays. 2 A-10's. We had more than that last year, when there were no USAF demos at all. Missed getting the Shornets shockwave cone, 1/2 second too late. Other notables included P-38 on static and flying (Porky II) and I ate lunch sitting under an A-10's h.stab. Photos are the best my digi-camera can do at that distance. It's old, and like 2 megapixel.

Go here for a detailed breakdown of most every prop in Eps 1, and 4-6: http://www.partsofsw.com Han ANH blaster: http://www.partsofsw.com/dl44sw.htm

Arrgh! I typed it twice to get it right, and still screwed up. Yes I meant 11, not 111. 111 is my fave squadron, how awesome would their rising sun logo look on a Shornet tail... (with a shark mouth) Anyways---while 143 has a cool logo and name, I get the impression they're not well-liked, and if you have a look, they lose a lot more planes than most squadrons. I get the impression CVW-7 is supposed to be 11 and 143, but 103 is replacing 11 temporarily. 11+103 would be double F's. Don't know where 103 will go after that. I know 105 is supposed to go from 18C's to 18E's relatively soon, maybe 103 and 105 will pair up.

Strangely, there's not much to report on what happened while the board was down. Things possibly of interest: Jolly Rogers paired with Pukin' Dogs for a "temporary" Air Wing 7 while VF-11 converts to VFA-111, tailcode changed to AG, modex from 1xx to 2xx, will deploy on Eisenhower. High-vis planes changed from 100 and 103 to 200 and 201.

While the board was down, I got mini AOTC Obi-Wan, and mini Ep 4 weathered Obi-Wan. And I paid only double-digits for Ep 4, which is a really good price based on Ebay...

If anyone wants to see a current-version Vader FX saber opened up: http://www.fx-sabers.com/vader_ESB_tutorial.html