scram

Are people really so damn gullible? That truck is so obviously CG it's ridiculous. It was clearly added in to hide the hilt and pommel.

This is a jet sword which will be wielded by giant mecha that will defend Washington D.C. when it lifts out of the ground and becomes sky fortress WDC-1, the last hope for humanity.

O-Z

yeah i think they added some deep rumbling bass for effect.

Pinkmeister

quazi

hankenstein

Digital Freak

bobdobbs

Simpsons-Movie-ruled

BarkoNorwang

nuttykiwi

How about releasing the brakes on that thing?

bu11etman

*Substitute Chuck Norris if Mr. Yeager isn't available.

evilkingteapot

deedrit

froggy

strider_mt2k

musen

DeadWriter

ethanthom

COOL!

strider_mt2k

Luka_Veliki

This test was being done by XCOR, another private rocket and space company, not directly by NASA.

Which, frankly, makes your mock the recent tragedy at Scaled Composites seem kind of foolish.

JonAcheson

"@Geisrud: Yeah, I can't sem to find this thing on froogle. "

...you are my hero <3

Shockage

"NASA is still the most experienced when it comes to space flight"

Are we forgetting the Russian space agency, which is the only lone space agency to have launched a modular space station and maintained it for 15 years (skylab doesn't count, they sent it all up in one go).

I know we've already established the fact that we're not blindly worshipping NASA/private space industry/Russian space agency, but I just feel the need to give them credit because they already have a viable plan and design for a trip to mars and can use off-the-shelf technology to send people to the moon within a few years.

Also, I'm Russian, so I'll admit that gives me some bias :D, but I still give credit where it's due.

And it's definitely not due to the space shuttle.

ntrgc89

bulletmagnet

We are still so far from warp speed...

sniff....

aec007

Deprecated

BrokenHaiku

homerjay

Serolf Divad

DAMN that was sexy.

Everything about that was subtly climactic. I wish more NASA vehicles took off horizonal like that so you could see the rockets pull a messy cloud of gas into a tight stream of flame.

hawt

Caidence

Very cool though.

immumo

stolen from wikipedia:
"Shock diamonds or mach diamonds are a formation of shock waves in the exhaust plume of an aerospace propulsion system, such as a supersonic jet engine, rocket, ramjet, or scramjet. It is formed when the supersonic exhaust from a nozzle is slightly over or under-expanded, meaning that the pressure of the gases exiting the nozzle is different from the ambient pressure. A complex flow field results as the shock wave is reflected at the free jet boundary, and the visible diamond-shaped pattern that gives the shock diamond its name is formed."

ltcmurray

CCM333

Darkest Daze

7 * 758 = 5306?

Darkest Daze

Although, I wonder what happened to the Nuclear Thermal Hydrogen engine NASA and the Russians were working on in the 50's 60's.
[en.wikipedia.org]
It's only weakness at the time was a lack of materials science to handle the intense heat inside the combustion chamber.

FrankenPC

RayCeeYa

Geisrud

Is it just me or does that not make any damn sense?

Destian

king_of_fools

newgalactic

Mfumbi

astrograph

savager

Spaceboy

Good point about the inefficency of shuttle launches. I remember the illustrations that used to float around of fuel tanks and SRBs with no attached shuttle. Instead it literally had a second fuel tanks' worth of cargo perched on top of it. Others had a cargo package where the shuttle would be, with disposable shuttle engines mounted on the bottom.

Lets hope NASA starts a trend with the Orion project and starst building simple heavy lifters again.

tamoko

Sirhoffman

TheCapt

Wow, you really know me, from two little sentences you really pegged me. *laughs* No, I'm not a NASA worship nut to fails to see the bad side of a government run agency. Mostly the best and brightest getting superseded by politicians and bureaucracy. Still it when its all said and done, NASA is still the most experienced when it comes to space flight and that being said they shouldn't be written off because some wonderboy builds Spaceshipone. Now, spaceshipone was great but if you look back in history you'll see the X-15 and you'll see a tested method only improved upon.

So anyway, in case your not getting the point, I just want to make sure credit is due where credit is due. So basically I'm on your side, I don't want people prancing about worshiping the private space industry or NASA blindly.

bbfreak

*na na na na naaaaaaa, na na, na na na*

rfayed

superbad

Vulcaex

It supposedly uses a ramjet engine with methane as fuel... I wonder if this is a precursor to the public release of that jet???

Bobby T.

NASA has its purpose...but we ought not worship them over private space endeavors.

Anybody here realize how inefficient the Space Shuttle program really is? I mean, basically, we're now using the Space Shuttle (which is a space-station on its own) to bring bits and pieces of the space station up one at a time, then bring the whole Space Shuttle back to earth. That's an incredible waste -- we ought to find a way to launch the shuttle carrying supplies and a return vehicle...leave the shuttle in orbit as part of the space station structure, and return to earth in a small return vehicle. Much less waste that way. Of course, then we couldn't prance around singing the praises of the reusable launch vehicle. So sad.

EQC

Wegmans

FTA:
Those glowing figure eights in the blast stream are called Mach disks, after the guy who lent his name to the speed of sound. They're shock waves, created as the expanding fuel hits the higher atmospheric pressure outside the nozzle. If part of this blast weren't obscured, you could take the number of Mach disks (we count seven) and multiply by the speed of sound - about 758 mph at the 1,300-foot altitude of this test - to estimate the speed of fuel exiting the engine.

skyshard

Those overlapping cones in the exhuast are called "shock diamonds" or "Mach Disks"

see: [aerospaceweb.org]

mcduff

lightshow

Zuman

Keebler

Mfumbi

Mfumbi

Mfumbi

LittleJon

bbfreak

Polybius