cruise missiles, EW and opining a doorway for bomber

a reply to: quatro

Nope. I'm debating if I should tell what I heard or not. Haha.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: quatro

Nope. I'm debating if I should tell what I heard or not. Haha.

I just read that the bat's sonar wavelenghts is closed to that of X-band radar too. So was it something toxic?

a reply to: Zaphod58

Not a beta emitter?

Would be kind of disconcerting if that was it and it killed them that quickly...

a reply to: framedragged

No, it was Alpha.

They painted an Alpha emitter on the aircraft that created a small plasma cloud around the aircraft in flight that enhanced the stealth characteristics. They eventually removed it when they got new skin installed.

That's what I was told anyway.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: framedragged

No, it was Alpha.

They painted an Alpha emitter on the aircraft that created a small plasma cloud around the aircraft in flight that enhanced the stealth characteristics. They eventually removed it when they got new skin installed.

That's what I was told anyway.

Would that be considered a form of plasma stealth?

a reply to: quatro

It was the earliest form of it.

Plasma stealth, while cool, does have one tiny drawback though. If the system fails, and the plasma touches the skin, it instantly shreds the aircraft. Looks cool on paper, not so much in reality.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Is that the ablation plasma tech then? Slamming alphas into air to ionize it? That seems like it would be absurdly dangerous unless they could control the emission amounts in real time. Or was it just incidentally radioactive?

a reply to: framedragged

I don't know all the details about it, I just heard some about it during a conversation a few years ago.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Haha, figures. I wonder if the reports of beta emitters at groom are about this, just misunderstood or misconveyed, or maybe there is some tech that uses beta and some that use alpha.

Man we really are like piranhas. The slightest hint of something juicy and we go into a frenzy.

a reply to: framedragged

The earliest systems apparently used paint, so it might very well be related to this. I wouldn't be surprised anyway. There are new ways to do it, but they're not in use currently that I know of.

a reply to: Zaphod58

And the radium girls thought they had it bad heh.

I wonder how often they had to repaint. Hope the new methods are safer too lol.

a reply to: framedragged

Yes and no. No emissions like in the early days, but in testing, they had a tendency to turn things into confetti. Very very very very small confetti, very quickly if you weren't careful with it.

a reply to: Zaphod58

A little confetti here, a little time rate gradient there. Seems like there sure are a lot of ways to turn test pilots into confetti o.O

a reply to: framedragged

Most of them love the danger. That's why they do it. But they usually start out small scale, like the X-48.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Well more power to them haha. I'm sure everyone involved is glad they can do some initial unmanned tests, I always got the feeling that Roswell ended... unfortunately... for someone.

a reply to: framedragged

You read through the 50s and 60s when they were pushing the envelope, and it was more common to have your stamp cancelled than to get it right. They pushed HARD for a lot of years, and for a lot of years the envelope pushed back hard. It's not nearly as bad now, because a lot of it is perfecting preexisting technologies, but there's still some danger involved.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: framedragged
... it was more common to have your stamp cancelled than to get it right.

Woah. That's heavy.

It's not nearly as bad now, because a lot of it is perfecting preexisting technologies, but there's still some danger involved.

At least until there's an entirely new technology to understand, let alone to perfect!

a reply to: framedragged

With computer modeling that we have now, and the advances we've made, it's so much safer than it used to be that it's not even funny. There were quite a few test pilots in the early days that were killed or severely injured due to just not understanding the aeronautics required to do what they were trying to do. Now, we have test programs where every single flight of the program is flown in the simulator before the aircraft is even powered on for the first time. And frequently the simulations are worse than the actual tests.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I feel I've chosen wisely with my masters degree then lol.

Now I just need to come up with a research project that gets me an NDA call and then somehow spin it so that I'm appointed a Master of the Universe.... it sounds so easy when it's all laid out like that. *cough*

a reply to: framedragged

It always sounds so much easier when you plan it out. Never seems to go that way though.