Calvin19

I'm illogically afraid of submerged anything, especially seaweed and the like. I dive and stuff, but swimming over a murky low visibility lake is the worst. I am also very nervous about airborne wires and ropes. I like flying low, and the worst thing ever is noticing a nearly invisible power line, or antennae wire.

The rules of communicating science. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/11/5-simple-tips-for-communicating-science/ Generally the root of the problem with the crazies is a fundamental lack of understanding of the basics. Someone sees something and it looks slightly different from what the ignorant(not meant to be an insult to anyone, just used because it is the correct word) would expect, so they fill in the blanks. (With crazy) Your query post asked for high school level stuff! I assumed you had to be at least done with your GED. BS in Mathematics? Shit... I can barely add.

It's not insanely complex, there are more complex mechanical systems out there for sure, but Falcon has another difficult issue. The big thing is the burn timing, propellant mass predictions, and 70-100% throttle-ability of the Merlin engines. It's a very narrow mass window they have to hit or the engine can't throttle low enough to touch down. After the boost phase and retro phase the rocket has to be the perfect mass or it can't do it and the range safety officer has to make the call.

That's pretty sweet too. Yeah different purposes. I'm taken by the scale of the Falcon 9. It's such an awesome project. It's a full gorram rocket! When they get it to come back and land on the pad that will be such a huge accomplishment. SSTO would be cooler still, but the tyranny of the rocket equation makes this the best existing option.

http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-picture-of-falcon-9-stage-soft-landing-2014-4 I can't sit still in anticipation for the video. So awesome.

A few more pictures of the same phenomenon. Either aircraft wings producing the low pressure effect directly in the lifting area, or the tip vortices on propellers or wingtips creating very fast-rotating vortices.

My background is aviation and meteorology, and communicating science is an awesome way to exercise the brain. Your bottom link to the video of the KC-10 is a great video, the phenomenon is pretty awesome. It is very similar to the phenomenon in the picture I attached below. The complete explanation is very complex, but you requested high school level stuff so I'll do my best. First, the attached picture. You have probably seen fog low to the ground in the morning, patchy, sometimes a little wind associated with it, sometimes very still. Fog is literally a cloud that is on the ground, same thing. This fog layer can be thousands of feet high, or very very thin, just barely a foot or two above the surface of a pond or river, or in a canyon, or anywhere where the air might be a little colder or more 'wet'. The fog, like clouds, is just a little bit of visible water that is not fully 'saturated' in the air. As the air heats up, or wind moves it around, the fog usually goes away. You have probably seen fog/clouds in canyons, or the cloud on the downwind side of a mountain. With the wind turbines in the picture, they are disturbing the clean flow (wind) of air across the land. The wake of these turbines stirs the air up just a little bit and mixes the wet air close to the ground with the slightly colder air 100' up, and leaves beautiful trails that are shown in the picture. It's a rare event to witness, and does not happen only with turbines, but the nice geometric patterns from the even placement of the turbines makes for a cool pattern in the fog or cloud barely touching the ground. You probably would not be able to notice it if you were standing under the turbines. Does that make sense? Ok, now for the KC-10 video. It is a very unique weather/aviation phenomenon in that video. Very cool. It's very close to the same as the wind turbine picture, only a lot colder and at a high altitude. The KC-10 is flying through air that is very close to becoming a 'cloud'. As a skydiver and high school alumni, I hope you understand the basics of how an airfoil works. The wing has low pressure above it, and the entire airplane is making temporary changes in the pressure of the air it is flying through. (as well as the engine exhaust trailing water and trace elements from combustion). You can see the low pressure above the wing, around the fuselage, and even under the tail making the air a 'cloud' from being disturbed just enough. The wake of the plane is stirred up, creating slightly different pressures and literally causing a cloud. This does not normally happen, normally the 'contrail' is just water from the engine exhaust being suddenly cooled down making a condensation trail. A cloud trail. The makers of that footage are obviously impressed by the unique phenomenon and are joking about it. Literally, they are making fun of the people, preemptively, that are using the footage to promote the 'chemtrail' conspiracy theory. Also, at one spot in the video they try to pinpoint the 'sprayers' on the trailing edge of the wing. The small things under the wing are aerodynamic extensions of the flap mechanisms and serve as aerodynamic 'buffering' for the wake the entire airplane makes while it flies through the air. -SPACE-

Whoa... how can any sane person refute THAT?!

Pilot made a good save. In another life I was owned a Citabria. Two seat aerobatic trainer. We had parachutes that stayed in the hangar most of the time. If I was doing a blatant acro ride with someone we would wear them, but mostly that 20lbs would put us above max gross with a full tank going XC, so it was a lazy roll or nothing. THEN. During the annual inspection the mechanic charged me $300 for the pull-pull elevator linkage replacement. When he showed me the reason, I included a panel removal and inspection every other flight. The 7x19 where it runs under the aft seat and through a pulley had frayed down to about 20% of the cable. I had practiced trim-only landings for the fun of it with marginal success. It was a real possibility. (the trim system is a separate cable friction lever actuating a pull-pull trim tab) Terrifying stuff.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/17/world/ukraine-religious-threats/ I'm normally pretty good at identifying fallacious reporting, but I don't see the obvious tells in this. Holy crap this might be really scary.

No AC for me anymore. Outback's compressor starting screaming five years ago mid winter, I cut the belt and never looked back. Boulder summers can get hot but I love the window gasket gathering Moab dust all summer long at the open position. But I don't mind it in friends' cars when the inside is 50f. -SPACE-

You are completely correct, I was on a different page. Bottom line is; all other parameters being equal; inertia wins.

I thought we were talking about mass vs mass. Obviously a 50 year old car that lacks safety features of newer cars we are talking about will 'lose' in a head on collision. The average age of a car in the US is 11.4 years. Ancient 'land yachts' in accidents are an outlier, and nearly irrelevant in the argument of heavier production cars having the safety advantage.

They do that to save fuel. If you're just doing slow speed observation and not cruising, might as well use two motors at 50% instead of four at 30% I would also think less engine noise hitting the sea surface from 2 engines instead of 4 might help the sonobouys detect those faint pings. Good call. I wonder if they have to watch out to keep them from resonating/syncing cycle at 37.5khz

??? [citation please] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/new-crash-tests-demonstrate-the-influence-of-vehicle-size-and-weight-on-safety-in-crashes-results-are-relevant-to-fuel-economy-policies http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/808569.pdf That smells an awful lot like a conspiracy theory.

Wow... There is some serious butthurt overeaction going on here. -SPACE-

Obviously you are not claiming there is a 'conspiracy' to limit the market, but what sacrifices would the consumer be willing to make? "Speed and power", safety, acceleration, useful load capacities, etc. A significant portion of safety and multi-car crash survivability is the mass of the car you are in compared to the other car. -SPACE-

They do that to save fuel. If you're just doing slow speed observation and not cruising, might as well use two motors at 50% instead of four at 30% My OCD kickin' in....Engines not Motors . I agree, though the technical definitions are open for more interpretation than I would consider worthy of an OCD trigger. 'Motor' is more broad of a term than 'engine'. In a mechanical context, Engine specifically defines a motor that converts thermal energy into kinetic motion. -SPACE-

They do that to save fuel. If you're just doing slow speed observation and not cruising, might as well use two motors at 50% instead of four at 30% -SPACE-

The thing is that this car IS extremely efficient, the 300mpg claim is not entirely inaccurate, but people are claiming that the twchnolgy is suppressed, and it could be "added" to existing cars for everyone to get this kind of efficiency. FALSE. This car is an engineering marvel, but no magic was used to make this happen. If you completely compromise safety features and make any car out of high density carbon fiber and drastic weight changing mods and a tiny hybrid engine you can improve the efficiency to this point. -SPACE-

http://www.realfarmacy.com/volkswagens-new-300-mpg-car-not-allowed-in-america/ Thermodynamics are not magic. Don't swallow too much conspiritonium. If you learn about this, and comparative cars, and why they are not widespread you will understand. It's a complex situation, this article and the hundreds like it are sensationalistic fallacious click-bait. If you only 'follow the money', or only follow the science, you are left with a polarized image. It's not just the car, or the Mh370 loss, or anything viral these days, it's leaked into everything. We need more people who can identify the science from the media. Wow... that sounds familiar and I check myself there, but, that is my though for the night. "careful you don't step in the bullshit"... -SPACE-

There are an awful lot of armchair experts here that can obviously do a better job of keeping tabs on 80,000 commercial flights per day. Yes.

"""although there are a number of issues which would need to be resolved before this could happen. For instance, the temperature of the atmosphere is approximately -175 degrees Celsius."""" I love how the temperature is listed, but no mention of the 50bar atmosphere being an issue for humans or, you know, maybe GETTING A PERSON TO TITAN. -SPACE-

I wish Carl was still around. -SPACE-

The issue though is Act 3 of the book relies heavily on a person buying into the premise set up early in the first Act. If one admits Act 1 is mythology, then one also has to accept Act 3 is a myth as well, but that's not what is being sold. Yes, which is exactly why scientists should not engage in this sort of public debate. It is not a debate between two scientific theories. I agree. This is the 'slippery slope' fallacy. To entertain a scientific debate between science and dogma will not produce real outcome. It is entertainment, probably for both sides. I like Bill Nye a lot, but I think Neil Degrasse Tyson would have been a more entertaining match. -SPACE-