panton41

The simplest answer is "We don't know" but when do know that the SLS is going to drop five designed-for-reuse RS-25 into the drink with every launch while the Merlin/Rapton will see reuse. At the end of the day that's better. As for the A-10, it's deader than dead in the long-term. In the event of a peer-advisory war they'll all be shot down within days and against dirt farmers living in mud shacks there's simply more cost-effective designs.

So, I guess we don't need those high visibility balls on power lines near airports and can stop notice to airmen about trees near the runway threshold... There may be a handful real-life examples of this, and that are far, far, far more examples of aircraft being damaged or destroyed.

A space elevator is a science fiction curiosity that's impossible with realistic material science. At least for the foreseeable future. I think you're confusing the RP-1/LOX powered Merlin with the MH4/LOX powered Raptor. The main issue with rapid reuse of the Merlin engine is that RP-1 is sooty, which means they need to be checked over and possibly cleaned. Methane/LOX burns clean and without soot, so quick turnaround is certainly possible. I don't think any Raptor have flown more than one flight, and most of those involved RUD. But, in test-bench type conditions they've shown the kind of reliability needed to rapid turnaround. Certainly, better than RS-25 which needed a total rebuild after every flight. It's not like the A-10 was known for performance. Flying far, high and fast compared to the A-10 isn't exactly a hard bar to beat here. Nearly all of the early submission on the A-X program were turboprop and it was only after the S-3 Viking went into service that a jet because feasible on the second round of submissions (and of those three submissions one was still turboprop). For low-intensity operations the A-29 (or AT-6) are perfectly fine, and for other roles just about anything that can drop a guided bomb from medium altitude will do. It's not like the A-10 goes out load for bear with its maximum payload every flight. Even in heavy CAS operations during Desert Storm a typical payload was six Mk82s (or CBU-52s) with proximity fuzes and two Maverick missiles and even that cause them to have problems with poor performance. (Hogs in the Sand, Wyndham) Heck, the B-1 fleet is about to fall out of the sky due to lack of maintenance and fatigue because it's proved such a capable CAS aircraft.

Except, you know, Starship has actually flown, albeit a prototype and only a few tens of kilometers. There real, visible progress and an aggressive timetable. We know from previous SpaceX efforts that might not arrive on schedule, but it'll arrive. SLS is... doing what exactly? They burned $20 billion to make a single, barely functional, core stage (it shut down without warning during a full-duration burn) using mostly recycled tech from 50 years ago? Turns out rockets aren't actually like Kerbal Space Program and you can't just put together parts like Legos and the SLS is basically a totally new design hobbled by being forced to use technology developed during the Nixon administration. And let's not get into the absolute farse of flat-out deadly engineering mistakes Boeing has been involved over the last few years. It's to the point the US military is rejecting deliveries because of manufacturing flaws. Heck, Boeing has messed up so badly that FAA type certification, which was once the gold-standard a lot of other nations accepted for own aviation boards, has been sullied by the 737-Max, 777x and 787 approvals. And, lol, no. SLS in full configuration is going to drop billions into the ocean, maybe once a year, for the equivalent of a Saturn I payload. SH/SS is going to outlift the Saturn V to LEO AND be fully reusable. And, there's a mass production line being built for SS/SH with an eventual goal of hundreds being built. There's hundreds of Raptor engines just sitting in a warehouse right now and they cost about $200,000 each for airliner engine type reuseability. Well, there's a reason the USAF is looking at existing turboprop designs for COIN operations. In actual, real world use the A-10 hasn't been doing much that a modern version of the A-1 Sandy couldn't be doing for a lot less money. Take some of the combat ready trainers you see in DCS World, add modern, computerized avionics and bombsights, and you'll actually have some pretty capable designs.

Honestly, my favorite thing about the Viper is how it's a small, highly capable fighter that just feels "cozy." I like driving small subcompact automobiles because I can grok where the rest of the car is easily, and the few times I'm driven larger vehicles I get nervous because I can't mentally judge where the rear passneger-side is intuitively.. That's how I feel in a Viper vs. the Tomcat. I also enjoy the F-5E and AV-8B for similar reasons. Plus, I think the Viper is simply a pretty aircraft and is fun to fly.

I'm the same way. I've been playing flight sims since the early-1990s and never managed to land properly in any of them. I tell people I fly like Indiana Jones, "Fly? Yes! Land? No!"

Fire up a Commodore 64 emulator and play Gunship. I wasted SO much of my high school years playing Microprose games. (For that matter, look up Cold Waters for a modern take on the 1986 submarine game Red Storm Rising.) Ah, but which hemisphere? Could extend it all the way to March 2022 if they wanted.

Doesn't mean it's actually viable in a peer adversary war, it just means the Senate is telling them what to do. Even in the 1980s there was an assumption every A-10 would be shot down within two weeks of a Fulda Gap scenario World War III. That's part of why they were made so cheap to start with. Look at the Senate Launch System... I mean Space Launch System compared to the alternatives coming out of SpaceX (i.e. Crew Dragon and the Super Heavy/Starship combo) and get back with me about how competent the US Senate is in regards to making aerospace decisions. The SLS program started before the Falcon 9 made it to orbit and hasn't flown once. It will cost $2-billion and drop it all in the drink every launch to put a single 6-person capsule into space. While the SH/SS will probably be closer to $100-million all-up, be comparable to a Saturn V in lift to LEO (with potentially dozens of passengers in a crewed version) and be fully reusable.

That's interesting, because I've always assumed the cartridge was part of a link's structural integrity. Then again, I can't say I've ever handled linked ammunition before.

I'll add that for tech stuff B&H Photo is pretty freaking awesome with good prices and decent customer service. And they're not a flea market of cheap imported knock-off junk all shoveled into the same bin like Amazon and New Egg have become. The only, tiny, caveat is the site is closed for ordering on the weekend for religious reasons.

That Other Simulator had a mod nuke option that I fiddled with years ago and once they detonated you could get up, make a sandwich and grab a beer because it was going to be a while as it computed everything that got damaged. Of course that was like 15 years ago. Besides that, the nuclear delivery subsystems on the aircraft are super crazy classified and I doubt it's something that every pilot gets training on versus a select few hand-picked for nuclear delivery duty.

It gets there by burning at least twice as many watts, if not more. (Look at their TDP and then realize Intel is notorious for outright lying about real world power consumption (measured by a wattmeter) vs. claimed TDP. It might be burning 250+ watts to actually get its full performance. There's also the simple fact that UserBenchmarks simply isn't a very good site for what it claims to do.

I found with my Warthog throttle that you have to set the throttles to idle (not off) and when the plane loads move it over the hump to off for it to register properly.

Can we name the AI pilot Ernie?

I use a sound bar for general PC gaming and day to day use, but in DCS (and other VR games). I put on a headset that's supposedly capable of surround sound (which seems to work OK). The main reason I use the sound bar is that I had a crappy Logitech 5.1 surround setup from like 15 years ago, but didn't have a physical place to put the rear speakers. The sound bar wasn't really being put to good use on the television in the living room, but sounded a million times better than the Logitech speakers. My only issue is that I'm using an S/PDIF connector and it's my understanding they're obsolete, but I don't get the same high-quality audio options with HDMI. Connecting the sound bar with HDMI also had a tenancy to "time out" and turn the sound bar off if I don't play audio for a long time, which is annoying.

Well, the only problem for me (with a 1070) is that it's impossible to upgrade if I wanted to because the graphics card market is crazy right now and will be for the foreseeable future.

Either use an ad blocker or pay for YouTube. (I do both because you can't install an ad blocker on an AppleTV and I loathe ads with ever fiber of my being.)

I think it's too busy and cluttered and the diagonal theme just wastes space. I also have my doubts about its ability to cleanly scale to different resolutions and UI scaling, its friendliness to color-blind and other users with poor eyesight and it looks likes it would be the opposite of VR friendly.

In the real plane this would have been followed by your wings tearing off and you falling out of the sky on fire anyway.

I think the requirement on iOS that you must use Apple's payment system - and they take their 30% pound of flesh - is a huge problem and I say that as a recent convert to iOS. It cripples apps like Kindle because unlike on Android you can't buy books in the app itself because Amazon, rightfully, doesn't want to pay that tax. And it's a relatively recent requirement over the course of iOS existing and at the time was seen as extremely consumer and developer hostile. But, having said that, I think a lot of this also includes the parental protections in Apple and Google's payment processing and Epic makes obscene amounts of money off of kids, who don't have a firm understanding of money, buying tokens for in-game items not realizing how much money they're spending. If Epic is processing the payments then they can laugh at the parents all the way to the bank, while Apple and Google locks the payment system after a short period and might perform a fraud-based chargeback if its challenged.

I'd be happy if they just fixed the English manual. It's full of typos, mistranslations and just plain sections written in Russian.

I'm still rocking a GeForce 1070 waiting on the 3070 (or whatever I can afford, I'm spending my 2020 income tax return on the best 30xx card I can buy). Gaming is a minor concern compared to the renders I do in DazStudio and I would love to see a ton more VRAM on these new cards (which is rumored, but it might just be a rumor). DazStudio uses nVidia iRay, so I'm stuck with nVidia graphics.

FWIW, large mirrors are known for screwing up quite a few VR setups, too. Windows Mixed Reality is well known for having that problem, as would any "inside-out" style VR system. For that matter, I can't help but think the beacon-style VR tracking wouldn't play well with large mirrors either.

Sing with me: 2,500 bugs on the tracker list, 2,500 bugs... Take one down, pass it around... 2,700 bugs on the tracker list...

In Elite: Dangerous I've named ships things like FV Amalthea (cargo hauling Python), TCSS Endurance (Diamondback Explorer fitted for exploration) and Got Buns Hun? (Anaconda, get it...?).