SethInMI

how did you find a 20 year old thread?

nice photo location. https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/s/davidstirling.html

pretty sweet. Did you think about the "what if the motor doesn't work" case? It looked like the shelf had to come up for a good landing.

the "trapdoor shelf" is working well? Did you build and design that yourself? Sounded like you did. What is the return mechanism after you leave? A spring?

So any more progress? Have you jumped the jets with the "start before exit"?

Still seeing rumors that NASA is seriously trying to decide on whether to use Starliner or Crew Dragon to bring the astronauts back. The debate is something like "Is Starliner safe?, yes. Is Crew Dragon safer? yes." All about managing risk. As Bill said, this would be terrible for Boeing if Starliner comes back empty.

quite a bit less. 8.50 in 1970 dollars is 70 in 2024 dollars.

my first reaction is no, you won't find any takers. but the real answer can't be made until you say something about cost and performance. I assume climb performance would be largely unaffected by altitude (like a turbo), which would be great. But what would it be? And what is the cost of a conversion? 182 DZs are often running on a shoestring, so someone getting together $100s of thousands of dollars would be a severe challenge.

and now he has, calling electric cars "incredible" and saying how much he likes Musk and wants him to do well. The tax credits are still on the chopping block, but the vilification of EVs is coming to an end.

They have been working on these cells for a number of years now so I don't know if they can solve it in the next 6 months or not. There are tradeoffs with all materials: cost, durability, reactivity, etc, so finding a new material that meets all requirements is likely not a sure thing.

Justin Amash, who was one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump the first time, is running for the Senate as a Republican in Mich. I can't imagine he has much of a chance, but I voted for him yesterday in the Michigan primaries. (Mich is open primary so you can vote for one party's candidates without being a member) Even before impeachment, I liked him, if not his politics. He's too libertarian for me, but certainly seemed to be someone who stuck to his principles pretty consistently.

I wonder if the "I love my piped in engine noise" crowd is coming from a racing video game perspective? I couldn't take some fake sounds seriously, but if you were used to racing on a simulator, having that simulated in a real car could feel more natural?

the 2015 Subaru Impreza I had came with a CVT. It would "fake shift" during acceleration by holding the transmission in a certain ratio, let the rpms climb, and then quickly move to a new ratio. I found it annoying. The only way to not do that was to set the cruise and let the car accelerate on its own. Then it would hold the rpms at the desired level and change the gearing to speed up the car. The car before that was an Impreza STi, with 6 spd manual, triple cone synchros on 2nd and 3rd. I added the short shifter kit, and got pretty good and heel-toe downshifting. But after 10 years with it, I was done.