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Smiling Jack posted:19 miles wasn't the flow, it was the blast zone where trees were uprooted. Fair point, that lateral blast is pretty awesome. BIG HEADLINE posted:Because it was caused by a landslide that caused a giant lava/magma dome to explosively decompress, which served to open an eruption channel that lead to the massive eruption. The umbrella is a nice touch. Very ACME.
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Jan 21, 2015 13:27
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Because it was caused by a landslide that caused a giant lava/magma dome to explosively decompress, which served to open an eruption channel that lead to the massive eruption. Wow that guy really has a lot of confidence in his umbrella.
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Jan 21, 2015 19:00
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This is a pretty old clip (2007), but if you've ever played War Thunder you know the feeling of that front plane, barring the whole "you're actually going to die" part. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHDZqUa0m1s
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Jan 21, 2015 19:25
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Because it was caused by a landslide that caused a giant lava/magma dome to explosively decompress, which served to open an eruption channel that lead to the massive eruption. That mountain tumor was nuts. A bulge in a mountain growing at a rate of five Edit: I was off some. McNally fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 19:59
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VikingSkull posted:St. Helens is a spectacular blast, but Pinatubo was over twice as large. St. Helens ejected a cubic mile of material, Pinatubo ejected 2.4 cubic miles. If we're talking world ending volcanic eruptions, Pinatubo ain't got poo poo on the Yellowstone Caldera. The Lava Creek eruption ejected 240 cubic miles of material.  I remember hearing my dad give a lecture on the Yellowstone eruptions during a field trip there and was just  Not that Yellowstone is going to blow its stack anytime soon. 
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Jan 21, 2015 20:25
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BIG HEADLINE posted:The best part is that the only reason the pictures survived was that he - about as calmly as I can imagine a guy facing imminent death could - rewound the film, put everything back in its case, and then laid on top of it to protect it from the cloud of superheated poisonous gas coming his way. Then there was the guy who had just enough time to radio out a few words, and the other guy who saw the first guy's trailer getting blown away and radioed that he was next. 
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Jan 21, 2015 20:38
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I grew up in one of the valleys around mount rainier. I did not get to see the May eruption, but there was another blast a couple months later when the skies were completely clear and I could see the huge mushroom cloud on the horizon. The Cold War was still going and that made the mushroom cloud thing especially spooky. And then science nerd dad had to explain what would happen to our town if rainier went off, buried under 100s of feet of hot mud from a glacier rushing down the valley. That was cool.
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Jan 21, 2015 21:28
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howe_sam posted:If we're talking world ending volcanic eruptions, Pinatubo ain't got poo poo on the Yellowstone Caldera. The Lava Creek eruption ejected 240 cubic miles of material. 240 cubic miles is cute. Toba ejected 690 cubic miles La Garita was 1,200 cubic miles <-250,000 megatons The Chicxulub impact was 400 times as powerful as La Garita, but then a rock 6 miles wide moving at a couple of miles a second will do that. Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 23:47
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VikingSkull posted:The Chicxulub impact was 400 times as powerful as La Garita, but then a rock 6 miles wide moving at a couple of miles a second will do that. Psh. That's the small bore of interstellar impacts. When the Earth was relatively young (~4.5 billion years ago) it got involved with an off-center collision with a Mars-sized planetary body. Earth and that other planet eventually gelled together, so the earth got a bit fatter, and the ejecta from the impact formed the moon. Basically the intersteller version of shooting an apple with a shotgun slug. Boom.
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Jan 22, 2015 01:50
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Cyrano4747 posted:Psh. That's the small bore of interstellar impacts. That's nothing compared to a type 1a supernova or what is thought to have created all the gold in the universe (neutron star collisions).
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Jan 22, 2015 07:41
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What do we have here? China's new transport the Y-20. Dance off with the C-17  But really it seems to have more of a Il-76 heritage 
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Jan 22, 2015 09:49
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Red Crown posted:
Firstly, I need to remember when I post something. Secondly thanks for the info. I had it in my head that their ship building was dying, since they were in favour of aircraft/missiles etc. Not sure where I got that idea, reflecting on it now, nor if its even remotely accurate. I wonder if it might be due to the state of the submarine fleet, in which they seemed to have been dragging their feet on retiring what they didn't need and replacing it with a more suitable fleet. That said, it'd probably be a good thing if they could materially lose their ability to develop their fleet - it'd be less stressful for the rest of the world. It will be interesting to see how India develops off the back of the Russians. The Indians seem to fancy themselves as somewhat of a counter to Chinese influence. Whether that's true, is an entirely different story.
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Jan 22, 2015 10:47
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:That's nothing compared to a type 1a supernova or what is thought to have created all the gold in the universe (neutron star collisions). I wonder how many megatons the Big Bang works out to
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Jan 22, 2015 13:35
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VikingSkull posted:I wonder how many megatons the Big Bang works out to All of them.
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Jan 22, 2015 13:55
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Smiling Jack posted:All of them. 
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Jan 22, 2015 16:48
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VikingSkull posted:I wonder how many megatons the Big Bang works out to If we treat the Big Bang (very loosely) as having (from our perspective) a yield equal to the mass-energy content of the observable universe, we would get approximately 1054 megatons. This is more than you can conceive of, and still neglects energy related to space-time inflation or the (presumably infinite) universe beyond our light horizon.
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Jan 22, 2015 20:23
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Frozen Horse posted:If we treat the Big Bang (very loosely) as having (from our perspective) a yield equal to the mass-energy content of the observable universe, we would get approximately 1054 megatons. This is more than you can conceive of, and still neglects energy related to space-time inflation or the (presumably infinite) universe beyond our light horizon. I'm not an astrophysicist, but I don't think it works like that. Wouldn't taking the mass-energy content of the observable universe give us the energy released if the Big Bang had involved only that matter and consumed all of it to produce energy? In that scenario wouldn't there be no observable material in the universe, only the released energy from the detonation? I think what you're doing is kinda akin to weighing the shrapnel left over from the casing of a bomb and assuming that it held an equal weight of explosive. In short, the Big Bang was probably way, way bigger than that. Then again I'm certainly wrong on all sorts of conceptual levels here.
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Jan 22, 2015 20:43
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Jan 22, 2015 20:51
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'm not an astrophysicist, but I don't think it works like that. Wouldn't taking the mass-energy content of the observable universe give us the energy released if the Big Bang had involved only that matter and consumed all of it to produce energy? In that scenario wouldn't there be no observable material in the universe, only the released energy from the detonation? That's the thing, though. Until some length of time after the big bang, there WAS NO MATTER. It was all energy. Mass-energy equivalence is exactly what you had. The entire universe was an infinitesimally small point of pure energy, then BOOM and now the point is measurably larger and still pure energy. The universe then expands considerably faster than lightspeed, which lowers the temperature enough to get matter particles to condense out. There's your first 10^-32 seconds. A microsecond later and you get protons. A few seconds later there are enough protons around that the entire universe turns into a ball of fusion. Three minutes later, all observable material in the universe stops fusing (there are still pockets), and the universe is merely expanding at lightspeed. A couple hundred thousand YEARS later, and the universe is finally cooler than the surface of a hydrogen bomb, and visible light begins to shine through, since the universe is now cool enough that a free photon is no longer IMMEDIATELY captured and reemited by the plasma all around it. When the light shines through, it means some stable atoms can finally form, and that's when the first stable hydrogen atom exists. So yeah, 380,000 years hotter than the inside of a hydrogen bomb. It was a big explosion.
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Jan 22, 2015 21:06
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Scary how this thread has been talking about volcanos lately and one erupted in Mexico yesterday better quality version http://imgur.com/gallery/bTkqwBB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volc%C3%A1n_de_Colima
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Jan 22, 2015 22:58
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Smiling Jack posted:All of them. I like you.
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Jan 22, 2015 23:24
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This has bugger all to do with airpower, but if you're talking volcanos, this is the most amazing volcano related photo you'll see in a long time.
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Jan 23, 2015 00:53
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Pablo Bluth posted:This has bugger all to do with airpower, but if you're talking volcanos, this is the most amazing volcano related photo you'll see in a long time. Yep, that doesn't look like THE END OF THE WORLD at all.
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Jan 23, 2015 01:27
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Pablo Bluth posted:This has bugger all to do with airpower, but if you're talking volcanos, this is the most amazing volcano related photo you'll see in a long time. this whole thread has apocalyptic undertones so the odd cataclysm kinda fits, IMO just volcanoes and meteor strikes, though, 'cause mushroom clouds and kinetic weapons get me hard
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Jan 23, 2015 01:43
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Volcano chat is cool, I'll post some AIRPOWER later to make up for it
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Jan 23, 2015 06:29
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Half of Montserrat has been rendered uninhabitable thanks to volcanic eruptions.
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Jan 23, 2015 07:01
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I recently read a novel many of you in this thread have likely read, Skunk Works bu Ben Rich and Leo Janos. It's been on my to read shelf for probably...poo poo, the majority of my adult life -- so it felt good to finally read it. It was pretty dang outstanding. I liked how well it was able to balance telling the Skunk Works story in equal parts through the lens of the practical, technical, political, military, and personal. So if you are a U2/SR-71/F-117 fanboy and already know lots about the tech and science behind the planes, no, you may not learn a ton of new information on the technical side, but the book still has lots to teach you about those other processes besides the technical that went on to make these planes into reality. The political and military drama Rich had to go through when he pitched, then developed the F117 alone is fascinating, let alone all those other aspects you will read and learn about. Rich also does a great job of invoking and writing about his old boss, and the patron saint of Skunk Works, the great venerable Kelly Johnson. He is a true larger than life figure and the man behind some of the centuries most fascinating and fantastic planes, and Rich does him great justice by the end of the book. Since I know ya'll have probably already read it , I'll refrain from blabbing about it anymore, and I'll just say the book is good and if anyone reading this thread has somehow not read it, fix that. One last thing though -- I'm not ashamed to say I quite nearly shed manly tears at a few parts of this book The way Kelly died... slowly, deteriorating in a hospital over a period of 4 years until this once giant and strong tree trunk and stubborn bastard of a visionary genious was left as nothing but an 80 pound senile husk. Then Rich taking him to the SR-71's 25th anniversary flyover at Lockheed, and after the sonic boom asking Kelly "Do you know what that was? The pilot is saluting you. We are all saluting you" and seeing tears -- perhaps knowing tears, perhaps not -- in the eyes of the man who willed that otherworldly plane into existence.  Also, the SR-71 pilot describing his experience at that same 25th anniversary fly-by of Lockheed's employees, saying "On the last pass I performed a short, steep afterburner climb and rocked my wings in a salute. I heard later that men had cried". Lastly, the epitaph for the author Ben Rich himself on the last page."At his request, his ashes were scattered from an airplane near his beachfront house on the California coast in Oxnard. At the moment his ashes were released, a Stealth fighter appeared out of the clouds, and dipped its wings in a final salute to its creator.  That's some epic poo poo.So yeah, if you are the type of nerdlinger that can get choked up by stories from the Apollo program, the Skunk Works book will have some of those too, in addition to all the former awesome poo poo I mentioned.
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Jan 23, 2015 08:04
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A tidbit from the early days of airpower: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anecdotes-from-the-archive/2014/12/26/an-american-pilot-at-war-1914-part-i/
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Jan 23, 2015 15:46
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I was browsing Wikipedia about the A-12/SR-71 and I think I'm missing something - why did the SR-71 exist? I mean, the A-12 was a thing that flew missions. They retired it very early since it had some close calls in Vietnam and it would just get more vulnerable over time. And yet, the SR-71 flew for decades after that, despite being slightly slower, flying lower, and having a worse camera since they had to shove two people in it. What am I missing?
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Jan 23, 2015 16:32
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The A-12 got retired because photo satellites got good enough it was no longer needed. The SR-71 had more payload, and was used for ELINT, not just photo missions. Also high-speed dick-wagging.
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Jan 23, 2015 16:37
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david_a posted:I was browsing Wikipedia about the A-12/SR-71 and I think I'm missing something - why did the SR-71 exist? I mean, the A-12 was a thing that flew missions. They retired it very early since it had some close calls in Vietnam and it would just get more vulnerable over time. And yet, the SR-71 flew for decades after that, despite being slightly slower, flying lower, and having a worse camera since they had to shove two people in it. What am I missing? Mostly that SR-71 had a different sensor suite. Side-looking radar, and a guy in the trunk to keep track of it all. As noted, flying over something is a great way to get nice pictures, but you have to be over(ish) your target, which lets your target know you know, and makes it a lot easier/more legal to whip SAMs at it. With a side-looking radar suite, you can fly hundreds of miles away through noncombatant airspace and still gather lots and lots of usable information.
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Jan 23, 2015 17:31
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Wasn't the SR-71 kept on in part because it could do post-SIOP BDA?
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Jan 23, 2015 17:58
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Slo-Tek posted:Mostly that SR-71 had a different sensor suite. Side-looking radar, and a guy in the trunk to keep track of it all. As noted, flying over something is a great way to get nice pictures, but you have to be over(ish) your target, which lets your target know you know, and makes it a lot easier/more legal to whip SAMs at it. With a side-looking radar suite, you can fly hundreds of miles away through noncombatant airspace and still gather lots and lots of usable information. Koesj posted:Wasn't the SR-71 kept on in part because it could do post-SIOP BDA?
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Jan 23, 2015 18:15
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david_a posted:I was browsing Wikipedia about the A-12/SR-71 and I think I'm missing something - why did the SR-71 exist? I mean, the A-12 was a thing that flew missions. They retired it very early since it had some close calls in Vietnam and it would just get more vulnerable over time. And yet, the SR-71 flew for decades after that, despite being slightly slower, flying lower, and having a worse camera since they had to shove two people in it. What am I missing? The A-12 was the first, original blackbird. Its intended mission, like the U-2 it "replaced", was overflying the USSR performing strategic reconnaissance. This is why it was operated by the CIA: it was a "civilian" aircraft flown by a "civilian" pilot illegally entering Soviet airspace, and not a military aircraft flown by an Air Force pilot doing the same, which could be seen as an act of war. Or so went the argument. While the A-12 was being developed, Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2, to the embarrassment of the US and particularly President Eisenhower. No subsequent president would authorize overflights of the USSR, and CORONA was starting to develop an alternative. At some point in the early 1960s, the Air Force heard about the A-12, and thought it would make a good interceptor (YF-12) and battlefield reconnaissance (SR-71) aircraft. Because flying airplanes in battle and around battlefields is what the Air Force does. The A-12 was ready first, but its intended mission no longer existed. Having the CIA fly battlefield reconnaissance was questionable, and once the SR-71 came online couldn't be justified anymore. Plus as others have said, the different sensors available to the SR-71 meant intel could be gathered without placing the aircraft or crew at risk. The risk was more than theoretical; shrapnel from a SA-2 was found lodged in an A-12's wing after a flight over Hanoi (source, section "Under Fire over Vietnam").
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Jan 23, 2015 18:47
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Dead Reckoning posted:Also, not everyone we wanted to collect on was rocking a top-of-the-line SAM network backed by Soviet "advisors." Maybe it was some kind of Lehmanesque "we will totally spy on the Kola peninsula in wartime guys" thing that I read somewhere.
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Jan 23, 2015 19:30
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The parts about overflights clears it up. I didn't realize the SR-71 never physically flew over Russia.
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Jan 23, 2015 19:45
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david_a posted:The parts about overflights clears it up. I didn't realize the SR-71 never physically flew over Russia. Nope it never did 
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Jan 23, 2015 19:53
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfdR0G5gc_s Flanker intercepting Portuguese P-3 over the Baltic sea, in November last year.
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Jan 23, 2015 21:40
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Does anyone remember an article that was (perhaps) posted in this thread, I think it was from an Aussie or Kiwi regarding the Centurion tank in Korea and it was full of hilarious little buts like the tank taking out phone wires and being unable to go up certain slopes and ending up as a pendulum?!?!? Vague description I know but I'm sure I read it in here, forums search and google aren't turning up anything Nevermind, I FOUND IT STRAIGHT AWAY http://antipodeanarmour.blogspot.ca/p/centurion-tanks-in-korea-report-by-lt-j.html
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Jan 24, 2015 18:42
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Yeah, that's a good read
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Jan 24, 2015 18:48
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