"I want my flying cars!" Every time I read stuff like this, I can't help but flash back to when I was a kid in the '70s, watching shows like "Lost in Space" (suspended animation, handheld laser weapons, AI robots, and FTL travel by the '90s), "Land of the Giants" (hypersonic sub-orbital passenger jets by the '80s), and "The Six Million Dollar Man" (advanced cybernetics, flight vehicles, even weather control by the '70s). You'd be surprised how many hours I spent drooling over those great astronomy books with artist renditions of domed Moon colonies, rotating space stations, portable jet packs, etc. I just *knew* that by now we'd have all the above tech and more. As a kid, watching Star Trek saying that Captain Christopher's son would lead a manned probe to Saturn, I knew we'd have ion rockets taking us to Martian colonies and asteroid mining sites by now. I knew we'd be flying PanAm rockets to that space station for vacations.
Sigh...we're decades behind where I thought we'd be. So cool as this is, I always have to fight that feeling in my gut that it's way behind schedule. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr. Worf" <hellomahog...@gmail.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2010 2:39:07 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [scifinoir2] Boeing's unmanned aerial vehicle hits goals Boeing's unmanned aerial vehicle hits goals Boeing said the first flight of the X-51A WaveRider unmanned aerial vehicle reached a top speed of about Mach 5 and flew nearly three and a half minutes before losing acceleration and being destroyed. By Seattle Times business staff Boeing said the first flight of the X-51A WaveRider unmanned aerial vehicle reached a top speed of about Mach 5 and flew nearly three and a half minutes before losing acceleration and being destroyed, as planned. Using a Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne supersonic combustion ramjet motor, the unmanned vehicle was launched from under the wing of a B-52 Stratofortress that took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California. "We built four test vehicles to get a successful flight, and we hit many of our goals right out of the gate, the first time around," said Charlie Brink, the Air Force's X-51A program manager. "This is a new world record and sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications, including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach and commercial transportation," said Joe Vogel, Boeing director of Hypersonics and X-51A program manager. -- Celebrating 10 years of bringing diversity to perversity! Mahogany at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mahogany_pleasures_of_darkness/
