Comment by Pyxl101 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Pyxl101 | Hacker News Reader

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Fighters are all designed to carry humans. Humans fall unconscious under high G-forces. Imagine a drone fighter. It could turn tighter and accelerate drastically faster than a human-carrying fighter.

The US has lots of boring drones, but perhaps there is a secret drone fighter program. It would surprise me somewhat if the US weren't working on something like this, perhaps with a goal of keeping it secret until it needs to be deployed operationally. Plenty of military technologies have been kept secret for decades, such as the SR-71 and the spy satellites on which the Hubble Space Telescope was based. On that note, did you know that the Hubble was basically an extra spy satellite donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the US had a fleet of them pointed downwards toward earth? For more on this, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen

So, consider: what kind of reconnaissance satellites does the US have today, that resulted in the retirement of the "Crystal" series? (Obviously something digital) Did the US's investment in supersonic spycraft end with the SR-71? If the US were going to design such a craft today, would it have a pilot or would it be autonomous?

On the other hand, if this were a top secret US technology, then I suspect all of the people who observed these phenomena would simply have been sworn to secrecy. I doubt it would be treated as a UFO and I doubt these officers would be speaking publicly about it. Unless this is all some kind of cover for the program. Who knows!

> decades

The predecessor of the SR-71 first flew in April on 1962, the public announcement was July of 1964. Given how much trouble we've had with our hypersonic research programs over the decades, and the lack of need for it given stealth is more affordable, there might have been some cool stuff, but it's not a practical or likely operational tool.

The first launch of a KH-11 was mid-seventies and subject to a lot of media coverage during the spy trials a few years later. Imagery was leaked during the Reagan admin. We don't need better resolution, we need more coverage.

So IMO our secrets are less about silver-bullet platforms and more about exploits. Exploiting their radars, sensors, communications systems, networks and computers. We don't really need a Mach 5 platform or 1" resolution for anything. It would be neat, but it would be unaffordable to buy and maintain.

It's encouraging that this tech exists, no matter who has it. It's obviously tech--not magic--which means it's based on laws of nature, which means we have some learning to do. I'm confident we'll do that some day soon and that's exciting.

So just to fuel a conspiracy theory: the huge budget overstretch of the F-35 fighter could be a cover for a secret set of drone fighter jets.

I certainly hope so. A black budget allocation syphoning from a legitimate project of dubious progress is actually more comforting than the alternative of financial malfeasance and design/engineering/fabrication management incompetence.

Wouldn't a drone still emit hot exhaust? Or how does it reach 2,400 mph as described in the popularmechanics article above?

That must be some damn nice secret propulsion system.

How do we know the object first sited was the same one seen later at the CAP point?

You reminded me of a quote my father once told me: "I fully expect to see UFOs in the future, and they'll be real. They'll also have USAF emblems on the side."

For decades, he worked as a civil servant in the DoD as an instrumentation and test engineer on a few well known weapons programs (and some not so much). I think he based his comment on the trajectory military technology was taking, as he commented similarly to you (referring to Pyxl101) regarding the human problem. i.e. if you remove the humans, you can save weight on life support, and you can do things you otherwise can't when you're limited to keeping the pilot alive and (mostly) functioning.

Part of me wants to believe he might've seen what we'd now call UFOs, but I'm confident that's wishful thinking. His remarks were offered based on his own experiences, and I'm sure he extrapolated from there. Regardless, I wouldn't be surprised if some of your predictions did turn out to be true in the near future.

Your last statement also reminded me of Project Mogul[1] and the use of UFOs as a cover story (or rather not, as the case might be). In all likelihood, the Roswell "UFO crash" was an errant Mogul balloon--a project shrouded in secrecy to some degree or another, mostly because we knew the Soviets had stolen our technology but we didn't want them to know we had ways of detecting their tests. I don't believe the USAF instigated the UFO theory, and neither do I believe the air force particularly cared. After all, if I understand the timeline correctly, it wasn't until the mid/late 1970s when the UFO researcher Stanton Friedman began perpetuating the myth, long after the actual event in 1947. As a cover story, that would've come far too late to be useful enough to cover for Project Mogul. To an extent--at least in the early days--I suspect early UFO "research" was largely the outcome of a means to pursue fame or money via book sales and speaking engagements more than a theory perpetuated by the government.

Now, that's not to say that the government isn't using it now that UFOs have long been established in popular culture. That may very well be a strong possibility.

Aside: I once attended a talk with my father that Mr. Friedman gave in the 1990s on UFOs. I also recall Friedman was made somewhat uncomfortable with the fact my father was not only aware of Project Blue Book but had access to the archives when he was at the air force academy. The brief exchange between the two was made when Mr. Friedman asked the audience if anyone had heard of the project and were familiar with (IIRC) volume 13.

Friedman quickly changed subjects away from "government cover up" for reasons that escape me. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul

Humans fall unconscious under high G-forces.

That's a little misleading. Acceleration hasn't any effects on human body. You can't sense gravity: free fall is the same as ingravity. What you can feel is forces being transmitted by matter contact.

If you can create a field that transmits a force similar to gravity uniformly, there would be no pressure.

It's not misleading. The high G-forces are transmitted by matter contact. Can you think of a way to accelerate a person at greater than 1G without contact with something made of matter?

Of course. Let the poor guy fall on the Sun.

We're talking about aircraft operating in Earth's atmosphere.

I try not to assume bad faith in your responses, but you're making it very difficult. My original comment was very clear that it was assuming a technology that we don't currently own. And then you put arbitrary restrictions to the conjecture to force it wrong.

Now you're moving again goal posts just "to be right". That's incredibly childish.

Of course you haven't adressed my core point, possibly because you can't understand it.

Edit: try stating my point and we'll see what's on your mind.

I don't mind being wrong (I like learning!), and "winning" is not my goal here. I don't believe that I'm moving goal posts or being childish, and so it seems like we're inadvertently talking past each other.

I believe your core point is that humans can't detect a force which acts identically on their whole body. Have I understood? This statement is true, of course, but does not seem relevant in context, as it seems to ignore all but the one sentence you quoted, which itself is true in its own context. I don't consider Pyxl101's ignoring of magical-seeming hypothetical technology to be misleading.

Pyxl101's comment [1], which you replied to, is all about practical technology. In that context, your comment seems like an irrelevant technicality (I think this is why you got downvoted), as no practical mode of transport can move someone without physical contact, which transfers force unevenly (just to the parts of the body in contact with the vehicle).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19805808

I believe your core point is that humans can't detect a force which acts identically on their whole body.

More than "detect", a uniform force simply doesn't affect us.

This statement is true, of course, but does not seem relevant in context...

On the contrary, the thread was started discussing if we could be facing a far superior technology, continued by Pyxl101 speculating UFOs could be drones because enormous accelerations prevent manned ships, and then I pointed that, if it's really a futurist technology, acceleration in itself could not be a problem.

... no practical mode of transport can move someone without physical contact

The "practical" thing has been inserted by yourself. Also it's not about "practical" it's about "known by us".

The kickoff point for your comment was about G-forces. In that context, "acceleration" is clearly felt acceleration in your local reference frame, not a free-falling acceleration relative to an outside observer. The scenario of falling into the Sun is clearly irrelevant. Then you want to accuse mkl of moving the goalposts and adding arbitrary conditions? You're the one running around with the goalposts.

well the alcubierre drive (which is purely speculative math around negative energy, not something that can be engineered) should move mass without accelerating it.

That's pretty much equivalent to "magic!", and is the opposite of high G-forces.

Could you submerse a human in a tank of water? I've heard that acceleration in water will be experienced as water pressure.

That would be pretty bulky and costly to include in an aircraft cockpit, but I wonder if it would solve the G-force problem.

I'm not sure if this would actually be better, though. 7 Gs of acceleration would be experienced as 7 bar pressure, equivalent to water pressure at 60 meters underwater, which is quite deep. Rapid changes in pressure between 1 bar and let's say 7 bar would probably be more uncomfortable to experience than regular G-forces.

Not true. Rotating bodies experience acceleration without any material contact.

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