hellyeasa

Before any Southern Californians object, remember that almost all your clean water comes from snowmelt diverted through hundreds of miles of aqueducts. Draining lakes such as Owen's Lake to a dusty dry alkali bed.

Who are we to condemn India's actions? Let's just hope the project minimizes ecological impact.

Sorry, this is ridiculous, it just wont happen (not ever, just this company). From my experience in the aerospace industry, having a manned prototype aircraft of this scale fly within 2 years, supersonic no less (!!), is an impossibility. It is simply not possible, at least with any sane regard for safety.

Aircraft are hard, you need an army of experienced engineers, like thousands, and hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and resources to design a 21st century aircraft. It doesn't matter if you're Elon Musk or whoever, that's the state of the art nowadays. You need to run numerous (supersonic!) wind tunnel tests of a design (each test spanning months, with year long lead time before testing, and months of analysis and design in between tests). There are only a few facilities in the world (like the 10x10 at Glenn Research Center) that can provide such wind tunnel testing. Structural and aerodynamic work will take years of iteration to meet basic design challenges. Actuators, flight computers, air data sensors, etc... need to be chosen with very careful forethought via trades with big name suppliers, and lead times for these things can be 9 months to 1.5 years easy. The engine is as important as the entire airframe its self, and there are only three engine manufacturers in the entire world that could make an engine for a plane like this. One would need to be designed from scratch from one of these manufacturers and would easily take 3-5 years! Oh, and they would need a ton of capital and thousands of engineers to do it too. This doesn't happen from a scrappy looking start up with random engine parts sitting in a room with a whiteboard. This is a joke, investing in this company is a sure way to throw away your investment. Sorry, that's the cold hard facts.

Yea, spacex managed to succeed, at least so far, but look how big they are now and how long it took them to get where they are today. And I would argue that spacex's engineering challenges are easier than those needed for a 21st century supersonic jet transport.

Sorry, that's just the state of aerospace engineering today. Major new aircrarft are only developed by the big boys with the experience and resources to make it happen over a 10-20 year time frame with continued but small investments in R&D, and incremental leaps in technology.

Might be plagiarized, but the pictures from the mashable article add to the story. People should still check it out after reading the original but they should really source this issue :/

Particularly the last photo, a man drawing out computer workflow with a bible open in front of him. Quite a juxtaposition to think about!

"The lord is my shepherd,

I shall not want;

he makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me...."

Here's another cool random plane tidbit.

Commercial jetliner fuselage wall thicknesses are typically around 1-2mm. They don't call 'em flying tincans for nothin! Think about that next time you fly!

Beautiful article.

This was beautiful.

Why do all websites have the same design? It's boring and lifeless?

Who cares? This is a reddit-esque circle jerk as clear as can be.

Good god. What is this pretentious bullshit? This tone of this post was so incredibly ridiculous I had to create an account to ask why it was posted here or taken seriously.

This self proclaimed smart person, with heavy emphasis on the self proclaimed part (check out the incredibly smug About page) apparently needs Lyme disease to feel the plight of the oh so pitiful stupid people. News flash, half the population is dumber than average, stop acting like Lyme disease is a cute self reflection on intelligence.

I am not attacking your smartness, and please get well soon, but don't be a pretentious asshole. God. South Park's "Smug Alert!" episode perfectly encapsulates the culture of this place sometimes.

Over and out.