Pan Am and the Salad Days
#11
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Joined APC: Apr 2019
Posts: 190
Isn't the limiting factor subsonic vs supersonic flow through the engine? Wasn't that the point of the complex inlet system, to keep subsonic flow? At some point, it has to be supersonic to go faster, which gets you into scramjet territory in terms of keeping the fuel lit.
#12
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Joined APC: Apr 2019
Posts: 190
This stuff was all beaten out in the 60s with the SST. Now we have better engines, electronics and tires. The reason needed for an SST is a perceived economic one. In the 60s the business was between US and Europe now China, Japan, India, Korea and Russia are players. They are a long ways off. Maybe things are about to change.
#14
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Joined APC: Apr 2011
Posts: 1,435
My last flight I had a jump seat rider who gave me his ID. I looked at it and said - I thought you were dead. The Squadron gets shot up and you disappear. What happened?- He said they transferred me to do secret missions flying into Cambodia. I said I thought that must have been exciting. He said exciting yes but we accomplished little.
I've no right to speak to your JS rider's disillusionment in his assignment. No right to tell anyone answering a call to arms anything. I can relate only what their service means to me, then and now. When witnessing PRC totalitarianism plow forward onto the property and private lives of those beyond reach of credible resistance, the fight in SE Asia was not lost so much as it could never reach its oft revised, stated objectives. The cost in grief cannot be mitigated. Measured in tears, you'd overflow an ocean. But Central Party intent, to exploit then destroy any semblance of a meaningful Bill of Rights, rolls on & on. Thanks to men like Pooch and his fellow warriors, us later boomers got to cling onto freedoms successive generations will continue to see attacked. Only this time with improved, virtually borderless methods and tools. Once Lady Liberty stands down, what do you want to bet she ain't never coming back?
#15
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Joined APC: Apr 2019
Posts: 190
What we have is worth protecting. That protection will not be provided by super heroes it has never been so. It is ordinary men like yourself that are tasked with carrying the torch. War is but one way to keep us free.