Thor’s Hall

Having earned an engineering degree of my own, I find this little ditty to be a little bit too true.

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, ‘Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.’

The woman below replied, ‘You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.’

‘You must be an engineer,’ said the balloonist.

‘I am,’ replied the woman, ‘How did you know?’

‘Well,’ answered the balloonist,‘ everything you told me is, technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help so far.’

The woman below responded, ‘You must be in Management.’

‘I am,’ replied the balloonist, ‘but how did you know?’

‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.’

I finally found the time to take a look at this video that was posted over at Lex’s. Good comments on this post (as usual at Lex’s) too.

WOW! I never understood what the USAF was so excited about with this jet. I mean it’s just a next gen stealth fighter, right. Boy was I off. If this is just a one generational step the future is going to be very interesting. The future is going to very interesting anyway. Aerodynamics as I know it has changed dramaticlly. We knew with the Harrier that vectored thrust allowed us to do a lot of VSTOL stuff, and some unusual in flight manuvering but it was seriously tricky.

Raptor though, it can be fast, it can be slow, and I know that while he says that the aircraft never departs controlled flight…it sure looks like it does. Listen to the manuvering speeds that the pilot is working with in some of these vertical manuvers. Also check out the turn and loop radii on this bird. It would be really cool to see those manuvers in a wind tunnel smoke stream. Laminar flow….NOT.

Cool stuff. The USAF has good reason to want some more of these.

F-22 Raptor All Out Demo / Pilot Major “Max” Moga Describes Eac – video powered by Metacafe