Litespeed

It must be that new fangled safety paint. It takes the hit like a bumper bar. Pigs arse

Always loved the design of the Sapphire, it just looks right. Would be a great candidate for electric conversion/hybrid in a few years as batteries get much better. The rise of drone warfare has stirred the development pot for small hybrids particularly rotary.

Looks like a Winton Sapphire on floats.

As used in the movie, Flight of the Phoenix.

What a beautiful aircraft. Such a loss of a wonderful machine

Unless it's built of special high temp epoxies resins and then post cured by a oven, the answer is ... No. Sadly you need a very high reflection level from infrared and UV to stop the resin softening with heat. A hot day and a +4G aircraft can become 1-2G and due to heat soak the spar will still be soft until at height for extended periods. It tends to be only the very expensive prepreg carbon machines from Europe which are oven baked that can take the lovely darker paint and not suffer. You can get away with some colour decals on the vertical sides or cowl but anything else is suspect. If Jabiru say No, then it's No. That also goes for the undersides of a wing, a dark underwing will soak heat esp from a hot concrete or worse tarmac surface. Is it possible to do a ultra high reflectivity silver? Probably but the risk is yours. I personally love shiny silver. If you want to go that way then test modules for heat transmission would be needed to see the effect of the paint. Not all paints are equal.

Careful Some skyhooks are better than others. Just ask Shirl and his chopper.

Great in concept, I have often watched Kestrels up close gliding on a cliff into the airstream to hunt. They can stay in the same spot gliding into the wind even with gusting. Even getting the idea to work at drone scales seems hard, advantages will greatly depend mission profile. Changing the shape of a wing in area will still require strong fast servos and be complex for mechanisms. Essentially you need to change the wing area to provide for a higher wing loading penetration into rough air. This for a bird means folding the wings in a not just changing angle of the wing but greatly reduces the area. A blended wing body with variable retractable or folding tips would seem the answer. Retractable would reduce drag but folding tips would be more stable. It's all going to be mission profile dependant. A drone can anything from a party killer for a tank hatch or a high speed winged missile.

This idea of been stuck til next year seems plausible but extreme. It was even on the BBC World service with interviews from expert insiders. The capsule is a nightmare design and full of questionable design and quality. More a upgraded 60s design with high tech. In typical Boeing style the fails are much more than stated. As per the 737 max, safety was a cost option, esp given it was a fixed price contract. The tests done in the capsule naturally included the ability to launch, dock , undock and safely land via parachute. All automatically via programs. As you would expect. Alas, the mods done for the crewed flight somehow involved those auto systems programs ability had been partially removed for expense/ stupidity, it may have been just a new version of programming for the crewed flights but it somehow is not able to fully Auto return. They are now rushing to try and reprogram for the capsule to be able to undock and fly home without crew for safety. So it's considered unsafe for uncrewed return, at this stage. Apparently they either -fix it for safe crewed flight return, which is seemingly a tough task in space with no spare parts and still programming problems are a thing. - get a lift in the next Dragon, which will need to leave two seats spare for the crew return. That means the Boeing capsule must Auto return or at least undock for the gate to be available for the next Dragon flight. Apparently they will even need new suits for the Boeing crew as they are not compatible with Dragon. It seems like the typical litany of fuckups Boeing style. At least NASA are on the job or Boeing would just hit the launch button and safety be damned. I do take many reports with a big dose of scepticism but it seems to have some legs given Boeing's track record on this program. Meanwhile NASA are very pissed and have to find a use for two unexpected long term guests which use valuable on board resources and a media disaster. From here on terra firma is seems a good laugh, but I am sure those Astronauts are not happy about getting in the capsule again.

The first two are good. The last is downright scary. Fortunately at this time that video is a fake and no such systems are currently available. My robotics engineering son and I discussed this exact thing over ten years ago and decided not to proceed as it would be evil and open to mass murder. But it is a indicator of the possible, esp in China where constant surveillance and face recognition is a thing. Fortunately for us, my son and I are not evil. He promised never to make killing machines and we are much safer. Sadly lots of smart bad people exist.

Because it's the driest place on earth, for available moisture. No moisture available to ice up from the pressure drop due to the Venturi effect. Where's the free 🍺

Bit of history. This guy is a Swedish 737 Captain.

It's called ETOPS. Which stands for.....Engine Turns Or Passengers Swim. 😶‍🌫️

The unsprung weight is a issue, but with development and the use of full electro magnetic suspension instead of normal strut/ spring plus suspension arms and current heavy hub/ disc, caliper setup etc it might come out not having a significantly higher number. It won't be for full sports cars but has quite a bit of potential. Various evolutions of the idea will take hold.

I am definitely on the pilots side. How deaf and blind would you have to be. It's not like the beaver is a quite aircraft in any way. Nor is it easy to miss it in your vision. As someone who lives on water, the master/captain/ imbecile driving that boat is incredibly lucky and completely without excuse. You are responsible for 360 degrees around you ,not just straight ahead. Just hope they were drunk and get charged appropriately. Poor pilot and passengers.