I mean 60y of service ain't too shabby for an ocean vessel that submersrs like 80% of itself.
It is sad that the ONR and Scripps didn't have the 8-10mill to keep it functional.
Just sad that the picts were exterminated/assimilated by the 12th century throughout the british isles.
Flipping really isn't the issue. We've had that technology at least since 1912. The trick is flipping twice.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced funding, the decision was taken to scrap the platform. In August 2023, Rob Sparrock, the program officer overseeing ONR’s research vessel program noted that it “... would cost about $8 million to make FLIP useable for another five or 10 years, but that funding could be better used elsewhere.”
Clearly an agent of the secret cabal of Good-Time-Ruiners.
Ngl I've always hated spaceships with those swivel designs.
To me they would be incredibly difficult to pilot since you have to maintain awareness of its position at all times which is already hard enough in a 3d dogfight.
And all that extra difficulty for what? I don't see any real advantages to the design.
This concludes my rant about something that doesn't actually exist. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Solution: just don't swivel during dogfights. Only switch to barbecue mode when not facing enemies.
I always assumed the foils were more for sensors than anything else, increase the size of the aperture to get better resolution, etc.
As for the rotating cockpit, I always assumed it was fixed more or less except you could spin it for different kinds of flying (like nap of the earth flying, orient so the fighter/bomber is above you, etc.)
But I also assumed that the b wing was ridiculously fast but turned for shit, in order to get into a capital ships defenses, drop payload and back out with minimal exposure.
Alas, I was a child and they had to make them stupid.
That must have been terrifying the first time they had to transform that. And maybe every time after that
It's giving controlled titanic disaster but with less death and destruction.
No, actually. Please tell me this technology is some kind of "accidental discovery" relating to the titanic, cause this diagram is very reminiscent of the play-by-play diagrams explaining how it happened.
When I was a kid there was a cartoon that featured one of these in an episode. I think it was from a transformers cartoon? I have spent ages trying to find it and have never been able to
What could possibly be gained from this that you couldn't do much easier faster with a little submersible?
Based on reading the wikipedia page movement in a submersible was exactly that problem they (successfully) solved with this testing platform.
