Free Republic

Two Olympic gold medalist ski jumpers have been suspended over their alleged involvement in manipulating ski suits to make them more aerodynamic. Three staff members embroiled in the cheating scandal - including the head coach - have also been stood down from their jobs. SNIP It has emerged that team officials manipulated pre-approved and microchipped suits to increase their size and improve aerodynamics to help athletes fly further. It was revealed in footage secretly filmed from behind a curtain then sent by a whistleblower to international media. A FIS official said the illegal alterations were only confirmed by tearing apart...

February 2, 2009 It might look ugly but this 1992 Honda Civic has double the fuel mileage of a standard Civic simply by lowering the coefficient of drag (Cd) from 0.34 to 0.17 with a little engineering savvy and $400 worth of material bought the local hardware store. In fact the drag on this 350,000 miles (563,270 km) old Civic has been reduced to the point where it is virtually equal to the radical tear drop shaped Aptera which has a Cd of 0.15. The car's builder Mike Turner says at a highway speed of 65 mph (105 km/h) he...

The Russian government has commissioned the renewal of the “Caspian Sea Monster,” the legendary ground effect vehicle (GEV). Only 30 such crafts were built in the Soviet Union over two decades. Propeller The revival of GEV production was announced by the Alekseev design and construction bureau, which used to be the leading producer of such vehicles. According to its production branch director, Evgeny Meleshko, the bureau is working on a big model. It will spend two years making the new design with the first tests to be launched in 2012. “For our company it’s a big project, and most of...

Piloted by Lockheed Martin F-35 Test Pilot Jeff Knowles, the third F-35B Lightning II short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) stealth fighter landed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., today. "Today, the third of our five STOVL test jets joined the F-35 fleet at the Test Center as our flight test program initiates the expansion of the F-35's flight-sciences envelope," said Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and general manager of F-35 Program Integration. "Our focus remains on fielding the F-35's tremendous capabilities to our warfighters, recapitalizing our nation’s aging fighter fleet, and meeting our commitments to the F-35 partner...

Those of us in flight test at California’s Edwards Air Force Base in 1959 accused the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter production engineers of turning the designer’s drawings upside down. The wings of most aircraft employed dihedral—they were set at a slightly upward angle—but the F-104’s wings angled in the opposite direction; the horizontal stabilizer and elevator sat atop the vertical stabilizer instead of below it; and the ejection seat fired down instead of up.We could recover from the spin that resulted from the aircraft pitching up uncontrollably when it stalled,which was due to the T-tail configuration, but most pilots who used...

A new direction for missile defense will continue to evolve in 2010, as what was once regarded as the stuff of fantasy becomes accepted as an essential component of defense and security. One trend will be the fusion of defense against aerodynamic and ballistic targets into a common network. While missiles and other weapons—such as short-range guns and lasers—are tailored for effectiveness against different targets, sensors and sensor platforms gather information on both and pass it through a battle-management system, which activates the shooters that are in the best position to engage. This trend can be seen at work in...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...