Missiles
I have had a subscription to Aviation Week and Space Technology since I was 18 years old. That is a long time. One of the things I liked to read about were missiles, guided missiles. Not slingstones or arrows or rocks; but guided missiles, with seekers and warheads and flames shooting out the back. That was cool.
I liked to read about them and I liked to talk about them. Once a freind of mine was fixing an airplane and I talked at him for 45 minutes about some Air Force test of various air to air missiles. Remember that Fred? I thought it was about the most important thing there was.
Other people didn't think so and I finally realized that so I stopped talking about missiles; until now. Now I am in a place where people occasionally shoot missiles at little airplanes like mine so I get to talk about missiles, for real. I can talk about burn times, warhead fuzing, elevation angles, battery lives, tactics and all sorts of other stuff and people listen. They not only listen they tell me about fuzing, operator training, seeker limits and various spectral signatures and we have discussions about it. The 18 year old who lives inside of me is thrilled to pieces about all this.
The old man who lives inside of me though, he isn't so thrilled. He doesn't know quite what to think.
I was talking to one of my guys on my crew and I told him "You know, we should be flattered the bad guys think our little airplanes are important enough to occasionally shoot at." He said he didn't feel so flattered. I wonder if he has been speaking to that old man.
I liked to read about them and I liked to talk about them. Once a freind of mine was fixing an airplane and I talked at him for 45 minutes about some Air Force test of various air to air missiles. Remember that Fred? I thought it was about the most important thing there was.
Other people didn't think so and I finally realized that so I stopped talking about missiles; until now. Now I am in a place where people occasionally shoot missiles at little airplanes like mine so I get to talk about missiles, for real. I can talk about burn times, warhead fuzing, elevation angles, battery lives, tactics and all sorts of other stuff and people listen. They not only listen they tell me about fuzing, operator training, seeker limits and various spectral signatures and we have discussions about it. The 18 year old who lives inside of me is thrilled to pieces about all this.
The old man who lives inside of me though, he isn't so thrilled. He doesn't know quite what to think.
I was talking to one of my guys on my crew and I told him "You know, we should be flattered the bad guys think our little airplanes are important enough to occasionally shoot at." He said he didn't feel so flattered. I wonder if he has been speaking to that old man.
posted by Carl at 11:08 AM
2 Comments:
That 18 year old inside you isnt buried very deep Carl, but I would say that there is no old man hiding in there who I have even met. Perhpas the new found respect for missiles is merely that 18 year old maturing a bit after seeing firsthand the damage those missiles inflict on the lives they encounter.
Glad to see a fellow rocketier,
I curretly have some nice G and H size re-usable engines and rockets. I love it the alltitides are amazing need sensing equipment to find these if you dont get the wind right. I will never forget my niece saying "Huston we have a problem" as one of the Rockets got hung up a little on take off and went a little squirely.
If you remeber the old estee rockets this is similar but 64 - 128 times more power.
A = 1
B = 2
C = 4
D = 8
E = 16
F = 32
G = 64
H = 128
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