X-37B

[///AMG]

Random question....is DUATS still a thing? Haven't really been in an FBO for a long time.

 

[denverpilot]

Random question....is DUATS still a thing? Haven't really been in an FBO for a long time.

Not really. FAA announced they were going to single-source it away from two providers down to one in late 2014 and analyze whether or not all core services were covered by something else. (Lockheed Martin Flight Service, assumably.)

https://faaco.faa.gov/index.cfm/announcement/view/15765

Either they found some oddball thing they had to keep the remaining provider alive for, or they're just moving at the speed of heat cutting them off. Haven't seen anything either way.

 

[bimmerphile]

Random question....is DUATS still a thing? Haven't really been in an FBO for a long time.

Yup, still exists
Idk anyone that uses it anymore, since the ipad entered the GA world

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[ppragman]

It can squeeze a president and her advisor into it and take them to Izzy.

The book was so good until the end, then it totally (in classic Neil Stephenson form) jumped the shark.

Spoilers

































The only thing about the end that was cool was the underground people and the submarine people.

 

[NovemberEcho]

The book was so good until the end, then it totally (in classic Neil Stephenson form) jumped the shark.

Spoilers

































The only thing about the end that was cool was the underground people and the submarine people.

Honestly I thought the pingers totally ruined it. I think it should have been cut in half, the whole 5000 years in the future part really killed it for me. I've never had a book go from great! to meh so quickly.

 

[Beep]

Ha. Well I've been known to also, but honestly I'm old enough to remember when that was the entire point of online message boards.

Nowadays they all have their weird quirks about what topics and discussions are "cool" and what aren't.

Spaceplanes == money in the world I worked in. Spooks and "sensitive" government agencies spend dump trucks full of it. Hell, trainloads of it.

Hell, FAA isn't even all that spooky and they paid a bunch of us a freaking small fortune to install telecom gear that was a decade out of date when they bought it through GTE Federal Systems, and wasn't installed for four more years.

We tried to tell them we were three entire product lines ahead of that thing by the time they ordered some, but they insisted.

Who was I to complain! Go hang out at JFK in a big ugly lime green building and shove some EPROMS and floppies into the 15 year old box to
"Upgrade" it and show GTE how to do the rest of the TRACONs and centers, well into the hard drive era. Haha.

The door to the telecom room is to the left rear of the conference room they showed on TV throughout the whole TWA 800 thing. The conference room sure looked spiffy. Wood panels. Fancy conference table. All that.

The rest of the place? Lime green concrete.

The checks cashed. The GTE guys gave me a tour of the old DUATS support center when I visited them in Chantilly. Well if a tour means walking from the lab a couple doors down to the room and opening the door.

Mainframes and modems down in he basement, baby. Chillin' with the DUATS folks before the Internet really existed.

Nice folk. Drove nice cars. Had big houses. Lots and lots and lots of money...

Nothing really changes in that world.

Nice to meet y'all. I'll try to figure out what the forum rules are on spaceplane fanboi posts more carefully in the future. LOL.

Nice to meet you

 

[Bear]

paxs later exited under darkness ..

 

[killbilly]

The book was so good until the end, then it totally (in classic Neil Stephenson form) jumped the shark.

The only thing about the end that was cool was the underground people and the submarine people.

Honestly I thought the pingers totally ruined it. I think it should have been cut in half, the whole 5000 years in the future part really killed it for me. I've never had a book go from great! to meh so quickly.

Funny thing. I didn't like the book the first time I read it, but I read it a second time and revised my opinions somewhat.

The last half of the book was heavily speculative, and it was definitely different from anything I've ever seen before. From some other reading I've done, humans - as a species - are extremely adaptable. A five-thousand year window with heavy evolutionary pressure could yield some of the things Stevenson posits in the book.

The stuff about Cradle - the physics part of it - were fascinating to me, especially since it's a field I'm not well-versed in.

 

[NovemberEcho]

Funny thing. I didn't like the book the first time I read it, but I read it a second time and revised my opinions somewhat.

The last half of the book was heavily speculative, and it was definitely different from anything I've ever seen before. From some other reading I've done, humans - as a species - are extremely adaptable. A five-thousand year window with heavy evolutionary pressure could yield some of the things Stevenson posits in the book.

The stuff about Cradle - the physics part of it - were fascinating to me, especially since it's a field I'm not well-versed in.

The physics aspect I was fascinated with. That whip-like thing was brilliant.