Some Ekranoplans (like the Lun mentioned in the article) have the ability to fly above the ground effect zone, though less efficiently.
If rogue waves (or other rough sea) can be spotted far enough ahead, the plane could increase altitude over brief rough spots, settling back on to its ground effect cushion once calmer waters were reached.
Because it's travelling so much faster than surface waves, the lidar (or whatever scanning system) would only have to consider a relatively narrow field of view in front of the craft.
Ahh, yes. A little digging shows that these tests are done at their McGregor, TX test site, and McGregor is well within hearing and visual range of the tests.
A launch is completely different from a private short-range test on a closed site.
You could watch a launch live, and they are very public about the timing, purpose, and location of launches before they happen.
The Grasshopper tests (to my knowledge) are not open for public observation, and I haven't seen any media coverage prior to tests, so if there was an unsuccessful test it wouldn't be as obvious as an unsuccessful launch attempt.
My question was whether this is by design, and if there was an unsuccessful test whether they would showcase that as well, in the manner that unsuccessful launches are well documented public 'learning experiences'.
Does SpaceX document all their tests publicly? Or are we just seeing the successful ones? (If they've all been successful ones, will we see unsuccessful ones if they come in the future?)
The spellchecker doesn't actually kick in all that often. The better solution is to give flags back differentiating between 'unlikely' and 'impossible' email addresses.
Oh the edge cases will be so angry. There are a very few engineers at Google who have Gmail account names shorter than 6 characters. It's not the norm, but they exist. Their addresses can't be validated.
I'm sure there are special cases all over the place. It would be nice if Mailgun differentiated between 'this address is just malformed' and 'from what I know of [ISP], this address oughtn't exist'.
People have waited through so many failed attempts to record the drop that nobody wants to mention that they didn't 'really' record an unassisted drop. The bead is still connected when it hits bottom, and the tail doesn't break until they raised up the suspended platform.
Check the video and notice that the suspended vessel jumps about 2 inches higher just after the drop.
It's a good recording, but I'm looking forward to a better one in 2026.
I really like the side-by-side comparison, buy why use a dark, non-default background for the iOS 6 home screen and a light one for the iOS 7 home screen? It looks like you're tossing objectivity to push a point.
This is a superb point. When the photo is supposed to document the interview the photographer can't be the interviewer. It would be like a news reporter filming themselves.