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Kim Campbell landed a severely damaged A-10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Campbell_(pilot) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Campbell_(pilot) http://www.aircr

• nether 13y ago
  Mandatory A-10 worship post requirement satisfied. Now onto why guns > missiles, and how the SR-71 was really cool.
  • melling 13y ago
    Hard to believe that the SR-71 is almost 50 years old and it's still the fastest plane in the world. [Update] For some reason, I can't reply to the X-15 comment, so I'll add the extra info here. The X-15 is dropped from a B-52. There are a set of rules to qualify for the record. An unpowered scramjet dropped from another plane isn't going to quality either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record
    • stephencanon 13y ago
      The SR-71 was never the fastest plane in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15). It's the fastest "air-breathing" (i.e. not rocket-powered) plane.
    • lostlogin 13y ago
      Does anyone know why the reply function breaks sometimes? Or is it a feature?
      • saraid216 13y ago
        If you load a comment within X minutes, it won't show the reply link. If you click on "link", you'll see the text box for entering your reply as normal anyways.
      • ColinWright 13y ago
        The deeper the nesting, the longer it takes a "Reply" link to show up. Wait a bit, reload, and it will be there, or follow the "link" link and it will be there immediately. This is a deliberate feature to slow down "discussions" that are actually unproductive back-n-forth arguments.
    • masklinn 13y ago
      > An unpowered scramjet The X-15 isn't even a scramjet, it's a rocket with a bloke at strapped in.
    • dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Hard to believe that the SR-71 is almost 50 years old and it's still the fastest plane in the world. Its not really that surprising -- survivability through sheer speed seems to have been largely abandoned in favor of focussing largely on stealth (see, B-2 Spirit vs. B-1 Lancer). With the motivation for pouring money into moar speed gone, you stop getting moar speed.
  • outworlder 13y ago
    I'm curious: why guns > missiles? SR-71 was really cool, except for the leaky fuel issue.
    • tsotha 13y ago
      They're not, which is part of the reason the A-10 is being retired.
    • billforsternz 13y ago
      I think nether has decided there are a group of A-10 fanboys who love the plane unconditionally. It has guns not missiles, therefore guns must be better than missiles. Perhaps the same group has unconditional love of SR-71. Not saying any of this myself, just trying to interpret nether's thoughts for you.
      • BrandonMarc 13y ago
        In my ROTC days they described the A-10 as basically a "flying gun" ... the rumor was they chose a massive gun, and then designed a plane to fit around it, done.
  • rhizome 13y ago
    Either you're giving people ideas or you have your finger on the pulse of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7363115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7363115