Take yer kid to work.

My dad works for Boeing in Huntsville, and they had the take your kid to work day thing.  He works on ATL and designed the whole deployment-retraction system.  Today he had (and I got) to go to the shop where the deployment-retraction system is being assembled.

In the shop, there were also 5 Avenger Humvees ans 3 SLAAMRAM control humvees.  The Avenger guys had an external control unit hooked up to one of the Humvees and they even let me "play" with the targeting computer. 

So I got to tilt and rotate the actual turret on an Avenger, with a view screen on the external control unit that connected to the FLIR camera on the turret.  The turret had a pod (empty) of 4 stinger missiles on one side, and a 50-caliber machine gun (emty also) on the other side.  I even pointed the turret at people (the turret was unloaded and the fire control was on safe, im not stupid) and locked on to the heat signature of people while they walked by.  The lock-on was fun, as you push a little black button and an on-screen box surounds the heat profile of what you are looking at and the turret automatically turns to point at the target.  I even locked on to myself as I was working the external controls and walked up to the turret. The turret followed me as I walked up to it, while no one was even at the controls.  I was about 3 feet from the FLIR camera, it staring me down, I tilted my head to the left and the whole turret jerked about one inch to the left.  It was a wierd feeling, a few thousand pounds of ceramic armor, a pod that held 4 stinger missiles, and a 50-caliber machine gun tracking my face all by itself.

 The Avenger guys were very nice and even let me climb on the humvees and get inside them, they even gave me a 50-caliber bullet casing (Pic1) (Pic2).   The gun on the turret shoots at about 20 rps and the recoil is about 800 pounds, enough to almost lift the front tires off the ground and causes the turret to pitch and yaw quite a bit.  They said it was hard to make an algorithm to compensate for all that.

 

So what did you do today?

will your dad adopt me?

Try to recruit(sp) I see...

My dad works at the WyDOT(Wyoming Department of Transportation). And after hearing some close calls he has with Semi's when he is fixing a guard rail or a fence I dont really want to go to work with him, also I dont want to get with a piss bottle from a trucker either.


Edited by Panda Man

Dude...

That's fricking awesome...

We dont have that at McDonalds

The store is too small.

DBibeau855 wrote: Yeah, you wouldnt have enough room, mexicans have lots of kids.. Sorry that was bad, but i had to make some sort of crack, but it wasnt humorous at all.

Yeah, I kinda took the subtle approach to that bit of humor..

Way to kill it.

my dad works at a crappy community college

comp science prof

so, uh, i was reading that ATL article, and noticed this.

Article wrote: The Advanced Tactical Laser can place a 10-centimeter-wide beam with the heating power of a blowtorch on distant targets for up to 100 shots. The Advanced Tactical Laser can produce a four-inch-diameter beam of energy that can slice through metal from a distance of 9 miles.

so, basically if a nuclear warhead was launched at us it would be able to detonate it from 9 miles away?  ...well, thats great, but nuclear explosions reach out about 6-7 miles, carry a shockwave 10 miles, and radiation from the blast alone goes out 15 miles...so uh, we'd still be screwed. 

Oh well, its a start though, right?

rockerdoode wrote: so, uh, i was reading that ATL article, and noticed this. Article wrote: The Advanced Tactical Laser can place a 10-centimeter-wide beam with the heating power of a blowtorch on distant targets for up to 100 shots. The Advanced Tactical Laser can produce a four-inch-diameter beam of energy that can slice through metal from a distance of 9 miles. so, basically if a nuclear warhead was launched at us it would be able to detonate it from 9 miles away?  ...well, thats great, but nuclear explosions reach out about 6-7 miles, carry a shockwave 10 miles, and radiation from the blast alone goes out 15 miles...so uh, we'd still be screwed.  Oh well, its a start though, right?

It is more for melting tanks and church busses that missiles.

Perhaps you are thinking about NMD?