At long last, a weekend.

I just finished up seven straight days at work, caused by my days off shifting from Mon-Tue to Weds-Thu.

Boy, did I pick the wrong week to do this. The start of holiday hours, a massive sale over the weekend, and lots of drama.

But I get to relax now. Yay me.

*thud*

Merry Mememass!

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My LiveJournal 12 Days
My True Love gave to me...
12 aurictechs a-falling.
11 chaoswolfs a-skating.
10 deathbytamarinds a-drinking.
9 docwebsters a-galloping.
8 eleris a-spitting.
7 fimbrethils a-spamming.
6 kshandras a-laughing.
5 blue madelineushers.
4 rubbing princeofcairos.
3 Kuwaiti sammy_grrrls.
2 chicken soldiergrrrls.
And a sossity in a cantaloupe tree.
Get gifts! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

Mach 9.6!!!!

NASA 'scramjet' makes historic hypersonic flight off California

A tiny unmanned NASA "scramjet" soared above the Pacific Ocean Tuesday at nearly 10 times the speed of sound, or almost 7,000 mph, in a record-breaking demonstration of a radical new engine technology.

The 12-foot-long X-43A supersonic combustion ramjet flew at about Mach 9.6 or slightly higher, said research engineer Randy Voland, leader of the scramjet propulsion team, during a post-flight press conference at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base.

The exotic aircraft flew under its own power for about 10 seconds after separating from a booster rocket at 111,000 feet, then glided to a splash landing about 800 miles offshore. Analysis of data to determine the exact performance will take several months, but mission officials were jubilant.

"Once again we made aviation history -- we did that in March when we went seven times the speed of sound and now we've done it right around 10 times the speed of sound," said Vince Rausch, Hyper-X program manager from NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.

"It was an absolutely tremendous experience," said Griff Corpening, chief engineer on two previous X-43A flights. "The research vehicle was absolutely rock-solid stable. Fuel came on as expected and off. All indications now we had a successful experiment."

The X-43A, mounted on a Pegasus rocket used to boost it to flight speed, was carried aloft under the wing of a B-52 aircraft and released at an altitude of 40,000 feet over a test range off the Southern California coast. The rocket motor then fired for a 90-second ascent.

Wow. This is an important step on the quest to lower the cost of getting things into orbit. A scramjet/rocket combo would be a good resuable ground-to-orbit option.

(no subject)

(A) First, recommend to me:
1. a movie:
2. a book:
3. a musical artist, song, or album:

(B) I want everyone who reads this to ask me three questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want.

(C) Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends to ask you anything & say that you stole it from me.

Blatently stolen from benkenobigal

My sappy side

OK, I'm a headbanging metalhead.

But some songs just get through to me.

This is one of them. It reminds me of fimbrethil for some reason.