I've been following tildes the past couple of weeks, and am really enjoying the friendlier, more thought out discussion, when compared to reddit. The one thing I miss is r/flying, which was a pretty decent community of pilots without too much low-effort content.

I'm curious if any other pilots have migrated here (hobby pilots, or professionals)? Are we anywhere near critical mass to support discussions around it?

To keep this valuable to the community at large, just a bit about flying as a hobby. At-least in the US, we still have one of the most active General Aviation communities in the world. It's a lot more expensive than it used to be, but for around $10k you can earn your Private Pilot rating. With that you can fly to nearly any airport, over nearly any area, see beautiful views, experience all sorts of weather and locations. At that point you're looking at ~$100-200/hr depending where in the US you're located, and what sort of club or rental you use.

It's expensive to be sure, but compared to what people manage to spend on boating, cars, even golfing, it can be fairly reasonable. And it's really a unique experience, if you love it there's nothing like it.

My evening flight from Gatwick to Milan was delayed, resulting with my arrival at 2:45am when there was no public transportation available (apart from taxis).

According to EU rules any delayed flights over 3 hours can be reimbursed (partially) as can any inconveniences.
This is the email I received from Wizzair's claims Dept:

Thank you for contacting Wizz Air Customer Service Department.

We would like to extend our sincerest apologies regarding the inconvenience caused by the delay of your flight. After thoroughly investigating your case we can confirm that the delay of flight W4 5786 MXP-LGW on the 3d of July 2023 was 02:57 h, based on the arrival at your destination airport.

Please be kindly informed that passengers are entitled to the compensation specified in Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council when there is an arrival delay of minimum 3 hours.

Therefore, unfortunately we regret to inform you that no compensation is due in this specific situation.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us by replying to this email.

Have a pleasant day!

Kind regards,

I am at a loss for words (and taxi fare!)

If everything had worked perfectly, it still would have been a bum airplane." - Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States attempted to design nuclear powered aircraft. This was part of a larger "nuclear craze" in the era where everything and anything was proposed to have nuclear technology applied to it. This led to all kinds of things like the Chrysler TV-8 and "peaceful" earthmoving construction projects. The only place where nuclear power or propulsion really took off was for large ocean going ships both for military navies as well as civilian tankers, cargo ships and icebreakers. Spacecraft technology was the only other "success story."

Nuclear powered aircraft, while more realistic than say nuclear cars, never quite caught on except for a few experimental engines and just one actual working aircraft. The most extensive efforts towards this during the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program were the HTRE-2 and HTRE-3 experimental nuclear reactors with heat transfer assemblies designed for nuclear powered aircraft at the Idaho National Laboratory. Rather than burning fuel, the jet turbine would use the heat from the nuclear reaction to heat air sent through a compressor which would then be expelled as exhaust for thrust.

On of the more fascinating tests were the test flights of the NB-36H which while conventionally powered, flew while carrying a working nuclear reactor to test the protective shielding of the crew. It carried an air-cooled 1 megawatt reactor. The engineers and crew worked within a specially shielded nose cabin with 12-inch-thick lead-glass windows.

The project was canceled by the Kennedy administration a few months after taking office in 1961 citing high costs, poor management, and little progress towards a flight ready reactor saying:

At the time of termination, the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program was still in the research and development stage, with primary emphasis on high performance reactors. Although a number of research and development achievements can be credited to this program, at the time of termination an airplane had never been flown on nuclear power nor had a prototype airplane been built. - Joseph Campbell, Comptroller General

and

Nearly 15 years and about $1 billion have been devoted to the attempted development of a nuclear-powered aircraft; but the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote. - John F. Kennedy, POTUS

Footnote: This post is a rework of a reddit post I made here a couple years back. It's not really meant to be a coherent or lengthy article but has some links and thoughts which I found interesting.

Recently Lockheed Martin put out a post on social media [1] where they showed a silhouette of a yet-to-be-revealed aircraft. Most people seem to believe it will be the reveal of their entry to the NGAD program [2] (Next Generation Air Dominance).

While not much is publically known one interesting tidbit is how much it looks like the silhouette of the Testor Corp [3] F-19 [4] model that was released back in the mid 80s. Testor said at the time that the model was based on intelligence (aka leaks) of what would eventually become the F-117.

Aviation forums in the past have said F-19 model is what they WANTED the F-117 and it does look quite a bit like the Have Blue [5] test craft they built, however, the legend is that they couldn't get the math to work for radar deflection properly at that time due to lack of computational power and ended up with the geometrically simpler F117 design we got.

[1] Lockheed Martin Teaser: https://theaviationist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/LM-NGAD-story.jpg
[2] NGAD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Dominance
[3] Testor F19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testor_Corporation#F-19
[4] Testor F19 Image: https://test803.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/img_6712-1.jpg
[5] Have Blue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue