Splendid
Congratulations and beers (and one milkshake for A) to all the designers and workers. And more beers if the wonderfully pointy nose of the plane manages to impale anything on its descent and landing.
Cue the traditional portentous drumroll and fanfare of trumpets as we reveal today the finished livery of our Vulture 2 spaceplane – a provocative combination of paint job and vinyl wrap which is, frankly, the mutt's nuts. Fans of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project will recall we asked readers back in …
Nuts = testicules boules, burnes, coucougnettes, couilles, roubignoles, valseuses, yecous, yocs,balloches, claouis, glaouis.
BUT
noix = walnut. A hazlenut is "une noisette".
I am ashamed of myself, I truly am, but details, details, ah the lovely details.
And the plane IS the mutts nuts.
Two points:
a) With all those layers of spray paint it's a good job none of you lot worked for NASA during the days it had a proper spacecraft.
2) The upper surfaces are brilliant, the work of a graphic design genius. Why this imaginative livery was not implemented for the underside instead of that hideous god-knows-what-inspired stripes 'n' triangles scheme is beyond me.
Ariadne should be allowed to design the Playmonaut's space suit too.
OK, three points.
sure it's real pretty, but will it crash and burn? is there enough tail authority with the vertical stabs to handle any sort of off center thrust, wind shear, or to correct spin on launch, especially at altitude? If this goes into a flat spin any time after thrust cutoff, can it recover?
Or will it fall mostly flat like PARIS with the glide slope of a whale and a pot of petunias?
The art of flying means actually going forward farther than going down. it's really the landing where you throw yourself at the ground and try to miss most of the impact.