Bing May Have Revealed Secret U.S. Drone Base

BladeVenom said:
Why does it matter if the engine is pulling passenger cars or freight cars?

ZIS5KHv.jpg

Is that better?
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Yes.. one is purpose built for freight and the other is purpose built for a particular tier of a passenger line. It's apples and oranges to the extreme - in most cases you can't even use typical freight rail for anything remotely high-speed.

Take some science courses or something.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:



There. Fixed. :D
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Really? Amtrak? Their engines are the same as the freight engines, they aren't engineered for passenger use nor are they high speed. Note the front loading coupler hitch receiver on the Amtrak engine and the complete absence of such a device on the other (purpose-engineered passenger) engines.

I'm not even a train enthusiast or anything... In fact I know next to nothing about trains in general (which seems to be more than can be said for you lot) and it's completely OBVIOUS to me. You're comparing completely different machines. You just see one train as sleek and shiny and another as dirty and boxy and go "AAHURP!!!!!"

The reason why we don't have this stuff in the US is the size of the country itself, our culture, and our pre-existing automobile-focused infrastructure.

Seriously you all are... so.... fucking... derp...
 
TheFlosser said:
You just see one train as sleek and shiny and another as dirty and boxy and go "AAHURP!!!!!"
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lol. Ok that was funny :D

But ... umm, I think this needs to be quoted again:

http://imageshack.us/a/img35/1521/missedthepoint.jpg


TheFlosser said:
Their engines are the same as the freight engines, they aren't engineered for passenger use nor are they high speed.
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Yeah... that's the point! Someone was saying that we don't put our effort/resources into developing technology like that, even while we're busy making uber drones and shit.
 
I'm sure if it was truly secret the US would just build a large roof, throw sand on it, used some sophisticated edge concepts to mask the shadows and seam, and satellite images would reveal nothing. I'm sure there are plenty of these type of facilities already. Do you really think they'd put a secret base in the open like that? I'm sure they know there is the possibility of enemy countries launching their own satellites or hacking into US ones. (unlikely but it's still something to consider)

Even area 51 is visible in plain view on Google maps and such. The secret parts of it probably are in the hangers and underground bunkers.
 
MajorDomo said:
Bing may just have finally upstaged rival search engine Google, but at the same time may have rubbed the CIA the wrong way in doing so. It looks like Bing Maps discovered a secret CIA drone base in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, maybe Google really didn’t really want to find this base at all. :D
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The Times and the Washington Post outed the drone base over a week ago. That was never posted as news here so why is this?
 
sinclair-zx81 said:
And then Skynet comes online...
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You guys crack me up. I keep telling you all that Skynet is a real program used by the AF to record maintenance, ops checks, missions times, etc for RPA's. I use it every day. How that name was ever authorized is beyond me though. :p
 
TheFlosser said:
Really? Amtrak? Their engines are the same as the freight engines, they aren't engineered for passenger use nor are they high speed. Note the front loading coupler hitch receiver on the Amtrak engine and the complete absence of such a device on the other (purpose-engineered passenger) engines.

I'm not even a train enthusiast or anything... In fact I know next to nothing about trains in general (which seems to be more than can be said for you lot) and it's completely OBVIOUS to me. You're comparing completely different machines. You just see one train as sleek and shiny and another as dirty and boxy and go "AAHURP!!!!!"

The reason why we don't have this stuff in the US is the size of the country itself, our culture, and our pre-existing automobile-focused infrastructure.

Seriously you all are... so.... fucking... derp...
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they have couplers in the front there under the fairings
 
Enough about trains, can anyone actually see the base when going through the bing maps website? All I see is sand...
 
BBA said:
The Times and the Washington Post outed the drone base over a week ago. That was never posted as news here so why is this?
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This, futher more its stated that the base was discovered two years ago, but didn't get reported due to goverment stopage in the interest of national secuirty.

Speaking about trains,
The wikipeida on speed trains in america, is quite interesting on the subject. Also all that wasted grant money... then again i would be no where near the trains... :)
 
TheFlosser said:
Yes.. one is purpose built for freight and the other is purpose built for a particular tier of a passenger line. It's apples and oranges to the extreme - in most cases you can't even use typical freight rail for anything remotely high-speed.

Take some science courses or something.
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eb6.jpg


It was still a passenger train.

Take some reading comprehension course.
 
BladeVenom said:
eb6.jpg


It was still a passenger train.

Take some reading comprehension course.
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its not you cant use 90% of the rail in the US for any thing near high speed
it would have to be rebuild for high speed and that just track
on top of the that rail signaling in the US is not made for any thing over ~75mph
so you would need all new signaling
 
and to be fair we have high speed in the north east
and again even for that it needed all new track and signaling systems
 
Elios said:
its not you cant use 90% of the rail in the US for any thing near high speed
it would have to be rebuild for high speed and that just track
on top of the that rail signaling in the US is not made for any thing over ~75mph
so you would need all new signaling
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Jesus. That's not the point. None of that is relevant. The point was that all those things can be done/built to accommodate high speed trains, but it hasn't been done. Period.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
Jesus. That's not the point. None of that is relevant. The point was that all those things can be done/built to accommodate high speed trains, but it hasn't been done. Period.
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And you don't seem to understand, if it made sense to do it in the US it would have already been done. Please get a grasp of the basic geography and population distribution across the US and compare to the countries with well-established high-speed rail infrastructure.

And those areas where we DO have high-speed rail, the trains are very similar to the ones you seem to enjoy comparing to 40 year old Amtrak trains based of a GE freight engine.

Nation-wide high speed rail would be extremely nice. I want it. But I'm trying to point out to you it is not going to happen unless there is a very strong indicator of commercial viability. Honestly I'd rather our gov't put billions of our money into that than giving it away to places like Egypt, Israel, etc.
 
TheFlosser said:
And you don't seem to understand, if it made sense to do it in the US it would have already been done.
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False. Just because something makes sense doesn't mean it's done. That's the whole point of government, and why we as a society spend so much time arguing about politics and trying to pressure elected leaders to do this or that.

There are years of built up US policies that go back to the 50s, when the US made a concerted push into building highways all across the US, which stack(ed) the odds/economics in favor of air and car to the detriment of rail. Just the fact that the construction of highways was bankrolled by the government, and that it continues to be done routinely, whereas that has (largely) not been the case for rail is one big factor. I don't know all the details but in order to really assess whether "it makes sense" you have look at ALL the subsidies that are going into and have gone into the car, rail, and airline industries currently as well as historically going back decades.

Please get a grasp of basic government, politics, history, and economics.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
False. Just because something makes sense doesn't mean it's done. That's the whole point of government, and why we as a society spend so much time arguing about politics and trying to pressure elected leaders to do this or that.

There are years of built up US policies that go back to the 50s, when the US made a concerted push into building highways all across the US, which stack(ed) the odds/economics in favor of air and car to the detriment of rail. Just the fact that the construction of highways was bankrolled by the government, and that it continues to be done routinely, whereas that has (largely) not been the case for rail is one big factor. I don't know all the details but in order to really assess whether "it makes sense" you have look at ALL the subsidies that are going into and have gone into the car, rail, and airline industries currently as well as historically going back decades.

Please get a grasp of basic government, politics, history, and economics.
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While I agree that this is a much more to the equation that is being represented in this thread, I will state that having used the high-speed trains oversees and coming back to the US that there are very few places in the US that these trains would work. It isn't just about the fact that the US is so large and the distances are greater between major cities, it also has to do with the fact that outside of a few metropolitan areas the US is made of urban sprawl that just isn't suited for getting from point A to point B and then doing anything once you get off at point B without another form of transportation besides your own two feet. Therefore you would end up having to get a cab or rent a car at to go most anywhere.

Now there are a few places I have seen that could greatly benefit from high-speed trains. Having a high speed rail system that connects many of the big cities in California would probably be useful. There are daily commuter flights that come and go every hour all day long already and the city density is great enough that transportation at your destination generally isn't an issue either. This also is also the case in the Northeast where they already have some high-speed trains as mentioned earlier.
 
Dunno if anyone said this yet (too lazy to read all the posts), but all I can say is:

Bing: All your base are belong to us!
 
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