Nightshade/PR

Just above the cloud layer..........

There's something about the Phantom that makes it never get old.....

I am flattered, and NOWHERE near that articulate!!!! But Thank You.

Both finesse and functionality have their place, and I think the Russians do a great job of balancing those factors. That being said, I agree that without a good pilot, any aircraft is just a 1g strafe target.

A group I must say i am QUITE proud to be a part of....

Getting on top (of the clouds) for a long ride to paydirt...........................

L-39's are smooth flying light attackers (very light)

The beginnings of a long morning

And awayyyyyyyyyyyy we go........................

This was FUN!!!! These guys put a lot of missiles in the air, and we were lucky to survive the run....

I know age and technology eventually catches up with every airframe, but I've always had a soft spot for the Viking.

Vikings........

Weather report over Germany calls for Tornadoes!!! And fliers from the Great White North over the Great Empty Expanse...

As it seems that getting access to the site for downloading the required files are next to zero, what are our next options?

Flight Of the Intruders.........

I love bad weather strikes...........

North Atlantic landings in bad weather....

This HAS to be Florida.

There’s always the chance that we are being watched, our evolution monitored closely, and despite that possibility, I’m a firm believer that in order to survive, we need to be a multi-planet species, so spreading out across the galaxy / universe is necessary. Not putting all our eggs in one basket, and all that jazz…..in case the worst of cosmic scenarios should come to pass. Because I believe that there are dangers beyond imagining out there, and we’d best be prepared to meet them head on, since anyone we meet along the way is will already have survived the worst the universe could throw at them, and advanced. They’ll be some of the toughest, smartest, brightest, and possibly the most fearless of universal survivors, and our best bet might be to find a way to stay out of sight until we can meet them on an equal footing. For us, that means leaving behind the TV mindset that we’ll somehow beat them with a computer virus, or the flu-bug, or some other unrealistic foolishness, and deciding that if we’re going to go out there into the deep dark, WE need to some of the smartest, toughest, and innovative denizens in the galaxy: as well as being ready to fight like all that’s holy to survive it, should that option become necessary.

I have to disagree. That may be reasonable to a member of our species, but to try applying that same reasoning to another, unknown and clearly non-earth-like species is dangerous. They may BE a warlike, hostile and xenophobic culture. We certainly are, so who's to say that mindset isn't common in the universe? We don't know who or what we are going to run into, so to assume some benevolent logic just because of advanced technology, or any assumption at all, is fraught with untold dangers. As it hasn't happened yet, we're all guessing at maybe's, and no one opinion holds sway over any others. We could all be right, after a fashion, or completely wrong after that same fashion. I am keeping my mind (and options, limited as they are) open to all possibilities.

This was pretty good.

Looking at this from a different angle.............. We assume that another (advanced) civilization wants to invade us for whatever......nefarious reasons that "aliens" have for showing up. (Women, booze, peaches, cheap land in Wisconsin?) But suppose they took a good long look at our species, and decided that the potential for our unleashing a living hell on the rest of the universe if we continue to progress down the technological path we are on, just isn't worth the risk of letting us survive as a species? Killing us off may not even be something they see as anything other than a version of self-preservation in the face of a looming/potential threat.

Not the greatest of sites...but a start http://www.fritzthefox.com/camo_guide.html

HA!!!!!! And given our propensity to shoot 1st and lie about what questions we asked later, we may be better off (right now) that we haven't met any aliens so far. Expanding our definition of life might require more willingness to embrace the differences in the universe than most humans are willing to allow.

Curiosity, if we're lucky. Otherwise, our future becomes very bleak...if we even have one. I believe that it would be shortsighted and extremely misguided to believe that there is NO ONE else in the entire universe except us. If there were no other life (in whatever form or fashion), why else would it be there? We certainly don't have the ability to get to what is out there yet, and it can't exist just for killer wallpapers from NASA. We have no idea of how long life's been around in the galaxy, how long any other beings or civilizations have existed, what their level of development is, and what they are capable of. I think as a species, we make the mistake of forgetting that even on our own planet, we are not the only existing life form, and the VAST majority of them neither look or think like us. But we seem to insist on applying our rather limited vision(s) of "life" to the rest of the cosmos, and exhibiting an extreme amount of xenophobia about what may be out there. I'm not sure about what is out there, but I think we do need to practice one hell of a lot more caution about broadcasting our whereabouts into the vast unknown. After all, history has shown quite bluntly what happens when indigenous people's are exposed to a society more technologically advanced than their own. And in this conversation, we are talking about untold magnitudes of sophistication that we couldn't begin to dream of. After all, if they can get here across interstellar distances, and solving all the nightmarish technical problems along the way, they are a LOT smarter than us. And meeting that race is what terrifies me to no end. Because my biggest fear is that we may find out that the rest of the universe is populated by beings just like us.