Following the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced funding, the decision was taken to scrap the platform. In August 2023, Rob Sparrock, the program officer overseeing ONR’s research vessel program noted that it “... would cost about $8 million to make FLIP useable for another five or 10 years, but that funding could be better used elsewhere.”
Clearly an agent of the secret cabal of Good-Time-Ruiners.
Ngl I've always hated spaceships with those swivel designs.
To me they would be incredibly difficult to pilot since you have to maintain awareness of its position at all times which is already hard enough in a 3d dogfight.
And all that extra difficulty for what? I don't see any real advantages to the design.
This concludes my rant about something that doesn't actually exist. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
It's giving controlled titanic disaster but with less death and destruction.
No, actually. Please tell me this technology is some kind of "accidental discovery" relating to the titanic, cause this diagram is very reminiscent of the play-by-play diagrams explaining how it happened.
When I was a kid there was a cartoon that featured one of these in an episode. I think it was from a transformers cartoon? I have spent ages trying to find it and have never been able to