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Test Plane Performs Vertical Landing

STOVL (Short Take Off and Vertical Landing) planes have been in development and use since 1951, though only two planes have ever reached operational status.  On Thursday, Lockheed Martin‘s F-35 Lightning II test plane made its very first vertical landing.

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To quote the late, great Douglass Adams: It “hung in the air in exactly the same way that bricks don’t.”

As a long time lover of Batman: The Animated Series, this reminds me of nothing so much as the Batwing.  Yes, in a world where all the men wore suits, televisions were in black and white, and everybody drove a Studebaker, Batman had a freaking spaceship.

Now, after watching actual video of a propeller-less object that hangs in the air and then gently touches down in one giant “screw you!” to physics, I am filled with only one simple feeling:

“It’s a witch!  Burn it!”

(via Pop Sci.)

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Susana Polo
Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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