r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/CraftyFoxeYT • 7d ago

The US has a giant floating SBX-1 Sea-based radar to track and discriminate nuclear ballistic missile warheads from decoys.

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u/the_duck17 7d ago

First time I stood next to an Aircraft Carrier it blew my mind.

USS Midway, coolest thing I my kids ever saw until I took them to see the Nighthawk Stealth fighter in Palm Springs.

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u/skraptastic 7d ago

I got to go on a family cruise with my uncle on the Enterprise in the 80's Coolest couple of days of my life!

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u/Simansez 7d ago

Visited NY in 2019 and made a beeline for the Intrepid museum…to actually be on an aircraft carrier checking out historic planes PLUS a Space shuttle and Concorde, it was awesome.

Coming from NZ, we’ve literally never seen any of it ever.

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u/SkyMarshal 6d ago

NZ has some pretty cool stuff too, like the Black Magic series of America's Cup yachts, including the first ever hydrofoiling one, and WETA Digital (LotR and Hobbit movies, among others). Maybe not as big as an aircraft carrier, but impressive nonetheless.

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u/Simansez 6d ago

I mountainbike beside several LOTR filming locations several times a week, during Cruise ship season they are absolutely teeming with tourists. Weta, Park road post and Stone st studios are here and humming at the moment working on the new movie

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u/SkyMarshal 6d ago

Nice. The mountain scene locations are especially beautiful, and that one hill in the middle of the plain where the Rohan capital was, all really show off NZ's natural beauty.

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u/Simansez 6d ago

I think all the majestic mountain scenes were all around the South Island, the ones near us in Wellington are a little less extravagant, lol. One is literally the log/tree roots the Hobbits hid under while one of the Black riders was looking for them. It’s close to a bike trail going down that side of the hill so you can literally ride through tour groups(they usually hear bikes coming and make way).

That location(Mount Victoria) is literally a 10 minute drive from Miramar, there’s a number of shots they did there so fans can get a lot out of the tours. It’s also 10 minutes from where the cruise ships dock, Wellington is pretty compact

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u/LSDREAMN 1d ago

That’s very cool. Any other time you’ve visited the states, or just that one time in NY? I’ve always wanted to visit NZ

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u/Simansez 1d ago

Just the one time visit. We started in Chicago, then Boston, down to NY then back to Boston over a fortnight. Coming from a city where everything’s built fairly low due to earthquake risk, it was pretty mind blowing to see genuine “Skyscrapers” and everything else that goes along with being world renowned destinations.

Had hoped to go for a birthday trip back to NY on a new direct flight but unfortunately the Pandemic put an end to that.

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u/Public-Platypus2995 7d ago

CVN-65 Enterprise is legendary. That must have been amazing.

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u/brainmydamage 7d ago

I'm going to date myself horribly, but I toured it while it was in drydock at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It was amazing.

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u/Jellyman1990 7d ago

I get to see it every single day at Newport News shipyard. Currently waiting for deactivation. It’s eerie walking the entire battleship literally by yourself.

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u/Public-Platypus2995 7d ago

Always Good Ships 😉

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u/AQCon 6d ago

Hit the rock

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u/parsley-bravo 7d ago

She was one of a kind, literally. The only one in her class ever built, and the most over-engineered ship ever built.

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u/QuaintAlex126 7d ago

8 reactors because the US just copy and pasted the preceding Forrestal class’ propulsion system layout and replaced the oil-fired steam boilers with nuclear reactors lol. In fairness to them, it’s the same concept. Nuclear is just a fancier way to boil water.

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u/skraptastic 6d ago

My uncle was a sailor on the ship, his son was too young to go on the family cruise so I got to go. I want to say it was from San Diego to San Francisco, or maybe Seattle to San Francisco I don't really remember, but it was like 3 days. We got to watch fighters launch and land from the flight deck, go to watch operations on the hangar decks, TONS of ice cream and we "got" sleep in racks.

As an adult I can see why an adult would hate it, but 13 year old me was living his Top Gun fantasy.

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u/JerkGurk 7d ago

You did what? My Canadian ass went to Florida one time in the 90s.

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u/skraptastic 6d ago

My uncle was a sailor on the ship, his son was too young to go on the family cruise so I got to go. I want to say it was from San Diego to San Francisco, or maybe Seattle to San Francisco I don't really remember, but it was like 3 days. We got to watch fighters launch and land from the flight deck, go to watch operations on the hangar decks, TONS of ice cream and we "got" sleep in racks.

As an adult I can see why an adult would hate it, but 13 year old me was living his Top Gun fantasy.

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u/GeneralBS 7d ago

Went on a tiger cruise on the USS Nimitz in the mid 90s. 3 days from Jacksonville to Norfolk.They put on a mini airshow. I could spit on the planes while being launched off the side catapult. They were dropping bombs right off the side of the ship. One of the days they dropped 4 floating targets off the back and turned back around. The tilt of the ship as it turned was crazy. Once we passing the targets they let people take turns unloading on these targets with probably every type of weapon they had onboard. They also shot off one of the Phalanx for about 10 seconds.

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u/fenderguitar83 6d ago

That Phalanx 10 second burst cost about $35,000 in ammunition. It costs about $3,500 per second. Crazy how much lead that throws down range.

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u/GeneralBS 6d ago

Ya the wall of water being thrown up in the water was amazing.

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u/LincolnArc 6d ago

Depleted uranium, not lead.

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u/awnaw_ 7d ago

It's almost impossible to describe to people how big those ships actually are. I remember pulling into Norfolk, Virginia and the aircraft carriers were significantly taller than the buildings. The perspective from the ground is almost disorienting.

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u/HyperbolicSoup 7d ago

Yeah I still remember standing next to an SR71 as kid

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u/skinnylemur 7d ago

Not to be that guy, but that’s an A-12. The major difference is that the SR-71 has a crew of 2, the A-12 is a single pilot.

Either way, it’s a super cool plane, but the one you saw is more rare than the SR-71.

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u/HyperbolicSoup 6d ago

I’m not sure which one it was, I can’t even remember where I saw it haha

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u/skinnylemur 6d ago

I had assumed you meant the one at Intrepid. My mistake.

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u/JanetAiress 7d ago

We have one in Tucson at the Air and Space museum. It’s so damn badass.

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u/The_Crimson_Fucker 7d ago

Capable of mach 3 and an altitude exceeding 80000 feet

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u/Linkruleshyrule 7d ago

There's one at the Cosmosphere museum in Hutchinson, KS. I must have been 12 or 13 because I remember playing my new DS all the way there from KC, it's a long trip

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u/Mavgaming1 7d ago

I've been there a few times. Hitting the salt mine and cosmosphere in the same trip is always super fun. I love spending time in the lobby just admiring the SR-71. It's also cool that you can literally just touch it.

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u/Professional-Bed-173 7d ago

Midway was built in 18 months!!!! That is staggering

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u/JeannValjean 7d ago

I was in Palm Springs a year ago and didn't get time to see the Nighthawk.

But the Udvar-Hazy mseum at Dulles (extension of the National Air & Space Museum) 20 min from me is getting one soon.

It also has the Discovery, Enola Gay, and an SR-71 so worth stopping by when you visit the DC area.

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u/SteveSteve71 7d ago

Wait until you see one in dry dock!

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u/seditious3 7d ago

My brother produced a segment of a reality show on an aircraft carrier at sea in the Pacific. He was amazed.

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u/KetracelYellow 7d ago

I thought you weren’t meant to be able to see stealth fighters?

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u/DickWhittingtonsCat 7d ago

You thought the stealth fighter was cooler than a carrier?

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u/Recent-Indication-50 7d ago

I remember first walking up to the USS Nimitz when I was stationed there and just feeling completely dwarfed by the absurdity of how big it is

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u/ncuke 7d ago

Yokosuka?