Popular Culture
- In the sci-fi novel Aelita (1923), two Russians travel to Mars in a pulse detonation rocket utilizing "a fine powder of unusual explosive force" (p. 19).
- In the drama television series JAG, the Season Nine episode "The One That Got Away" (original air date October 17, 2003) features the Aurora — which in the show is a super-secret hypersonic aircraft under development by the CIA that uses a pulse-detonation engine.
- In the movie Stealth (2005), the advanced fighters use pulse-detonation engines with scramjet boosters.
- The PDE has been used as a story point in a number of modern novels such as Dan Brown's thriller, Deception Point (the second page of the book states that all technologies in the story are non-fictional and exist, albeit without referencing any sources), and Victor Koman's science fiction polemic, Kings of the High Frontier.
- In X-COM (UFO: Enemy unknown), the Interceptor is equipped with a two pulse detonation engines, capable of sustained flight speed of 2100 knots, minimal speed of about 1000 knots. However even this huge propulsion force is inferior compared to the alien Gravity Wave Engines.
- In the SyFy television series, Eureka, season 4 episode 10 features a flying sleigh described as being powered by a PDE.
Read more about this topic: Pulse Detonation Engine
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)