14:25 into this video is an *astounding* scratchuilt Saturn V. Cutaways of not just all three stages, but also of the Command and Service Modules. unfortunately the camera moves too fast to make out anything that might say *who* built this masterpiece.
A 1979 promo for TMP. Some interesting stuff here… work on the Enterprise model, Klingon battle cruiser models getting exploded (a scene later re-imagined) and Persis Khambatta losing her hair, and not being entirely thrilled by it.
This popped up on ebay a few years ago. It purported to be a Boeing design for an advanced subsonic stealth bomber… but the design is, clearly, rather silly. Supposedly it dates from 1984 and was produced at, by and for Boeing, intended to be a decoy for the B-2 Advanced Technology (Stealth) Bomber competitors. I’m not sure Lockheed or Northrop would have looked at this and seen a serious design, however.
*Some* aspects of it seem like they might have been taken from an actual stealthy bomber design… the inlets and exhaust, indeed much of the middle part of the wing/body, look about right. But the stubby wing and especially the straight-vertical fins in substantial numbers are goofy aerodynamics and spectacular corner reflectors.
At least two of these were made and wandered out into the wild over the years.
A “hovertank” is, of course, a terrible idea. A hovering vehicle pretty much by definition has no traction with the ground, thus cannot well handle a lot of recoil… which is the sort of thing a cannon provides in spades. And anything that hovers has to be built light enough to get lurched off the ground, which reduces the capability to be armored. And… on and on.
Nevertheless, the “hovertank” has it’s place in science fiction.
And now modern consumer electronics and drone technology has reached the point where a hovertank can in fact be yours. In subscale plastic model form at any rate.
I’m honestly surprised and impressed that that bitty quadcopter could lift that, and do so effectively. Now imagine that the kit was designed for that from the get-go, using vac-formed parts… or even carbon fiber laid-up components. Far lighter, and better integrated with the lift system.
Sometimes I look at some of my goofier projects like the “2001 Briefcase Computer” and I think to myself “that’s actually pretty cool.” Then I see guys like this and I know that my nerd-cred is minuscule.
The parts I currently have (including a pile of keys, composed of both vintage and newly-cast) together with CAD drawing of parts I’m working on. It all seems to fit correctly, which is promising.
… they still would’ve lost.
Cool, though.
Adam Savage has a bunch of old (decades) silicone molds sitting doing nothing. Silicone, sadly, degrades not just from use, but over time; a mold that is years old will almost certainly fall into ruin if you try to cast a part using it. So, if you have an old mold that you want to get parts out of, what to do? Well, if you are well connected you get someone to CAT scan the mold, create an STL model of the mold, convert the hollow space within into a solid model, then 3D print. Easy! Anybody can do it! But here’s the thing: each scan the CAT scanner makes takes 30 seconds… and each mold could take 1500 scans to complete. So… twelve and a half solid hours on a CAT scanner.
Huh.