Huh. Technically this isn’t as impressive as Falcon 9 recovery, but it’s nothing to sneeze at.
Jan 232016
Jan 222016
Auctions over.
Due to some recent expenses, I’m unloading some stuff. I figure a silent auction on my website would be quicker and easier than Ebaying it. So what I have: two lots of sci-fi books. First lot:
Lot 1:
Hardback: “Dune, The Machine Crusade.” Good shape w/dust jacket.
Hardback: “The Forge of God.” Good shape, first edition, first printing, w/dust jacket.
Hardback: Haynes Owner’s Workshop Manual, Millennium Falcon. Like new.
Paperback: “revelation Space.” Decent shape, 2002 printing.
Paperback: “Spock Must Die!!” OK shape, 6th printing, 1970. The first real Star Trek novel published.
Paperback: “Sandworms of Dune,” got wet and puffed up a tad, but still perfectly readable.
Paperback: “Contact.” 1997 printing, good shape.
Lot 2:
Hardback: “The Integral Trees,” First edition/printing, good shape w/dust jacket. Some tears on the jacket.
Hardback: “God Emperor of Dune,” First edition, fifth printing. Books in good shape, dust jacket is a bit beat up.
Hardback: Haynes Owner’s Workshop Manual, Imperial Death Star. Like new.
Paperback: “Eon,” 1986 printing. Used condition.
Paperback: “The Making of Star Trek,” 6th printing, 1970. Good shape!
Paperback: “The Tranquility Alternative,” 1997 printing. Almost new condition.
Paperback: “The Time Ships,” I think 1st paperback edition. Pretty good condition.
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Either of these lots should be worth at least $30 or so, but I’ll set the minimum at $15. So if you are interested in either lot, email me your bid (*not* comment) here:
The winner(s) will also be dinged for postage. For the US, they’ll go out media mail, so it should be cheap. The auction will end Sunday. I’ve never done an auction like this; the process is that you bid without know what the other folks are bidding… if anything. Highest bidder wins. If by Sunday there are two or more identical bids, I’ll contact the bidders and let ’em know, see what they want to bump up to.
Jan 222016
Eight-grader Anthony Ruelas walked out of his class without permission, and received a suspension as a result. Yay! Finally, a school that has rules and actually applies them!
So… why did this kid wander off? Well… a friend of his has having a bad asthma attack and the teacher sent an *email* to the school nurse. Three minutes on there’d been no reply, so Ruelas just picked her up and carried her to the nurses office. So… the school gave him a two-day suspension.
And then on the first day of his suspension the school called his mother to ask him why he wasn’t at school that day.
Jan 212016
A piece of Sikorsky concept art from 1959 illustrating a commercial passenger pod for the S-60 flying crane helicopter. Into the 1960’s there were a lot of people thinking that commercial helicopter “airliners” would soon be a practical reality… and obviously, helicopters are perfectly functional in the role of hauling people to and fro, but the idea never really caught on. And in retrospect it’s not difficult to see why.
Compared to turbojet or turboprop passenger planes, helicopters are creakingly slow and quite short ranged. So the idea was that helicopter-liners would serve as short range feeder vehicles, transporting businessmen and the like from city centers to outlying regions. A popular goal was to fly passengers from the top of skyscrapers to distant airports, saving considerable time and trouble with ground traffic. But in the end, while helicopters could do that – as many a multi-millionaire with his own helicopter can attest – the cost was always high, and the noise of regularly scheduled very large choppers was excessive. There was also always the fear of helicopters this big zipping up and down the city streets, and building the infrastructure to support in-city commercial heliports just seemed like too much effort.
Jan 202016
News broke today that some circumstantial evidence suggests the existence of a new planet in our solar system. Unlike poor Pluto which lost its official planet status, this planet is estimated to mass 5 to 10 times Earth, which would make it indisputably a planet.
To be clear, the planet has not yet actually been discovered. Instead, its existence has been inferred by noting that a number of Kuiper belt objects that *have* been observed appear to be gravitationally perturbed by a single object that fits the Planet IX description. If it is eventually found, we won;t be sending probes to it anytime soon… it’s estimated orbital semimajor axis averages 600 AUs; it might get as close to the sun as 200 AU. Neptune is a mere 30 AU from the sun. It is thought to be an ice giant… a large rocky core that *could* have turned into a gas giant, but is too far out to have gathered much gas during the initial formation of the solar system, and what gas it does have is frozen as ice onto the surface. Due to its extreme distance (600 AU), it’s thought to probably look 600 times dimmer than Pluto as seen through a telescope. Sunlight should be about 0.0025 times as bright as it is on Pluto, or 0.0000028 times as bright as on Earth… one part in 360,000. In other words: kinda dark. So if you’re planning on sending a probe, basically the day side of the planet would be like trying to photograph the night side of the moon. If we duplicated the New Horizons mission (interesting note: new Horizons launched ten years and one day ago) to this world, it would take at least 190 years for the probe to get there.
Jan 202016
I recently acquired diagrams of a B-52 with six high-bypass turbofans. Sadly, the diagram lacks data on *which* engines those were, and when the design was made. So: does this look familiar?
Could be any of several, I think.
The full diagrams have been posted into the 2016-01 folder on the APR Patron Dropbox site. If interested, this and many, many other high-rez aerospace goodies are available to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and higher. So, check it out…
UPDATE: Looks like this was *probably* the CFM56. Some Googling finds repeated references to a study in the 1980′ s to re-engine the B-52 with six CFM56’s, though I haven’t found much in the way of details.
Jan 202016
Ruh-roh…
Report: Hillary Clinton server contained highly classified intel
And she would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling FBI agents.
Jan 192016
Raedthinn has been acting very strange last few weeks (he has been increasingly attempting to get my attention, for purposes unknown); today he has basically lost his voice and acts like he’s miserable. Spent much of the day hiding under the same bed he hid under after his recent dental escapades. Attacked me when I petted his belly. So tomorrow afternoon I’m taking him in to get checked. I suppose it could well just be One Of Those Things, but his behavior has been “off” enough to make me uncomfortable.
Here’s Fingers using Raedthinn’s face as a pillow.
———————
UPDATE:
The vet gave Raedthinn the once-over and found… nothing. Temperature normal, innards normal, his teeth and jaw, which I’d worried about, normal. One of the main drivers in taking him to the vet was that he’d lost his voice; at the vet he yelled his damfool head off in protest. Apparently nothing physically wrong with him, but the vet suspected a psychological issue. So as a result, I brought Raedthinn him with a bottle of meds… but not meds for Raedthinn. Instead, some sort of anti-jackassery juice for Bruce. Seems chances are good that Raedthinn is just sick and tired of Bruce’s hijinks. So Bruce has had his first dose; so far, he’s acting like a calm cat. We’ll see if that relaxes Raedthinn.
Jan 192016
Jan 192016
Faith, according to many, can impart many good behaviors. But then it can also do this:
The boy accused of blasphemy who cut off his hand
In short: at a mosque in Pakistan, a 15-year-old boy mis-heard a question raised by the imam: “Who among you doesn’t believe in the teachings of the Holy Prophet? Raise your hands!”
He raised his hand. He was promptly accused of blasphemy by the imam. This being one of the worlds many Dumb Regions, the accusation of blasphemy is taken quite seriously (it often leads to an official death sentence, coupled with unofficial lynchings; in court, you’re generally not allowed to defend yourself, and even the accusation can’t really be brought out in court because *that* would be blasphemy). So, the kid did what I suppose makes sense if you are a religious nut who has been accused of committing blasphemy with your hand: he chopped it off and tried to hand it to the imam on a plate.
Since this is a Dumb Region, the locals did not drag the kid to a hospital to try to reattach the hand; they bandaged him up and buried the hand. They did not shake their heads and bemoan the fate of the poor, crazy dumb kid… they have decided to revere his act of religious devotion. People from surrounding villages have started to swing by to express their admiration.
Gah.
But on the other hand (snerk)…
I can see an opportunity here. Is it possible to advertise and promote this act among others of his religion who are equally religiously nutty? Get them to believe that it is an act to emulate? Beyond the utility of having people who might otherwise be building suicide bombs disarming themselves (heh), there’d be just the sheer entertainment value.