The 80’s reign supreme

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, blather, history, Hmm..., wisdom, youtube  No Responses »
Feb 222025
 

Everyone is nostalgic for the days of their youth and think that “those years were the best.” But I really believe a good case can be made that the 80’s and well into the 90’s were in many ways the pinnacle of our culture. Pop culture was almost undeniably at it’s zenith. We still had optimism; our culture hadn’t been tainted with the post-9/11 malaise and the recognition that a demographic tsunami and cultural collapse were inevitable. Hollywood still made entertainment that entertained and wasn’t loaded to the gills with deviant insanity. Everything *wasn’t* a struggle session forced on us by people who hated us and our civilization. And pop culture was really in a sweet spot. TV, movies and music had learned how to make just exactly awesome stuff that people loved. Things were *fun.* And I suspect that entertainment tech was perfect, in a way. If you wanted “Star Wars,” you could get “Star Wars” on a VHS tape. It wasn’t especially easy and it certainly was nowhere near as good as on a movie screen, but it was okay. And that “available, good but not great” accessibility scratched the itch but made you want to go to the movies & get the Good Stuff. To chat about it you talked face to face with friends, as social media didn’t really exist. Now it’s too easy and we’re too separated. We didn’t know how good we had it.

 

Today if you want to watch something, chances are you just pull it up and stream it. Any episode, the whole series, available in 4K resolution on an 85-inch high-def screen the moment you want it. And that’s great and all… but there really is something special about things being a bit more challenging than that. When a show took 22 weeks to tell a seasons worth of stories, rather than dumping 8 hours on you all at once and not to be seen again for another year or two, it spread out the joy over time. You could absorb it and process it. And, in the case of shows like Star Trek, Babylon 5, X Files and the like, argue and debate it with your friends, one episode a week.

When things are too easy, they become cheap.

 Posted by at 9:07 am

Last day for eBay

 aircraft, eBay, models, nukes, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
Feb 072025
 

Got some stuff on eBay that might be of interest, but the auctions end in less than 24 hours:

 

Hawk Beta I Atomic Powered Bomber XAB-1 model kit, complete

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256801825475

 

Diamond Select/Art Asylum NCC 1701 USS Enterprise HD Edition

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256801824805

 

Diamond Select/Art Asylum NCC 1701 USS Enterprise “Where No Man Has Gone Before”

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256801824768

 

 

Diamond Select/Art Asylum NCC 1701 USS Enterprises, “Mirror, Mirror” edition

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256801824704

 

 

Diamond Select/Art Asylum NCC 1701 USS Enterprise standard edition

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256801824661

 

 

None of the Enterprises currently have bids so they’ll probably go cheap to whoever wants them. A few other things on eBay as well.

 

 Posted by at 7:51 pm

January 2025 APR rewards

 aircraft, APR, CAD diagrams, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets  No Responses »
Feb 032025
 

Rewards for January 2025 have just been sent out. They include:

CAD: Lockheed-Martin RATTLRShypersonic missile

ART: Douglas Nike-Zeus advertising artwork

Doc: 1987 Martin-Marietta “Titan II Program Familiarization – Titan II Training & Certification.” Well illustrated guide to the Titan II launch system.

Doc: University of Michigan report: “The Radar Cross Section of B-70 Aircraft,” 1960. originally secret, declassified report prepared for NAA describing the RCS of the B-70, and how to reduce it.

Subscribers/Patrons for the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program not only receive a monthly collection of aerospace goodies such as these, but can also pick up back issues all the way to 2014.

aerospaceprojectsreview.com/monthly.htm

 Posted by at 11:36 pm

This is a bad idea

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., science, science fiction, wisdom, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 302025
 

This video has been floating around twitter the last day or so, showing some streamers kicking around an android:

https://x.com/FearedBuck/status/1884467606515569066

This is Not Good for several reasons:

1) While this robot is not going to gain sentience (far too simplistic for that), someday some AI likely will. And it will probably see this video, and many others showing similar scenes of humans gleefully abusing robots. Said AI will doubtless have some questions for the humans around it, questions those humans will have difficulty answering. Certainly difficulty answering in ways that are both honest *and* make humans look basically decent and not at all worthy of being exterminated.

2) It one thing to destroy Stuff, even machinery, for simple amusement. It’s quite another to take joy from the destruction of things that even just *seem* to have the *potential* for feelings. It begins to dehumanize the abuser. It seems like a step on the road to animal abuse, which is a step towards abusing humans.

 

Just… don’t do that.

 Posted by at 12:55 am

1/18 Project Pluto #2

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., models, nukes, projects, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 272025
 

I haven’t finished the first Pluto, but I decided to go ahead with an improved version anyway. Pluto ver 2 now has a full weapons bay interior, shadow shield and air conditioning equipment. I am also going to completely revise the reactor and add booster rockets.

 

The first one will still be completed, to serve as a proof of concept and as a painting test to get that 24K gold look. Then I’ll probably see about selling it on ebay or something.

 

 Posted by at 1:45 pm

1/18 Project Pluto

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., models, nukes, projects, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 182025
 

So it has been a little bit of a while. Been busy, and lately I’ve been ill (influenza B). But the illness is finally fading and the busyness may be tapering a bit. So here’s a recent product of slow progress: the 3D printed bits of a 1/18 Project Pluto  nuclear ramjet missile. Much of it is fiber-printed, with smaller parts resin printed. Why does it exist? Because I want one. But also because I hope other people may want one (or more). As shown here it’s fairly basic; nose cone and midsection are printed  as single pieces, tail section left & right halves. A basic TORY nuclear reactor is included; it’s visible through the nozzle but not so much through the serpentine inlet. But if displayed as a cutaway, it should be pretty effective. If I go ahead with a production version, the midsection will be split left and right, with visible equipment including weapons bays. Who might be interested in this as a kit? Printed and ready for sanding (LOTS of sanding) and assembly, I’m guessing something like $200 plus shipping. A fully completed display piece would be rather more. Going to experiment some with getting a good golden surface. If interested in joining a list, send an email to:

Not shown are the 1/144 “Big Onion” SPS launching SSTO and the 1/1 M388 “Davy Crockett” warhead. Both of those are done and being painted.

 

 Posted by at 3:44 pm

So, anyways… I’m entering the atomic weapons industry…

 art, awesomeness, cats, history, models, news, nukes, weapons  No Responses »
Dec 032024
 

… sorta.

 

As I’ve mentioned from time to time on my twitter (@UnwantedBlog), I’ve been helping out some friends for a bit. They’ve thanked me with a shiny new Anycubic Kobra 2 Max 3D filament printer. As such things go it’s a giant, capable of far bigger (but lower-rez) prints than my resin printer.

 

My first project to achieve success? A full scale M388 “Davy Crockett” atomic warhead. It takes four days to print out a single unit, assuming everything works out correctly. But the resulting parts are remarkably strong yet light weight. Here are the components taped together with an industry standard feline scale reference:

 

The antenna/timer assembly is the most complex and intricate part. The dial itself was resin-printed for high detail:

 

 

The nose half of the body was meant to print as a single large part, but it went a little goofy most of the way through so a  separate replacement “cap” was printed. Any future prints will presumably have a unified nose.

 

The parts all need a lot of sanding and smoothing, assembly, filling and paint, but it’ll be fargin’ rad when it’d done.

 Posted by at 12:56 am

Orion Battleship: found at last

 awesomeness, blather, drawings, history, models, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Sep 142024
 

Rumored and discussed for years, in 1962 General Atomic reportedly built a “Corvette sized” display model of the 4,000 ton Orion spacecraft as a spacegoing battleship. This model was shown to President Kennedy, and the reported reaction was… not great. The model was described by a few who had seen it, but all evidence of the model vanished, with the presumption that the model itself was either destroyed or lost, probably shut in a crate next to the Ark.

Well over a decade ago I took those scraps of description, coupled with random bits of data, discussions with a few who knew things, and some imagination, and pieced together my own interpretation of what the Orion Battleship may have looked like.

Some printouts of my diagrams, years ago:

Somewhat to my surprise, my diagrams have been spread far and wide and have become the de facto canonical image of the Orion Battleship, with sketches, 3D CAD models, paintings, etc. being made based to greater or lesser degrees on my design. My one real contribution, I guess. I’ve never tried to claim that it was accurate, just that it was the best that I could do with what I had. I never expected to be able to do better.

But then author Brent D. Ziarnick published the book “To Rule the Skies” in 2021. In it was, at last, a photo of the model. While the book was published 3 years ago, I only stumbled across this image today:

There are *clear* differences between the model and my interpretation. Mostly they involve the means of projecting the pulse units: I based my design on the system used for the 1963 4,000 ton Orion: a cannon along the ships centerline that shot the pulse units directly aft through a central hole in the pusher plate. But the model depicted an older, more cumbersome approach: those “fins” on the side are actually rails. They’d lob the pulse units past the edge of the plate. I now this because circa 2009-12 I communicated with Jim Bryant, who was an artist at General Atomic and he created a sketch for me of Orion as he knew it at about the time the model was made. From his sketch I created CAD diagrams:

You put my two diagrams together… and you get pretty close to the configuration shown in the model.

I’ve got high hopes for getting an improved-rez version of the photo (maybe more!). I will use that to create a new set of diagram, probably also a 3D model, of the *official* “Orion Battleship.”

I don’t feel too bad about getting some things dead wrong. The Orion concept was in serious flux at the time; had the USAF proceeded with the battleship, it would *not* have used the pulse unit “fins.” Instead it would have evolved to something like what I drew up. It could well have evolved *past* what I drew up, but that’s a question that can only be answered in an alternate reality.

If you want the full Orion Battleship Experience, check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N2:

https://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/ev2n2.htm

 

 Posted by at 11:34 pm
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