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“Roof” space station concept

 art, history, projects, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Oct 102017
 

Posted to a NASA Flickr page is this illustration of a 1984 space station concept:

This is the Johnson Space Center’s 1984 “roof” concept for a space station. The “roof” was covered with solar array cells, that were to generate about 120 kilowatts of electricity. Within the V-shaped beams there would be five modules for living, laboratory space, and external areas for instruments and other facilities.

This would probably be a very heavy station for the volume and usable surface area provided. However, once that truss structure is in place, it seems like it would be possible to keep adding on to it without overly stressing the structure, with the possible result of a very capable station. It should also be possible to keep tacking on new truss elements.

The design would necessarily keep most of the station elements shadowed by the solar arrays.

 Posted by at 10:15 pm

I question this toy-like object

 Hmm..., humor, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Oct 092017
 

While in a cheap-crap store, I happened across this “toy.” I didn’t pay it a whole lot of attention to it; I *think* it’s one of those highly gummy things that just sticks to things. I think.

There was one thing about it that made me go “huh” and take a few seconds out of my day to take a photo. And then when I got home check online to see if the thing that made me go “huh” was, indeed, huh-worthy.

Here’s a link to the Urban Dictionary definition of the term in question. I’ll leave it to you to decide if this was the result of ignorance, or someone was a smartass and it got past ignorant higher-ups.

It would also surprise me precisely none at all if it turns out this isn’t actually an officially licensed product.

 Posted by at 5:06 pm

Talking past each other on guns

 blather, Hmm..., politics, weapons, wisdom, ಠ_ಠ  48 Responses »
Oct 092017
 

This piece seems to be reasonably well reasoned, and if you are a left-winger or an anti-gunner, or if you know one, I’d suggest giving it a read.

6 Reasons Your Right-Wing Friend Isn’t Coming To Your Side On Gun Control

As the title suggests, six reasons are given. But I think the first one is perhaps one of the most important:

The most destructive, divisive response when dealing with Second Amendment advocates is the notion that we aren’t on your side of the issue because we “don’t care” about the tragedy and loss of life. Two years ago at Christmas I had a family member, exasperated that I wasn’t agreeing about gun control, snarl, “It appears that if your [step] daughter was killed because of gun violence you wouldn’t even care!”

Me, I’m a jerk. I’ve long since ceased to really care about convincing people who disagree with me to agree with me, because to a large degree politics has become so stultifyingly polarized that no matter what evidence is produced that there isn’t some phantom wage gap, or that nuclear power is the way to go, or that the United States isn’t the greatest evil in world history, or that the world is more than 6,000 years old or that vaccines aren’t going to give you autism or that a firearm I own isn’t going to jump up and shoot you or that maybe you should be allowed to keep what you earn and control your own stuff and destiny, there will be people who just will not accept it. A few decades of these fights have largely drained the hope from me that many people are even open to understanding anything that even comes close to libertarianism or conservativism or a rational scientific outlook. So I just throw the occasional bomb onto my blog and call it a day.

But if you actually hold out the hope of convincing The Other Side of your viewpoint, coming at them right out of the gate with “you don’t care about victims” is *exactly* the wrong approach. And for two reasons:

1: If the other guy doesn’t believe that you believe what you’re saying, he knows you to be a dishonest and disreputable liar.

2: If the other guy *does* believe what you say when you declare that he doesn’t care about actual victims, he’s going to assume that *you* are the actual sociopath in the situation.

And somethgin that has coem up in the comments section of this blog many times is also discussed:

5. We Seriously Don’t Care About Gun Laws in Other Countries

We really, really don’t.

We don’t.

Most Americans give precisely zero shits about “but everyone else in the world does X.” Whether “X” is:

  • Fanatical devotion to soccer
  • Disdain for American beer/chocolate/fast food/movies/music/culture
  • Acceptance of anti-blasphemy laws and other forms of legal strictures on the expression of unpopular opinions
  • What y’all think the US should do about gun laws.

We really, really don’t. Sure, some do, but we tend to sequester them in Hollywood where we can point at them and laugh.

 Posted by at 12:18 am

Ah, vegans…

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Meh., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  10 Responses »
Oct 082017
 

On a day when I received emails telling me that the mailer will not be purchasing my cyanotypes because he disagrees with my politics, this news story came along to make me sigh and shake my head:

Vegan’s life upended after Facebook rant about “carnists” killed in Vegas

The owner of a vegan food truck (uuuughhh…) posted some interesting things about the victims of the Mandalay Bay Massacre, including:

“Yes, I am jaded. Fifty-nine meat eaters dead. How many animals will live because of this?” And “I don’t give a REDACTED about carnists anymore”

And now she’s shocked, SHOCKED, that people are reacting poorly to her essentially expressing appreciation for the fact that fifty nine of her fellow Americans were murdered, because they had perfectly normal and natural diets.

This is her and her clearly well adjusted son/business partner in front of the food truck they are no longer operating. So if in a few weeks you see them tooling around Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in a repainted food truck, make sure to pay them a visit. Do not do like the people in the article death-threatening her, but *do* demand that she make you a good burger. Use the same court rulings that force religious bakers to make cakes they don’t want to make.

 Posted by at 8:00 pm

APR Patreon rewards for October

 aircraft, drawings, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 082017
 

Got them done a little early this time, so here’s a review of what the APR Patrons will be receiving:

Patrons will receive:

A proposal brochure on the C-135A cargo transport

A brochure about the Shuttle-C

A well illustrated NASA-produced booklet from the mid 1980’s describing the space station as them conceived

A large format diagram showing a wind tunnel model of the Titan III/Dyna Soar

A CAD diagram of the ca. 2001 Russian TsAGI Integrated Wing Body large passenger transport jetliner

If these are of interest, please consider signing on to the APR Patreon.

 Posted by at 12:32 pm

I’ll take the American system

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  32 Responses »
Oct 072017
 

Non-Americans and anti-American Americans are currently yammering on about how the US needs to get rid of the right to bear arms and other basic Constitutional rights, in the doomed pursuit of a slight decrease in the crime rate. Many of these people disdain “Constitutional absolutists.” But without that absolutism, you get this:

Amber Rudd: viewers of online terrorist material face 15 years in jail

As described, if you “repeatedly view terrorist content online” you  “could face up to 15 years behind bars.” Assuming the article is accurately written, simply viewing material that the government doesn’t like can get you tossed into the hoosegow. But worry not, gentle blog readers, the intent is narrowly focussed:

“I want to make sure those who view despicable terrorist content online, including jihadi websites, far-right propaganda and bomb-making instructions, face the full force of the law”

So, only jihadi websites, anything to the right of Lenin and basic chemistry. What’s to worry about?

 Posted by at 7:57 pm

YouTubers Worth Watching: The Dead Mall Series

 AARRRGH, Gah., history, Hmm..., youtube, YouTubers worth watching  8 Responses »
Oct 072017
 

The world is full of places that have fallen into disuse and despair. Sometimes it’s because some idiots got likkered up and started messing around with an ancient nuclear reactor designed by Socialists, and they wind up trashing the countryside. Sometimes it’s a formerly vibrant auto manufacturing city that got wiped out by unions, politics and recovering post-war foreign auto manufacturing capabilities. And sometimes it’s a shopping mall that was once the hub of activity and is now abandoned and empty, because shopping malls have fallen out of favor, or because the local economy tanked, or because the people running the joint were idjits. Fortunately, there’s the Dead Mall Series on YouTube to show the world some of these dismal, empty reminders of times gone by. Some are truly abandoned, empty shells left to nature and vandals; some are still functioning, but on life support with only a tiny fraction of their stores still open.

If you are of my generation, the shopping mall was The Place To Be back in the day. It was where all the cool kids hung out. But of course if you have the misfortune of actually being like me, you weren’t one of the cool kids, so you didn’t actually hang out at the mall. And of course today a lot of the official function of a shopping mall has been taken up by WalMart, CostCo and Amazon; the socializing function has been taken up by Facebook and such. So there are a *lot* of malls that are now ghosts of what they once were, while still being perfectly decent enough structures. I’ve often wondered what could be done with a shopping mall to turn it, at minimal cost, into something else. Schools and hospitals and museums seem obvious choices, but I doubt there’s enough call for such. Some sort of office complex, maybe. Senior citizen or other assisted living facility with built-in gathering places, amusements, shopping (greatly reduced in scope, of course).

The Dead Mall Series gives tours of some of these places along with commentary, added music (the music *always* seems to fit right in with my 30-year-old recollection of 80’s malls) and often enough added vintage commercials with a few minor tweaks to make them a little more interesting. (The woman in the “Tan Perfect” commercial who doesn’t want wrinkles in this one, is, ummm… yeah.)

 

 

 Posted by at 6:07 pm

SJW comics: does it have a future?

 art, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, news, politics, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  6 Responses »
Oct 072017
 

I’m not a big comic book guy, so I haven’t been as invested as some in being appalled at the SJW takeover of Marvel Comics. As someone who only paid a smidgen of attention to the issue, it was hard to tell if this problem arose within the staff of Marvel, or if there was an actual fanbase. Given that sales have apparently gone down as a result of the SJW-ification  of many of the titles, I assumed that it was a problem within the Marvel offices. So when news came out that Marvel was teaming up with Northrop-Grumman in order to bolster STEM, I figured that the Marvel leadership was pulling its head out, and that the fanbase would approve.

Ooops.

Marvel cancels controversial Northrop Grumman presentation at NYCC following backlash

The “backlash” came from an army of Twits  who claimed to be horrified that a comic book company that has made billions of dollars off of fictional weapons designer Tony Stark would team up with a  company that builds the weapons that keep their nation safe. And Marvel didn’t just cancel the presentation, they cancelled the partnership.

It may be that the Twitterbots who were complaining were that small portion of the fanbase who are thrilled with the neutering of characters like Iron Man, or if this is a larger symptom of idiocy among the fanbase.

 Posted by at 3:00 pm
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