Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* have some fairly massive, un-aerodynamic corrugations, and for the same reason why the SR-71 has corrugations on the wing: to allow for thermal expansion. Why exactly the Boeing Dyna Soar corrugations run crossways to the airflow, I’m a little unclear on. Terrible aerodynamics, but I imagine that’s just the way the structure wanted to flex.
The corrugations rarely appear on the usually simple diagrams you see of early Dyna Soar configurations, but they were there on full-scale mockups.
So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing:
1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US.
2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like to see these people fired.
3: It’s the team owners right to keep them or fire them
4: And it’s the fans right to stop spending time and money on games with players who are over-paid rude jackholes.
The NFL gets neither my time nor my money, so the NFL doesn’t care what my opinion is. But when you have an audible fraction of the people in attendance in the stadium *booing* the players behavior, the NFL should probably take some notice. And if you’re one of those fans who watches and/or attends and you’re booing? Stop watching, stop attending. Pretty simple free market stuff.
A few decades ago, professional athletes didn’t get paid diddly squat. Now they get paid more than most CEO’s, certainly more that the vast majority of the STEM majors, cops and soldiers who actually make life not only better but *possible.* They now seem to be an entitled class of dimwitted self-important boobs, paid stupid sums of money to do something fundamentally unimportant. And given how dependent upon politics the NFL is for a large fraction of their vast profits (sweetheart tax deals, getting the military to expend time and treasure for flyovers and the like), you’d think that something the NFL would want their players to be is *non* political, at least on the field.
So if you are a fan who is offended that a lot of the players are disrespecting your country because they are upset that even though black criminals are shot by the police at a lower rate than white criminals, they want that ratio to be tilted even further (that might not be what they *say* their reasons are, but that’s what it comes down to), then there is a simple solution: turn the game off. Stay home. Imagine how much more time and money you’ll have if you’re now going to a stadium to spend several hours watching tattooed millionaires play eleven *minutes* of sportsball and get paid more in that time than you will all year.
If stadiums emptied and the TVs were turned to something else (heck, if you are a “football family,” maybe y’all could play Monopoly or something instead), perhaps the rather obscene amount of money being squandered on this ridiculous pastime could finally be put to some better use. What better uses? Hmmm. Let me think…
Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator.
And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time:
There have of course been advances in the field of encabulators, such as the micro-encabulator:
And the retroprototurboencabulator:
OK, the Encabulator is never going to not be funny. But the thing I noticed: in all the variants of it produced over the years, there hasn’t been a whole lot of actual variation. Where are the *all* *new*scripts?
Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again.
One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed in to Facebook, and if you are signed in, your own Facebook page when displayed to you has a bunch of editing features plastered all over it. Mine does, at any rate. So I can’t see what my own APR Facebook page looks like to other folks. Meh. So I don’t know if it looks ok or not. Anyone wants to wander by and let me know, that’d be great.
Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.
So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review:
It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even have Klingons hating on other Klingons based on skin color, something that has *never* been indicated before. And of course they have cloaking devices, ten years before the Romulans invented the friggen’ things.
And Star Fleet bridge officers who attack other officers and try to mutiny. Yeah, sure, happens all the damn time in Starfleet. The rest of the story just didn’t really inspire much interest.
The first episode ends with a bit of a cliffhanger. Of course if you want to watch the second episode and those beyond, you’re supposed to pay up for the CBS All Access streaming service. But the episode left me cold, no more interested in shelling out to stream the episodes than before I saw it. So…
At least there’s still “The Orville,” a show that actually seems to get Star Trek.
This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like gasoline.
I kept halfway expecting the drone to duck into a crevice in the rock face and wind up in a great interior space, lit only by the flames of a Balrog…
OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman:
A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the keys to the city? A commendation for improving the streets and the gene pool? Nope:
Left unexplained in the article is why a guy who, according to the description given in the article, was simply defending himself has now been charged with murder.
A piece of NAA concept art from the late 50’s or very early 60’s depicting a “space taxi.” Such devices were a common staple of space station thinking well into the 60’s, though it’s difficult to tell just how serious of a design this one was. The canopy, for example, seems an odd choice. The shape of the bubble and of the hatch indicates that this was not designed to hold pressure; the fact that the pilot is shown in a full space suit backs that up. It would make it difficult for the pilot to enter and exit the craft. And of course, the taxi is shown without reaction control thrusters, making it rather difficult to maneuver the thing. Very likely this is an artists fantasy done purely for marketing, showing people things they expect to see. Note, for example, that the space station appears to be cribbed directly from the Collier’s series. And if the station was rotating, that door would be in the *floor.*
