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Anybody having trouble with this blog?

 AARRRGH, blather, ಠ_ಠ  25 Responses »
Sep 092016
 

Not philosophical trouble or political issues, but technical troubles. While out today, I got an email from a reader saying he couldn’t get in… instead was presented with a captcha thing that didn’t work. So I checked on my phone, which normally pulls up the blog just fine… and got a “can’t connect to server” on both the blog and up-ship.com in general. At the same time, I was getting notifications that comments were being posted, so clearly *other* people were getting in just fine. When I arrived home, the blog pulled up just fine on my netbook, and now it works fine on the phone. So… what the frak. Anybody else see something like this?

It has been more than a year since the last major blog fiasco. I suppose it’s about time, so if sometime in the near future the thing collapses again… well, you’ve been warned.

By the way: my security software keep telling me about such-and-such ISP that has been blocked because of attempts to log in to the blog dashboard. The ISP is in Ukraine, and I have the funny feeling that no good is intended.

UPDATE: just got an email that someone in Ottawa, Canada, couldn’t access either the blog or the root website, getting instead an “ERR_CONNECTION_RESET” message.

 Posted by at 3:25 pm

Kicking a moon rocket

 awesomeness, history, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  5 Responses »
Sep 082016
 

This blog has been blathering forth for more than 8 years now, so at some point I probably posted some version of this video of a Saturn V shake test carried out by shoving and pulling on the CSM section. Don’t care. It’s cool even if it’s a repeat.

 

Imagine NASA doing this in a couple years with the SLS. Yeah, no.

 Posted by at 8:44 pm

The feel-good film of the summer

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., politics, weapons, wisdom, youtube  3 Responses »
Sep 082016
 

This has been a dreadful summer for motion picture box office receipts, with some big, big bombs. But then there were surprise hits like “Sausage Party” which cost relatively little to make ($19 M) and raked in more than $90 M domestically. The lesson? Maybe smaller is better. For example, this short film, “Never Met Her.” It is NSFW. It is a fact-based little yarn about a recent protest at the University of Texas-Austin where a bunch of anti-gun protesters decided to carry sex toys around public for some reason (watch out, kids, you might cut yourself being so durned edgy).

Unsurprisingly, some snowflakes got triggered.

 

 Posted by at 7:24 pm

A new Mexican-American War?

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, history, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  19 Responses »
Sep 082016
 

This could prove endlessly entertaining:

Mexico threatens to cancel treaty that ceded Texas and California to US if Trump gets elected

The bill Piter is proposing would specifically cancel the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War and ceded Texas and California as well as parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming to the U.S. if Trump cancels NAFTA.

Like most proposals out of politicians, I assume that this is just grandstanding and useless theater. But boy howdy would it be entertaining to watch Mexico try to reclaim Texas…

 Posted by at 7:13 pm

Your new productivity destroyer

 art, awesomeness, Forward!, history, science fiction, spacecraft  15 Responses »
Sep 062016
 

Soviet science fiction movies

With English subtitles or, in a few cases, English dubbing. I’m currently downloading “Solaris” to watch later; I’ve heard good things about that. One the other hand, the vast majority of these are completely unknown to me. And on the gripping hand… how can you *not* want to watch 1974’s “Teens in the Universe?” Just on the title alone it *screams* “I need the MST3K team on this stat.”

And then there’s the poster. Look at it. Look. Fabulously gay Soviet space scouts and the bell-bottomiest bell bottoms that ever bell bottomed.

 Posted by at 3:06 pm

Well there’s something you don’t see every day

 Gah., Hmm..., news, politics  8 Responses »
Sep 062016
 

A politician completely losing control of her lungs during the course of a speech:

This has got to be a nightmare for a politician. As someone with bad lungs myself due to repeated bouts of bronchitis, coughing is for me an ever-present annoyance, something I have to work hard to suppress (such as during interviews on The Space Show). But the bulk of the work I do does not depend on me keeping coughing under control… unlike Hillary here.

So, how will this be spun? The initial spin will be, I’m sure, “It’s nothing, no big deal.” If this continues or worsens, “Look how much she cares, she’s willing to put her own health at risk because she cares so much.”

 Posted by at 11:46 am

Bell Aerospace Hypersonic Transport Ticket

 aircraft, art, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  10 Responses »
Sep 052016
 

Produced by Bell Aerospace around 1960 as a promotional item was this “ticket” for a flight from New York City to Melbourne, Australia. The aircraft shown was a two-stage hypersonic passenger transport; the first stage was essentially a supersonic transport equipped with turboramjet engines; it carried on its back a rocket powered passenger spaceplane. At the time it was pushed by the likes of Walter Dornberger, who had previously publicized a two-stage all-rocket powered hypersonic transport. There was some link between this design and the Dyna Soar program, but it is unclear just how involved the engineering was on the HST. Artwork was produced and a good display model, but it’s hard to tell if it went any further than that.

bell hst ticket 2 bell hst ticket 1

I have uploaded high-rez scans (600 dpi) to the 2016-09 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is accessible to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above.

 Posted by at 1:11 am

Universe

 art, awesomeness, history, science, science fiction, youtube  2 Responses »
Sep 042016
 

I mentioned this film a mere five and half years ago. “Universe” is a black and white documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1960, and gives a general overview of the universe as revealed by astronomers. Some pretty spiffy visual effects are used; as a result, this film was one of the inspirations for the film “2001.” Additionally it was narrated by Douglas Rain… HAL 9000 himself.

It’s now available to view on and download from YouTube:

I’m generally not a fan of colorized films, but it’d be interesting to see what a skilled colorizer could do with this.

Another film that helped inspire “2001” was “To The Moon and Beyond,” made by Graphic Films for exhibit at the 1964 New York Worlds Fair. That’s one I’ve *never* seen, sadly, but much of the work done by Con Pederson and Douglas Trumbull on “Moon” was of great value for “2001.” “Moon” was projected onto a spherical screen, apparently something like an early Omnimax. The technical requirements for this might explain why the film doesn’t seem to have been shown since the 64 Fair. I don’t know if a copy even exists anymore, though it seems probable.

 

 Posted by at 5:25 pm
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