admin

Fire

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Hmm..., news, photography, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 052016
 

The past couple days have been reasonably apocalyptic out here in rural Utah. A wildfire broke out Wednesday morning west of Plymouth, Utah (last I heard it was “human caused,” but no definition further than that), maybe twenty or so miles north of here. As Wednesday progressed I watched the plume of smoke get bigger and bigger, until later in the afternoon I drove off to go take a look. After nightfall the smoke cloud continued to progress, so that by Thursday 6:30 AM I woke up not being able to see my neighbors house. The wind shifted a bit and the air cleared some, but the smell of fire remains. This has done my lungs no good. So far, at least, no bronchitis has yet broken out, but wow do I have a headache.

I’ve taken a number of photos that might be of interest.

Two photos taken early 8/5 showing how a light down the way is scattered off the junk in the air. It’s got that “starry wisdom/gateway to somewhere you don’t want there to be a gateway to” look going on.

Dsc_4362 Dsc_4335

Early 8/4, low smoke cloud to the north lit by the fire.

Dsc_4280 Dsc_4303

Early 8/5, smoke cloud to the north and a light plume from lights illuminating a flag pole:

Dsc_4333

Panorama on the evening of 8/3 showing the smoke cloud working its way south

2016-08-03 pano 1

Panorama early 8/4

2016-08-04 pano 2

Panorama early 8/4 showing smoke cloud lit by fire

2016-08-04 pano 1

Evening 8/4, near Plymouth

WP_20160804_007

Evening 8/3 showing smoke cloud to the north

WP_20160803_036

Afternoon 8/3 near Plymouth

WP_20160803_027 Dscf7227

 Posted by at 2:56 am

Dual Keel Space Station Art: Part Two

 art, history, Patreon, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 032016
 

A while ago I was asked by another aerospace historian if I had any artwork of the “Dual Keel” version of the Space Station design from the mid/late 1980s. This was a predecessor to the International Space Station (the “Russians” being the “Soviets” at the time) and was to be used not just as an orbiting shack for some basic research, but also as an assembly area for manned missions to the moon and Mars. Turns out I had a fair amount of Dual Keel art. As is the way of things, a lot of that art is moderately poor… scanned from dusty slides, in many cases. Still, it’s what I had. It dawned on me that others might be interested in it, so I put all the images into the same size and format (standard 8.5X11) and made a PDF out of it, seventy some pages. I have uploaded Part Two to the “APR Extras” Dropbox site into the “2016-08 APR Extras” folder. This is accessible to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above (if you are such a patron and don’t have access, send me a message via Patreon, I’ll get you fixed up). Part One was uploaded to the “2016-07 APR Extras” Dropbox folder last month.

dualkeelad2

 Posted by at 9:25 pm

Truax’s Steam Rocket to soar again… over the Snake River Canyon

 awesomeness, Crazy, history, news, rockets, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Aug 032016
 

Apparently, come September a brand-new Skycycle will attempt to launch across the Snake River Canyon. Read about it here:

Return to Snake River: A new generation prepares to complete Evel Knievel’s greatest feat

Everybody remembers Evel Knievel; relatively few remember Bob Truax, the rocket engineer who designed and built the Skycycle.  Fortunately the article does talk about two generations of Truax, including Bob Truax’s son who built the new Skycycle that will be used in the new attempt.

 

This is scheduled for September 17 near Twin Falls, Idaho. Hmmm. That’s only about 2 hours from here, easy enough for me to drive up to. Except: the launch site is on private property and you have to buy a ticket. That’s fine, of course – but the tickets cost $1,000. A bit out of my pay grade, sadly.

evelspirit

 Posted by at 8:13 pm

Well, *duh*

 AARRRGH, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, ಠ_ಠ  10 Responses »
Aug 022016
 

Dutchman flies to China to see online girlfriend, lives in airport for 10 days waiting for her to show

Well, that was dumb. The title pretty much says it: he flew to China to surprise his internet girlfriend, and she never showed up. The obvious conclusion to draw is that she doesn’t actually exist (“catfishing”) and was just someone’s joke or scam to string the guy along for some reason, but apparently she’s at least *kinda* for real. The story goes that they’d agreed to meet up after a year of online dating, but he couldn’t wait; he sent her a photo of his flight information, but she didn’t know what it meant. And even better:

She says that she was unable to meet Cirk when he arrived in Changsha because she was out of town, undergoing cosmetic surgery in Zhengzhou, Henan province

Good plan, dude. It seems like these Surprise Romantic Gestures only work in the movies.

Heck, he might have lucked out here. “Cosmetic surgery” covers a *lot* of ground. Maye she was getting a boob job. Maybe “she” was getting bits lopped off (you know what I mean). Who friggen’ knows.

And here’s the one bit of wisdom I can really impart. The guy in the story is not photographed at his best, but he looks *awful.* He looks like a cross between a modern-day meth head, a 1980’s AIDS sufferer and a 1940’s death camp survivor. I doubt he got there in just 10 days. Now, I’m certainly no expert on what women want, but in general it seems like “scrawny tweaker” is not high on the list. The photo of the Chinese woman in the article has her face blurred, but she otherwise appears to be Standard Hot Asian Chick. And here’s my wisdom: unless you’ve got buckets of cash on open display, if you are not a good looking guy, that chick on the other end of the internet Does Not Exist.

At this point I’m willing to entertain the idea that there are *no* women on the internet. Anyone who claims to be a women, especially if “she” seems to be interested in you, is actually a 40-year old fat guy living in his mom’s basement.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 2:35 pm

Enterprise Restoration

 art, awesomeness, history, models, science fiction, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Aug 012016
 

This video shows the effort the National Air & Space Museum went to to restore the original USS Enterprise model. Damn if that doesn’t look like one hell of a job!

 

Tucked away inside the video were brief glimpses of some CAD diagrams of the Enterprise used for determining the paint scheme. I’d *love* to see these in full!

ncc1701color

 Posted by at 5:09 pm

Turkey

 AARRRGH, dumbassery, Gah., history, Hmm..., news, nukes, politics, ಠ_ಠ  9 Responses »
Aug 012016
 

I’m sure Putin is rubbing his hand in giddy expectation over this…

Reports Turkish troops have sealed off Incirlik US/NATO nuclear air base

It’s sad that a NATO nation is falling into outright dictatorship. But as we’re on the one century mark from World War One, *perhaps* opportunities are arising to fix some of the geopolitical mistakes of that war. At the end of WWI, the victorious European allies chopped up the former Ottoman Empire (and other areas of the Middle East) into a ridiculous hodge-podge of borders that cut existing political/religious/ethnic groups apart and stuck the chunks together with other groups that hated each other. Perhaps weh  all is said and done, Turkish Kurdistan can be set free to join up with Iraqi Kurdistan. And Constantinople can finally revert to Greece. That’ll be fun.

 Posted by at 12:05 am
 Older Entries  Newer Entries