I’m sold: the red-band trailer (consequently NSFW) for “Keanu,” which comes out in a few months:
Jan 292016
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Jan 292016
The next two US Aerospace Projects issues will be new types. Here’s a first look at one of them:
Jan 292016
This is interesting: a recent translation of a previously untranslated Babylonian text indicates that the ancients were on the path towards developing the rudiments of calculus, using some mathematical cleverness to predict the path of Jupiter across the sky. This is not an easy or straightforward task, but “the Babylonians did so by tracking Jupiter’s speed as a function of time and determining the area under a time-velocity curve.”
The recognition that the area under a time-velocity curve related to distance traveled did not re-appear until Europe in the mid-14th century; it’d be another three centuries before Newton and Leibnitz invented calculus.
This Babylonian Astronomy Text Changes History
Couple this with the Antikythera Mechamism and the fact that Archimedes was also on the path to calculus, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the ancient world was a lot closer to industrialism that we might have thought. Had science flourished and not been squashed by mysticism, we could well be a thousand to fifteen hundred years further along technologically.
A discussion with a friend today raised an interesting ponderable: how might history have been different if the Moon was seen to rotate, rather than being tidally locked? Assuming that it was at the same distance yet still rotated (thus minimizing issues with tides), I have the feeling that science just might have had a chance to triumph. Plato and the Pythagoreans believed that the heavens were perfect and inviolate; if the Moon rotated, it might have been clear that the Moon was a flawed, imperfect *place,* rather than some flawless celestial crystal or a great mirror reflecting Earth.
Jan 282016
Because it’s funny, that’s why.
And because why not:
Jan 282016
So there I was, sitting in a classroom, bored out of my mind, when all of a sudden the PA system woke up with a screech. Someone in the administrative offices had a TV on and was watching the Shuttle Challenger launch, saw it explode, and turned on the PA system and stuck the microphone up to the TV speaker. The classroom sorta froze for a few seconds, since nobody knew what was going on; the audio of course started up in mid sentence. When the speaker finally said something along the lines of “the space shuttle has exploded,” several students, myself included, packed up our stuff and bolted from the room, dashing towards the library. A whole lot of other kids and teachers had the same idea, with the result that hundreds tried to pack in to see the one TV in the place.
Boy, did that day *suck.*
Here’s the live CNN coverage. Note that the reporter is speaking when Challenger explodes… and, unlike current news reporting practice, he shuts up. Rather than a stream of unending blather, he lets the story speak for itself for a moment. Granted, he was likely shocked, but still…
Here’s some “behind the scenes at CNN:”
Here’s one hour of CNN coverage, from 11:00 to 12:00 (the explosion is at about 11:38):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rDg7S46ijM
And from 12:00 to 1:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmU2jC_RMYQ
It’s difficult to say that there was a bright spot in that day, but if there was, it was President Reagan. Originally scheduled to deliver the State of the Union address that night, he instead delivered a necessarily hastily-written address to the nation on Challenger… surely one of the great speeches in American political history.
Jan 272016
As some may know, I’ve recently been on a high-rez aerospace artwork kick (as always, if you know of or have any such, let me know). And while I’ve been focusing on high quality stuff, sometimes there are low-quality images that are stuff worth of note.
One such is below, a rendering of the Northrop Corporations “SLOMAR” (Space Logistics, Maintenance and Repair) design circa 1960. Numerous companies worked on that USAF study, producing a range of lifting manned entry vehicles (see the General Dynamics version HERE). Northrop designed a vehicle virtually identical to the Boeing Dyna Soar, though a bit bigger.
Jan 272016
Start gathering your pennies, DeLoreans will apparently be made available in 2017. These won’t be strictly speaking “new” DeLoreans, but rather approximately 300 “replicas” assembled from vintage spare parts. They will have updated electronics and some as-yet undefined new engine; this is good, because the original DeLoreans suffered from some pretty lame engines.
So if this sounds good to you… they’ll be sold for the truly affordable price of only $100,000.
The DeLorean Is Coming Back Thanks To This New Law, Will Have 300-400 HP
Jan 272016
A video describing the Mars Automatic Pistol, an early, failed attempt at marketing a semi-automatic pistol. Like many early automatics, this gun was ridiculously over-complicated; dirt, dust, water, mud, blood and sunlight all would have no doubt caused it to seize up in the field. It is noteworthy in having been just about the most powerful semi-auto handgun for many decades, firing the proprietary .45 Mars Long round.
It took quite a while for firearms designers to really figure out practical, powerful semi-auto pistols. John Browning nailed it with the M1911 which, more than a century later, is still the basis for most modern automatics. The parts count reduction alone…
Jan 272016
A couple things:
Ukraine set to liquidate world famous aircraft manufacturer Antonov
I’m literally angry with rage! No more AN-124’s or 225’s (not that there were going to be any more of those anyway). And in unrelated news:
Denmark passes controversial bill to seize assets and valuables from refugees
On one hand, this makes sense: the refugee-colonists flooding into Denmark and nearby nations are costing those welfare states a *lot* of money, so having them pay for themselves makes sense. On the other hand… how the hell is this supposed to actually work? How do you rifle through all the colonists stuff and figure out what to pawn?
So.
The two stories are unrelated on almost every level. However, I can see a link… and a solution to some problems. Antonovs problems are due in no small part to Russias war of territorial conquest against Ukraine, with the economic damage that has resulted. As a result of that war, a good-sized chunk of Ukraine has been chopped off. So… here’s my solution: Europe accepts Ukraine as part of the EU, based on pre-war borders. Europe then sends the Syrian refugee-colonists to Ukraine, who then settles them in Crimea. Assuming that the Russian-backed paramilitary forces on the ground try to prevent the colonists driving across the border, the EU funds Antonov to crank out a bunch of new cargo planes with which to darken the Crimean skies with parachuting colonists and their stuff.
Everybody wins!
Jan 272016
I can’t honestly tell if this is funny, but it certainly pegs the meter on the weirdometer. Some NSFW language.
Someone with a little bit of skill, the right tools and a whole lot of free time was able to visually mangle “The Shining” into something about chickens. It’s obviously done as a joke, but a side benefit is that it shows that someone else with the same skills, same tools and *more* free time, perhaps even a budget, could re-work another film into something else entirely, perhaps for serious effect. As another example, “Hell’s Club” from some months back:
Hell’s Club was a bit more of a straight mashup, taking bits and pieces from existing movies and expertly putting them together, while “The Chickening” does far more with adding all-new stuff.