Say “howdy” to the incept date of the movie character with the all-time best death.
Jan 082016
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Jan 082016
This set of illustrations took distressingly long to come together, a lot of that time being research. Issue 4 of US Spacecraft Projects will, as previously promised, be all about “landers,” an admittedly somewhat vague descriptor. Still a fair bit of work to do, but at least the basics are all in place.
Jan 072016
Yeah, yeah, the title hearkens back to some politically unfortunate events, but it fits here.. two photos of the Saturn Ib and Saturn V on the launch pad lit up by the amazingly brilliant lamps NASA used for the job. The image of the Saturn Ib gets to me… I think it’s the contrast of The Most Amazing Thing EVAR in the background, while in the foreground are a number of fellers just doing a job.
Jan 072016
Jan 072016
In digging through my files, I came across a few photos showing John Glenn being presented with a gift sometime after his Mercury flight. Somehow I suspect that today the chances of an astronaut being presented a firearm as a recognition gift seems slim, especially as the presenters seem to be NASA itself. The placard in the box and engraved on the rifle state that it’s from the “PROJECT ENGINEERING OFFICE.”
Jan 062016
The Aviation Week archive is now online. You need to sign up to gain access; I had to try with two different email addresses. Part of the process is they send you an email you have to click on to finish the registration process; the first address never got the email, the second got it in seconds. Shrug.
Not that it’s not the *complete* archive. There are still a number of issues missing… perhaps unsurprisingly, one specific issue from the 1980’s I went looking for isn’t there. Presumably it’ll show up eventually. But even so… there is a productivity-destroying amount of stuff available. At least in some cases the online images are higher resolution than the best scans from actual issues of the magazine.
Jan 052016
Interesting timing. The Norks set off a nuke, and MTV premieres “The Shanarra Chronicles.” This latter is something I’ve never paid much attention to; apart from Tolkein, I just don’t get much into fantasy. Bring up elves and magic and my eyes tend to glaze over. But Shanarra is set not in some mythical alternate world or some magical past, but apparently this world, thousands of years after (apparently) nuclear/biological warfare has destroyed human civilization and caused several subspecies (elves, trolls, dwarves, gnomes, etc) to spring up*. And, of course, magic. So, there’s that.
So, now with the Norks getting frisky with nukes and biowar getting easier on a daily basis, the idea of humanity evolving a tad makes this video more relevant. It is a handy, concise explanation of the process of evolution, using computer graphics on a scale rarely encountered, and with a level of accuracy far exceeding what you’re likely to find in a public school post-Department of Education.
*See also “Adventure Time.”
And because why not, here’s this again. If you think evolution is bunk, by all means go through this and figure out what statements are wrong:
Jan 052016
CNN TV says they have confirmation that this was a man made event.
Magnitude 5.1 seismic disturbance recorded in North Korea
Yay, nukes! Can we test our own now, please?
UPDATE:
North Korea says it successfully conducts hydrogen bomb test
Granted, North Korea in the past has proved to be as honest as a Chicago politician, so who knows. A 5.1 magnitude quake equates to *roughly* 0.67 kilotons, which would be one hell of a weak H-bomb, but it’d be in line with the kinda sad nukes the Norks have set off in the past.
Jan 052016
I recently decided that I wanted to at least look at the idea of producing a printed and bound book or two of aerospace artwork. For copyright reasons selling coffeetable tomes filled with other peoples art is probably not a good idea, so this would likely be something just for myself, if it can be made affordable. But step one was gathering the artwork I have into one location so’s I can figure out what to include. So I dug through the ol’ hard drives and gathered stuff into one folder. A few conditions: the images had to be large/high-rez enough to be printed at at least 8.5X11; they had to be in color, not B&W; they had to be paintings (not CGI, not photos of models, not line drawings); they had to be “official” images, not fan art of the like; they had to be interesting.
I’ve been thinking of perhaps a few different volumes… “Saturn/Apollo,” “Shuttle Program,” “Conceptual Designs,” etc. I was looking for something on the order of 50 images per volume.
End result: the “Aero Art” folder has 982 files for a total of 7.73 gigabytes. I guess I have enough to take a stab at this…
What I’d *really* like to do is to have a larger format book… preferably 11X17 or so pages. But that’s probably a bit much.
Jan 042016
The internet has all the answers, so long as you have the download speed for it…
