… is coming to Spike TV as a series.
Best point: it’s being written by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski.
The “Red Mars” trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is kinda divisive… some people love it, some hate it. I read the first book 17 or so years ago… and don’t remember it overly much. Still, there’s no such thing as too much hard sci-fi on TV.
Issue 03 of US Launch Vehicle Projects is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #03 includes:
USLP #03 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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The CAD drawings created for USBP reformatted and rescaled for 11X17 collected in a separate volume. Drawings have in some cases been corrected, improved and added to.
USBP 11X17 10-12 collects the diagrams created for issues 10, 11 and 12, including:
Boeing Model 464-34-3, Republic mach 7, Lockheed CL-1301-1, Convair WS-125A, Boeing 484-415, Martin Model 223-10, Boeing Model 814-1010 Dyna Soar, Martin Model 192-5, Boeing Model 464-40, Boeing Model 701-218, Northrop Nuclear flying wing, North American D118, Martin Model 223-11, North American Model 705-00-04, Bell/Martin 464L, Boeing B-1, Boeing Big Bird BB 6800, Boeing Model464-41, Douglas MX-2091-E, Boeing Model 701-238, Martin Model 223-12, Northrop Nuclear Flying Wing, Rockwell MRCC, Lockheed CL-820-8
USBP11x17-10-12 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $10:
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The CAD drawings created for USBP reformatted and rescaled for 11X17 collected in a separate volume. Drawings have in some cases been corrected, improved and added to.
USBP 11X17 13-15 collects the diagrams created for issues 10, 11 and 12, including:
Ryan Model 162, Boeing Orbital bomb, Northrop Atomic Wing, Consolidated Vultee High Speed Flying Boat, Martin Model 189, Boeing Model 464-046, Curtis F-87C, Boeing Model 701-247, Lockheed WS 464L Dyna Soar, McDonnell WS 464L Dyna Soar, North American WS 464L Dyna Soar, Republic WS 464L Dyna Soar, Convair WS 464L Dyna Soar I, Convair WS 464L Dyna Soar II, Douglas WS 464L Dyna Soar, Northrop N206 WS 464L Dyna Soar, Boeing Model 814-1010 Dyna Soar II, Bell/Martin WS 464L Dyna Soar, Boeing Model 2050E Dyan Soar, Boeing Dyna Soar/ Titan IIIc, Bell D2001 TS-149, Lockheed Harvey; Convair Model 35, Rockwell D661-27, Boeing Model 464-49, Boeing Model 988-123, Boeing Manned Orbital Bomber, Boeing Model 701-251
USBP11x17-13-15 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $10:
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For the last week or so, the news media, entertainment media and internet have been loaded down with claims that America has had more mass shootings in 2015 than 2015 has had days. This, of course, sounds pretty bad, and is a factoid being used by the civilian disarmament movement to further their cause of restricting firearms solely to agents of the government and violent criminals. But is the claim accurate?
Surprise, surprise, it’s not.
Basically, the definition of “mass shooting” had to be badly mangled in order to get the numbers they were after. The definition being used here is that in a single incident of gunfire, four or more people are injured or killed. Note, though, that it’s not four people injured by the shooter shooting them. Nor four people being injured by being shot. or, indeed, *anybody* being shot. Injuries such as bystanders running away, tripping and skinning their knee? They’re counted. The shooter himself gets shot by a cop, or beat half to death by a bystander, or shoots himself? He’s counted.
The number being trotted out is 355 mass shootings in 2015. The Congressional Research Service defines:
“mass public shooting” is a mass shooting “in at least one or more public locations, such as a workplace, school, restaurant, house of worship, neighborhood, or other public setting . . . and not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance (armed robbery, criminal competition, insurance fraud, argument, or romantic triangle).” Using these definitions, Grant Duwe, in his 2007 book Mass Murder in the United States: A History, notes: “Excluding those that occurred in connection with criminal activity such as robbery, drug dealing, and organized crime, there were 116 mass public shootings during the twentieth century” (emphasis mine). The Congressional Research Service reported 317 mass shootings between 1999 and 2013, only 66 of which qualified under their criteria as mass public shootings.
According to this metric, there were fewer mass shootings in *14* *years* than is now being claimed for 2015.
However you count ’em, a mass public shooting is a Very Bad Thing. But some in the civilian disarmament movement are claiming that the US is somehow unique in this, that we are virtually alone in having mass shootings. But, surprise, surprise, this isn’t accurate either.
How dangerous is the US as far as mass shootings? Not very, compared to some Enlightened European Nations:
Here’s something I have some vague recollection of posting before, but couldn’t find after a cursory search: a sketch of the seating arrangement of a 3-man A-4 rocket (might be the A-8 derivative). This is a scan of a photocopy of a photocopy; the original photocopy was found in the files of a researcher at the NASM twenty or so years ago. It’s thought that the sketch was originally made by Werner von Braun during WWII.
Little data is provided; range is given as 500 km. *Presumably* this would have been a winged, landing-gear-equipped derivative of the A-4; replacing the warhead of the V-2 with just three guys seems like a waste of three guys, as well as a not terribly effective weapons system.
The full-rez scan (such as it is) has been made available to APR Patrons in the 2015-12 APR Extras Dropbox folder. If you’d like to help out and gain access to this and many other pieces of aerospace history, please check out the APR Patreon.
Bruce has made a step forward in socializing: he has learned what a sleeping human is for. Up till now, whenever I have attempted to sleep down in the basement Quarantine Zone he has taken the opportunity to practice his “hand and foot attack” skills. But last night he finally figured it out: humans are for sleeping on.
This one might not be for everybody. But then, who could *really* take issue with a short film about a pair of psychos hell bent on slaughtering a family? NSFW language, actions and amounts of blood.
A few days ago I posted about some proposed cyanotype blueprints and asked if there was interest. I got a few comments and a few emails, with totals something like this (as of 12-07, 10:55 am):
Orion: 2
Have Sting: 3
X-15A-3: 3
MRCC: 1
D645-3: 0
X-20/Titan III: 3
B-70: 5
ITHACUS: 0
Hmmmph.
Takes about 10 orders for these things to turn any sort of profit.
The Space Launch System continues to meander ahead. This surprises me; I thought sure it would’ve been cancelled by now. But forward it goes. Proof of that progress comes in the form of NASA recently signed a $1.16 billion dollar contract with Aerojet Rocketdyne (seriously, how depressing is it that this is now one company, rather than two vibrant competitors?) to restart production of the RS-25 rocket engine. Four of these engines will power the core of the SLS launcher.
Diagram showing the Saturn I, Space Shuttle, SLS and Saturn V to scale
The RS-25 was also – and better – known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine. It’s an incredibly complex, fabulously expensive engine, because it tries to squeeze every last erg of performance from the hydrogen and oxygen propellants, and because it’s a man-rated engine that *cannot* be allowed to self-disassemble, and because it’s reusable.
Except… the new RS-25s will be tossed away with each SLS flight. Every time the rocket goes up, four RS-25s will be dumped into the drink.
Seems just a little bit of a waste.
As part of the new contract, the RS-25’s will be modernized; since there’ll be no reusing them, manufacturing processes are to be streamlined and parts count will be reduced. That’s good, but unless the parts count drops a *lot,* the price per engine will remain painfully high.
Interestingly, this is kinda the same/kinda the reverse of the history of the H-1 engine used on the Saturn I. The Thor and Jupiter MRBMs used the LOX/RP-1 S-3 engine; it was the right size for the new Saturn I, but was terribly expensive. So Rocketdyne engineers took the S-3 apart, figured out what they needed and what could be simplified, reduced parts count by (IIRC) more than 90%, and produced the H-1 engine. Lighter, cheaper, more powerful and, as it turned out, reusable without even really trying.
Throwing away the RS-25s after each flight is not necessarily necessary. Many, many Shuttle-derived launch vehicles have been designed over the decades that used SSMEs but didn’t throw them away. Anywhere from one to four (and probably more) SSMEs would be mounted at the tail of the launcher, built into a “capsule” that would separate from the booster after burnout and return the engines to the Earth (generally via ocean splashdown) where they would be recovered and reused. The design below (from US Launch Vehicle Projects #2) is a Martin Marietta concept from 1984 that put three SSMEs into a lifting body module that hung off the side of the booster. This position was chosen so that the booster could be launched from an unmodified Shuttle pad. The SLS mounted the engines directly below the core, necessitating a whole new launch pad. But since the Shuttle is no more, that’s not a big deal.
Since the last nuclear test detonation in the US was *way* back in 1992, the old way to get data on nukes is to revisit the artifacts of long-ago tests. Films turn out to have a surprising amount of new stuff to teach.