The Unwanted Blog

Located on the grounds of the Museum of Aviation near Robins Air Force Base in Georgia is one of the YMC-130H Credible Sport testbeds. Credible Sport was, to put it mildly, one of the sportier variants of the C-130. Intended specifically for a rescue mission of the American hostages held by the Iranians, Credible Sport was designed for near VTOL operations, to land and take off within the confines of a soccer stadium. In order to do this, the aircraft was liberally festooned with solid rocket motors. Eight were located near the front of the plane, with their nozzles pointing forward; at the instant the plane touched down, they would fire and slam the plane to a halt. Eight more pointed down, and more pointed aft; at takeoff, the downward rockets would provide enough thrust to launch the plane vertically skyward, while the aft rockets would push it forward. By the time they burned out, the plane would be going fast enough so that the conventional turboprops would be able to maintain forward flight.

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The program came to a halt when one of the test planes crashed… the braking rockets were meant to be fired after touchdown, not when the plane was still 20 feet in the air. Ooops.

The specifics of the mission as a whole are a bit murky. At least two Credible Sports would be used to deliver Delta Force commandos and to haul out the hostages; but there would also be considerable backup by other aircraft from the US Navy and Air Force. I had a friend who was in the Air Force at the time (“The Jimmy Carter Peacetime Fly-In Club” as he called it), maintaining B-52’s on Guam. And the night of the Eagle’s Talon/Desert One fiasco, the follow-up operation that followed in the aftermath of the failure of the Credible Sport, all the B-52’s were put on high alert and fully loaded with ordnance. Seems likely that the idea was to extract the hostages and then transform Tehran – and likely large parts of the rest of Iran – into fields of rubble reminiscent of WWII Hamburg. Had this gone off as planned, Reagan might not have been elected until 1984. 

More photos after the “continue reading…”

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The US Navy’s Vanguard launch vehicle was to be America’s first rocket to put a satellite into orbit. As we all know, the first orbital attempt was a dismal failure.

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Vanguard launch TV-3 was on December 6, 1957, and achieved the staggering altitude of four feet before losing thrust and toppling over (I’ve always wondered at the relative ease with which the nosecone seems to just fall off). This was on live TV, somewhat different to how the Soviets were doing it at the time.

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The next Vanguard launch, TV-3BU, was on February 5, 1958, and made it 57 seconds before breaking up. The next launch was TV-4 on March 17, 1958, and succeeded in placing the Vanguard satellite in orbit… where it still is (mankind’s oldest artifact in space.

Let me repeat: Failed on December 6, failed on February 5, succeeded on March 17. Less than two months between launch attempts, even after failures. Try to imagine the US launch industry trying that today.

Many years ago, I bought a copy of Piers Bizony’s “2001; Filming The Future” in a used book store. Tucked inside the book were 8 glossy promotional prints from 2001. I have not the slightest clue where they came from. The prints themselves seemed new, and were cetainly in good shape, but the images themselves… well, they weren’t the best quality. Still, they were interesting.

Some years later I moved to Utah. The prints ended up in my shop. And as I found out real quick, the shop is not as waterproof as I might’ve hoped. Along with losing all the printed issues of the initial run of APR, a lot of other things got wet when rain worked it way in. Included in the list were the glossies… the water did a fantastic job of gluing them together into one inflexible mass. They stayed that way for some years, up until a month ago when I decided to experiment. Turns out Windex helps to soften them up and allows them to be peeled away from each other. Not intact, not without noticable flaws, but better than nothing. So, not having anything better to do with them, I scanned them, and here are the first two of eight:

Moonbus.

Dave Bowman lookin’ all serious and stuff.

Sunlight:

Algae:

How Raedthinn spends long car rides:

Once he’s situated somewhere stable, like a motel room, he can relax: