This image of a bit of script is floating around. I swear to Jeebus that I recognize the style; I may have even posted about it. Anybody?
Aug 242019
Aug 242019
LOL wut? Clown World goes nuclear:
Russian officials blame cesium exposure on ‘Fukushima crabs’
Reactor explosion? What reactor explosion? Naw, naw, see, what happened is, the guy who tested positive for elevated levels of Cesium 137 went to Thailand recently, and ate some crabs. And clearly the crabs came from Fukushima. yeah, that’s the ticket…
Aug 162019
Hmmm.
Exclusive: Russian Doctors Say They Weren’t Warned Patients Were Nuclear Accident Victims
As more information dribbles out about the recent Russian missile explosion that released radiation of an undefined sort, this story is kinda interesting. There is some hey-didn’t-I-see-that-sort-of-thing-on-that-Chernobyl-show level paranoid bureaucracy skullduggery going on with doctors not being given all the facts, but one of the more interesting bits is that one of the doctors who treated the incident victims was found to have cesium 137 in his muscle tissue. There are a whole lot of useful bits of data left out here, such as how *much* cesium 137 and whether he could have picked it up elsewhere or whether any of the many other doctors and nurses involved were also contaminated with cesium 137. Given how often cesium 137 shows up in lower left nuclear incidents, such as industrial radioactive sources being simply lost or misplaced, it’s entirely possible that that one doctor came across it somewhere else. But if the doctor was contaminated internally to an important degree by a victim flown in from hundreds of mils from the incident site, it would indicate that there must be a *lot* of cesium 137 floating about. because cesium 137 would be an odd substance here. It’s a byproduct of the fission of U-235, but you’d imagine that uranium would be the bigger story if that was the source. It’s not seemingly terribly useful for military applications.
Cesium 137 is a beta emitter; it’s pretty much useless in a reactor, though I imagine someone clever might be able to find a way to harness the beta emissions somehow. It won;t make a bomb, though you might turn very fine powder into a cladding for a dirty bomb. Cesium salts are water soluble and play hell with biological systems since it infiltrates easily. But it’s actual practical uses in industry all seem kinda pointless for a missile:
Caesium-137 has a number of practical uses. In small amounts, it is used to calibrate radiation-detection equipment.[5] In medicine, it is used in radiation therapy.[5] In industry, it is used in flow meters, thickness gauges,[5] moisture-density gauges (for density readings, with americium-241/beryllium providing the moisture reading),[6] and in gamma ray well logging devices.[6]
I *suppose* it might have been used in a propellant flow meter for a rocket engine? Maybe?
I’m no nuclear expert, but for the life of me I can’t come up with a good use for the stuff.
Aug 162019
Around three years ago I posted some rather cruddy images of a saucer-shaped nuclear-powered spacecraft that the Chrysler corporation drew up in 1956. At this time a manned spacecraft was a perfectly normal sort of thing for Chrysler to design; their aerospace division was responsible for the Redstone missile and the Saturn I first stage. One of the images was a small scan of the cover of the August-September 1957 issue of “Saucer News.” I finally managed to score a copy of this “fanzine”on ebay a while back and have scanned the cover at high (600 dpi) resolution. The image quality is a bit regrettable, but what can you expect from a 1950’s UFO magazine.
As always, if anyone might happen to know anything more about this design, I’m all ears. Chrysler long ago got rid of their aerospace division and whatever archive it might have had.
I have uploaded the full resolution scan to the 2019-08 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to $4 and up subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Aug 152019
One sizable document I’ve scanned for preservation is a Rockwell presentation package from October, 1985, showing a large number of space programs that the company could capitalize on. These included everything from minor mods to the Space Shuttle to major changes… stretching the orbiter, stretching the tank, adding additional boosters. Heavy lift boosters to put SLS to shame; heavy lift SSTOs; small experimental spaceplanes; manned military spaceplanes; space-based weaponry; space stations; space based nuclear power. Figured this stuff might be of some modest interest. So why not, I’ll post little bits of it from time to time.
Aug 092019
There seems to be something wrong with our bloody Russians this week.
A Russian military ammo depot that blew up earlier this week just exploded again
But wait! There’s more!
‘Brief radiation spike’ after rocket engine blast in northern Russia
Ummmm…
Radiation levels peaked between 11:50 and 12:30 (08:50-09:30 GMT) before falling and normalising by 14:00, the city administration in Severodvinsk said on its website, without reporting how significant the spike had been.
…
“They advise everyone to close their windows and drink iodine, 44 drops per glass of water.”
And…
Is Putin covering up a nuclear disaster? Ambulances covered in protective film transport six Russians who suffered severe radiation poisoning in mystery explosion during ‘test of new hypersonic missile’
UMMMMM…..
The Daily Mail article suggests that this was a “Zircon” hypersonic missile that exploded. The 3M22 Zircon is an experimental scramjet-powered anti-ship/land target missile with range of about a thousand miles, with the capability of carrying a 600 kiloton thermonuclear warhead. If there was a radiation release, that would indicate that the missile was carrying an actual nuclear warhead… something that seems *really* unwise for a peacetime test flight. it’s unlikely that the warhead actually detonated; that would be Big News virtually impossible to hide. Instead I guess the warhead must have either been blown apart by the chemical explosives, or trashed on impact. in either case, it seems a little odd that the radiation spike would go back down. You’d think there’d need to be a substantial cleanup. Unless, I suppose, the plutonium actually caught fire and burned and the smoke rifted downrange…
There is also speculation that this wasn’t a Zircon, but a Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile. The existence of a truly nuclear powered Burevestnik is by no means certain, but who knows. In the unlikely case that this what what crashed, then perhaps the burst of radiation came from the engine melting down in flight or on impact; the drop in radiation coming as the reactor sank into mud or a pond or even just the dirt. Shrug.
Jul 082019
Today in “good riddance” news:
Democrat Eric Swalwell drops out of presidential race
He may be out of the race, but never forget that his party didn’t drop-kick him after he “joked” about committing mass democide against the American populace with nuclear weaponry.
Jul 072019
And I’m a little surprised at the lack of interest in some of them:
Aerospace Vehicle Design Vol II Spacecraft Design by K. D. Wood, 1964
This one is real hard to come by, usually sells for well over $100. Only one bid, $19.99. This one ends in a few hours.
Three early “Space” books for kids: Fletcher Pratt, Jack Coggins, Lester Del Rey
Sure, they’re a little rough, but they’re old kids books, awesome in their massively over-optimistic way, and terribly low price. This one ends in a few hours.
Proceedings of the Shuttle-Based Cometary Science Workshop, 1976 NASA
This one ends in a few hours.
And this one:
XIIIth International Astronautical Congress Varna 1962, II (pp 483-1026)
This book of conference proceedings has papers on the Aerojet Sea Dragon, a general Electic “Direct” Apollo design and a nuclear-powered TV satellite. It’s already made the rounds on ebay once, no bidders. Huh.
And there’s other stuff.
Jul 062019
A sketch of the 1980s/90s SP-100 space-based nuclear reactor, designed to provide 100 kilowatts of electrical power continuously for years on end. It would have been just the thing for applications where solar panels would not have been practical, such as deep space probes or military systems that need to be somewhat maneuverable. One might thing that replacing vast PV arrays with a small reactor would have made the satellites less visible… and on radar and likely visible light, that’s probably true. but that reactor and its radiators would have been quite visible in infra-red, apparent to any IR sensor pointed int its general direction. The sketch below shows not only the tests and progress that had been done on the SP-100, but also a conceptual payload of an undefined sort. It seems to be festooned with sensors.
Jul 042019
Someone is selling a contractors model of an engine for a cruise missile on ebay. The engine is an unducted aft fan design. This type of engine was proposed for use on jetliners; it provides fuel efficiency benefits but in the end the brain-melting noise it put out doomed the concept. Not only did it bother people, it also tended to buzz the bejeebers out of the aircraft structure. In the end very high bypass conventional turbofan engines proved capable of doing the job. Noise, of course, would not have been much of an issue for a cruise missile, but since this design was put forward (circa 1989) the US has not fielded any new major cruise missiles.
Note:”TCAE /GEAE” likely stands for Teledyne Continental Aviation and Engineering / General Electric Aviation Engines. Teledyne CAE was known as such between 1969 and 1999, an unhelpful 30-year span.
Vtg USAF TCAE/GEAE Propfan Engine Cruise Missile App 1/5 Scale Contractor Model
