Anyone near the Washington Navy Yard?

 blather, nukes, photography  2 Responses »
May 302014
 

It seems the Cold War Gallery at the US Navy Museum has a full-scale reproduction of a Trident warhead on display. It seems a long way to go from rural Utah to get photos of that one thing, but photos of that one thing – especially photos with a good scale reference in frame, and photos taken from “below” to see the aft end of  it – would seem to be potentially very useful.

Ballistic Missile Triggers and MIRV

I don’t know the layout of the place, but what I’d *love* is a photo taken with a long lens as far away as possible while still keeping the warhead large in frame, to get as orthogonal a view as possible. But what would be vital would be photos that give dimension to the thing. Measurements of the *glass* would be handy.

Any help appreciated.

 Posted by at 11:46 pm

Brother, can you spare a 300 kiloton W87/Mk 21 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle?

 blather, Hmm..., nukes, photography  15 Responses »
May 282014
 

In researching the external configuration of American nuclear weapons, a few details have remained elusive. One blank spot in my records is the tail end of the Mk21 RV, the conical warhead used on the MX “Peacekeeper” ICBM. A number of Mk21s are on display at the USAF museum in Dayton, but displayed attached to the post-boost vehicle. This has the effect of blocking off the view of the aft end of the RVs.

612px-W87_MIRV

It seems reasonable to assume that if the USAF museum has ten of these on display, there might be another one elsewhere. But I haven’t been able to find one, and haven’t been able to find a single photo depicting the aft end of the vehicle. Does anyone know where a guy could get a photo or three that shows the tail of this thing? Note: there are a number of Mk 12 RVs (used on the Minuteman) on display. The Mk 12 looks a whole lot like the Mk 21; the most obvious visible difference between the two seems to be that the Mk 12 aft end is more “rounded” than that of the Mk 21. The Mk 12 has also proven to be a bit challenging to find photos of the tail end… but I lucked out a while back in finding what appears to be a test version of one in an aerospace museum “junk yard.” So… huzzah.

And so long as I’m on the subject, does anyone know of *any* useful photos or illustrations of the Mk 3, Mk 4 and Mk 5 RVs used on the Poseidon and Trident SLBMs? The Navy seems like they actually don’t want everyone to know just what they look like.

 Posted by at 11:32 am

B-58 Pod

 aircraft, drawings, history, nukes, projects, rockets  8 Responses »
May 262014
 

As originally conceived, the B-58 Hustler would have a large centerline pod that would contain both fuel for the outbound portion of the mission and a single large nuclear warhead. Numerous variations on this pod were planned, including rocket-boosted versions to serve as standoff weapons. As it turned out, the pods kept leaking fuel into the weapons bay, so a two-component pod eventually replaced the unified pod.

b-58 pod

 Posted by at 11:04 pm

Nuke First Fruits

 drawings, history, nukes  9 Responses »
May 252014
 

The Albuquerque trip provided a whole lot of photos to be used to produce accurate diagrams of US nuclear weapons. The first real result of that is a corrected and expanded version of my diagram of the Mk 1 “Little Boy” bomb. The final diagram in the book will have more than this, but this gives the general idea of what I’m going for:

Nuclear warheads nukes 2014-05-25-Model

 Posted by at 1:03 am

Home again

 blather, news, nukes, Obamazombies, politics  2 Responses »
May 222014
 

The place is still standing, though I ain’t. Amazing how tiring six or seven hours of sitting on your butt can be… especially when it followed a couple hours of hiking through some truly bizarre terrain.

I need to work with my files a bit (step one: BACK UP EVERYTHING) and buy some new DVDs, but I should get burning on them by the weekend. Might take a little while to get them all done.

Also: I will also get back to work on the “prototype” version of “A Guide to American Nuclear Explosive Devices” within the next day or so. I don’t have an estimate of when these will be ready, but I don’t think it should be too long. Certainly far faster than the “Space Station V” thing: I find writing about Real Stuff goes vastly faster than fiction, and the same holds for CAD drafting. Fiction requires a certain aspect of imagination that I’m finding a bit difficult to access as easily as I once did.

Also also: I’ve decided on the “special” for the “early adopters” of the nuke expedition. As appropriate for the subject, the decision came with a proper MUAHAHAHAHAHA evil genius laugh. This should be available well in advance of the book prototype.

——————-

And to get back into the swing of things, I heard about this on the radio today:

Howard’s Daily: Finding Infrastructure in the Stimulus Plan

Remember the $800 billion “stimulus” package from 2009? Guess how much of it got spent on physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc…. you know, the stuff the government is actually *supposed* to do): 3%.

Woo.

About $500 billion went to tax cuts, unemployment benefits, and “state fiscal relief” (shoring up insolvent state budgets). The remaining $300 billion was spent on actual projects, of which the big beneficiaries were: (i) subsidies for clean energy ($78 billion), (ii) subsidies for education and child support ($50 billion)(student loans, special ed, and support for disadvantaged children), (iii) health and health IT ($32 billion), (iv) transportation infrastructure ($30 billion, as noted above); (v) environmental cleanup ($28 billion), (vi) new buildings ($24 billion), (vii) scientific research ($18 billion), and a few other categories.

Stimulating, no?

 Posted by at 4:40 pm

Gorignak

 AARRRGH, aircraft, blather, nukes  13 Responses »
May 212014
 

I managed to miss a hell of a photo op today. I visited Goosenecks State Park, which is the next best thing to the Grand Canyon, and took a boatload of photos. While sitting in my car swapping out lenses, I heard a loud rumbling. It turned out to be a B-1B bomber going balls-out just a few hundred feet up, wings swept all the way back and banking *hard* directly overhead. And so there I was with a disassembled camera in my hands. Hrrrmmmph.

That’ll teach me to be unprepared for high-subsonic strategic bombers…

 

Anyway, the Nuke Trip paypal button has been yanked. A “thanks” to all who contributed. I’m still a day from home (post title indicates current position), but when I get there I’ll start cooking up DVDs for the $50 and $100 contributors. Might take a little while to organize & burn ’em. One more nuke made it into the files at the last minute: a B43 welded to a post outside a recycling center in Socorro and slathered with a quarter inch of paint. Huh.

 Posted by at 10:50 pm

VLA

 art, awesomeness, blather, books, drawings, history, new products, news, nukes, photography, science  2 Responses »
May 202014
 

The nuclear phase of the expedition is now complete, after one last pass through the museum today (which included getting a look at the back, where a number of interesting display models are stored). The numbers:

Sunday: 810 photos, 3.9 gigabytes

Monday: 519, 2.41

Tuesday: 192, 1.0

Some of these will be trimmed out… out of focus, or pointed at the floor, or excessively redundant, etc. A few will be crudely edited… a lot of the photos show details of display pieces with a tape measure for scale, and a hand holding the tape measure… and sometimes a good chunk of my whole person. Can’t have that. No friggen’ selfies.

So if you want in on this, now is the time. Now is the end of the time, in fact. Next time I get to a motel with good wifi (or, barring that, get home), the options to buy in will be removed. You can get the PayPal button to get the complete set of photos on DVD (and the option to get an early prototype version of the resulting book of nuclear weapon diagrams) here:

http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=24608

After finishing up this afternoon, I launched south to see the Very Large Array. The dishes were scattered to hell and gone, rather than bunched up close; this reduced some  of the photo opportunities. Bu I still managed a few interesting shots.

Dsc_4932 Dsc_4953 Dsc_4970

 Posted by at 9:40 pm

Nukes

 blather, nukes, photography  5 Responses »
May 192014
 

The pitiful WiFi issues continue so once again I’m posting via phone. I’ve completed the nuclear photography portion of the expedition, so by usual practice I should now close the door on new “investors.” However, as the trip has exceeded initial cost estimates and messing around editing blog posts is a pain via phone, I’ll leave the PayPal buttons up for a little longer.

I have taken about 1500 nuke-related photos in the past two days, with perhaps a few more tomorrow during a final pass through. This will fill two DVDs, so that’s a lot of imagery.

Tomorrow, after an appointment, I set off for a destination suggested by a blog reader.

 Posted by at 9:38 pm

First World problems

 blather, news, nukes, photography  5 Responses »
May 192014
 

I’m finding this trip to be the most frustrating yet in terms of communications access. A good chunk of southern Utah was jsut a dead spot for my cell phone, and the first motel had a *really* slow wifi. And the motel I got in Albuquerque is useless in terms of WiFi. My fallback option of stopping at a McDonalds has been stymied by a sudden mysterious lack of McDonalds in this region. Hmmmf. So, I’m posting this from a New Mexico highway rest stop midway between Albuquerque and Los Alamos.

Now: as annoying as that has been… try beaming that previous paragraph back in time, oh, 20 years. People wouldn’t have had the slightest clue what the hell my problem is…

 Posted by at 11:24 am

Time on target

 news, nukes, photography  1 Response »
May 182014
 

Got to Albuquerque early this afternoon, spent several hours at the nuclear museum. Wasn’t quite as vast ad I’d hoped, but its certainly a useful source. I’ll return tomorrow AM, then go to the Bradbury in Los Alamos.

I’d post a few of the 900 or so pics I took at the museum today, but this motels notion of internet access is rather more limited than I’d prefer and thus I’m posting this with my phone.

 Posted by at 6:59 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries