This does not bode well

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., news, nukes, politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 122022
 

For the most part, I’m satisfied to let people be who they want to be. Do whatever you like in the privacy of your own home, so long as you’re hurting nobody else. But the fact is, some things (and people) really are nuts. Mental illness is a reality. And being mentally ill in one area could well mean you are not likely to make good judgements in another.

Behold who the Biden administration is hiring to help plan for the future of nuclear waste.

Biden Puttin’ On The Dog

Tolerance goes just so far. And then it gets pushed *too* far and it snaps back. Are we at that point? near that point? beyond that point? I dunno, but if I was *kinda* like this person, but nowhere near as nutty as this person, I’d be *real* worried about the inevitable pendulum swing in the other direction. I would post the photos that this person happily and willingly puts out onto the internet, but I at least *kinda* try to keep this as a safe for work, safe for family and safe for life blog. If I included the photos, parent groups across the land would try to get my blog yoinked from public school libraries… and they’d be right to do so.

Apparently he has the right degrees, the right education to technically work in the field of nuclear waste handling. But imagine being a standard, normal engineer tasked with working alongside this guy in his dresses and dog-play. Yeeeeesh. If nothing else, he is making everything in his life all about him. There are reasons why “professional attire” is what it is… and conformity is part of that. It is not strictly from an authoritarian desire to make everyone conform to some arbitrary standard, but to make everyone focus on their *job* not on their attire, or on what Bob’s wearing today. The physical sciences are hard enough without having to deal with loonies that you can’t respect. The job needs to be about *the* *job.* Intentionally dressing bizarrely as a way to garner irrelevant attention to yourself seems to denote massive narcissism, if nothing else.

 Posted by at 9:10 am

Bell nuclear powered helicopter

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Feb 112022
 

One of the odder concepts from the 1950’s was this circa 1959 Bell Aircraft concept for a nuclear powered helicopter. Very little has come out about it in the decades since; some crude schematics of how the reactor and propulsion systems would be arranged, a bit of text, and this one piece of art. Supposedly this vehicle would have a fuselage some 300 feet long (including rotors, it would be much longer), have a top speed of 200 miles per hour and weigh 500,000 pounds. The artwork looks more like the result of turning the artist loose on the idea of “giant nuclear helicopter” than an interpretation of an engineering study; nuclear reactors powerful enough to lift a half million power helicopter and neither small nor minimally radioactive. A heavily shielded reactor would have to be fitted within this vehicle *somewhere,* and there would doubtless not be windows in that region. This design, though, has windows along the whole length of the fuselage, with little space for a shielded reactor. This design seems to have been designated D-1007.

 

The full-rez scan of the art has been uploaded to the 2022-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 

 Posted by at 10:16 pm

Last Signed B-47/B-52 book

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, books, nukes, projects, sales & specials, secrets, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 082022
 

I have one last copy of B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress: Origins and Evolution. It is signed, numbered (#23 of 23) and comes complete with three bonus 18X24 prints, also all singed and numbered. The total *including* shipping  within the US (I shudder to think what shipping overseas would be as the book is honestly fairly massive) is $62. If you would like this copy, the very last of this batch (and there’re no plans for a second batch), send me an email and I’ll send you a paypal invoice. First come, first served…

Update: SOLD.

 Posted by at 10:25 pm

So the entire US gold supply should be safely non-radioactive by now…

 art, history, Hmm..., nukes, science, science fiction  No Responses »
Jan 012022
 

In Goldfinger (1964), the villains plot was to set off a dirty A-bomb in Fort Knox, irradiating the US gold supply. The claim was made that the gold would be radioactive for 58 years, which would be… 2022. Well, here we are.

 

As an aside, I can’t say as I think too highly of the math here. Cobalt and iodine were mentioned as part of the bomb being “particularly dirty;” bombs “salted” with those substances were proposed back in the day because they would indeed make bombs dirty. The fallout would be *nasty.* But the half-life of cobalt 60 is 5.3 years; that of iodine 131 is 8 days. This means that 58 years gives cobalt 10.94 half lives and iodine 2,650 half lives. This means that cobalt would have decayed down to 1/(2^10.94) = 0.00051 of it’s original radioactiveness; iodine would be essentially nonexistent. It’s the less radioactive, longer-lived components of the bomb – the uranium, the metal bits of the casing, etc. – that should be more worrisome long-term.

I often wonder sometimes if Hollywood types even care about simple accuracy.

 Posted by at 8:13 pm

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, nukes, politics, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 252021
 

Russian Citizens Are Now Being Prepped for Nuclear War

Neato.

In short, Putin is demanding that NATO stay out of former Soviet vassal states like Ukraine and Lithuania,  because he wants a buffer. But what buffer do those states have against the Russian military? Perhaps a good compromise would be if NATO stays out of the Soviet states while the Russian military pulls back behind the Urals.

Russian state propaganda somehow feels that Ukraine or Poland being secure is a threat to Russia. Why that would be is not clear. Does Putin think that Estonia is going to suddenly start baying for Russian blood and then sweep across the border? Will Latvian special forces take Moscow?

So, now Russian propagandists are promising to nuke American and European cities if former slave states cozy up to the West. Doesn’t seem a particularly effective way to calm everyone down to the point that Ukraine and the like no longer have a desire to have military backup, but maybe that’s just me.

I’m just glad we have such competent, on-the-ball leadership in Washington.

 Posted by at 6:23 pm

A Suck Ride in a Sub

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., history, news, nukes, ships, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 132021
 

The voyage of the USS Connecticut to San Diego sounds like a month of food poisoning.

Damaged Submarine Likely Had A “Nightmare Voyage” To San Diego Says Veteran Submariner

Likely did 6000 miles at 10 knots on the surface. Ride would have been rough because the friggen’ nose got ripped off… and because submarines aren’t designed to sail on the surface, the boat would have rolled like a drunken Bill Clinton.

They estimate repairs could take *years.* This is not the sort of industrial capability that wins wars with near-peer opponents. Early in WWII, the USS Yorktown was blowed the ᚠᚪᛣᚳ up and returned to sea after 48 hours of repair, serving admirably to lay a historic beatdown on the Japanese navy at Midway before finally being taken down by masses of aircraft and a salvo of torpedoes. None of that “years in drydock” ᛒᚪᛚᛚᛋᚻᛁᛏ… it was rebuilt in a damn hurry and sent back to the fight like a boss. Today the Navy runs one of only *three* Seawolf class subs into a friggen’ rock and it’s out of commission for a Presidential administration.

 Posted by at 8:44 pm

Senior moment: early nuclear war novel

 AARRRGH, books, Gah., history, Hmm..., nukes, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 122021
 

I can remember a scene from an *early* (late 40’s, early 50’s) novel about nuclear war that has a nuclear bomb going off in or just above an American city. The scene in question goes into some detail about the effects of the blast; I recall being impressed with not just the detail, but the grimness of the description. But for the live of me I can’t recall what the book was. I *thought* it was “Alas, Babylon,” but I’ve gone back and forth through the book, and it doesn’t seem to be there.

I know that’s vague, but does this sound at all familiar to anyone? Sadly my collection of fiction books got thinned out after Utah (and will thin out some more shortly). I used to have a great big dedicated “apocalypse” section, but it’s scattered and tattered now.

 Posted by at 4:07 am

November 2021 APR Rewards

 aircraft, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Dec 012021
 

The rewards for November, 2021, have been sent out. Patrons should have received a notification message through Patreon linking to the rewards; subscribers should have received a notification from Dropbox linking to the rewards. If you did not, let me know.

Document: “Galactic-Jupiter Probe Program Concept:” 1967 NASA-Goddard brochure describing a Pioneer/Voyager type of space probe

Document: “Mixed Mode Rocket Vehicles for International Space Transportation Systems,” 1973 paper describing modified Shuttles and other launch vehicles

Document: “Nuclear Physics Made Very, Very Easy,”1968 NASA NERVA test operation publication that summarizes nuclear physics

Diagram: Navalized Advanced tactical Fighter (Northrop NF-23) general arrangement

CAD Diagram ($5 and up): “Disney Bomb,” British designed and built, American dropped rocket-boosted submarine pen penetrating bomb from the end of WWII

 

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. *ALL* back issues, one a month since 2014, are available for subscribers at low cost.



 Posted by at 12:42 am
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