I recently came across something on ebay that looked interesting; the buy-it-now price is a bit steep, so I googled it. Huzzah! It’s available online as a PDF. D’oh: my antivirus program freaked out that the connection to the university website is insecure. Huzzah! It has been archived on the Wayback machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210627145321/http://users.umiacs.umd.edu/~oard/apollo/LOR_News_Conference.pdf

This is a writeup, with photos and diagrams, of the July 11, 1962 news conference at NASA headquarters where the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous technique was described. prior to the the understanding was that the Apollo Command and Service Modules would land directly on the lunar surface; this sounds easy, but required a bigger booster than the Saturn V and would have put the astronauts far above the lunar surface (so far as I know, no determination of how exactly the astronauts were going to get some fifty or more feet down, and then fifty or more feet back up). LOR entailed the use of the Lunar Excursion Module,a small, lightweight spacecraft that could zip on down the the surface from lunar orbit and then hop on back up. Far less mass needed to go to the lunar surface, meaning the planned Saturn C-5 (later Saturn V) could take care of the whole mission in one shot. No need to assemble spacecraft in Earth orbit using multiple launches of hardware and propellant tankers.

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As should now no longer be a spoiler of any particular note, James Bond dies at the end of “No Time To Die.” I cannot directly confirm this myself… this is the first Bond movie since the Roger Moore era that I will likely end up not seeing in the theater (the wokevertising that promised a Bond put in his place by a Mary Sue apparently turned out to not be accurate, but it turned me off to the flick). But the credits end with “James Bond will return.”

Now, there are a few ways this could happen, what with Bond being dead and all:

1: He’s not dead. An amazing escape, slid down an escape tunnel, beamed out by Scotty, survived under rubble, whatever. Presumably he received enough facial injuries that the reconstructive surgery will make him look like some completely different actor.

2: The old fan theory that the name “James Bond” is regularly passed along to new secret agents along with the 007 number. So Connery, Moore, Craig, etc. all exist in the same continuity.

3: A complete reboot.

Hard to say what it’ll be. Hard to say if the suits in charge of such things even know right now.

But here’s my suggestion: reboot. What’s more than that, remake some/many of the early Bond movies. Do this with A Plan: crank out the movies assembly line fashion so you get one Bond a year. Something like:

2025: Dr. No: A Chinese mad scientist working for SPECTRE farks with western space launches, risking a nuclear war.

2026: Thunderball: SPECTRE steals some nukes and threatens to evaporate some major cities, with the likely consequence of a nuclear war.

2027: You Only Live Twice: SPECTRE screws with space launches, threatening to spark a nuclear war

2028: Diamond Are Forever: SPECTRE builds an orbital weapon of mass destruction, threatening to spark a nuclear war; use of the weapon causes several nuclear detonations and reactor meltdowns.

2029: The Spy Who Loved Me: A megalomaniac sea-steader steals Russian and British boomers, with the intent of sparking a nuclear war; ends with multiple nuclear detonations at sea.

2030: Moonraker: And here’s the culmination. The remake goes much as the original; eccentric billionaire space industry tycoon steals a reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle from The Government, has a secret space launch complex hidden away in South America and plans to launch a bunch of craft all at once. Instead of manufacturing some weird poison, his minions are stealing nuclear warheads and plutonium pits. But when Bond is captured and the Evil Genius begins monologing, it’s none of that “I’m going to create a master race in space and will wipe out all mankind, muahahahaha” nonsense. It’ll be: “Have you seen what’s been going on lately? Ever since 2025 we’ve come within seconds of a global nuclear war like every friggen’ year! I’ve had plans in place to establish self-sufficient off-world colonies; but those plans were based on a thirty-year schedule. Last year multiple H-Bombs went off in the Atlantic! We don’t have thirty years! So damn right I’ve been stealing stuff; I’ve had to accelerate my plans. I’m getting the hell off this rock before it gets turned into radioactive ash by these crazy morons!”

In the end, Evil Genius successfully launches his hundred or so heavy lifters from the Amazon and sets up several self-sufficient O’Neill habs out in the asteroid belt. Bond goes along, hired as the new societies Director Of National Security. The numerous nukes and fissionables stolen by Evil Genius are used to create a range of reactors used to power spacecraft, stations and asteroid-munching factories. Enough power is available at the beginning that the factories are able to process out fissionables from the asteroids and mass-produce PV arrays, so the habs are able to not only self-support but reproduce. Since the thousands of people taken along have all been selected based on merit and STEM abilities, with no patience for “other ways of knowing” or kowtowing to “feelings” or “diversity mandates,” they are able to rapidly increase their technological base. They have functional fusion reactors and fusion engines within five years.

MI6 fires the now absent James Bond, hires a new nonbinary genderfluid dangerhaired Jamie Bond. On zer first mission, World War Five breaks out and the nukes fly; planetary population drops to a few hundred million in the resulting blasts, fallout and nuclear winter. Over the next few years, Original Bond leads a few missions to return to Earth scrape up technology, a few survivors, animals and plants. One exciting adventure where Bond leads a mission to raid the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Just a few months ago in February or so, I mentioned that I was working on a model of the “IXS Enterprise” warp drive ship for Fantastic Plastic. Currently planned for 1/288 scale, this is the most data-intensive model I’ve done so far… as shown below with only one of the two rings in place, the model is well over half a gigabyte, and my computer just laughs at me when I tell it to render the thing. The model nears completion; some “kitification” is needed on some parts and the two shuttles don’t exist yet.

In related matters, FP has released the model of the “Super Nexus” I CADded up a few years ago:

And the Convair “landing boat:”

And the Soviet LOK spacecraft:

That last one is of course in scale with the Soviet LK lunar lander I did for FP a while back:

Christmas is coming.

China Tested A Fractional Orbital Bombardment System That Uses A Hypersonic Glide Vehicle: Report

Short summary of Fractional Orbital Bombardment System:

Your typical ICBM lobs its payload onto a ballistic trajectory, an elliptical orbit that intersects Earth at two points: launch and target. FOBS, on the other hand, puts the warhead into a circular orbit like a conventional satellite. Typically a *low* orbit, but a circular orbit nonetheless. This is harder than an ICBM lob, but there are a few advantages. The biggest advantage is that, being in a low circular orbit, the warhead is below radar detection until it is almost on top of the target. At which point it fires a de-orbit motor and drops out of the sky with very little warning.

The reason why it’s called a “fractional” orbit is that it is generally assumed that it won’t complete a full orbit, but will de-orbit the first time it passes over the enemy. But that does not need to be the case; it could stay in orbit for some time, pretending to be, say, a weather, communications or spy satellite. Additionally, a FOBS system could theoretically launch in *any* direction; instead of Russian or Chinese ICBMs launching over the Pacific or Arctic to reach US targets, they could be launched south, pass over Antarctica and come at the US from Mexico or the Gulf where we have relatively little in the way of either early detection systems or missile defenses.

A disadvantage of FOBS is that the warhead, typically, must be aimed more or less directly at the target, as there is little cross-range to play with. Thus only a few orbits will pass close enough to the target; most orbits will be many hundreds or thousands of miles too far away. But by using a hypersonic glider as the warhead, cross-range is increased. So now something that looks like a mundane satellite launch that will pass nowhere near a US target will now sprout wings and fly right down Main Street.

The US and Russians have a treaty banning FOBS; the 1967 Outer Space treaty explicitly forbids the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, which is exactly what FOBS does. The Chinese are on board with the OST, but hey, look, they don’t care. Shocker.

Glad we have a crack team of stalwart patriots and geniuses in the White House to deal with this.

And here comes the next King of Englandland to remind us all of how vitally important it is to keep idiots away from the reins of power. Granted, the US is currently saddled with Sniffy Joe, but he will be yeeted from the White House soon enough, either via election, resignation or 25th.

Prince William: Saving Earth should come before space tourism

Speaking about the current space race and the drive to promote space tourism, William said: “We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live. … I think that ultimately is what sold it for me – that really is quite crucial to be focusing on this [planet] rather than giving up and heading out into space to try and think of solutions for the future.”

Brits, you voted for this goober’s administration. Time to vote him and his ilk out.

Someone needs to remake this commercial with Washington blasting off in a Starship. Or an Orion (the *real* Orion, not that silly capsule).

William Shatners flight on Blue Origin to the edge of space seems to have gone off without a hitch.

Looks like he had fun… at least for the tiny few minutes he had.

This was the voyage of the RSS First Step today. Its mission: encounter Earth from incredible views at apogee pic.twitter.com/Gzsnkv97K9

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) October 13, 2021

A film made circa 1965 by Con Pederson of Graphic Films for the USAF. It depicts the future of space operations as seen from the mid-1960’s, before the optimism about space came crashing down after Johnson cancelled Saturn V production in 1968. Pederson influenced Kubrick’s work on “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and that is visible in this film… the failure of the AE-35 unit is clearly seen, as is a rather chunky space pod prototype.

A photo taken from the first stage of a Saturn I showing the second stage’s six RL-10 rocket engines firings, boosting the S-IV stage towards orbit. Also visible are four orange-yellow exhaust plumes from ullage rockets… solid rockets that provide just enough acceleration to the stage to settle the liquid propellants at the bottoms of the tanks (otherwise the turbines might suck down vapor rather than liquid and that would be a Very Bad Thing).

Photo was from a 1965 magazine advertisement for Pratt & Whitney, manufacturer of the RL-10 engine. The full rez scan of the ad has been made available at 300 DPI to all $4/month patrons/subscribers in the 2021-10 APR Extras folder at Dropbox. 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.

For the sixth and final season. I don’t think they can incorporate all the books left in just one season (with a whopping *six* episodes), but I hope they give the series a proper ending.