Now you can become a Meteor Gunner

 art, awesomeness, news, weapons  5 Responses »
Dec 262015
 

I’m certain that Xur and the Kodan Armada will be lining up for this:

Cabot Meteorite Pistol Set

The “Big Bang Pistol Set” will be a pair of left and right handed 1911’s made from meteoritic metal. Rather than melting the meteorite, the components will be cut from the meteorite. if it all works out, the Widmanstattten patterns should result in some spectacular looking firearms. It’ll also result in firearms you couldn’t pay me to pull the trigger on; inconsistent alloying and structure would seem to make them more very complex pipe bombs than reliable firearms. However, since they estimate that the auction price of the pair will be half a million to a million dollars, I suspect that I won’t be tasked with shooting these things anytime soon.

Bear in mind that Cabot’s “entry level” 1911 runs $3,675. So they’re used to “pricey.”

Here’s a photo of one of their 1911’s with meteorite-metal grips:

 Posted by at 6:48 pm

The birth of aerospace mythology

 AARRRGH, APR, art, blather, Crazy, drawings, Gah., history, Hmm..., humor, news, projects, spacecraft, US Spacecraft Projects, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  7 Responses »
Dec 202015
 

OK, so I wrote about the “Have Sting” orbital railgun, and produced some provisional diagrams of it, publishing them in US Space Projects #3. A blog article was written for War Is Boring discussing “Have Sting,” based in no small part on my diagrams. OK, so far so good. But then other blogs start writing about Have Sting, and an error is introduced.

Whenever a blog post links to my blog, a “pingback notification” is sent to my blog dashboard. I’ve just glanced at these, haven’t given them much thought. For the most part they seem to be just parroting the verbiage from the War is Boring piece. But with one change: “Have Sting” has become “Have Sling.” A “T” became an “L.”

Examples:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/219718-exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built

In September, the Aerospace Project Reviews Blog published some fascinating diagrams depicting “Have Sling,” which aerospace historian Scott Lowther described as “[a] General Electric design for a gigantic orbital railgun.” Have Sling was never built, of course.

http://www.usaspeaks.com/news/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

September, the Aerospace Project Reviews Blog published some fascinating diagrams depicting “Have Sling,” which aerospace historian Scott Lowther described as “[a] General …

http://www.usaspeaks.com/news/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

http://www.viralnewstrend.com/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

And a bunch more, all seemingly the same post over and over.

And if you Google “have sling” and some other terms, some seriously wacky stuff appears, which I’m guessing is the result of some weird auto-translation:

http://www.bbtechnonews.com/index.php/2015/12/19/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

In September, the Aerospace Task Reviews Blog site released some remarkable layouts portraying “Have Sling,” which aerospace chronicler Scott Lowther

“Aerospace Task Reviews?”

And:

http://journalfocus.com/2015/12/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

Exploring the ‘Fatality Celebrity’ space gun America never built

UNITED STATE protection coordinators did at one time think about constructing a huge Fatality Star-like gun in space as component of the “Celebrity Wars” rocket protection program, as Warisboring’s Steve Weintz advised us this week in the middle of the hullaballoo of the position of The Pressure Awakens.

In September, the Aerospace Job Reviews Blog site released some interesting representations portraying “Have Sling,” which aerospace chronicler Scott Lowther…

… the styles explain a space tool the dimension of the International Space Terminal, each Lowther.

Buh?

So now when people try to research orbital railguns, there’s every chance that they will be presented with the fallacious designation “Have Sling.”

I just did a Google search on “railgun” and “Have Sling.” It spat back 741 results. “Railgun” and “Have Sting” only produced 321 results. The lie traveled around the world while the truth was still putting on its boots. And entertainingly, in doing some Googling for this post, I found this blog post. It is illustrated in part by “Do NOT try this at home:  schematics for the orbital railgun . (Image courtesy up-ship.com.)” I found this illustration amusing for two reasons… firstly, when you say “Image courtesy whoever,” generally you’ve asked whoever for permission to republish. I usually don’t mind people reposting the images I create, but I wasn’t asked here, just sayin.’ More entertainingly, the diagrams of the “orbital railgun” are in fact my diagrams for the 10-meter USAF Orion. Which ain’t a railgun.

 Posted by at 11:12 pm

The new face of terror

 Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, religion, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Dec 172015
 

Enrique Marquez, Syed Farook’s former neighbor, likely to be charged

Seems Ricky here bought the two AR-15’s used in the attack. That’s not illegal. But he bought them for Syed because Syed didn’t want them listed in his name (even though he would have been legally allowed to buy them). This is a “straw purchase,” which is illegal. He also planned a terror attack with Syed in 2012, but they chickened out. This may or may not have been illegal, based on how far they got in planning. Shockingly, Ricky was a convert to Syeds religion. Purely coincidental, surely.

enrique_marquez

Yup, that’s him.

Feel free to caption. Possibilities include:

“Oh Boy! I get to further the political ambitions of Diane Feinstein!”

“Oh Boy! I’m gonna be *real* popular in prison!”

 Posted by at 9:44 am

AGM-129 Flashback

 aircraft, books, drawings, history, nukes, photography, weapons  5 Responses »
Dec 162015
 

I was reminded of the AGM-129 Advance Cruise Missile today, which reminded me of the small heavily illustrated booklet on the AGM-129 I put together a few years ago. It’s probably not too late to buy a couple hundred of these as Christmas presents for your friends and family. Here’s a retread of the original post from Back Then:

– – – – – –
Literally years in the making, I’ve put together two versions of a photo essay of several surviving examples of the AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile. Available free for the downloading is Stagger Around #3: AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile, Abridged Edition as a 13 page PDF booklet. This contains photos of the AGM-129s on display at Hill Aerospace Museum in Utah, the USAF Museum in Dayton and the Strategic Air & Space Museum in Nebraska, ready to print.

Also available is Stagger Around #3: AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile, Full Edition. This 34-page edition includes more photos of these missiles, along with the missile at the San Diego Aerospace Museum restoration facility, a rare General Dynamics display model, official USAF photos of the AGM-129 in test and in service and drawings of the missile, including 1/32 scale layout diagrams. This is available through MagCloud, either as a downloadable PDF ($5.75) or as a professionally printed and bound edition ($11.80).

Don’t forget to check out my other MagCloud publications, including Justo Miranda’s Reichdreams Dossiers, Aerospace Projects Review, Historical Documents, and Photographing Stuff.

And don’t forget to check out Stagger Around #1, F-104A Starfighter, and Stagger Around #2, Starship Enterprise.

NOTE:

If you liked this and want to see more like it… feel free to toss fifty cents, a buck, a hundred bucks, whatever, my way. Think of it as a donation to a worthy cause. Or a bribe. Whatever you’re more comfortable with.

– – – – – – –

When I originally put this out in 2012, the PDF version was orderable through MagCloud. If anyone wants to order it straight from here like most of my other stuff, let me know.

 Posted by at 1:31 pm

A mass shooting every day. Or not…

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, history, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  48 Responses »
Dec 072015
 

For the last week or so, the news media, entertainment media and internet have been loaded down with claims that America has had more mass shootings in 2015 than 2015 has had days. This, of course, sounds pretty bad, and is a factoid being used by the civilian disarmament movement to further their cause of restricting firearms solely to agents of the government and violent criminals. But is the claim accurate?

Surprise, surprise, it’s not.

The Media’s Inflated ‘Mass Shootings’ Count Is Wildly Misleading

Basically, the definition of “mass shooting” had to be badly mangled in order to get the numbers they were after. The definition being used here is that in a single incident of gunfire, four or more people are injured or killed. Note, though, that it’s not four people injured by the shooter shooting them. Nor four people being injured by being shot. or, indeed, *anybody* being shot. Injuries such as bystanders running away, tripping and skinning their knee? They’re counted. The shooter himself gets shot by a cop, or beat half to death by a bystander, or shoots himself? He’s counted.

The number being trotted out is 355 mass shootings in 2015. The Congressional Research Service defines:

“mass public shooting” is a mass shooting “in at least one or more public locations, such as a workplace, school, restaurant, house of worship, neighborhood, or other public setting . . . and not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance (armed robbery, criminal competition, insurance fraud, argument, or romantic triangle).” Using these definitions, Grant Duwe, in his 2007 book Mass Murder in the United States: A History, notes: “Excluding those that occurred in connection with criminal activity such as robbery, drug dealing, and organized crime, there were 116 mass public shootings during the twentieth century” (emphasis mine). The Congressional Research Service reported 317 mass shootings between 1999 and 2013, only 66 of which qualified under their criteria as mass public shootings.

According to this metric, there were fewer mass shootings in *14* *years* than is now being claimed for 2015.

However you count ’em, a mass public shooting is a Very Bad Thing. But some in the civilian disarmament movement are claiming that the US is somehow unique in this, that we are virtually alone in having mass shootings. But, surprise, surprise, this isn’t accurate either.

Comparing Death Rates from Mass Public Shootings and Mass Public Violence in the US and Europe

How dangerous is the US as far as mass shootings? Not very, compared to some Enlightened European Nations:

And how *often* do mass shootings happen in the US, compared to other nations?
Note that according to this data, the annual chances of an American being killed in a mass shooting is less than one in ten million. Sure, other countries might have lower risk, say, one in forty million. But one in ten million is such a vanishingly low number compared to other causes of death that stressing out about it, or allowing demagogues to mangle civil rights, just doesn’t make sense.
Here’s what you need to know about “gun control:”
 Posted by at 11:46 am

Trench Mauser

 history, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Dec 032015
 

A video describing a Mauser bolt-action rifle with a factory modification: a periscope. This would allow the shooter to stick the rifle up above a trench and shoot at the enemy without putting his own noggin into the field of fire. Looks incredibly cumbersome, but under the circumstances, it’s better than getting shot. A modern version would be something like a webcam that clips to your rifles optics and runs down to a small screen or something like a militarized Google Glass. That would have the advantage of not only being far less cumbersome, but also lighter, cheaper and with the ability to aim any which way, including around corners.

 Posted by at 8:48 am

Horseshoe Magazine

 art, awesomeness, history, weapons, youtube  2 Responses »
Nov 152015
 

Here’s a firearm I’ve never seen before: the French “Union” pistol dating from the 1930’s. The pistol itself is fairly conventional; where it’s different is the 35-round magazine, bent into a horseshoe shape. The far end of the magazine simply fits up against the underside of the pistol frame. Manufacturing quality is apparently high. This was a select-fire .32, justifying the large magazine capacity. Not explained: how you holster the thing.

 Posted by at 11:25 am
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