So, the Armalite firearms company ran this ad:
And in a magnificent example of the Streisand Effect, the Italian government goes goofy:
Various Italian government officials want Armalite to withdraw the ad, claiming it’s *illegal* because the Italian government holds the copyright on images of Michelangelo’s David. Which was made over 500 years ago. By a guy who is long dead.
The meter-bore “Babylon” supergun that ballistics genius Gerald Bull was building for Saddam Hussein prior to Gulf War I has, so far as I know, never been terribly well documented publicly. You’d think that there would be all manner of diagrams and the like available, but if they exist, I haven’t seen ’em. A few fairly uninformative photos taken after the war and a poorly reproduced photo of a display model are all I’ve seen.
The made-for-HBO-movie “Doomsday Gun” (which I recommend, it’s good) has a scene set at an arms show, with a scale model of the gun. I *assume* that the model was a prop made for the movie, not the real item, but you never know. And if it’s a movie prop, I don’t know how accurate it might be. Still, it’s the closest thing to a clear shot of the gun I’ve ever seen. Fortunately, the camera gets in close and pans along the whole length of the thing. I took screenshots all along the pan, and stitched ’em together, and it came out surprisingly well. The full rez image (which you can get by clicking the small one here) is fairly sizable.
There are a number of photos indicating that this plane has seen better days. But still… dayum. Can you imagine Hill Aerospace Museum, say, getting this, fixing it up and parking it next to their B-52? The sheer awesomeness of those two together… Giggitty!\
It belongs at Hill:
As if the basic idea isn’t stupid enough, apparently the school-rule fascists have this sort of thing pretty well codified:
the reason for Nathan’s suspension as a “level 2 look alike firearm.”
Yeah.
What’s worse is that if this sort of nonsense continues, not only are the control freaks going to damage generations of kids with respect to firearms and *play,* they’re also going to mess with teaching physics. Anyone else here remember the Right Hand Rule?
Good for physics::
Good for statics & dynamics:
I can see it now….
Oh My God! He has a rocket launcher!!!
Oh My God! He’s got a detonator!
Where things get interesting is when two inviolate areas of political correctness collide. What happens when this ban on “finger guns” runs into Sex Ed?
The Redwing Tewa hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll. Just… WOW.
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The complete footage of the Trinity nuclear test, three different cameras.
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Video of the Sprint missile, which was capable of blistering accelerations. To get an idea, at about the 24 second mark in the video, you can see the whole surface of the second stage begin to glow white hot.
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Sprint was designed and built to defend Minuteman ICBM bases. It would do this by reaching out and tagging incoming Soviet warhead at a range of just a few miles; the Sprints warhead was a neutron bomb which would essentially trash the target by causing it to melt down. If you were unfortunate enough to be standing near one of the Minuteman silos when this occurred, you would very likely be in a world of radiological hurt. But the point was simply to make sure that the incoming warheads didn’t make it to the surface intact and do an underground burst which would trash the silos.
Tell me THIS ain’t awesome:
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Atomic cannon shot Upshot-Knothole Grable, May 25, 1953. Notice the jeeps and trucks and such directly below the blast.
So, a number of years ago I started working on “Nuclear Pulse Propulsion,” which was to be the End All Be All tome on this topic. Sometime into it, someone suggested that I take a page from Tom Clancy and add a little fictional vignette of a few paragraphs to the start of each chapter, to try to bring some aspect of the designs to life. It was a good idea, I thought, so I took a crack at it… and realized with my first attempt that it just wasn’t working. At least, not the way I was going about it. I started writing a yarn featuring the 4,000 ton “space battleship” pitched to the USAF. But several pages in, it became clear that I wasn’t doing well on keeping it to “a few paragraphs.” Also… it was getting fairly dire. Just as there are few stories you can tell about a Ohio-class boomer or a Minuteman III missile silo that feature them doing the jobs they were designed for, there seem few to tell about a spacecraft designed to fight an all-out nuclear war. And while, if written well, it could be an exciting yarn… it ain’t gonna be too damn cheerful, unless global annihilation is something you think is pretty awesome. So… I just sorta gave up on the idea.
In the past week or three I’ve gotten back into working on NPP, and dug up the Orion Battleship tale. And because why not, I’m posting a PDF of it. Keep in mind, this isn’t a polished piece. It’s not even a rough draft; it’s half a rough draft. There is no dialogue, there are no human characters. I had an end in mind, but just never got to it.
So, if’n yer interested in such things, HERE YA GO.
And because I just got the plumbers bill for replacing the pressure tank and suddenly find myself in some need of cash…
Holy crap:
Usually when a headline uses words like “spectacular,” you can bet that the one thing the subject of the article is NOT going to be is… “spectacular.” In this case, though… wow.
In short, it’s a vast warehouse with carefully and properly stored and cataloged goodies from a magnificent weapons collection, to battlefield bits and pieces (clothing, drums, bugles, flags, etc.), to one hell of an art collection… including a bunch of Hitler Originals.
And you can’t get in to see *any* of it. Because it’s all in storage awaiting a museum whose construction has not been funded.
Lots of amazing photos and anigifs at the link.