Nov 052020
 

In the long long ago this blog focused far more on “unbuilt aerospace projects.” Last few years it has become far more about the culture war/war on western civilization/The Crazy Years.  This is not how I would have it… but then if it were up to me society wouldn’t be going crazy either, cities would not be getting trashed, Antifa and their violence and criminality promotion would be the stuff of alternate realities, the likely next President and the likely next *next* President would not be promising to toss me, my friends and family into federal prison. This sort of thing can kinda come to dominate a discussion.

All that said, aerospace is never far from my mind or my efforts. The thing is, though, my efforts have been devoted to a few books that I’ve got contracts to produce. This is a new sort of thing, and it is unsurprisingly a substantial time-sink. And since the publisher has not gone public with the books (they won’t until after the manuscripts are turned in next year), there’s not a lot I can say about them publicly.

*THAT* said, below is a render of a little CAD model I’ve recently made. The model is not the subject of the book; but it has been made for the purposes of making *one* diagram of a vehicle that incorporates this. One might argue that this is going a bit far for a small part of a diagram; this part of the diagram might be only an inch or so long. But while it is possible that these books might see a Second Edition, at this point I’m working under the assumption that I’m only doing this once, so I want to do it right.

So I still spend a whole lot of time with aerospace. It just doesn’t translate to blog postings right now.

 Posted by at 3:10 pm
Nov 042020
 

Pennsylvania is still Trumps. But overnight Michigan and Wisconsin kinda magically flipped to Biden; as things currently stand, Biden looks like he’ll win. For some forty or fifty million otherwise law-abiding Americans who have been staring down the barrel of either tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in NFA taxes for the mere privilege of exercising their basic rights – or of spending a decade in Federal prison, a power-grab unheard of in American history –  the prospect of a Biden/Harris Presidency is of course a very bad thing. However: as things currently stand, it looks like the Republicans will maintain control of the Senate, and conservatives currently have a substantial majority in the Supreme Court.

Bidens gun grabbery is of course wildly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court would have been certain to – eventually – hear the case and smack it down (quite possibly after a great deal of damage had been done), so the Biden/Harris plan has been to pack the court. But with the Senate in the hands of the Republicans, this is – at least for the next two years – probably off the table.

What’s left to be seen is what Biden/Harris will do to NASA and the USSF. The USSF seems to be moving along nicely, so one can at least hope that it will be allowed to continue, but it’s impossible to say. As for NASA… it is pretty much traditional for new administrations to tear up the old administrations plans. So don’t be surprised if Artemis gets redesigned, setting back yet more years, if SLS gets shoved back even further. SpaceX – if the incoming administrations plans to punish the successful is stymied by a Republican Senate – should arrive on the Moon long before NASA, and on Mars likely *decades* earlier. So… perhaps that might be for the best. If the USSF isn’t strangled in the crib, and if it is run sensibly, the USSF will likely become a major SpaceX customer.

Now a very likely real positive: the economy tends to do better when there is gridlock in Washington, such that the government can’t “fix” the economy via “intelligent design.” Instead, economic evolution through natural selection is allowed to play out, and things tend to run pretty well because the government is too busy fighting itself to “help” the economy.

But a potential serious negative: Biden/Harris will take over during a pandemic. Expect lockdowns and all kinds of efforts to change society on a permanent basis, including attempts at the Green New Deal and the imposition of actual factual Socialism, all based on the “in this time of crisis…” brand of fear-mongering policy-making.  The US will likely be dragged back into suicidal international efforts to crush the US economy by blaming us for all the carbon in the air, while the Chinese and the Indians get a pass. The Republican Senate will be watched *very* carefully to see if they have the fortitude to stand up to that nonsense.

I’m frankly curious to see if Biden/Harris pulls the US embassy out of Jerusalem.

What about the riots? One would expect them to die down, now that their guy is likely in. Those who burned and looted and drove up the homicide rates will get a pass. But the likes of the McCloskeys and Rittenhouse… expect them to be served up for the dastardly crime of defending themselves against the mob.

 

My main suggestion: watch those videos of SJW meltdowns… and learn from them. Don;t be like them. We survived Obama, we’ll likely survive Harris. But it will require vigilance and stoicism.

 Posted by at 9:17 am
Nov 032020
 

As I type this, Trump looks like he will win the electoral college. One of the remaining question marks that could determine the actual outcome is Pennsylvania, where at this writing 65% of the total votes have been counted, with the bulk of the remainder  likely to be “mail in” ballots. As I type this, the tallies are 2623695 for Trump, 1948417 for Biden. If I’ve done my math right, that means the total votes counted so far are 4572022 and the theoretical total vote count at 100% will be about 7033880. So for Biden to win 50% of the state, he will need to win an additional 1568513 votes, or about 63.7% of the remainder. Given that the mail in votes seem to come largely from urban areas like Philadelphia, winning two out of three of the votes outright does not seem impossible, but it’ll sure seem suspicious.

UPDATE, 2:30 AM (because of course it is): Some updated numbers… PA has 74% reporting, with 2964853 for Trump, 2286865 for Biden. Something like 1845198 votes left to count, of which Biden would need to win 68.3% of. The *trend* has been a steady improvement for Trump. A sudden reversal of fortune at this point would raise eyebrows.

 Posted by at 11:35 pm
Oct 302020
 

I never quite “got” religion… not until I started reading HP Lovecraft and finally grokked the concept of “Cosmic Horror.” With that understood, I could finally kinda understand religion, just not as most religious folks would prefer it. I read tales of some god or other flipping his marbles and wiping out a family, a city, a world, and I see it as not a miraculous wonder but a Grade-A Cosmic Horror. And then when you get to the idea of a soul that can exist forever… yeesh. Couple that with the concept of damnation, or even just a soul getting twisted up to serve as little more than an MP3 player spitting out “holy holy holy” for all of eternity, and the horror approached mind-snapping levels.

But you don’t even need to deal with “God” to get to horrifically terrifying madness inducement. The Bible, for example, speaks of angels. These are often depicted as men or women with wings, but the Biblical descriptions of at least the seraphim – the highest “order” of angels –  read like something Lovecraft would have dreamed up while tripping on an overdose of LSD.

 

HPL came up with some doozies. But nothing compares with the idea that you have an immortal soul and that you could spend an eternity being tortured because you did not follow rules that not only did you not understand, but were perhaps quite unaware of and perhaps they would have been impossible for you to follow (quick: don’t think of an elephant). In HPL’s world, for humans dead is dead, pretty much. But in religion, dead is just the start of an eternity of madness and agony. For HPL, the “gods” don’t care about you. In religion, the gods *do.* And chances are very high that they despise you. Wheeeeee.

 Posted by at 12:25 am
Oct 282020
 

Kate Mulgrew of ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ crashes Captain Janeway statue celebration via Zoom

https://janewaystatue.com/

I guess it looks ok:

So, what do we have here? A celebration of a person who:

1: Celebrated STEM and objective reality such as 2+2=4. This is pure white supremacy.

2: Traveled through and explored regions without the consent of those regions. Colonialism.

3: Wiped out or overthrew several species. Genocide.

4: Spoke English, chose to center old 19th-century European fiction (and 15th century European historical figures) for her recreation, with the local European characters portrayed by and depicted as ethnic Europeans. Erasure!

5: Showed prejudice against certain peoples/races. Racism!

6: Consumed a great deal of coffee without citing and celebrating the fact that it is a product of Arabia. Cultural appropriation!

7: She maintained a conventionally-accepted body mass index. Fat shaming!

Clearly Captain Janeway is problematic.

 

 

 

 

NOTE: This is sarcasm. Don’t attack this – or any other – statue, ya friggen’ animals.

 Posted by at 3:27 pm
Oct 262020
 

Given some recent posts on this blog, this opinion piece is timely:

https://www.space.com/elysium-effect-billionaire-space-revolution

It’s fairly long (as such things go), but the summary is this: billionaires are working to open the space frontier… and Certain Groups are demonizing them for it. They believe that the Evil 1% will develop spaceships and take off and live in luxury in space while plunging the rest of us schmoes back on Earth into permanent dystopian grinding poverty. Th best evidence that these sort of people can come up with is that space flight will be expensive, that it’ll cost a couple hundred grand just to pop up above the atmosphere, millions to go to orbit, hundreds of millions to circle the moon. And this, for the first generation of truly commercial space tourists, will be true. But this is *always* the way of things. The first home computers? Blisteringly expensive. Now you have a 1970’s supercomputer in your pocket. Jet travel? it was originally so expensive that it gave us the term “jet set,” because it was so expensive that it was *necessarily* fancy. Space travel will start of expensive and, if allowed to progress through the normal course of evolution that the free market provides, will eventually become cheap enough that at least a sizable fraction of the public could at least reasonably consider a trip to Space Station V.

Given the current dismal state of public discourse, I can easily imagine a future where SpaceX gets Starship up and running… and the US government, perhaps under pressure from special interest groups, perhaps due to it’s own grasping nature, will throw up regulations and laws that demand that commercial spaceflight be cheap enough for everyone right then and there (likely impossible thus killing off commercial passenger spaceflight), or that passengers – especially colonists to Mars – demographically match the population (or perhaps some particular politically-chosen ratio), or that spaceflight be proven so safe that it’s impossible to actually be allowed. If this happens, it doesn’t mean that space won’t get colonized… I’m sure the Chinese and Indians will be happy to do it without us.  From the standpoint of those who are protesting in the US, that’ll be just as well given how much they hate western civilization.

And given the trajectory that 2020 has been on, I *really* hope that SpaceX has a fantastic security system in place. It would suuuuuuuuuck if the CCP managed to convince their running dog lackeys in Antifa to swarm the place and burn down the Starship facilities.

What I find especially amusing is the title “The Elysium Effect,” taken from the now largely forgotten sci-fi flick “Elysium.” In that, the richest of the rich toddle off to a vast and physics-defying space station while Earth turns to garbage. The general understanding is that this is some sort of critique of capitalism and wealth inequality… but if you pay attention to the movie, it’s anything but. The rich left and live in luxury, yes. But Earth didn’t turn to crap because the rich made it so… but because the *poor* made it so. Los Angeles is depicted as essentially Mexico City North… vast slums, a population probably measured around a hundred million, the English language being a rarity on the ground. Enlightenment values have evaporated. Western civilization, engineering rigor, all the things that Certain People decry but that make a society rich and successful were wiped away in a flood of refugees and unassimilated immigrants. “Elysium” is not a cautionary tale of wealth inequality, but a cautionary tale of a society that doesn’t control its borders. *Of* *course* those who can will flee in the face of collapse. And we are all better off if the means of escape is available.

 Posted by at 9:21 pm
Oct 232020
 

News article:

How genetic variation gives rise to differences in mathematical ability

Summary: gene sequence ROBO1 is found to be associated with the development of gray matter in the right parietal cortex, which is associated with mathematical performance.

Suggested hypothesis: people who argue that 2+2 does not necessarily equal 4, or that “2+2=4 is an expression of white supremacy or the patriarchy or western imperialism or INSERT DUMBASS IDEOLOGICAL NONSENSE HERE” have ROBO1 gene sequence variabilities that lead to *reduced* formation of that right parietal cortex gray matter. Suggested experiment: do some genetic testing and see.

The question would then  become what to do about it. If it turns out that genetics leads to a difference in mathematical ability *and* differences in political ideologies, will that mean that people will start voting for candidates based on their genetic testing results? Will that mean that science and engineering firms will not be allowed to “discriminate” by not hiring candidates who fail math tests if they have the gene sequence for bad math abilities? Will it mean that math test results will be driven in part based on your genes… this person has to give mathematically correct answers, that one doesn’t, in order to achieve the same grade?

 Posted by at 12:42 pm
Oct 182020
 

Gotta admit to some mixed emotions here. So one Steven Gallant beat a firefighter to death and was sentenced in 2005 to 17 years in prison. That seems rather light to me, but then I don’t see why any out-and-out murderer should ever see the light of day ever again. Call me a little strict, I dunno. Anyway, last year he was out of prison on a day release program to help with a conference on prisoner rehabilitation, when another Mostly Peaceful Religion Enthusiast decided to go on a stabbing spree in London. Gallant grabbed a Narwhal tusk and stymied the Cultural Enrichment Practitioner until the Police could get there and shoot him. As a result of his actions, Gallant has been given a *bit* of a reprieve by the Queen of England… ten months off his sentence.

On one hand… someone who does something heroic should be recognized and rewarded for it. On the other hand:

“Gallant had been among a gang who battered his dad Barrie to death outside The Dolphin pub in Hull in April 2005. It was so savage paramedics who tried to revive him couldn’t find his mouth.”

Ummm. Fortunately, the murder victims son seems ok with this turn of events. But if he hadn’t? Had Gallant had a proper sentence of life plus 180 days (an extra six months in his cell to freshen the air for the other murderers on his cell block) and got a sudden *actual* get-out-of-jail pardon, and if the murder victims family had a real problem with that, then there would be a real quandary. In that case, I think the best solution would be to let him out, but to declare him outlaw. Just like the good old days.

Murderer on day release who foiled London Bridge terrorist is granted sentence cut by Queen

 Posted by at 4:47 pm
Oct 162020
 

I watched the two Presidential “Town Hall” broadcasts last night. There were very VERY clear distinctions between the two:

1A) Trump: The moderator spent a good chunk of the time (seemingly the majority) interviewing Trump, not letting the audience ask questions

1B) Biden: The moderator let the audience do almost all the asking

2A) Trump: the moderator was adversarial in the extreme

2B) Biden: The moderator was friendly

Each approach seemed fine in its way… on one hand, it’s the job of the press to grill the candidate; on the other the “town hall” format is supposed to be for regular people to ask questions. Just interesting to note the stark difference. Also noted: somehow, *nobody* seemed to ask Biden the important and obvious questions, such as “how do you think history will remember you if you try to enact your claimed policies and you incite a wholly unnecessary civil war (with the gun grab) and/or destroy the US economy (Green New Deal)?” or “so just how much money did Hunter make from selling influence to the Chinese, Ukrainians, Russians and who all else?” Every question was a softball.

 

 Posted by at 9:09 am
Oct 152020
 

So… working away on Terribly Important Aerospace History Book Project Number Two today on my ~15-year-old Windows XP laptop when it decided that it needed to take a nap. When I tried to rouse it back to functionality, all it was able to tell me was that some Windows file or other was missing or corrupt, and to fix the problem I needed to reboot Windows using the original CD-ROMs. Which have been missing for at least two states.

This has been my main work computer for many years… all of my Aerospace Project Reviews and USxP’s were written and illustrated on it, most of the CAD models I’ve created were done on it. Most of that work has of course been backed up… but, irritatingly, not the most recent. The two latest as-yet unfinished USxPs, previewed HERE and HERE, don’t seem to have been externally backed up because apparently I’m kind of an idjit.

Fortunately, a local mom-and-pop computer repair place was *apparently* able to convince the computer to open in some minimally functional Windows mode, and is – hopefully – in the process of copying over some 47 gigabytes of data to an external data storage device. With luck tomorrow morning I’ll get a message that it’s done and I’ll have everything back. But even then the computer will be a doorstop; the cost and bother of repairing it would exceed its usefulness.

2020 continues to be a stellar year.

 Posted by at 6:38 pm