Season three of “Star Trek Picard” has been an astonishing breath of fresh “Star Trek.” After four dismal years of “Discovery” insulting the fandom and crapping on the legacy, and two hideous seasons of “Picard” that took a steamer on the character of “Picard,” season three, under new management, has really turned things around. And the latest episode goes so far as to wipe out the Discovery production design aesthetic.
There is a visit to the Star fleet Museum, showing a number of of ships on display. These include the Defiant from Deep Space Nine, Janeway’s Voyager, the NCC-1701-A Enterprise, the HMS Bounty whale hauler… and the USS New Jersey. This is a never before seen, probably never before mentioned ship. Which makes sense; doubtless Star Fleet has lots of ships worthy of keeping that never showed up in any prior episode or movie. But what makes the scene really special: all of these ships are, so far as I can tell, *exactly* what they should be in terms of design. The Bounty looks like a Klingon vessel from Star trek III and IV, not one of those gibberish ships from Discovery. The Enterprise, Voyager, Defiant are all quite correct. And the New Jersey? Take a look:
That’s a *proper* TOS-era Connie-class. Not like the sad spectacle of “Pikes” Enterprise from STD/SNW.
And there’s the fact that Worf looks like a Trek Klingon, not a nuTrek Klingork.
So, yeah. Picard ends with this season. But the powers that be will be *really* missing out if they don’t follow this up with a series that spins off of Picard Season Three… same production crew, same production aesthetic, same writers, same producers. They finally found people to work on Trek who actually *like* Trek.
“Zipline” is an American company specializing in drone delivery systems. While package delivery via drone has been promised in the US for some years, Zipline has been operating successfully in Rwanda since 2016 as a medical supplies (meds and blood) delivery system. And it seems to work *really* well… something like 90 seconds from receipt of order to launch of the drone, which flies at 60+ mph at a radius of up to 50 miles, delivering up to 4 pounds of payload via parachute. Since startup, Zipline has made over 20 million miles of flights. This system seems not only remarkable successful, but remarkably efficient to run; their main distribution center launches 500 drones a day, and they’ve made this Really Neato System as run of the mill as SpaceX is making launch vehicle recovery.
While this is great for emergency deliveries in rural Africa, it would not be a great system for package delivery in American cities and suburbs… you want your package *delivered,* not dropped, and delivered accurately, not somewhere in a dozen yards radius. A big enough quad/octocopter could over course do this, landing right on your porch and dropping off the box. This type of drone delivery has been proposed for years, but there are obvious problems. First, the things are *LOUD.* Second, all those blades spinning about would pose a hazard to people, pets, property. Third… have you *seen* city folk? Chances are real good that in the half second it takes to land and drop off, some “youths” would spring upon it, not only stealing the package but beating the drone to death with baseball bats. Because that’s where we are now, I guess.
Zipline has what looks like a decent answer to those, though. They still use a big quadcopter, but it lowers a “gondola” up to 400 feet. The gondola has some basic maneuver capability, but no more than needed for translation; all the lift is provided by the main drone. This keeps the “loud” and “dangerous” far overhead. And with the “loud” further away, there’s less chance of Cultural Enrichment spotting it and ambushing it. Additionally, their 50-pound drones are *really* quiet due to special props.
Below is an interesting video on the topic, covering both systems. There is definite cringe… the YouTube goes to Rwanda to see it in action, which is fine; he somehow finagled his way into the operations system, working to get an order processed and launched, which is fine, but his “I just saved a life!” schtick gave me a headache.
The military applications for this are obvious, but somehow were left completely out of the video. Never mind the dullsville of dropping off medical supplies or even ammunition… Zipline has figured out how to make a nearly silent drone delivery system. An inherently quiet drone with a sensor platform/bomb pod suspended 500 feet below it? You could likely drift along over a trench at night, the gondola maybe only ten feet up, dropping off small care packages as you go. The drone itself would be virtually silent, and so far up that it would be virtually impossible to shoot down with small arms. Ordnance that was set to go off via timer or remote activation would allow this to scatter bomblets around and set them all off at once. Or, heck, just pack the gondola with high explosives, napalm, thermite, WP, drift it right up to somebody or something your really don’t like and BLAMMO. Won’t hurt the drone none.
I’ve added some more things to my eBay: “Dynascott.” There are some new cyanotypes, some books, a piece of vintage NASA test equipment that I bought *years* ago to serve as a prop for The Alternate History Movie That Shall Not Be Named. Some cyanotypes I’ve had before; the photos are of the *actual* prints I’m selling. I have more cyanotypes and a lot more books to add soon, but this gets the ball rolling. I’ve included Buy It Now for them.
At last, my collection of “Tom Swift Jr.” novels is complete. Since I’m a miser/dirt poor, I was only willing to spend a pittance for each book, but if you wait long enough pretty much everything shows up on ebay.
Woo.
And because why not, here’s the next shelf over:
On a related note: turns out that last year a bit of good news slipped by me un-noticed. The CW a few years ago decided to make a TV series about Tom Swift Jr… it could have been good (I mean, it’s not beyond the bounds of the physically possible), but CW decided instead to make an abomination. The series began airing on May 31, 2022. It was promptly cancelled on June 30, 2022, due to low ratings. And of course: Tom Swift had been turned from a no-nonsense STEM-focused blond blue-eyed teenager with a girlfriend into a flamboyant gay black adult. Thus assuring that the existing fanbase would be uninterested. And who among that fraction of the population for whom “flamboyant gay black man” is a draw would be interested in a crappy sci-fantasy show?
Lead actor Richards said of the adaptation, “The original Tom Swift was great for his time and what he represented. At the time, that was the face of young boys, All-American kids full of possibilities. But in 2021, that can look so different. It can look like someone like me—a Black guy who is chocolate, who is queer, who is all those things that we’re told aren’t the normal or the status quo.” He added, “We’re going to dive into so many sectors of identity. We’re going to talk about Blackness—and a different kind of Blackness than we’re used to seeing, which is the Black elite, the 1 percent, the billionaires. We’re also going to talk about a queer boy’s journey into becoming a queer man. Not only self-acceptance, but acceptance as a whole, having the community and people around you.”
This is a “cut scene” from a video game (“Star Wars: Squadrons”) and is a few years old… but it’s the best official non-“Rogue One” Star Wars that has come out since Disney bought the franchise.
In short, a volcano on Venus seemed to be active from 1990 to 1992. It could be that the mountain simply slumped, but more likely it that it blarped up some lava.
So if you decide to go for a hike on Venus, add “volcano” to the list of things to be careful of.
This would make Venus the third world in this solar system to have active volcanoes, after Earth and Io. But some form of geological activity is much more common, with ice geysers all over the place out among the larger moons.
I will be posting some more cyanotype blueprints to ebay in the coming days. These were made from old transparencies I’d had made prior to the move from Utah. But I also hope to have some “brand new” cyanotypes in the near-ish future. The transparent film remains astonishingly elusive; two separate companies are trying to obtain it… and have been for a few months now. Every other print shop in the area has flat refused to try. A print shop a few hundred miles away made a few transparencies for me a few months back; I just sent them files to have a few more made. With luck they’ll come through. I have a *bunch* more I’d like to have done. Here are what I recently sent off:
Martin XB-51. The original print was 1/40 scale; this blueprint will be 1/72 scale.
The Avro “Arrow” structural layout.
Two sheets from NASA illustrating the Saturn V. One sheet is very likely more interesting than the other, so what I might end up doing is ebaying the two sheets and cataloging just the one.
The US-1205 and UA-1207 solid rocket motors for the Titan IIIC and IIIM, respectively. I have the originals of these framed and hanging on my wall; conveniently, they fit in off-the-shelf 11.75X36 panorama frames that you can get at Hobby Lobby and the like. I will probably tinker with some of the other blueprints that are *close* to this size to massage them to fit into that frame. Because as awesome as the prints are on their own, they’re spectacular framed.
I have also sent a revised version of my SR-71 CAD diagrams to be re-printed. The first print’s lines came in too light/fine. Live and learn…
