Dec 062022
 

… of just what constitutes this garbage. What fraction is paper? How much plastic? And how much is just sticks and weeds, stuff not normally considered “garbage” in the ecosystem?

 

 

In any event, this mechanism seems to be working quite well. I wonder if it could be made actually productive, though, rather than just harm-reducing: instead of shipping the garbage off to be landfilled somewhere, run it directly into an incinerator. Use the heat and the water to spin a turbine; use the turbine to drive a generator. Use the generator to power not only the mechanism, but feed excess power – if any – into the grid.

 Posted by at 7:15 pm
Dec 062022
 

BREAKING: Army Chooses Bell Textron’s V-280 Valor Tiltrotor to Replace Black Hawk

… the V-280 Valor tiltrotor beat out Sikorsky-Boeing’s bid — the Defiant X coaxial rotor blade platform — in the years-long competition to design the future long range assault aircraft, or FLRAA, a key part of the Army’s plan to modernize its aviation platforms. 

 

While I’m pleased to see the Valor going ahead, I *also* hope that the Defiant goes ahead in some fashion. There’s no reason why we should only have one VTOL transport. The Defiant would be spectacular in different ways than the Valor.

 

 Posted by at 11:36 am
Dec 062022
 

This “experiment” seems like all kinds of fun. It also seems like the sort of thing that would attract the attention of the ATF. Or the DoD.

I gotta admit I like the method of production of the nozzle. Adopting that process for a more advanced rocket might be a chore… a refractory metal nozzle made this way would be great, but I have doubts that it’d be possible.

 Posted by at 8:46 am
Dec 022022
 

I remember reading many years ago someone describing what would happen if a modern anti-ship missile was launched against a World War 2 battleship: after the explosion, a sailor would have to go out on deck and sweep up all the bits of the missile and dump them overboard and probably slap on another coat of paint. The point was that ships used to be massive floating armored installations, and thus required massively powerful incoming weapons to take them out, but more recent ships are lightly built and rely on active defenses (missiles and CIWS along with ECM) to avoid getting hit in the first place.

 

The war in Ukraine from time to time demonstrates this. For example, the Russians recently launched a “Lancet” loitering munition against a piece of Ukrainian artillery, an old Soviet-era D-20 howitzer. The advanced modern weapon made a direct impact… and blew out a tire. There is value in being built like an old cannon, it seems. The Lancet seems to use a warhead wrapped with bits of cut-up rebar; this doubtless does wonders against soft targets such as trucks and troops concentrations and playgrounds and hospitals and the like, but seems to do diddly-squat against actual armor. Other variants apparently include shaped charge warheads for use against armor; perhaps this was a failure of proper weapons selection.

 

 Posted by at 9:40 pm
Dec 012022
 

Twenty copies of the new book have finally arrived, fortunately entirely intact. They took two days to cross an ocean, one day to cross half a continent… and two weeks to cross the customs office. Shrug.

Anyway, here’s what I’m gonna do: signed, numbered and dated copies will be $20 plus postage (media mail). These will come with two 18X24 prints, also signed and dated. If you would like to be on the list for one of these send me an email:

But the first five copies will be auctioned off, with the highest bids getting the lowest numbers. Additionally: numbers 3,4 and 5 will receive three 18X24 prints, while numbers 1 and 2 will receive four 18X24 prints, all signed, dated and numbered. If this sounds interesting to you, email me what your bid is. Bidding ends Sunday night, after which I’ll let bidders know. If there are more than five bidders, six and beyond won’t be held to their bids… but they won’t *necessarily* get the next numbers in line. Once the auction winners are processed, I’ll send out PayPal invoices for the regular copies, and they will be sent out based on the order of payment.

I also have ten “SR-71” copies and five “B-47/B-52” copies. The SR-71’s, singed and dated with two 18X24 prints, will go for $20; the B-47/52 signed and dated with three 18X24 prints, will go for $55 plus postage. If you would like one of these, let me know.

 Posted by at 11:12 pm
Nov 202022
 

Alex Stein took his show on the road to mock armed Antifa LARPER whackos to their faces. The one thing I wish he’d done is zoom in on their firearms and try to obtain serial numbers. Not because there’d be anything to do with that data, really, but the effort of obtaining it would likely freak out these little weirdos.

 

 Posted by at 9:02 pm
Nov 182022
 

A mere sixteen years ago I posted artwork of the Martin “EGRESS” ejection capsule meant to fling crew from a stricken spacecraft anywhere up to and including orbit. Those scans came from photocopies of a conference paper. I have at last now scanned the same work, producing slightly better results. The artwork is remarkable for one detail in particular: of the two crewmen, one is clearly Lance Squarejaw, wholly unfazed at his situation. The other is… not unfazed. I’d pay real money to get at the original color painting.

 

The whole thing – diagrams and art scanned at 600 DPI – will be offered up to APR Patrons & Subscribers soon.

 

 Posted by at 11:59 pm