The YouTube channel “Found and Explained” just released a video on the 4,000 ton Orion Battleship, with the model used based on my reconstruction from issue V2N2 of “Aerospace Projects Review.” The video was sponsored by a “Star Trek” video game, so there are a *lot* of Star Trek references in the video.
For more information on the project, including blueprints, be sure to check out issue v2N2.
YouTube is filled to overflowing with “fan edits” of this or that movie, or fan-made videos showing spaceships from Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlestar Gallactica, etc. The quality of these vary greatly. Lots are *terrible.* But every now and then, you get THIS:
It’s a reworking of the “launch” scene from Star Trek VI. The original was fine, but this is *way* better. And note that the artist didn’t decide to redesign the Enterprise or Spacedock; he respected the canon.
Now *this* is impressive prop work:
Three versions of the same “epilogue:”
Version 1: Ignores events of “2010”
Version 2: Incorporates events of “2010:”
Version 3: Slightly modified by another YouTuber. Much less professionally done, but… a little amusing:
After months and years of posts about massive failures of various kinds… here’s a video about an attempt at a long-distance car jump. Guess how it turns out.
Ronald Reagan chats with a Nazi in “Desperate Journey:”
The dialog from IMDB:
[Major Otto Baumeister has told the captured crew that, since they know the location of an underground Messerschmitt underground factory, they will feel his iron fist. Now he separates Flying Officer Johnny Hammond from the rest, questioning him for intelligence]
Maj. Otto Baumeister : That plane you were flying, American-built, wasn’t it? One of the new ones. We have heard a good deal about them. We know that they are capable of operating at amazing altitudes. How do you manage to supercharge the engines at the extreme cold of those high altitudes?
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : If I told you, the others wouldn’t find out?
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Certainly not.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : They can’t hear us out there?
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Quite sure. Now, about the supercharger.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : It’s done with a thermotrockle.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : A what?
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : Thermotrockle amfilated through a daligonitor. Of course, this is made possible because the dernadyne has a franicoupling.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : I do not understand you.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : I knew you wouldn’t. The amsometer on the side prenulates the kinutaspel hepulace. That’s the entire secret. There you have it.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : I do not follow you.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : Well, maybe I could make it more clear if I drew a diagram.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Certainly.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : [Bending over as though to draw] There’s three things you gotta understand. As I said before, the daligonitor is amfilated by the thermotrockle. It’s made by its connection with the franicoupling of dernadyne. Even at cruising speed the kinutaspel hepulace is prenulated by the amsometer. Makes no difference. Could be taking off. Snowing or raining, any pilot will tell you that the altitude, 10, 20, 30, 40,000 feet…
[flexing his arm to strike]
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : [appearing casually in Baumeister’s doorway] Oh, Terry. He wants to talk to you.
Flight Lieutenant Terrence Forbes : Oh. The major wants to see me.
[Forbes enters Baumeister’s office and sees him under the desk, unconscious. he looks incredulously at Hammond]
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : The iron fist has a glass jaw.
A rotary cell phone where a lot of the functionality is mechanical. It’s a real device that is available for pre-order as a kit, for a price that seems remarkably reasonable ($390). Since it is not manufactured by a major phone or electronics company, I imagine that you’ll be SOL if anything goes wrong with it, especially electronically or with the software… customer support and repair seem like they’d be a challenge. But as a neato knickknack, it seems… neato.
Over the years there have been suggestions of using “lithobraking” as a means of reducing the cost of transporting payloads to the lunar surface. As the name suggests, the idea is to use the lunar surface itself – the lithosphere – to slow the craft. Meteoroids do this all the time, of course, though in their case it’s pretty destructive. But for those rare serious suggestion of using lithobraking, the idea would be to lay out a miles-long “track” of smooth lunar dust; the spacecraft would come in at a *very* shallow angle and touch down at extreme – essentially orbital – velocity, and use skids to brake using friction. The precision required, and lunar infrastructure required, would be pretty substantial. One early suggestion of what a lithobraking spacecraft might look like is this (from HERE):
It might be workable. But it’s not something I’ve seen demonstrated too often, either practically or in animated form. Well, until now. At last, we have a good video representation of what lithobraking might look like in actual practice:
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So “Halloween Ends” opened this weekend. On a budget of $20 million, it has made an estimated $41.25 million domestically in the opening weekend, pushing itself to profitability in a handful of days.
The low budget – $17 million – horror movie “Smile” has, in just a bit over two weeks, made $71.2 million, making it a rampaging success.
That’s nice. How is this newsworthy? Compare that performance to “The Woman King.” On a budget of $50 million, after a month it has made $59.7 million domestically. D’oh.
It seems the strategies of glorifying the actual villains while accusing the potential customers of being bad people didn’t work so great.
Snerk.
One of these days Hollywood types *might* figure out that hating the audience is not a good plan. In the mean time… keep hemorrhaging dollars, dorks.
Why aren’t more sports cars like this? Granted, there is zero chance that I will ever end up the owner of even a bottom-end sports car, much less a Lamborghini or a McLaren, but I’d be much more interested if I knew that the car could at least take a pot hole.