Hubble & Webb: Streamers

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, photography, rockets, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 302022
 

The Hubble and Webb space telescopes both observed the DART asteroid impact, and both saw distinct “streamers” in the ejecta. Which seems rather odd given that the asteroid appears to have been a loosely-assembled gravel pile, with nothing holding the ejected particles together… no surface tension, no magnetic fields, not even any appreciable gravity.

Webb and Hubble capture detailed views of DART impact

Webb’s view in near infrared:

 

Hubble’s view in visible light:

 

 

 Posted by at 10:14 am

Rocket videos worth watching

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, photography, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 292022
 

Say what you will about United Launch Alliance and the fact that it is far, FAR behind the times when compared with SpaceX, they’ve recently been issuing some damned impressive videos.

And they’re retweeting some good vids of their Delta IV launch:

 

 

Some great launch videos. Now, to release some equally impressive landing videos, demonstrating that ULA is in the business of recovering and reusing rockets to not only lower launch cost (and compete with SpaceX) but also to ramp up launch rates in order to save western civilization off-world, because it’s going to hell on *this* one.

 

 Posted by at 11:09 am

DART impact from a distance

 art, awesomeness, history, news, photography, rockets, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 282022
 

The images coming in of the DART impact are absolutely remarkable.

Dude. DUDE.

 

 Posted by at 6:23 am

DART

 art, awesomeness, history, news, photography, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 262022
 

This is what men can do when they strive for greatness using the precepts of western science: we can bullseye a 500-meter-wide pile of rubble from across the friggen’ solar system.

 

The plume was visible from Earth-based telescopes.

The Webb and Hubble telescopes were aimed at the impact, but I haven’t seen anything from them yet. Probably takes time to process.

 Posted by at 11:41 pm

North American Rotary-Wing Logistics Spacecraft

 aircraft, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 192022
 

A mid-1960’s North American Aviation concept for a sorta-lifting body spacecraft that would use deployable rotors for landing. Functioning as an autogyro, these rotors would be a more controllable alternative to a parachute, in principle allowing fairly pinpoint runway touchdowns. I had cause to go looking for information on this recently; i was fairly certain that I had a few reports on the subject, but could not find them. Grrr.

A few photos I found online a few years ago of a display model, presumably originating from an auction website such as ebay:

 Posted by at 6:43 pm

So much for that “afraid of NATO” BS

 aircraft, Hmm..., news, politics, rockets, russian empire, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 182022
 

It *seems* that Russia has pulled a fair amount of the air defense missile systems from St. Petersburg to transfer them to Ukraine. But wait! Wasn’t the whole point of the war that Ukraine joining NATO was a major threat to Russia? If so… St. Petersburg is not only real close to NATO member Estonia, it’s real close to *Finland,* which, thanks to the war, is now joining NATO. So… shouldn’t the Russians be kinda worried about an immanent attack on their second most important city from eeeeeeviiiiil forces of NATO?

 

Exclusive: Russia moves missiles from St Petersburg to Ukraine

Satellite images reveal that both mobile firing platforms and missiles disappeared during the summer from a base in the Zelenogorsk (Terijoki) area on the Karelian Isthmus, northwest of St Petersburg, among others.

The transfer of equipment has not previously been publicly reported in Russia or western countries.

St Petersburg—Russia’s second-most important city—has long been surrounded by a protective ring of 14 anti-aircraft missile bases. Now several of them stand empty.

Huh.

 Posted by at 1:15 pm

Tridents compared

 drawings, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, ships  No Responses »
Sep 162022
 

An Aerojet diagram comparing the Trident I (C-4) and Trident II (D-5) submarine launched ballistic missiles, showing the significantly larger size of the latter

The full-rez version of this scan has been uploaded into the 2022-09 APR Extras Dropbox folder. It is available to all APR Patrons/Subscribers at the $4/month level and above. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 

 Posted by at 10:49 pm
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