Sigh. SJWs on the Moon.

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Meh., politics, rockets, spacecraft, THIS is why Trump won, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 012018
 

‘First Man’ Director Damien Chazelle Defends Omitting American Flag Planted on the Moon

“First Man,” the forthcoming biopic about Neil Armstrong, *had* looked like a good movie. But even though it covers Armstrong walking on the Moon, the director and the actor portraying Armstrong felt that showing the American flag being planted on the Moon was somehow inappropriate.

The director once posted this to Twitter:

 

The director is a loon.

Hollywood is all about the dollar. So even though the place is swarming with leftists, you’d *think* at some point they’d get it through their skulls that offending half the potential audience is a bad idea. In this case, the movie is almost certain to have a potential audience that’s mostly American… I can’t see the Chinese market being all that excited to see a flick about an American historical figure. Or the Europeans for that matter. It *should* do well in the US… but not if it sets out to annoy not just half the American market, but the half of the market that was probably going to be most interested in this movie. Because it certainly seems to me that a movie about an American war and space hero would probably appeal more to people who actually feel positively about American patriotism than those who don’t.

“First Man” opens October 12. I expect I’ll have other plans that day.

UPDATE:

Possible hint as to what Buzz Aldrin thinks about this.

 Posted by at 6:56 pm

Time to fire up the Dragons

 Hmm..., news, politics, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 312018
 

NASA needs to get on the horn to Elon Musk and start playing nice.

Russia Cuts Off U.S. Access to ISS, Pledges to Stop Ferrying American Astronauts in 2019

Short form: Russia has a contract with NASA to launch astronauts, and the contract ends in April, 2019. This is nothing particularly startling, and it’s entirely possible (probably probable) that NASA and Russia will sign a new contract and flights will continue uninterrupted. That said… BRING ON THE DRAGONS. It’s *long* past time that the US was back in the business of launching our own people into space. SpaceX is supposed to fly an unmanned-but-man-rated Dragon in November and an actually manned capsule in April of next year. Boeing is supposed to fly their capsule a few months later.

 Posted by at 8:15 pm

Rocketdyne nuclear-electric spacecraft art

 APR, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 252018
 

A piece of 1960’s (published in a book in 1967, but it looks older than that) artwork depicting a five-man nuclear-electric spacecraft. heading to Mars. The spacecraft is long for radiation shielding purposes; at the far distant forward end is the reactor, with the crew and ion engines in the conical section in the tail. Between the ends is a long boom attached to which are the propellant tanks and two large radiators. This is more or less the propulsion system and layout originally planned for the spaceship “Discovery” from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” with the difference that the ion engines were on the other side of the crew module, and the spacecraft “towed” the reactor and radiators, rather than pushing them.

 Posted by at 11:44 pm

Early Saturn V art

 art, history, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 222018
 

Found on ebay: a piece of B&W art depicting the Saturn V. The provenance is uncertain… unknown where this art originated. There are some unusual details; the tailfins are clocked 45 degrees off, moved from the outer diameter of the engine firings to between them, an odd choice to say the least. The third stage is larger in diameter than the S-IVb with a very long interstage between the S-II and the S-IVb; this *may* indicate that the third stage was meant to be a nuclear stage, with a single NERVA engine attached to the rear of the S-N third stage. The payload is also different: it appears to be a direct lander… no LEM, the Apollo vehicle landed directly on the lunar surface.

 Posted by at 11:34 pm

Back when CNN was a news network

 AARRRGH, history, Hmm..., rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 202018
 

CNN’s live coverage of the Shuttle Challenger launch, January 28, 1986. Compare to modern coverage: here, the event plays out live… and without a constant running commentary of inane babble. A reporter at the time would have no useful information for several minutes; he would not be able to tell the viewers anything they would not be able to figure out themselves. Today… you would expect *someone* to be running his or her damnfool mouth nonstop, apparently living in terror of three seconds of “dead air.”

 

Similarly, later that night President Reagan gave a brief televised speech to the nation. The Great Communicator earned his accurate nickname, one that has not applied to any President since. Sure as hell doesn’t *now.”

Theoretically CNN is *still* a news network. But I have randomly flipped over to the channel from time to time, probably several times a day… and I cannot recall how long it has been that I’ve seen actual news coverage. These days, every time I go to CNN it’s nothing but talking heads complaining about Trump. These days I see the “news” part of CNN to be a vestigial organ from the past, much like the “music” in MTV.

 Posted by at 1:59 am

NERVA to Mars art

 art, history, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 192018
 

A piece of Aerojet artwork depicting the NERVA nuclear rocket engine heading to Mars. This is almost certainly artistic license as the vehicle depicted here is a single stumpy upper stage with an aerodynamic fairing. This is mot likely a RIFT (Reactor In Flight Test) configuration, a simple expendable upper stage test configuration meant to be launched atop a Saturn V to prove out the engine.

 Posted by at 10:06 pm

Mercury on a Jupiter

 art, history, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 142018
 

Found on ebay a while back, a pre-NASA Army Ballistic Missile Agency illustration dated 25 May 1959 depicting the Mercury space capsule, including smaller views of it atop both a Redstone and a Jupiter. In both cases this would be a purely sub-orbital lob. It’s unclear just what’s going on with the nose of the Jupiter version; it does not have the abort tower the Redstone version has. This may be a purely aerodynamic fairing, with abort motors located underneath the capsule in the sizable adapter section.

 Posted by at 9:49 pm

“Space vehicle for Mars probe”

 art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 092018
 

A 1959 NASA depiction of the Ernst Stuhlinger “Umbrella” ship. This design was nuclear-electric, the electricity powering a bank of ion engines providing a trickle of high ISP thrust. The large circular “umbrella” was the radiator for the nuclear reactor, located at the far end of the “handle.” This design is a little different from the usual depiction with the crew compartment divided into two semi-toroidal segments. Normally this design is shown with a single torus with a maximum diameter much smaller than that of the radiator; here the crew compartments are shown to be relatively gigantic. I assume that this is artistic license as it also depicted the crew compartments as having *vast* circular windows in the floor. The crew compartments would spin (apparently independent of the rest of the ship) to generate some amount of artificial gravity to keep the crew healthy.

 Posted by at 10:26 pm

McDonnell-Douglas early Shuttle concept

 aircraft, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 072018
 

Scanned from a 35mm slide at the NASA HQ some years ago. The basic shape here (FDL-7/McDonnell Model 176) appeared on a great many McD designs for the latter half of the sixties from small one-man experimental designs on up to full Shuttle-sized craft like this one. It had both sharply swept fixed wings on the bottom and stowable high aspect ratio wings for landing up top.

 Posted by at 8:21 pm

STAR Clipper

 APR, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Launch Vehicle Projects  No Responses »
Aug 032018
 

A piece of color art, scanned from a 35mm slide at NASA HQ some years back. The Lockheed STAR Clipper was an early concept for a reusable 1.5 STO launch vehicle, a predecessor to the Space Shuttle. The STAR Clipper was described and illustrated in unnecessarily *vast* degree in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2 and in US Launch Vehicle Projects #2.

The STAR Clipper was an interesting design which was popular and well known for a while, receiving lot of kinda-press… it, or shuttles very much like it in appearance, appeared in a lot of publicity art produced by Lockheed, NASA, the USAF and even other companies. For a while it was the Shuttle Stereotype.

 Posted by at 1:45 am
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