Instant Aerospace Archive

 aircraft, awesomeness, blather, books, drawings, history, Hmm..., news, rockets, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 092014
 

Well, here’s a new one. I’ve been put in touch with a guy who has an entire aerospace archive he’s selling off. He wants $4000 for the complete set of stuff, a catalog of which is included here as a PDF (the items actually available in the collection are bounded in red). There’s some undeniably interesting stuff in there that I really want, but $4K is well beyond what I can pony up. But I think this stuff might be of interest to a whole lot of other folks. So what I’m thinking… crowdsource this purchase.

There are two groups of documents that I think would be of most interest, so I will provide high-rez scans of the docs for $150 for group A, $100 for group B, or $225 for both).

Group A: shown on page 3, “Space Shuttle Systems Handbook” and “Hubble Space Telescope Systems Description Handbook.” These are fairly enormous collections of diagrams; the original sales price of these two items back in 1993 was $558. I’ve seen a much more recent version of the Shuttle Handbook,” and it was fairly spectacular.

Group B: shown on page 6, a number of “Shuttle Systems Data Reports” which would seem to illustrate just about everything on the Shuttle program. These I have *not* seen personally, so I’m kinda guessing here. The total sales price in 1993 was $258.

As for all the other stuff: I think the best approach would be to auction them off – after scanning, of course – to those who have bought in for either Group A or B. Right now I’m not asking for cash. There are some details I need to confirm first (such as getting photos of the collection… not that I don’t trust the guy, but I don’t trust anybody). But I *do* want to gauge interest, to see if I will actually be able to afford the full $4K. So if you’d like to get in on this, please send an email to scottlowther@ix.netcom.com letting me know if you wants Group A, Group B or both. If I go ahead with this, I’ll need the funds up front.

WSN catalog

 Posted by at 10:35 pm

US “X” Projects

 aircraft, APR, blather, books, drawings, history, Hmm..., new products, news, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Bomber Projects  16 Responses »
Sep 032014
 

US Bomber Projects issues 09 and 10 are now done, and will be available for sale just as soon as I get all the requisite website blahblah worked out. Hopefully tonight. I have issues 11 and 12 planned out, though still quite a bit of drafting to do.

The USBP series has been modestly successful (not blisteringly so, but ok, I guess…). I’m pondering doing the same format but with something other than bombers. Other concepts include:

  • US Fighter Projects
  • US Transport Projects (jetliners, cargo, civvies, SSTs, HSTs, etc.)
  • US Recon & Experimental Projects
  • US Launch Vehicle Projects
  • US Spacecraft Projects (spaceplanes, moon landers, Mars ships, etc.)
  • US Helicopter Projects

So, a few questions for commentors:

1) What did I leave out?

2) What would you most like to see? Some of these have a much bigger database to work from than others, of course.

 Posted by at 7:49 pm

And the “sci fi is illegal” weirdness continues

 blather, books, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, politics, ಠ_ಠ  11 Responses »
Sep 012014
 

In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment for a Novelist

It has been a few days since I posted about public school teacher and (apparently craptacular) amateur sci-fi author Patrick McLaw getting arrested and disappeared for writing an (apparently craptacular) sci-fi novel. And there doesn’t really seem to be any news since then. And that alone is news. If there was a valid case against this guy, you’d think the local police/prosecutors would be touting their case. Instead… nothing.

 

 Posted by at 5:59 pm

I think I might not write any more sci fi…

 books, Gah., I'm from the government, news, ಠ_ಠ  10 Responses »
Aug 272014
 

There’s either a *lot* missing from this story, or something *really* wrong is going on here…

Cambridge Mace’s Lane Middle School Teacher on Administrative Leave

In short: a middle school teacher wrote and self-published two sci-fi books, set around 900 years in the future. The first one involves a school shooting that kills a whole bunch of people (the Amazon description is HERE). And at least as the article describes it, the fact that he wrote these books was enough for the Maryland police to swoop in, scoop him up, *disappear* him, sign him up for a psych evaluation and ransack his home looking for guns & bombs (of which they apparently found none).

From the Amazon description, the writing seems… well, “not so good.” But if you can get tossed just for writing crappy fiction at the age of about 20, I shudder to imagine what the future holds.

Yikes:

He is currently at a location known to law enforcement and does not currently have the ability to travel anywhere.

 Posted by at 7:08 pm

Here’s one for the Mormons…

 blather, books, Crazy, Hmm..., religion, ಠ_ಠ  34 Responses »
Aug 222014
 

I know there are at least a few Mormons who look in on my blog from time to time. I’ve got a question for y’all.

Up front: I’m not a Mormon, but I’ve found them, over the last decade living in distinct Mormon Country, to be decent enough folks. Much of their theology strikes me as downright silly, though (don’t go feeling superior, those of you who believe that small carbohydrate crackers are regularly transformed into meat by means of prayer). Some of the silliness is hard to tell whether it comes from misunderstanding by outsiders, or it is, in fact, silly.

I was reminded of this today in a book store. I wandered past the religion section ( I kinda had to, as it was on the other side of the aisle from History), and for whatever reason one particular kids book caught my eye. It was a large-format illustrated work with the odd title “The Not Even Once Club.” That’s not a title that immediately explains itself. I thought it might be some horribly uncomfortable book about sexual assault, or some lame book about how naughty it is to bully other kids, or some such. But a quick glance at the cover showed that it was actually about a group of kids banded together to never violate any of God’s commandments. Ummm… sure. Why not. That interested me… I wanted to see how the author & illustrated dealt with convincing kids that they really shouldn’t aughtta commit murder, perjure themselves, make sculptures or pick up sticks on Sunday. Never not once ever do any work on Sunday at all, which would be a neat trick since work is defined as force over a distance, which is accomplished by, oh, I dunno, walking your butt to Church. But I digress.

A quick flip through the book made it clear that I still didn’t have the right idea. The kids in the book were shown having a tree/clubhouse that was packed to overflowing with jars of candy and other goodies. A new kid in the neighborhood is brought in and given a test: would he drink alcohol? Not. Even. Once. How about coffee?  Not. Even. Once. How about tea? Not. Even. Once. How about lemonade? Sure, that’d be awesome. Since he passed the test, and was given some sort of loyalty oath to sign, he was inducted into the group, and, presumably, lived happily ever after.

Ummm.

The message I got from this was that it’s bad to drink booze. Sure, I get that. And that it’s ok to drink lemonade. Sure, I get that, too. But where I get fuzzy: it’s not only bad to drink coffee, it’s also bad to drink tea. Bwah? And Tea-Drinking-Is-Teh-Evil seemed to be a bit more important for this group of kids than Murder-Be-Bad.

The book, by the way, was published by Deseret Book Company, a Mormon propaganda firm.

So, for all y’all Mormons out there, explain this to me: Coffee? Tea? Bad???

Is this standard doctrine, or is the author on the loopy end of the Mormon bell curve?

I have heard conflicting things about coffee. As goes at least one story, it was Officially Bad because the caffeine serves as a stimulant, and thus that’s downright druggie. But then the LDS church holds, or at least held (I dunno) a whole lot of stock in Coca Cola… which has a lot of caffeine. So then coffee=bad because it’s a hot drink (which didn’t really clear that up for me). But that doesn’t explain tea, as it’s more like served cold than hot. So… WTF.

And I guess the lesson here is that while caffeine is bad, sugar is AWESOME, and kids need to be bribed with as much of it as can be shoved into them, and that giving in to peer pressure is to be encouraged. Or something.

 

—

And because why not:

 

…

 Posted by at 6:06 pm

ANED

 blather, books, drawings, history, nukes, weapons  3 Responses »
Aug 082014
 

I haven’t posted much on the “American Nuclear Explosive Devices” project lately. For those interested, don’t worry, work continues; just that since a lot of it is converting photos into CAD diagrams, then erasing a days work and starting over, then going at it again, and so on, it hasn’t been terribly interesting. But there is progress.

aned-02-011-Model

NOTE: I have in most cases high confidence in the accuracy of the external configurations of the nuclear weapons. The internal configuration, however, is rather less trustworthy. Most of the diagrams won’t go into the innards, as that would require pure guesswork on my part; but some do have internal arrangements available to some degree of reliability or another. None, with the possible exception of Fat Man, are detailed enough to build a functioning nuke off of, so no worries there.

 

 Posted by at 3:22 pm

Pax Orionis: a small scene

 blather, books, My Fiction, nukes, Pax Orionis, science fiction, spacecraft, Utah  6 Responses »
Jul 132014
 

I wrote this a while back, sort of as a simple exercise. It takes the form of a screenplay, though more what I *imagine* a screenplay to be, rather than a proper one… because I don’t think I’ve spent more than five seconds researching how to write a screenplay. If it ends up in Pax Orionis, it’ll likely be re-written into the form of a transcript of a TV documentary or news piece. A note: it takes place at Dugway Proving Grounds near Tooele, Utah, and while described exceedingly vaguely, is meant to be filmed at one specific real-world spot. A further note: cussin’ and such.

Things Blow up: EPUB format

Things Blow up: MOBI format

Things Blow up: PDF format

I would appreciate comments/critiques/large sums of cash.

 

 

 Posted by at 11:11 am

More on Pax Orionis

 blather, books, history, Hmm..., news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, reshaping the world, science fiction, spacecraft  2 Responses »
Jul 082014
 

There actually seemed to be a bit of interest in the idea I posted a few days ago for an alternate history book idea I’ve been tinkering with for a while. So I’ll take it off the “nice, but probably never gonna happen” list and bump it up to “Hmm. Maybe…”

This is planned to be an official history, with the (tentative, subject to change) title: “Pax Orionis: A History of the Third World War and Its Aftermath.” Written in the alternate history 2014, it focuses on nuclear pulse propulsion, how it began in the fifties, turned into a reality as a result of a small nuclear war in the sixties and became a dominant force in geopolitics until the Third World War in the 1990’s (currently scheduled for 1994, so the book is a “20th anniversary” thing). This alternate world is quite a different place due to some very small changes that quickly spiral into massive consequences. WWIII is as bad as it gets; somewhere in the history will be population tables from before the war, right after and as of 2014, with discussions of the possibility that within the next X years the planetary population might make it back up to one billion. But on the other side, the war leaves translunar and interplanetary infrastructure largely intact; while Earth is trashed, the universe is now open and the ships are there.

In looking at what I have already put together, I’ve got about 30 pages more or less cribbed from my Nuclear Pulse Propulsion book, and a fifteen page outline of the alternate history. The history will be changed considerably from what I originally wrote; the original scribblings were in support of a collaboration with another feller, but now it’s a one-man show and a lot of stuff I’ve written will be dumped or greatly altered.

Being an official history, the usual form of third person fictional narration doesn’t work, and there are some aspects of the story where I’d really like to include that (some of the war events, for example). An idea I’ve been playing with is having the authors of the official history including snippets from autobiographies, diaries, novels and screenplays. This is not how official DoD histories are usually put together these days… but Pax Orionis is a whole different world. It is of course a very, very bad world with a whole lot of dead folk, blasted cities and whole nations that have been simply erased; but history shows that massive devastation is often an opportunity for new things.

 Posted by at 2:10 am
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