I’ve just uploaded a 1986 article on the “Midgetman” road-mobile Small ICBM developed but not deployed by the US at the end of the Cold War to Dropbox for above-$10 APR Patrons/Subscribers.
This is of course on top of the monthly rewards packages and the “Extras” posted rather irregularly. If you’d be interested, consider subscribing:
Fortunate is the man who has this coffee table. Fabulously wealthy is he if he has a woman who looks at that table and thinks “that’s awesome, I picked the right guy.”
It’s a spectacular piece, and I kinda really want one. However… before I’d plunk down money I don’t have for this sort of thing, I’d demand some improvements. From a distance it looks great, but in the closeup shots you can see the pretty strong layer lines. This appears to have been filament-printed, and little effort seems to have been made to smooth out a lot of it. But as a prototype, it’s fantastic.
It’s also interesting to point out that with 6 years worth of Star Trek to choose from, the stuff people *really* seem to like, to the point they’ll spend time, money and effort on, is the TOS and TNG stuff. A similar coffee table using the 1701D bridge? I can definitely see it. Ops from DS9? Meh. Bridges of NX-01 or Voyager? *Maaaaybe.* Kelvinverse Enterprise bridge? Unlikely. STD or SNW bridges? Literally no.
A lot of that is because the TOS and TNG designs were brilliant, while the later ones have been kinda bleh. But also, TOS and TNG are beloved. The shows themselves inspire interest in the designs. nuTrek inspire little more than dismay and fatigue.
I’d be interested to see a kickstarter for a production run of these, with the layer issues dealt with. Pretty sure it’d be far beyond my means, but I’d wish ’em well.
In 1992 NASA had a flurry of PR about the “First Lunar Outpost” concept which would see the US return to the moon using large lunar landers launched by a single Saturn V derived heavy lifter. A fair deal of concept art was released; much of it used the relatively new technology of computer generated imagery. Five of these images recently appeared on ebay as 16X20 prints; what the heck, I went ahead and bought them. They arrived today and I was pleasantly surprised at the production quality. They weren’t simply printouts glued to cheap foamcore, but instead are very glossy, hard plastic bonded to higher quality foamcore.
I believe I’ll have these professionally scanned and made available to APR Patrons/subscribers.
With all the little publications I’ve written and illustrated, and all the years of blogging ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT political opinions and the like, it seems that at least *one* of my efforts will go down through the ages: my design for the Orion Battleship. We know to a fair certainty that such a craft was designed in the early 1960s, and that a mockup the size of a car was built; we know some of the components and features of that design. But other than that… we don’t know much. The overall size and configuration are unknown. So, fifteen years ago when I was working on an article for Aerospace Projects Review about large Orion vehicles, I went ahead and made a speculative reconstruction design. I did my best with what was available… and in the years since, nothing seems to have come out to refute the design. I do not contend that the design is an accurate reconstruction; I was never able to get in touch with anyone who knew the Battleship design first-hand to confirm my reconstruction. I could well be *badly* wrong, especially since the descriptions of the original design tend to be second-hand. One day we might find out for sure.
But in the years since I showed my design to the world, I’ve seen it recreated here and there. It seems to be the accepted Actual Design.
Huh.
Behold:
That second video uses a model based on my design, more renders of which are HERE.
A purchasable 3D printed, lower fidelity copy of my design on Etsy:
My renders – unimpressive even by 2009 standards – even made it into meme format:
If you want to see the Orion Battleship as I designed it in its original format, check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N2.
Black and white concept art, Rockwell illustration from the early 70’s represents the almost-final B-1A configuration, from back when being very supersonic was the goal rather than being stealthy at low altitude. Most obvious differences between this and the as-built B-1A are the ride control vanes (the small canards) and the discontinuity in sweepback angle between fixed and movable portions.
The full image has been made available as a thank-you to APR Patreon and Historical Documents Program patrons at the $4 and above level, placed in the 2023-12 APR Extras . If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.
Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 song “Born in the USA” is famous not only for having been incredibly popular, bit for being “misunderstood.” Springsteen’s intent, as is pretty clear by a straight reading of the lyrics, is to tell the tale not just of a Viet Nam vet (the US was barely a decade out from that expensive but successful war and incredibly unsuccessful peace), but of a nation in disrepair. But it was grabbed onto by the political right – such as President Ronald Reagan – as a a rah-rah USA USA USA song to rally around. Then as now, leftists explain this as Republicans & conservatives being “media illiterate” or simply dumb. But is that really the case? Consider my own experience.
When it came out I was a dumbass early teenager with no particular political leanings. Yet I also saw the song as pro-USA, and I loved the hell out of it. And, yes, I listened to and understood the lyrics, and saw the darkness therein. But I – and I suspect a whole lot of other people – simply interpreted them differently from the intention of Springsteen. Yes, the lyrics reference the dire economic situation faced by *many* people at the time, coming out of the OPEC oil embargoes and Carters economic flailings and the collapse of the Apollo program and all the rest. But here’s the thing: two people can look at the same thing and see very different results… same screen, different movies.
Everybody in the US in the early 80’s knew that things sucked. You could hardly experience Carter and inflation and stagflation and Iran and the Soviets and the collapse of the iron, auto, farming and a bunch of other industries and not notice it. But there are two ways to deal with “things suck:” despair and determination. And thus we had two different approaches to understanding the song:
Leftists: “Things suck in the USA, therefore the USA sucks.”
Rightists: “Things suck in the USA right now. But we’ll fix it.”
In 1984, things sucked. But they didn’t suck quite as bad as they had a few years before, and things were clearly improving. Those in the middle and on the right saw this, and interpreted “Born in the USA” in that light.
And we got this for the 1984 Presidential campaign:
Essentially, “Born in the USA” was a negative ad against the US that got turned into a positive ad for the US. And that irritated the hell out of a lot of lefties who wanted to wallow in despair… and wanted everyone else to do the same. Turning it into a nationalistic anthem was a giant middle finger to the nattering nabobs of negativity.
Positivity and optimism can do wonders in an election, and in society. “I Like Ike,” JFK’s “Camelot,” “Morning in America,” “Make America Great Again,” etc. Turning a negative into a positive is a sign you’re on the right road.
The second Starship/Superheavy launched today. Vastly more successful than the first flight, but both stages were still destroyed.
This sort of thing would be unacceptable for a modern NASA launch system… but it was common in early launch vehicle development. Atlas and Titan kerploded with regularity. This sort of thing is not desirable, but it is a natural part of the learning process.
Scott Manley has done an analysis of the video and has some good suggestions about what happened with the booster. There would seem likely to be some serious issues with slosh and propellant hammer effects, caused by the sudden deceleration and flip maneuver. These are resolvable.
But beyond the technical issues and successes… this flight was simply *gorgeous.*
Some beautiful views of the Starship II 🚀,
before the take-off, while take-off, during the Hot-Staging phase and after separation and charting its solo Odyssey. One day a similar machine will carry a human to Mars, beside all the negativity.#Space #SpaceX #StarshipBest… pic.twitter.com/Qm3BxrBIj3
— Masroor H. Bukhari (@MasroorBukhari) November 18, 2023
I LOVE this view of the Raptors shutting down in segments!! 🔥 #SpaceX #Starship@DJSnM @Erdayastronaut pic.twitter.com/UaNdMMUfAx
— Debapratim (@debapratim_) November 18, 2023
So majestic – look at her!!#SpaceX #StarshipLaunch
— This Brown Geek (@thisbrowngeek) November 18, 2023
OMG! No Words!! #SpaceX #Starship #ITF2 #Elonmusk #Liftoff #Starbase #Texas https://t.co/TGuheUrBqZ pic.twitter.com/av5nIGyUVz
— Scott Schilke (@SchilkeScott) November 18, 2023
How wonderful!👍
Congratulations #SpaceX pic.twitter.com/klliKCEvpA— Ri's Kitchen (@TanKitchen91) November 18, 2023
The most awaited lift off of the year. Few more steps towards success 🚀 what a view 😍🫶#SpaceX #StarshipLaunch #Starship pic.twitter.com/tJf9T1kdz7
— cosmichaos (@karmicoder) November 18, 2023
Due to a law rushed through last year, if Illinoisans don’t register their perfectly legal and common firearm (referred to inaccurately as “assault weapons”) by January 1 2024 they could get in trouble. But there’s a little wrinkle… the “Firearm Owners Protection Act” of 1986. The FOPA has a lot of problems, but it also has a fun little provision:
No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s [1] authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.
Huh. No system of registration is to be established by the US, any state or political subdivision. A gun registry is *illegal* under Federal law.
So, tell me where I’m wrong: if you know a firearm registry is illegal, you knowingly violate the law if you register your gun. So if its a choice between obeying the Illinois state law or the US Federal law… isn’t it legally safer to not violate US law? Doesn’t registering your firearm make you an accessory to breaking a Federal law?
A good question to ask is why would a government pass a law they know to be not only illegal under federal law but downright unConstitutional. Well, it’s always worth considering that the people who do these sort of things tend to have an amazing mix of arrogance and stupidity, leading to monumental incompetence. But it’s also worth considering that the idea may well be to set up the system of laws so that not only is virtually everyone in violation of *something,* they all know it. This will necessarily have the effect of reducing respect for rule of law. It seems counter-intuitive that the government would want to bake a lack of respect for the rule of law into the population… but it makes sense once you realize that a lot of government types are in it for *power.* A population that no longer expects or even wants to obey the law will just naturally expect all manner of corruption from their “leaders.”
Several models of the Starship Enterprise were built for the original “Star Trek” series. The most famous is the 11-foot model which was used for most of the effects shots, and *amazingly* managed to survive long enough to end up in the hands of the National Air and Space Museum. But before the 11-footer was a 3-footer. This was made early on, and was solid wood with no lighting; still, it was used in a number of shots. This model stayed in the hands of Gene Roddenberry, modified to rest on a mike stand bolted to a wooden base. This model was lent to the first special effects house during the production of the aborted “Star Trek Phase II” series in the mid-70’s… and then it vanished. Whether it was stolen, misplaced or lost has not been clear, but Roddenberry considered it to be stolen. Stuff like this that disappears stands a good chance of never being seen again. Witness many of the models made for “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
But then, the “Aries Ib” model for “2001” was found a few years ago. And as it turns out, that 3-foot Enterprise was recently found. It was in a storage unit, purchased by someone who buys such things at auction. The new owner then put it on ebay with a starting price of a mere $1000. And then Star Trek fandom found out about it and has been going nuts. The Roddenberry estate contacted the seller and the auction has been pulled.
News was revealed here:
https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/red-alert-lost-3-ft-tos-enterprise-found.354596/
The current seller has broken no laws… it seems he just bought an abandoned storage unit. But the Enterprise remains stolen property and should be returned to the Roddenberry estate. Still… it sure seems like the seller aught to be compensated for finding this thing, even if he didn’t really know quite what he had. It’s in pretty rough shape, as can be expected. With luck it’ll receive some sort of restoration, though arguments can be made for exactly how far that should go. It should definitely be cleaned up. It’s drooping and cracked; that should be fixed. But fixing the paint and decals? I don’t know about that. Perhaps it, unlike the NASM Enterprise, should retain the appearance of years. There are some “errors” that were there from the beginning, those should stay.
It is very unlikely that this will ever see an auction. But if it does, it’ll doubtless go for Lotto-levels of cash.
The photos from the ebay listing:
So they’re coming for the night sky, too:
Anything and everything to erase any mention of the people who built the world. The wokies want to rename the Magellanic Clouds because by modern standards Magellan was not a great guy. But you don’t see them wanting to rename anything named by the Sumerians or Babylonians or the Arabs, do you.