Shields!
No comments, just admire seamanship 🚢 🛳
— Medstone Shipping (@medstonesa) November 29, 2018
Oh my.
Dec 022018
Nov 272018
Russian Icebreaker Under Construction Bursts Into Flames, Injuring At Least Two
Russia’s future Project 22600 icebreaker the Viktor Chernomyrdin, which is under construction at Admiralty Shipyard in St. Petersburg, has caught fire
The Russians gotta be wondering just what the frak is going on at their shipyards these days.
Oct 302018
Huge Floating Dry Dock Holding Russia’s Only Aircraft Carrier Has Accidentally Sunk
Whoopsie. The aircraft carrier itself didn’t sink, but it was damaged by a falling crane and may have been partially flooded. it was undergoing long-delayed repairs and upgrades.
The shipyard may wish to check to see if they’ve recently had anyone transferred in who used to work on drilling holes into Soyuz capsules…
Oct 022018
Patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon received last month:
Diagram: A foldout diagram of an Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft
Document: “The Piasecki Story,” an illustrated history of the company and its products
Document: “The N.S. Savannah,” a brochure about the sole nuclear powered merchant vessel
Document: “Lunar Spacecraft Design” A paper describing the evolution of the General Electric Apollo design, quite similar to the later Soyuz spacecraft
CAD diagram: 1985 design of the British HOTOL spaceplane
If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
Sep 092018
This looks like it might be good:
Now, if you’re a modern moviegoer, your first thought upon watching this will be to note that the cast seems to not have the adequate level of diversity. Outrage! For example: Colin Firth was chosen to play Royal navy commodore David Russell. What’s wrong with Margaret Cho? And Max von Sydow is playing – according to IMDB – Boris Yeltsin. But couldn’t they have gotten someone like Donald Glover to play a more diverse, woke and pansexual Yeltsin?
Aug 032018
Ye gods.
There seems to be something to the thought “I can win elections” that somehow translates into “I’m an expert in everything.” It seems to be a virtual universal at all levels. Both the current and prior occupant of the White House are fantastic examples of that… both were capable of running winning campaigns, but neither had much (and in the case of Obama, *any*) actual experience in the relevant areas of governance.
Longer version of the video:
I’ve often wondered if experts called to give testimony before these self-important ignorant baboons are given Xanax or quaaludes or something to keep them calm. I’d have a hard time stopping myself from saying something to the effect of “what the hell is wrong with you?” The admiral here maintains calm magnificently in the face of invincible ignorance.
Jul 262018
Who needs actual engineering training, when you can design and build things based on feels?
Builder of doomed duck boat had no engineer training
I had thought that this was an antique, a leftover from WWII. Turns out it was a stretched replica built by a guy with no mechanical or engineering training.
Good Jorb!
Who needs STEM, when you can have Other Ways Of Knowing? That’s just as good. Anyone who says otherwise is a western civilization chauvinist. Probably a right winger. Probably a fascist. Probably a misogynist NAZI.
Grrr.
As may be obvious, I have little patience for those who would debase science and engineering by demanding that standards be lowered in order to cram in some BS quotas. This incident is not a result of that (the builder has been doing this for some decades, it seems), but the results are the same. Boats are not exactly some mysterious magical concept that humans only have some vague notions about; designing them properly is something that engineers have been working on for THOUSANDS OF FREAKING YEARS. Designing and building a boat without the benefit of actual engineering is STUPID.
Jun 082018
Bad news: the Chinese have already pilfered it.
What Secretive Anti-Ship Missile Did China Hack From The U.S. Navy?
The “Sea Dragon” is a mysterious missile program that began in 2015 and has already resulted in flight vehicles, with new versions being prepared for launch by submarines while submerged. The article suggests several possibilities of what the “Sea Dragon” might be… but one thing it does seem to be is the next missile design the Chinese will be building, since they managed to swipe half a terabyte of data.
It’s great that the Navy might actually be developing something new. Not helpful is letting our enemies just copy the damn thing. Somebody needs a whoopin’.
May 032018
Artwork was created for USBP 21 by Rob Parthoens depicting the Convair Submersible Nuclear Ramjet launching vertically from the ocean. This is approximately the craziest design for a manned aircraft I’ve seen from the post-war period.
Be sure to check out US Bomber Projects issue 21 to read more about this design.
Mar 292018
Here are two presumably wholly unrelated pieces of aerospace artwork. At least I *hope* they’re unrelated…
The first is an anonymous painting of a spaceplane. Doesn’t seem terribly realistic; most likely done for advertising purposes (I wonder if the “7-11” might indicate a relationship to the chain of the same name). The print arrived damaged, as you an see; the paper was thick and *really* brittle and really didn’t appreciate being rolled up. If anyone knows anything about it, feel free to comment.
The second is concept art from Bell Aerospace illustrating an amphibious troop carrier for the Marine Corps. The design of the assault vehicle is fairly ordinary as such things go, except for one detail: it could turn into a hovercraft and float across the surface of the water, rather than plowing through it. No further details provided, so I don’t know if the hover-skirts were deployable and retractable, or if they were simply dropped when the vehicle got to shore. The latter would certainly seem more economical.
I’ve uploaded the full rez scans to the 2018-03 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to all current APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in this and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. Chances are good that $4/month is far cheaper than your espresso/booze budget!