Oct 062023
Oct 042023
Grumman won the contract to build the forward-swept-wing X-29. But Grumman was not the only company to go for the contract; Rockwell devoted a fair amount of effort – both engineering and PR – to win the prize. Their concept was similar, though intended to be a wholly new aircraft, and with a notably different planform. Below is a magazine ad from 1980 showing a model of the Rockwell “Sabrebat” concept.
The full-rez scan has been uploaded to the 2023-10 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for $4 and up Patreons/Subscribers. 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acquisition and preservation of such things, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Sep 302023
These rumors sound good. Too good, in fact…
Rumor: Christopher Nolan Directing Next James Bond?
Not just that Nolan will direct the next two or three Bond movies, but that they will be based on the original Ian Flemming novels, set in the original time periods, and will be faithful to the source material. This would be directly opposed to the modern studio system of making crap For The Modern Audience, with character race and gender swapped, with the good guys turned into bad guys, beauty made ugly.
Again, just rumors. Thus very likely not gonna happen. But if it does, it’ll be remarkable.
Sep 232023
Do you want your very own genuine space suit from “2001: A Space Odyssey?” Sure, we all do. Got at least eighty grand to start bidding on it? Sure, we all don’t. But at least you can look at the pictures and dream.
Astronaut Space Suit (6) Piece Ensemble from 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM, 1968)
2/ More photos of the "2001" lunar space suit: pic.twitter.com/4ldclFqS44
— Unwanted Blog (@UnwantedBlog) September 22, 2023
"2001" space suit backpack. Again… WANT.
/1 pic.twitter.com/m8KKv2lVuu— Unwanted Blog (@UnwantedBlog) September 20, 2023
Sep 232023
Well before the BBC fell into ruin and self-parody, it had a moment of undeniable awesomeness. Nicolas Winton was a British banker who rescued nearly 700 mostly Jewish children from the Nazis just before the outbreak of WWII, getting them to new lives in Britain. Afterwards, he did little to nothing to glorify himself or his deeds; it only really came out in 1988 when his wife found an old notebook with the names and passed them on to a Holocaust researcher. There followed a couple TV programs culminating in an episode of “That’s Life” where, unbeknownst to Winton, the *entire* audience was filled with the children and descendants of children he’d saved.
That’s how you fricken’ do it.
And now there’s to be a movie about Winton starring Anthony Hopkins.
Sep 222023
Memorial sculptures should not only make fairly clear what they’re memorializing, they should also not be especially mockable. Butt perhaps that point of view is old fashioned and out of date.
Sep 212023
Both technically well done *and* freakin’ hilarious. When “300” came out nearly two decades ago, these parody edits would not have made a lick of sense. Now, they are far, far too familiar.
BGV EDITS
Sep 202023
Specifically, deep fakes. Here’s the pinnacle.
Sep 182023
It turns out that Peter Jackson filmed about 1,300 *hours* of footage for the Lord of the Rings. Seven million feet of negative is sitting in a Warner Brothers vault, not doin’ nuthin’. Granted the majority of this is alternate takes and bloopers, but almost certainty there is enough quality additional scenes there that the already massive Extended Version could be greatly further extended. Guy in the video below suggests that Warner Bros cutting Jackson loose to create six-hour miniseries from each movie for release on HBO/Max would be the way to go for the 25th anniversary of each flick, in much the same way they gave “The Justice League” back to Zack Snyder. I can’t say as that I disagree: a proper Ridiculously Extended Cut, overseen by Jackson, would be a dandy way to get over the nightmare of “the Rings of Power.”
The legalities of such things elude me. I *assume* that Warner retains all the rights to do with their stuff what they see fit, but who knows.
Sep 172023
Normally people are impressed with aircraft going higher, faster. And that’s certainly worth getting impressed about. But prepare to be impressed with aircraft going *incredibly* slow…
Someday it will be practical to 3D print structures of incredibly lightness using carbon fiber, with structures decimeters long and hair-thin, while still rigid. With skins of graphene and “rubber bands” made out of… well, I don’t know what, imagine the wondrously impractical ghostlike aircraft that will be built. With equally advanced optics and electronics, such aircraft could have cameras and transmitters. carried aloft by high altitude balloons, they could be released at the edge of space to fly for potentially days, covering hundreds or thousands of miles, their weak signals picked up by ground or space based receivers. I don’t know if cameras and transmitters will be good enough to make them useful intelligence gathering systems, but they are very unlikely to be detected by IR or radar. With their carbon constructions and extreme surface area to volume rations, when they are done they will likely degrade away to almost nothing very quickly.