“Vanguard to Dyna Soar”

 aircraft, art, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 032022
 

I’ve just made available to subscribers and Patrons at the $11 and up level a mid-1961 Honeywell booklet describing the space projects they were involved with at the time.

While not a detailed technical design document, this illustrated bit of PR is nonetheless interesting as it shows the sort of thing that aerospace companies would produce Way Back When in order to inform and enthuse the public. Modern aerospace companies would probably produce this as a web page or a PDF, which just doesn’t have the same impact. Of course, *this* one is being distributed as a PDF, but moving on…

 

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 

 

 

 Posted by at 3:21 pm

Turns out the Canucks have themselves a supersonic transport

 aircraft, awesomeness, Hmm..., news  No Responses »
May 242022
 

Well how about this:

World’s fastest passenger jet goes supersonic in tests

… a Global 7500 test vehicle broke the sound barrier during a demonstration flight last May, achieving speeds of more than Mach 1.015.

Huh. I would *assume* that a power-dive might have been involved, but it’s still impressive. The Bombardier Global 8000 is planned to enter service in 2025, have a range of 8,000 nautical miles, carry 19 passengers and fly at Mach 0.94 (top speed).

 Posted by at 4:54 pm

Jet suit ascent of a hill

 aircraft, awesomeness, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
May 172022
 

Its cool and all, but to be really practical the suit would need some sort of powered exoskeleton and an intelligent control system. As currently built it requires the pilot to have considerable upper body and arm strength.  I would suspect that mountain rescue services might make use of something like this, but mostly for scouting; the actual medical services would probably come in the form of some sort of smallish VTOL vehicle, something that can carry a medical professional up and carry the victim down (a second unmanned VTOL, or the same one after the patient delivery, can retrieve the paramedic).

 Posted by at 12:26 pm

Boeing moving headquarters to D.C.

 aircraft, Hmm..., I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
May 052022
 

Boeing *used* to have their headquarters where they actually made stuff. Then they moved to Chicago (far, far away from their manufacturing capabilities), and since then their ability to make stuff has been… kind of a joke.Now they’re moving to the region of D.C. Their ability to make stuff can be assumed to be at an end.

Boeing will move its headquarters to DC area from Chicago

Maybe Elon Musk could buy Boeings factories? It’s not like Boeing will have much further need for them, now that they will be a full-time Lobbying Corporation.

 Posted by at 4:40 pm

In any contest between jocks and nerds, bet on the nerds

 aircraft, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, russian empire, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
May 042022
 

Those who have been looking at this blog for long enough may recall that, years ago, it would shut down or lock up or disappear for hours or days at a time due to outside attacks. These attacks were, until I added a bunch of security features, apparently meant to add spy/malware to the blog, to make it a money-making venture for other people. Exactly how that was supposed to work I’m not sure… but most of the attacks – as in well in excess of 90% – seemed to come from Ukraine. Ukraine has a large number of nerds with excess free time, lots of skill and a willingness to unleash it upon just about anybody. Well… now they have a valid target in the form of the Russian military.

Inside the elite Ukrainian drone unit founded by volunteer IT experts: ‘We are all soldiers now.’

Ukrainian drone unit Aerorozvidka eager to strike at night “when Russians sleep”

How Small Drones Could Win The Fight In Ukraine’s Cities (And The Truth About That Anti-Drone Pickle Jar Story)

 

ISIS and similar groups tried using the same idea – drones with bombs – against the US in the middle east. There, success was minimal… not because the idea wasn’t good, but because ISIS is not exactly filled with nerds. The US countered the drones with electronic warfare: our nerds were better than their nerds, which was not at all surprising. But Russian nerds seem to be absent from this fight. Or, perhaps worse, the Russian military simply took the Russian nerds away from their computers, slapped second-rate AK-47s into their hands and dumped them into trucks.

 Posted by at 10:59 pm

Catching a rocket

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, news, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
May 022022
 

Rocket Lab launched an Electron space launcher today… and caught the booster with a helicopter. The recovery did not go to plan however; reportedly the dynamics of the helicopter/rocket system was unusual and the pilot of the helicopter released the rocket. It seems he must have done so from a low altitude, as the booster survived splashdown and is being recovered and returned.

 

As elegant as a SpaceX landing? Nope. Better than anything else out there? Yup. The more the merrier when it comes to recoverable rockets. I’m sure Rocket Lab will figure out the problem and work to correct it. That’s how *good* engineering is done. The payload was apparently successfully delivered to orbit.

 Posted by at 10:08 pm

Turns out the little drones can do a *lot* of damage!

 aircraft, awesomeness, Crazy, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
May 022022
 

Previous footage showed a little drone dropping something akin to a grenade, doing damage to soft targets. Here’s one apparently kerploding a *tank.* WTF??? It drops *two* bombs, so it’s clearly not one of those dinky camera drones, but something bigger, but it still seems like a whole lot of bang for the buck.

 Posted by at 11:18 am

Even the little drones can do some damage

 aircraft, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 302022
 

This sort of thing is not new… I recall seeing drones like this being used like this in the middle east a few years ago. I imagine China is thrilled that they are unwittingly serving as arms dealers for the forces opposing Russia… and giving ideas to those who may soon have to face Chinese forces.

Also notice: that looked like it was, before the invasion, a pretty nice house. Russia will have one *hell* of a reconstruction bill when all this is done.

 

I suspect the bomb that was dropped was a fairly simple explosive, basically a hand grenade or small mortar round.For anti-infantry purposes, this works: the video shows one guy likely killed, another guy crawling away and then stopping, either injured or dead. What you *want* is a weapon that injures as many as possible, but not necessarily kills. The dead are dead… but the injured are costly liabilities, requiring resources and personnel to take care of.

But imagine if it was a shaped-charge warhead, perhaps taken from an RPG… and smuggled into a port city such as Sevastopol where cruise missiles are being loaded onto submarines. Poke a few holes in a surfaced and docked sub and boy, you might really make a mess. If you can penetrate the torpedo compartment (honestly, I suspect it would take a fairly massive warhead to do that, but who knows) or zap a cruise missile… scratch one sub, and block one dock.

 

An armor-penetrating bomb would be useful for taking out tanks like this one that spent a good long while destroying a building that apparently had a number of civilians sheltering in the basement:

 Posted by at 6:46 pm
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