The Right Stuff

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 232020
 

Coming to Disney+ in October, so I won’t be seeing it anytime soon. On the whole I guess it looks ok, but there is one thing that kinda jumped right out at me.

Here’s the thing. At about the 0:47 mark…

Was a Mercury-Atlas ever launched without an escape tower? Later in the trailer there are scenes of a booster exploding into a fireball in flight, and civilian observers on the ground freaking out. Being a trailer, there’s no good reason to conclude that these three shots belong together, but they kinda look like they do. And since no manned Atlas ever failed, this would seem to indicate a test launch. So maybe this depicts an unmanned test Atlas launching and then failing, with witnesses aghast?  But even then, I don’t immediately recall towerless Mercuries launched by Atlases. But I’m not an expert on the Mercury program. Perhaps a dream/nightmare sequence of one of the wives? Dunno.

Other thoughts: the casting looked shockingly non-diverse. Will Disney catch hell for this? Or is the show jam-packed full of stunt casting that doesn’t appear in the trailer? Will the Mercury 7 turn out to be surprisingly populated with alphabet people (this is Disney, after all…)? Will the head of NASA be portrayed by a black woman (but then, this *isn’t* the BBC)?

 Posted by at 1:10 pm

Convair Solar Powered Spaceship: 1959

 art, Hmm..., projects, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 222020
 

A Convair illustration from a magazine article in 1959 depicting a solar powered spaceship. In this case, a spherical mylar “balloon” is used as a reflector. This would be light weight, but since it would need to maintain some level of internal pressurization to continue to hold its shape, it’s unclear just how long it would work before micrometeoroids turn it into leaky Swiss cheese. Additionally, a reflective hemisphere does not have a true optical focal point, rather a focal “line,” so a lot of the sunlight this thing would capture would be lost of inefficiently used. Presumably this design uses the sunlight to boil a working fluid such as mercury; the superheated pressurized gas blows past a turbine to generate electrical power. The gas then flows through a radiator to cool off and recondense back to a fluid. But given that there are no visible radiators, perhaps the idea was to use the sunlight to directly heat a fluid such as hydrogen to an extreme temperature to be used as a propellant. If your materials are up to it and your reflector is good enough, specific impulses in the area of 800 to 1200 seconds should not be unreasonable. But even here the illustration seems lacking… if hydrogen if the fuel, where are the huge tanks? In all likelihood, this illustration was never meant to depict a solid engineering study, but was merely propaganda art.

 Posted by at 10:25 pm

Say… haven’t I heard of something like this before?

 Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 222020
 

Kamala Harris is PRANKED by Russian hoaxers who pose as climate activist Greta Thunberg and her father and offer Biden’s VP pick ‘dirt’ on Trump

It’s not much as such things go, but in the transcript Harris is offered a secret recording of Trump telling climate puppet Greta Thunberg that she will never achieve her goals. Meh. Harris accepts the offer and says that her people will “work” with what she believes to be climate activists.

Ummm… didn’t we spend several *years* being informed that accepting dirt on the opposition candidate from foreign sources was terribly Naughty And Not To Be Countenanced?

 Posted by at 7:27 pm

Now, do the voice…

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., science, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 212020
 

Deep Fake technology used to put Tom Selleck into the role of Indiana Jones. For the most part, these are nearly seamless… except for the Fordesque voice. It will soon be possible to swap out Indies in entire movies. Differences in height and physique will probably take longer to work out.

Is it a good idea? Dunno. Does it fit with the original artistic vision? Probably not. But in a world where the IP holders have turned Star Trek into STD and Star Wars into Last Jedi, such things as “artistic vision” no longer seem of relevance.

Bring on “Casablanca” starry Ron Reagan!

 Posted by at 8:38 pm

Sports mech

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., science, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 212020
 

Well, *this* is interesting. I’m not seeing the immediate practical value of the thing, other than “hey, it’s cool,” but the engineering behind it is impressive. A couple generations of further development and maybe it’ll be something useful for exploring Mars, roaming battlefields, wading through “mostly peaceful protests.”

Something it shows – that sci-fi movie mechs almost never do – is that with even a modest scaleup from human-size, the human pilot in the middle gets tossed pretty badly. The humans in “Pacific Rim” size mechs would get splattered into paste by the movement of their machines.

 Posted by at 10:59 am

A one-week sale on aerospace goodies

 aircraft, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, sales & specials, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 212020
 

I’m currently running a sale on downloadable aerospace items that I had planned on either not releasing or not releasing yet. Twenty-eight pretty nifty items of considerable interest to aerospace aficionados. The sale is open to APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers for one week only. If any of these look interesting, consider signing up.

 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 1:48 am

Silly Season

 Crazy, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 202020
 

There are few that these people won’t attack.

Entertainingly, the politicians who enable this sort of violence and irrational hatred make sure to use their governmental power to assure that the same thing doesn’t happen to *them*:

“I Have A Right To Make Sure That My Home Is Secure”: Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Defends Ban On Protesters On Her Block

But given who the DNC choose to associate with, it shouldn’t be too surprising that violence stick to them like a tick:

Convicted murderer and rapist speaks at DNC

 Posted by at 11:38 pm

Not a good year for Goodyear

 blather, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 202020
 

So a photo came out claiming to show a slide at a “diversity” class at Goodyear, the manufacturer of tires. The slide showed what is, and is not, acceptable political sloganeering on employee clothes during work hours, and it’s kinda remarkable:

In short, according to this slide it is acceptable to show off left-wing slogans, but not right-wing or centrist slogans.

This, rather predictably, caused a bit of a kerfuffle, including a tweet by Trump suggesting that people buy their tires from someone other than Goodyear:

 

And so Goodyear’s PR people banged out a reply where they claim no ownership of the slide or the diversity “training” session:

And now audio has come out that supports the original story that Goodyear had a policy allowing leftist propaganda, but not centrist or right-wing:

And so now Goodyear has responded *again,* this time admitting that the slide was indeed from a diversity mind control session and that the slide was prepared by a Goodyear employee, but that it somehow does not reflect Goodyear’s positions. Further, they will now allow employees to show support for the police (but apparently not for the radical notion that all lives matter):

Goodyear is of course a private company and thus can crank out whatever rules they like.  But blatantly partisan rules such as these are bound to create strife. Especially when a simpler and far more equitable and fair solution – not to mention one less likely to result in employees beating the tar out of each other – is to simply ban all political expressions on company property. No signs, pins, shirts, hats. Zero, zip, nada. Quick and easy, perfectly legal, completely fair. But no, they wanted to appear woke and *specifically* allowed employees to display support for an organization, founded by Marxists, currently at the forefront of a wave of criminality and misery sweeping Americas cities. How did they think this would work out well for them?

Goodyear may have themselves a problem. But another issue is concerning, and not for the first time: that original image of the offending slide would have been simplicity itself for *anyone* to create with Powerpoint. Post a fake image online, and BOOM, a major corporation takes a shot to the nads. Now in this case, it’s looking more and more like it’s an accurate depiction of an actual Goodyear indoctrination session… but it would be easy to fake. People really should hold their fire for just a little bit just to make sure that they’re not being hoodwinked.

 Posted by at 5:49 pm
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