This model was shown with some regualrity about 60 years ago, an early representation of the hoped-for “Nova” rocket which was planned to put astronauts on the moon. I would’ve expect that the model had been long ago lost, but it seems to be held by the Smithsonian… and it’s much larger than expected at 1/72 scale and 48 inches long:
You can zoom in on the image at the Smithsonian link above, though good luck on downloading the full-rez version.
I have previously linked to a vintage photo of the model HERE. And if you want one of your very own, Fantastic Plastic is in the process of working on a set of Nova/Post-Saturn rocket models:
Other than the first episode that CBS dumped onto YouTube, all I know of the “Picard” series comes from reviews. Reviews, of course, must be taken with big grains of salt, especially when they come from “mainstream” media sources and are glowingly, slobberingly positive. When they come from reasonably well established fan sources they seem to be a bit more trustworthy.
Here’s one that discusses one of the main ideas from “Picard,” that the Federation has become nasty, xenophobic, downright Trumpian in the wake of a supernova taking out the Romulan homeworld. Picard left Starfleet because Starfleet abandoned nine hundred million Romulans to their fate. But the show itself argues that Picard is just dead wrong in his analysis. To support the evacuation, Starfleet was building a rescue fleet of TEN THOUSAND starships at the construction facilities around Mars. Apparently the fleet was close to being finished and ready to go when the Cylons showed up, hacked the Martian defense network and blew up not only the fleet but the construction yards themselves, and apparently utterly trashed the infrastructure of the entire planet. After that, Starfleet gave up on the idea.
But Starfleet giving up on the idea seems entirely practical. Those ten thousand starships were doubtless a major investment in resources, in manpower, in skills and talent, and in whatever the Federation uses for money… and it all went up in smoke. The construction yards, gone. Presumably the people doing the actual construction, gone.
So far as I’m aware, the timeline of just what’s going on on Romulus has not been given, but it seems that the supernova in question came as something of a surprise. Clearly there was enough warning time to build a massive armada… but was there time to build a *second* armada, after also building up another planet-scale starship construction infrastructure? Seems dubious. In all likelihood, once the armada was trashed, the Romulans were just plain doomed. Of course, what a “Star Empire” would need with a Federation armada to rescue a relatively trivial number of its own people for is at best unclear. If, say, an asteroid five hundred feet in diameter was spotted heading straight for Washington, D.C. with an impact time of “this time next week,” I suppose the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force might be able to provide some assistance in evacuating the D.C. area… but the actual evacuation would be the responsibility of the *US* government. And, of course, the civilians in the D.C. area.
It kinda seems to me that if this review is accurate, and if these trends continue, the best way to explain the “Picard” series is that when the evacuation fleet was destroyed, Admiral Picard kinda broke. And in the years since… he’s gotten old. Senility and Irumodic Syndrome have led to him being paranoid and unable to see the world for what it really is. As with modern day SJW’s, an elderly and mentally incompetent Picard sees an imperfect government as somehow fascistic, racist, dystopian simply because his pet concerns are not the top priorities. His failures are now the Federations failures.
Couple this inability to understand their own plotline with the Picard production using Discovery era designs as post-TNG, 25th century modern designs and I just can’t see Picard as being any kind of “good.”
In 1985, Rockwell ponders the business case for solar sails. Solar Sails, or “light sails,” had been around for a couple decades at that point, though purely as hypothetical constructs. Solar sails would really only be useful for interplanetary transits, which would of course limit the number of potential customers.
And here we have Tom Holland (“Spiderman”) and Robert Downey Junior (“Iron Man”) spliced damn near seamlessly into a scene from “Back to the Future.” Now what someone really needs to work on is the voice audio version of Deep Fakes, so that the voices match the faces.
It will not be long before you will be able to stream any movie you want with any cast you want. “Casablanca” with Ronald Reagan as Rick, which was the original plan? Easy. Ilsa played by Traci Lords? Sure, why not. Strasser as portrayed by Darth Vader? Sure, but why not Werner Klemperer? Have Signor Ugarte played by Nic Cage and you might be on to something.
Possibilities: the surface is asymmetrically cooling. Or it spat a fat blob of dust in our direction, blocking some light and not only making the star look asymmetrical, but dropping apparent brightness down to little more than a third of normal.
Short form: yet another Bernie Sanders supporter committed an act of political terrorism, this time by breaking windows at a GOP office and apparently (incompetently) trying to burn it down. This follows after leftists attempted mass murder by ramming vans into GOP voter registration events and another tried to commit mass murder with an SUV at Mar-A-Lago and Bernie workers were caught on tape suggesting democide. And let’s not forget James T. Hodgkinson, the poster child for Bernie Bros, who shot multiple people a few years back in support of Sanders’ politics. Many more stories out there of Sanders supporters committing acts of political violence great and small. Why are so many of Bernie supporters so ready to carry out acts of violence?
It’s probably simple: Bernie is a communist. Sure, he and his supporters often try to soften the blow by claiming that he is a “Democratic Socialist” and not a communist, but as has been clearly explained hereabouts before, the express aim of the Democratic Socialists is to bring about actual, factual *communism.* So Bernie claiming that he’s a Democratic Socialist and not a Communist is kinda like me explaining that I’m not a fabulously wealthy author, I’m really just a dirt poor author. While this is true, being a dirt poor author does not negate the fact that I want to be a fabulously wealthy one… just as Bernie wants actual communism. The policies he advocates for, such a limits on income that would essentially end innovation in the United States (just how much investing in Tesla and SpaceX would Musk have done had he been limited to selling PayPal for, say, a million bucks) and nationalization of major corporations, speak strongly and clearly to a worldview that is close enough to communist as to make no difference. This is clear not only to his political opponents, but also those who agree with him and his policies. And if the history of the last century taught us anything, it’s that socialist economics, from Venezuela to Zimbabwe and Cuba and Nazi Germany and Red China and the Soviet Union, lead to governmental mass violence against the public. After a century and well over a hundred million dead, no honest person can believe that this is just an accidental byproduct; instead, violence is baked into the belief that some group has the right and obligation to tell others how much they can make, what they can make, how well they can live based on their own labor. Communism and Socialism *are* violence. Communism and Socialism attract the violent. Sanders, coming off as a communist, attracts the violent.
If you find yourself near a Bernie supporter, do not let your guard down. It seems that they want to take your stuff and will use violence to get it. Someone publicly proclaiming their support for Sanders should be viewed in the same light as someone publicly proclaiming their support for anti-semitism or their support for pedophilia or Star Trek: Discovery or gulags. These people are not to be trusted.
Below is an image taken from a history of the B-52, artwork depicting the YB-52 configuration packing a single Navaho cruise missile. Cool and all, but there’s something bugging me: I could *swear* that a year or three back I came upon or was sent a passel of images showing, among other things, the B-52 carrying Navaho missiles, in the form of both artwork like this *and* diagrams. But I have been unable to locate these images, whether due to them getting separated during the move, or misplaced/misfiled prior to the move… or them not having existed in the first place because my brain is having a little joke at my expense. Unfortunately my tiny little brain is incapable of letting go of missing things like this and it’s driving me buggo. Does this sound at all familiar to anyone?
Scandinavian Airlines has decided that the best way to sell their services to Scandivanian people is to insult Scandinavian people and culture. This wokist piece of garbage commercial plays into the latest anti-European trope that Europeans – in this case, Scandinavians – have created and are *nothing.*
Gillette, eat your heart out.
“Scandinavians, you people are nothing special. Your culture and heritage and technological and biological distinctiveness are nonexistent. Fly with us.”
Do Chinese companies try to sell stuff to Chinese people by insulting and dispiriting the Chinese people? Indians? Iranians? Mexicans? Nigerians? Seems unlikely. Cultural Marxism seems to focus solely on tearing down successful western cultures. I bet that if there were coordinated campaigns such as this to convince Zoroastrians or Uighur or whatnot to forget *their* cultures, the UN just might step in. Granted, not in a truly meaningful way, just with a bunch of tut-tutting and hand-wringing, but here? Nada. Niente. There’s no such thing. Cultural genocide is just fine so long as it’s *western* culture that is being denigrated, torn down and replaced.
