Dec 072019
 

Some years ago I scored some aerospace concept art off ebay. This is not an unusual occurrence; I’ve procured a great many lithographs there. But this one was different… it was the *actual* original painting created in the mid-60’s. At the time I couldn’t really get a good scan of it, but a change in scanners a while back, coupled with the recent move and revival of the “scan everything” project allowed me to finally digitize the thing.

The image depicted a composite aircraft that used stowable rotors for VTOL and hover like a helicopter, and turbofan engines for efficient fast forward speed. As shown here it is operating in Viet Nam in a combat search and rescue role, something the Lockheed CL-945 (a very similar design) was intended for.

The full image is far bigger (a bit bigger than 10X the linear dimensions than the version above) and has been made available as a thank-you to APR Patreon and Historical Documents Program patrons. If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

 Posted by at 6:52 pm
Dec 072019
 

As will probably come as a surprise to nobody by this point, this ad for the very expensive Peloton stationary bike has garnered a whole lot of negative feedback:

I have to admit that while I, too, reacted with disdain the first time I saw the ad a few weeks ago, my reaction was different than the Standard Accepted Response. While the bulk of the Woke Internet seems to see this ad as depicting a wife who is under the thumb of a domineering husband, working her keister off with slatherings of fake enthusiasm in the hopes of meeting his high expectations… I saw it as a horribly vain Instagrammer-Influencer-type who goes to great lengths to constantly film herself pretending to work out, all in hopes of gaining likes from her audience, and who then makes her doubtless put-upon husband sit there and watch what is surely hours and hours of banal vanity. Because she looks no different at the end of the supposed year of workouts than she does at the beginning, so it sure looks to me like her actions are all about *appearing* to be working out rather than actually working out. It’s not like they show someone actually losing weight; she starts of just as fit as she ends up.

But as I said, it seems that the vast majority of folks see it rather differently, that she’s got Stockholm Syndrome and a bad relationship. I’ve always had a bit of difficulty in picking up on some cues like this, so I’ll just shrug and so “ok, sure, maybe.” So, building on the idea that the wife in the ad is in a bad relationship, “Aviation Gin” hired the same actress for an ad for their product. It does not directly address the Peloton ad (apart from the very obvious title), but… see if it looks like a possible sequel to you.

Aviation Gin is partially owner by “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, which may go some way towards explaining why the company has a sense of humor.

 Posted by at 12:03 pm
Dec 062019
 

As hinted at here and there, I’ve recently moved from rural Utah to non-rural elsewhere. One of the benefits of the move was that it put me a LOT closer to large format scanning services. Previously getting a large blueprint scanned meant several hours on the road and then a return several days later to pick it up; now the drive is a matter of a few minutes. Consequently, my rather extensive backlog of large format aerospace art and diagrams is finally getting scanned in bulk.

Behold some recent results, mostly involving early Titan III, Saturn and Dyna Soar studies:

Some of these will end up in the monthly “catalogs” for the APR patrons to vote on… and some will end up as “extras” for patrons, particularly for above $10-level patrons. If these sort of images are of interest, or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

Additionally: if you have large format diagrams that you feel are of aerospace historical interest, let me know. I’m always in the market to buy, rent, borrow such things.

 Posted by at 2:46 pm
Dec 062019
 

Feminist comedy club owner shuts down show because she was mad about the jokes: ‘I have never felt more alive than right now’

So, the comedy club owner didn’t like the comedy and shut down the event. Well, it is her right to do so. But here’s the bit that made me chortle… silently, without cracking a smile, but still, you know…

There were about 17 people in the crowd, according to the outlet, of which 13 were the comedian’s friends. …  She went on to refund the four paying customers their entry fees.

Ummmm…..

 Posted by at 8:47 am
Dec 032019
 

This is the best the Dems have.

 

 

 Posted by at 9:50 am
Dec 032019
 

By 1985, the Solar Power Satellite was essentially dead, killed off by the plumetting price of oil. But the technology developed for it was still valid, and Rockwell thought there might be a use for microwave power transmission systems. Their idea here was to use a space-based nuclear reactor – apparently something along the lines of the SP-100 – to generate electricity and then use SPS-derived microwave beaming tech to send that power to distant “customers” such as space stations and satellites. This would permit the customers to basically have nuclear power, but without the risks of having a nearby radiation source. The receiver would be much lighter than a PV array in terms of construction, and vastly more efficient, since all the energy coming in is of a single fixed frequency. A space station could presumably have a power receiver in the form of a mesh “net,” perhaps a single sphere a few meters in diameter at the end of a modest mast, capable of capturing dozens to hundreds of kilowatts of clean electrical power. This would lower the cost and mass of power systems compared to PV arrays… and it would greatly reduce the drag produced by those giant sails.

 

 Posted by at 6:11 am
Dec 022019
 

One of the few network shows that I watch is “The Rookie,” a relatively bog-standard “beat-cop procedural” with Malcolm Reynolds playing an over-the-hill rookie cop. Pretty much what you’d expect, entertaining yet forgettable. But an episode I watched last night got me thinking. The episode “Fallout” has the entire city of Los Angeles receiving an official FedGuv text message stating that a ballistic missile was inbound, due to arrive in 29 minutes. Hijinks ensue, and at the end, as you’d expect, it turns out to be a false alarm. Everything resets, back to normal, on to the next episode.

But… consider an alternative. The episode ends not with everything back to normal, but with a Mighty Flash followed by a growing rumble in the ground and a blast wave, fade to black, “continued next season.” Next season, same characters (mostly, as some got converted to high temperature vapor), still cops, still in L.A…. but an L.A. that got converted into a crater surrounded by a firestorm due to a Nork nuke. The cops are now no longer issuing tickets and hunting down gangbangers, but rescuing people from crushed buildings and working, over the next four or five seasons, to rebuild L.A. back into a functional city. Or, perhaps better, they’re trying to make sense of a world where L.A. was just one of *thousands* of cities blasted to oblivion in a global thermonuclear war.

In short, the idea is to run a Perfectly Normal Sort Of Show for several seasons and then to utterly flip the script, changing not just plotlines but genre. I’d had the same sort of idea years ago several seasons into “House, M.D.” when I thought it’d be neat if, over the course of a season or two hints were dropped of some mysterious new disease and then the show becomes about some apocalyptic pandemic… smallpox-like, zombie outbreak, Andromeda Strain, whatever. Watching Gregory House deal with a plague followed by an alien invasion seemed like it’d be a hoot.

Just a thought. Back to work.

 Posted by at 8:20 pm