The best thing you’ll see all day… a bunch of vegans crash an Argentinian rodeo, and a couple gauchos ain’t havin’ it:
https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=uVCD9_1564508614
Aug 012019
Aug 012019
It seems that Boeing, prime contractor for the Space Launch System, tried to shut down development of orbital fuel depots and orbital propellant transfer. Because if you can stash a lot of fuel in orbit easily and cheaply, you don’t *need* the bloated irrational monstrosity that is SLS.
The SLS rocket may have curbed development of on-orbit refueling for a decade
What’s interesting; if this story is true, Boeing opposed fuel depots because they threaten SLS. But SpaceX, now working on “Super Heavy” rockets with roughly the same capability as SLS, are *actively* supporting fuel deports. Why the difference? Because SLS was never meant to really do anything. Launch once a year, one extremely expensive mission maybe to the moon, call it good. Pretend to be moving outwards again, but the minimum possible steps taken as slowly as possible. SpaceX wants to lob dozens of people to *Mars* in just the next few years. Same launch capability, but fundamentally different goals.
*IF* this story turns out to be true, someone needs to have their ass handed to ’em. Congressional investigations at least on par with the “Trump is a Russian stooge” investigation, because this one has had clear and obvious impacts on the US: Billions spent on a system nobody wants, years wasted that that the US could have used to conquer the heavens. Hell, just imagine what we could have done with SLS money by way of building breeder reactors.
Aug 012019
So I was cleaning out some junk when I stumbled across a printout of a circa 2009 version of the “Man Conquers Space” screenplay. At that time the story was in constant motion, with major changes and updates occurring very rapidly. It had, honestly, become damned bloated by that point, encompassing a *lot* of history and events and characters; it would have been a nightmare to actually get made, and probably would have been a mess unless there had been *lot* of trimming and good editing. Of course, we all know how MCS ended up; it will never be made.
Finding the printout made me go digging through old digital storage, and I found two versions of the screenplay, one from 2008, another from a few months later in 2009. It’s made me wonder what, if anything, should be done with them. They are marked “Copyright” both David Sander and one other fella who may well now wish to remain completely and permanently anonymous.
At some point I plan on reading through them again, just for giggles. I may well also print them out, plug them into a binder and place it on my growing “well, THAT didn’t work” shelf.
I’m left to wonder what else can and should be done with them.
Jul 312019
Guess what we’re supposed to hate now:
Even one of Trump’s favorite foods has a hidden Russia connection
Where the author digs deep to demonstrate that hamburgers are Russian, and that since Trump likes hamburgers… well, I guess it’s obvious: Trump is a Russian stooge.
Now, the story of how pre-war Soviets studied American mass food production techniques and made their own kinda crappy take on the hamburger (instead of a minced meat patty between two buns, they turned it into a minced meat patty infested with breadcrumbs, making it more like meatloaf)would be modestly interesting on its own. But this being Current Year, it’s every loyal mediabots job to try to find every opportunity to imply that Trump is a racist or a traitor. And by extension, anyone who also likes hamburgers is a tool of Putin.
Jul 312019
The trailer for “The Lighthouse” seemingly gives little away, and is just strange. Is it a dream? Are they dead? Is this madness? Dunno. But it sure seems like it *could* (not *will*) end up fitting into the Mythos.
As an aside, Cthulhu is very unlikely to pop up in “Midway.” But the trailer makes it look promising; some of the CGI – and there is a hell of a lot of it – seems kinda dodgy, but who knows if that will still be the case on the big screen. “Pearl Harbor” looked promising as well, and look how that turned out.
Jul 312019
West Baltimore is infested with fine dining.
Jul 312019
Before Lunar Orbit rendezvous made it possible for a single Saturn V to launch a complete lunar mission, the expected mission profile included launching a rather large lunar lander to Earth orbit, mating it with n upper stage, and then fueling the whole thing using specialized tanker spacecraft. NASA lucked out with the LOR concept; while some considerable work had been done on the tankers, the fact is that NASA really didn’t know *how* to do zero-gravity propellant transfer. When the word came down to stop working on the tankers, there were undoubtedly quite a number of quiet expressions of relief.
Still: the ability to do major propellant tanking in space will be vital for a real interplanetary economy. SpaceX will need to be able to do that for many of the lunar and Mars missions planned for Starship. So, it seems that on-orbit tanking is back on the menu.
NASA agrees to work with SpaceX on orbital refueling technology
Jul 302019
When “First Man,” a biopic about Neil Armstrong, was being developed, I was interested. News broke before the release that it didn’t include the raising of the US flag on the moon; this bothered me slightly, but it was the director and main actors looney political statements that caused my interest in the movie to evaporate.
So it’s on HBO now, and I finally watched it last night. On the one hand, the lack of the flag raising makes perfect sense in the context of the film… it covers years of Armstrongs life, and the lunar landing itself is damn near an afterthought. The time spent showing Armstrong bopping around on the lunar surface is minuscule.
On the other hand: Jibbers Crabst, what a *dismal* slog that movie was. It wasn’t so much that it was dull and often rather hard to see; it was that it was little more than a series of Armstrong’s low points. Let’s see if I can recall the main points:
1) It starts with Armstrong screwing up an X-15 flight, making it look like a hypersonic horror movie.
2) Then he loses his baby girl to cancer.
3) Then he goes up on Gemini 8, the launch of which is another horror movie.
4) And then Gemini 8 goes out of control and he nearly dies.
5) But hey, at least he has a friend, Ed! Who then promptly burns to death in Apollo 1.
6) And then he crashes the lunar lander simulator.
7) And then he goes to the moon, which is a difficult to see ride devoid of joy.
8) And then he stands on the lunar surface looking into a pitch-black crater and it all comes back to his dead child.
9) And he finally comes home… to wife who clearly doesn’t like him.
And… that’s about it. The greatest adventure in human history reduced to a series of misery-points.
Now, I’m all in favor of the actual facts of history, warts and all. But far too much of modern western civilization seems to be able to see nothing *but* the warts anymore. The Founding Fathers weren’t great innovative leaders who forged subservient colonies of a distant empire into a proud nation with a history of greatness second to none; they were just slavers to be dumped down the memory hole. Cowboys? Fictional nonsense that didn’t exist. Cops? They’re all corrupt fascists. This fetishizing of self-flagellation has hit the space program hard. Apollo wasn’t the greatest, most inspiring achievement in history; it was “whitey on the moon” (a point driven home explicitly in “First Man”), run by Nazi war criminals. And Armstrong? Not a near-mythic hero to be emulated, but an unpopular man with a crappy family life who underwent fear and terror because he was grieving a dead child.
Bah.
If they’d made “First Man” into some sort of Lovecraftian cosmic horror fantasy… hey, that coulda been kinda neat. *Horror* can be interesting. But *dismal?* Just no.
If you want to destroy a culture, you bomb it into rubble and shoot the survivors. If you want to *ruin* a culture, you take away it’s hopes, dreams, Foundational Myths and Heroes.
Jul 302019
Or an eggshell.
What’s really amazing is how nonchalant so many of these people are about committing violent assaults while on camera, *knowing* they’re on camera.They aren’t trying to hide their identities, because they think they’re being heroic in assaulting people who hold the wrong political views. Or who just happen to be somewhat near someone holding the wrong views.
Even though this isn’t as bad as shooting or stabbing someone, the mainstreaming of political violence like this co only lead to worse things.
Jul 302019
I’m not a particular fan of Quentin Tarantino, but I will still say that “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is an entertaining flick. At about three hours it’s a *looooong* flick, and for the majority of the run time I’d say, “yeah, this is pretty good,” but the last fifteen minutes or so… to put it simply, I don’t think I’ve laughed that loudly in a crowded theater in a *loooooong* time.
It is set in 1969 and includes historical characters and events; Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, Steve McQueen, so on. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a washed-up actor, a veteran of westerns now relegated to bit parts; Brad Pitt plays his stunt double, equally hard up for work, but much more relaxed about it. The quest to find some sort of meaning and future is the basic issue throughout the movie, and it works reasonably well, has some pretty funny moments, and is generally entertaining.
It’s at the end when things go off the rails that the movie earns it’s ticket price. A group of people who can be accurately and succinctly described as “end state Antifa” set about to do something horrible… and as with “Inglorious Basterds,” history takes a turn. Ultraviolence ensues, and it’s GLORIOUS. I wound up randomly sitting next to a couple of little old ladies, and when blood and bits started flying, it was so bonkers that these grandmas were laughing themselves fuzzy.
If you want historical accuracy, this ain’t it. If you want “toxic” masculinity (i.e. the sort of masculinity humans evolved to have over millions of years) on display, and you want to see a fitting response to a bunch of anti-“fascist” dirty hippies… then by god this is the movie for you.