repost: US Launch Vehicle Projects #06: Solar Power Satellite Launchers

 drawings, new products, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Launch Vehicle Projects  No Responses »
Jul 212019
 

Now available… the newest and biggest issue in the US Aerospace Projects line.

US Launch Vehicle Projects #6

Cover art was provided by Rob Parthoens, www.baroba.be

US Launch Vehicle Projects #06 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #6 is devoted to the launch vehicles proposed for the 1970’s Solar Power Satellite program. This required millions of tons of payload delivered into Earth orbit over a span of decades, with flight rates of several times per day for each vehicle. This program produced some of the largest and most ambitious launch vehicles ever designed, and was the last time that launchers of this size were ever seriously contemplated. Appropriately, USLP#6 is by far the largest issue of US Aerospace projects to date at over seventy pages, three times the size of a usual issue.

Topics in this issue include the Rockwell Star-Raker, several Boeing Space Freighters, the Boeing “Big Onion” Low Cost Heavy Lift Vehicle (antecedent and descendant designs), a Grumman two-stage HLLV, a Rockwell HLLV and “small” HLLV, NASA-JSC heavy lifters, a Boeing/Rockwell Personnel Launch Vehicle and a Boeing winged SSTO. Along with orthogonal views, a number of perspective diagrams are also included.

 

 

USLP #6 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $9:

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 Posted by at 4:46 am

Screw your sacred place

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, religion, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 212019
 

How can a person know if their religion sucks? Well… if your religion opposes building a world-class telescope, then, yes. Your religion sucks.

It would be one thing if this mountaintop was being used for a casino or a WalMart warehouse or a garbage dump. But a telescope that will show the universe in unprecedented detail? A *good* religion would welcome such a thing.

Mauna Kea: Hawaii protesters delay giant telescope construction

And it seems that his time in the Delta Quadrant didn’t do our favorite Ensign any good…

Hawaii island Mayor Harry Kim gives praise to protesters blocking access to Mauna Kea

And the sickness has spread even as far as Utah:

Utahns gather in ‘sacred’ ghost town to support protest in Hawaii

 

There is, of course, a compromise: cancel the Mauna Kea telescope and build it on the Moon instead. Such an endeavor would of course cost a bucket of money, many billions of dollars. But there are many areas of US FedGuv spending that could have their funding slashed to fund the scope. During the period of time that say, some foreign aid (humanitarian, military, diplomatic, scientific, etc.) is zero-funded, simply tell the people to thank the Hawaiians for their opportunity to sacrifice for the greater good.

Another advantage of a Lunar relocation: you *can* build  a casino next to it. Perhaps just a few miles away behind a hill to block direct impingement of the gigawatts of bright flashing lights. But by building the whole complex on the near side of the moon, those Mauna Kea protestors can squat in ignorance atop their mountain and look up into the night sky and see the bright lights of New Vegas shining down on them from 240,000 miles away, and they can know that they share in none of either the money being made or the knowledge being learned.

 Posted by at 2:39 am

Star Trek: Picard

 Hmm..., news, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jul 202019
 

CBS has released the first real trailer for the Picard series. It shows a whole lot of unrecognizable characters and stuff, with no views of Starfleets ships, so it’s impossible to say if this is actually in the TNG universe or some mutant STD/Kelvin timeline. However, there are a few hints that it might actually be back to TNG. There are some glimpses of Starfleet uniforms that look TNG-appropriate, and there are two cameos. One is wholly unsurprising, and is clearly partially the result of digital de-aging. The other actually made me laugh out loud and took me wholly by surprise.

CBS burned through my my supply of trust with the execrable STD, so I certainly won’t be subscribing to CBS All Access for this. But it actually does look like it has potential. That one unexpected cameo… oh, yes indeed.

 

 Posted by at 6:07 pm

Apollo 11 at fifty: as it happened

 awesomeness, history, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Jul 202019
 

CBS new is again running a live stream of their historical footage, this time covering the landing of Apollo 11.

Back in ’69, they didn’t have the tech to run live TV from the actual landing. So CBS filled in the lack of footage with cel (cartoon) animation. They timed the animation to match the *planned* landing, but as is well known Armstrong had to divert to avoid landing in a field of boulders. so the animation depicts the LM on the surface well ahead of the actual event. Also of note: listening to the small sounds from the CBS news studio when it becomes clear that the LM is actually down. They (Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra)  maintain professionalism, but only just.  Another minor note: I can think of two times when Cronkite took off his glasses on camera: announcing the death of JFK and just after the Eagle landed.

For real entertainment value, watch it with closed captioning on.  I assume a computer is transcribing the speech into text… but it’s not doing a great job of it.

It looks like CBS didn’t include the vintage commercials this time. Additionally, there’s a time jump; it was more than six hours between landing and stepping out of the LM onto the surface, but the two broadcasts are welded together here. Until Aldrin turns on the TV camera showing Armstrong on the ladder, CBS filled in the lack of video with actors in fake space suits going through the planned motions. Also interesting: Cronkite jumped the gun on when he thought Armstrong was actually standing on the lunar surface, and missed the second half of “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

This was the most amazing event in TV history, and likely in *all* of history. What makes it more remarkable is how in such short order the same public that was so entranced  by this became uttering apathetic to following missions. One might argue that Apollo 11 was the first, and the first time is inherently far more interesting. And yet… turn on the TV, and chances are fair that one or more channels will be broadcasting yet again another interminable baseball, football, soccer or basketball game. There’ve been *millions* of ’em, yet billions of people still gladly pay vast sums of money, time and attention to such objectively pointless activities.

Sigh.

 Posted by at 5:19 pm

WTF did I just watch

 AARRRGH, art, cats, Crazy, Gah., youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 192019
 

This may come as a shock, but Broadway musicals (or any musical) are not my thing. So when I started seeing references to a trailer for “Cats” being released, I paid no attention. Until I began to notice that the references kept referring to the horrifying CGI *things.” This spurred my curiosity, and I’ve added the trailer below. You’re welcome.

I assume that “Cats” isn’t *supposed* to be a Cronenbergian body-horror fever dream, but here we are.

 

 Posted by at 6:05 am

The Crazy Years

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Jul 182019
 

For all America’s troubles, there’s one bright spot: unlike Canada, we don’t have a “Human Rights Tribunal.”

Accusations fly at human rights hearing into transgender woman’s Brazilian wax complaint

Short form: a transgender woman went to a home-based business to receive a “Brazilian wax.” But the business owner did not want to carry out the procedure since the customer was equipped with male junk and felt uncomfortable with that (and her husband didn’t want her fondling another dudes tackle). So the customer took the business to the human rights kangaroo court in Vancouver, British Columbia,  in order to ruin them, going so far as to compare the business owner to a Nazi. Which makes one wonder what kind of person wants a Nazi apply liquid-hot magmawax to their nads.

There’s just a whole lot of weird here. There’s also a lot of sad. Remember the story from a few days ago of the kid in Utah with a road-side “beer” stand, making money hand over fist with the jovial approval of the cops? Here we have a story of a woman who had carried out a cosmetic, errr… procedure on friends and family, apparently successfully, decided to make a business of it, and her very first customer put her out of business and has tied her up in an Orwellian thought-crime court.

Canada? Not even once.

Heinlein saw America devolving into chaos. But I don’t think he saw *this* sort of thing.

 Posted by at 9:40 pm

Top Gun

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
Jul 182019
 

It took thirty years to crank out this sequel. And I was all ready to dump on it, until I saw the aerial footage.

Unconventionally for a major Hollywood movie trailer, this one gives away almost nothing of the plot. What it does is show some *gorgeous* imagery that I wanna see on the big screen. Most of it even looks real, not CGI. A few details:

1) A couple shots of an F-14. The Navy retired those *years* ago. So… flashbacks?

2) One shot of Tom Cruise wearing a high-altitude helmet, another with him wearing a flight suit with the circular ring that such a helmet would attach to. I’m unaware of any such aircraft in the current US Navy; AFAIK, the U-2/TR-1 is the only plane left like that in US service. So… perhaps a bit of sci-fi element to the film, the Navy getting some new extreme-performance aircraft that Maverick test flies, perhaps?  Go ahead and set the nerd-world alight and make it an F-37 talon.

 

 Posted by at 4:37 pm

Ad Astra trailer 2: I remain unenlightened

 art, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Jul 182019
 

The second trailer for the Brad Pitt movie “Ad Astra” has come out, and it remains confusing. Specifically, the timeline. Because it certainly *looks* like Tommy Lee Jones’s character, the father of Brad Pitt’s character, seems to have been an Apollo astronaut, but now in his sons day – which would therefore seem to be *approximately* *now,* involves cities on the moon, Mars bases and tether-suspended low-altitude stations, along with 3D holographic projection technology. So… alt-history? Apollo wasn’t strangled, but instead NASA funding stayed at 4% of the Fed budget?

 Posted by at 10:35 am

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2019 Democratic Party spokespeople

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., humor, politics, THIS is why Trump won, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 182019
 

We have us a new Trigglypuff, being backed up by several people who are *straight* out of Clownworld central casting. Note: the language is NSFW, the intelligence is lacking, the humor is fall-down.

Whenever you see one of “the squad,” just keep in mind that *these* are their voters. Feel free to send this to your politically apathetic friends.

 Posted by at 2:11 am
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