This issue *should* have been out the door some time ago, but due to a combination of factors, it’s not yet ready. To make up for the delay, this issue will be stuffed to the gills with all sorts of stuff.
Patience!
Dec 272008
Dec 272008
Buy all six together and get ’em notably cheaper than individually…
Dec 272008
A proposal (for NASA) ca. 1967 for a stopped-rotor test vehicle. A Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar would be equipped with the engine, transmission and tailrotor of an AH-56 Cheyenne, and an all-new folding rotor.
Dec 262008
Sadly, I don’t have a specific date for these. Copies were made years ago, long before I had the sense to get the dates. Ah, well…
Dec 252008
As my camera is in the shop (actually, I got a robocall on the 23rd telling me that it is actually in UPS’s hands…), here’re a couple of old shots of Tak.
Dec 252008
Dec 252008
… Axial Tilt.
Dec 242008
This will be entertaining to watch:
The Swedish government has announced plans to clamp down hard on religious education. It will soon become illegal even for private faith schools to teach religious doctrines as if they were true. In an interesting twist on the American experience, prayer will remain legal in schools – after all, it has no truth value. But everything that takes place on the curriculum’s time will have to be secular. “Pupils must be protected from every sort of fundamentalism,” said the minister for schools, Jan Björklund.
Creationism and ID are explicitly banned but so is proselytising even in religious education classes. The Qur’an may not be taught as if it is true even in Muslim independent schools, nor may the Bible in Christian schools.
The “why” of this law is pretty clear. In recent years, a great many immigrants have moved into Sweden… immigrants of the Islamuslimohammadanism persuasion. With them has come Islamic fundamentalism and a *lot* of trouble (look up the troubles in Malmo, for instance). And as with the rest of Europe, Sweden’s birth rate is pitiful… the end result being demographics show serious trouble in the future for Swedes who *don’t* want to live under Sharia laws. So… they’re trying this. Making it illegal to teach religion – *any* religion – as factually true. It is not a surgical strike against Islamic fundamentalism, but a general carpet bombing. And I suspect it’ll create little but a whole heap of trouble.
Dec 242008
Two Boeing designs, reported to NASA in 1973. The “Mid Mach design” was meant to cruise at Mach 1.5; the high speed design at Mach 2.7. Even though the planes were relatively sedate by SST standards (which tended to target about Mach 3+), the designs were extremely… pointy. The reason for this was to mitigate sonic boom. Sonic boom, after all, is the reason why aircraft are not allowed to fly supersonically over the continental United States. Sonic booms, after all, are loud, un-natural noises that would bother people. What? What’s that you said? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of the cars driving past, the freight train, the gangbangers driving by their their stereos set on 11, the TV blaring downstairs and the neighbors crotchfruit screeching their heads off….
Dec 242008
Drawings done at Martin to aid in the building of a scale model. A bit lean on the details.
