The AIAA-Houston branch online magazine “Horizons” for April 2009 had a two page article of mine on the General Dynamics “Nexus” series of SSTO launch vehicles. Payloads starting at a respectable ONE MILLION POUNDS. You can download it and other issues of “Horizons” here:
http://www.aiaa-houston.org/horizons
Note they got the title wrong. Woohoo! I’m not the only one who makes editting goofs!
On display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy facility.
I’d never heard of this “Arthur Frommer” guy before today. Apparently he’s a “travel critic,” someone paid to tell people where to and not to visit on vacation. He just unloaded this steaming pile of starship fuel onto his blog:
I am not yet certain whether I would advocate a travel boycott by others of the state of Arizona; I want to learn more about Arizona’s gun laws and how they compare with those of other states. But I am shocked beyond measure by reports that earlier this week, nearly a dozen persons, including one with an assault rifle strapped about his shoulders and others with pistols in their hands or holsters, were openly congregating outside a hall at which President Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
For myself, without yet suggesting that others follow me in an open boycott, I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest. I not only believe such practices are a threat to the future of our democracy, but I am firmly convinced that they would also endanger my own personal safety there. And therefore I will cancel any plans to vacation or otherwise visit in Arizona until I learn more. And I will begin thinking about whether tourists should safeguard themselves by avoiding stays in Arizona.
In my opinion, the man is a blithering dumbass. Anyone who has ever considered paying any attention to him should give serious consideration to ignoring him from here on out. Open carry laws are hardly a secret… any “travel critic” who was so monumantally pig ignorant as to not only not know about common gun laws, but also the Consititution of the US, seems unlikely to be a man who actually knows the first damned thing about travel. Who would pay attention to a “travel critic” who suggested taking his AK-47 to Jolly Olde England for a fox hunting expedition?
I suggest boycotting Frommer and his works, since he has just come out and declared himself kinda stupid.
Note to Frommer: stay the hell away from Utah. We regularly carry loaded weapons onto sidewalks. I did so for many hours just today. You would crap yourself in fear if you knew that you might be in a restaurant where one or more patrons might actually be so barbaric as to have a concealed weapon. And we really don’t need you stinking up the joint.
Raedthin expresses a view similar to mine regarding the just-discovered internal Jupiter-reflections.
Part Two of the Rock Island Arsenal collection.
Grenade launchers:
Old school rifles:
Subguns and shotguns:
Submachineguns and assault rifles:
Via 30-second exposure. Note the airplane track above and the star-streaks.
UPDATE: Bah. Nevermind. Ignore the original post. Those photos were taken without seeing the blue-green dot. Tonight I went out and took more photos of Jupiter… and saw the dot *again.* But this time, knowing to look for it and being willing to do some ultra-basic science, I simply moved the camera left and right… and the dot move in the opposite direction. It must be some sort of internal reflection of Jupiter inside the lenses.
Well, THAT’s boring.
I took a number of shots of Jupiter last night, the first one which seemed to show Neptune. I glanced through the others and saw the same blue-green do there next to Jupiter regardless of ISO level on the camera, so I didn’t think much more on it. But I took another look at the other pics, and realized that this can’t be Neptune. It’s moving fairly quickly across the starfield. Far too slow to be an airplane or a satellite; seemingly too fast for a comet. Maybe an asteroid? But who ever heard of one in blue-green? Additionally, I checked on the position of the blue-green thing on the full images themselves… the dot moves, indicating it’s not a hot pixel.
Any advice on this would be appreciated. The filenames give the time the pics were taken in hours-minutes-seconds, local Utah time.
Finally went and bought a *real* camera, a Nikon D5000. At about $600, it’s at the low end of Good Camera prices. I spent today tinkering… and tonight taking test shots of the night sky. It has built-in long exposure settings up to 30 seconds. Here are a few early results:
The first two show the Milky Way and the skyglow of Ogden/Salt Lake City.
These two also show the Milky Way and skyglow… but up in the upper right corner I lucked out and caught three satellites zipping along.
Milky Way:
The last one is the least interesting to look at but in a way the most interesting in what it shows. It’s a shot of Jupiter, with an overexposed circualr disk of Jupiter visible, along with at least two moons visible. Niftily, just above and to the left of Jupiter is a blue-green speck… Neptune. I’ve never seen Neptune through a telescope before… and here it is visible via the standard lens that came with the camera.
A zoom lens is on order. It’ll be interesting to see what I can see with that.
Part 1:
The Rock Island Arsenal museum (Rock Island, Illinois) has an impressive collection of firearms dating from Way Back When on up to, approximately, the 1970’s. Included are the old standards… and a lot of unusual prototypes. Here are a few.
Submachineguns: 
Assault rifles and grenade launchers:
More grenade launchers:
Took some photos tonight of Fingers and her five amazingly healthy kittens, now in the basement until she can heal up. No closeups of her wound… it shall suffice to say “it looks like several square inches of raw bacon, something that looks great while cooking, but terrible on a cat.” She looks miserable, but she also looks kinda… relieved. She’s back to being friendly and purring all the time.
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