November 2009 – Page 6 – The Unwanted Blog

Space Document Sale

sales & specials, spacecraft No Responses »

Nov 162009

~~On sale for half off:~~

~~“The Story of Peenemunde:” Normally $15, on sale for $7.50~~

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Saturn V and Saturn Ib Payload Planers Guides: Normally $11 for both, now get both for $5.50

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Lunar Module Manuals: Normally $7.00, now $3.50

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Saturn S-IVB sketches: Normally $8.00, now $4.00

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Goodyear METEOR: Normally $8.00, now $4.00

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Early Shuttle Docs (Flight Test Vehicle, Single Body Canard Booster, ILRV, Astrorocket, ASTRO): Normally $27.50 all separate, now $13.75 together

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Early Space Station Docs (Manned Space Lab, 12 Man Space Station, Skylab Guidebook, MOL test launch, Extended Apollo Lab, MOL Briefing): Normally $34.50 all separate, now $17.25 together

Time to panic… it’s the Ukrainian Super Flu!

news No Responses »

Nov 162009

This sounds like fun.

British scientists are examining the strain of swine flu behind a deadly Ukrainian outbreak to see if the virus has mutated.

A total of 189 people have died and more than one million have been infected in the country. Some doctors have likened the symptoms to those seen in many of the victims of the Spanish flu which caused millions of deaths world-wide after the World War One. An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus. He said: ‘We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.

‘They look like they have been burned. It’s terrifying.’

Last Ice Age took just SIX months to arrive

news, nukes, reshaping the world 14 Responses »

Nov 152009

From the Daily Mail:

It took just six months for a warm and sunny Europe to be engulfed in ice, according to new research.

Previous studies have suggested the arrival of the last Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago took about a decade – but now scientists believe the process was up to 20 times as fast.

In scenes reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The day After Tomorrow, the Northern Hemisphere was frozen by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream, which allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.

Not mentioend in the article is the likely reason *why* the Gulf Stream suddenly slowed down: The ice dam holding back Lake Agassiz broke, and dumped more fresh water than is currently held by all the lakes on Earth directly into the Atlantic ocean via the St. Lawrence seaway. The article *does* crank out the “O Noes! Greenland is melting” scarememe, which is quite a lot less of an impact due to the extremely slow rate at which fresh water is added to the Atlantic as compared to Lake Agassiz emptying out in about a year.

But if you really wanted to freeze out Europe (and who doesn’t?) how would you go about it? Well, you could nuke the bejeebers out of the Greenland ice sheet in the hopes that you’d melt enough fresh water to do it… unlikely. But there might be another possibility: nuke the crap out of the Panama Canal. The Pacific Ocean is about 10 inches higher than the Atlantic at that point; if you could nuke a channel all the way through the canal zone – this would probably require a 100-kiloton class nuke every half mile or so along the whole fifty miles of the canal – the Pacific would try to empty itself into the Atlantic. This would surely change Gulf Stream flow patterns.

1) You might be able to pull this stunt off with a handfull of really big Soviet citybusters. A few H-Bombs in the 10 megaton range taken to Lake Gatun on board a cargo ship, then dumped overboard at the appropriate points (better would be to dump them through locks cut into the bottom of the ships hull, so the operation won’t be seen) and detonated at a precise sequence might do the job. The bottom of Gatun is something less than 40 feet above sea level, so you’d need to excavate the whole length of the lake to at least that depth. The process of doing so would almost certainly create a series of tsunamis which would take out the locks on either side, opening the way for the Pacific to race in and do its thing. So along with the extraordinary panic this act would create, you’d also have the excitement of throwing transcontinental shipping into chaos, as the new channel would not be passable by ship, and of course people trying to walk or drive from North America to South America would find the way not only blasted apart, but radioactive. And then, if all goes to plan, Europe gets thrown into a new Ice Age. Huzzah!

2) ???

3) Profit!

Tony Zuppero, Mad Scientist

awesomeness, blather, nukes, projects, science, science fiction, spacecraft, weapons 7 Responses »

Nov 152009

Back in the early/mid 90’s, when I was getting my Aero E degree from Iowa State U, the Iowa State Space Society put on several “Mid Continent Space Development Conferences,” where we got a surprising number of aerospace “luminaries” to come in and give presentations on whatever their topic was… Bill Gaubatz from McDonnell-Douglas on the Delta Clipper, Robert Forward on several “crazy” concepts (I drove him from Ames to the Des Moines airport – or vice versa – once, and had what at least to me seemed a good conversation regarding wormholes and time dilation with him), Seth Shostak from SETI, Len Cormier and his Space Van concept, Lori Garver from Ad Astra, Chuck Lauer (for orbital “real estate development,” later to be one of three founders of the late lamented Pioneer Rocketplane), Leik Myrabo (for whom I gave the introductory remarks, and managed to mangle both his name and that of Rensellaer Polytechnic… yeah, not one of my crowning moments) for laser propulsion, and numerous others. (now THAT is a run-on sentence!)

One of the others was Anthony Zuppero from the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. He spoke to us of colonizing not planets (like Mars… at the time, the idea of blowing off Mars was heresy to young chuckleheads like us), but comets. And he showed us how it could be done, using the resources available in situ.

Sigh.

The days when I was young enough to think I might actually live to see such days.

Sigh.

Anyway: It turns out that Zuppero has written a book, a memoir on his experiences in aerospace. It is discussed in this article in The Register. And it is also available for free downloading as a PDF file HERE.

Yes, I was vain enough to do a search for my own name, since I knew I’d met him. And lo and behold, there it is, along with the names of fellow students that I haven’t seen, heard of or in some cases even thought of in 14 or so years. Hell, even my parents get the tiniest little mention.

I’ve not read the whole book, just a few bits (yes, starting with the MCSDC stuff). But his recollections of the MCSDC certainly match mine, and bring back the memories:

Pretty quickly I noticed that the only place I had ever been that was
more dismal than Idaho Falls in the winter was flying and driving
in Iowa in mid winter. The extra depressing element was that
from the air one could not see any mountains anywhere in Iowa,
and we could in Idaho Falls. We could see majestic mountains
from an airplane above Idaho Falls.

Got that right. Iowa in winter is charitably described as “dismal.” Especially when I recall that driving across Iowa in winter once involved my Ford Escort hitting a patch of ice, going into a spin on the entirely ice-covered highway and thinking “well, at least I’m the only idiot out here,” and then seeing the headlights of a Peterbilt coming out of the mist. Ba-BAM!

Another of Zuppero’s anecdotes, that, had I put some more thought into this some years back, could have saved me considerable headache:

I was supposed to be the featured evening speaker. But Robert
Zubrin, also there on no money, said it would really help if he could
speak in my place and I speak at his place. I should not have let
him. It is a status thing to be the featured evening speaker. Zubrin
did not publicly thank me for trading. That was the rub. Never
again, Robert.

Snerk.

Now, doesn’t that bring back a few years worth of unpleasant recollections…

Zuppero discusses his ideas at some considerable length in his book. In short… nuclear thermal rockets “burning” water ice, the ice taken not from Earth but from the comets that the rockets are used to colonize.

Zuppero also discusses his Asperger’s Syndrome at some considerable length… a topic of some small theoretical interest to me. And he pretty much nails it:

<> I will sometimes go too fast. I will sometimes say things that are
<>simply not supposed to be said that way. Because I am an Aspie,
<>I can’t see what’s wrong with doing these things at all. If I went
<>too fast or confused you, tell me and I will try to fix it. Maybe
<>not.If I use inappropriate language or say things that are too graphic
and just not proper in mixed company, or that are insulting or too
mean,
too bad.

I’m an Aspie.

You are supposed to treat me nice, like we treat mongoloids and
other weird people.

…

You don’t like my exaggeration? Too bad. I’m an Aspie.

…

One always has a “day job” that you do to get money. One also
has a fantasy, a hobby daydream you think about all the time. It’s
the daydreams that make magic happen. And that is what
happened. However, it took a while and was mostly
disappointing the entire time. I never got rich either. And I got
fired a couple of times. Aspies just have a hard time with social
situations, like a boss.

…

Asperger’s Syndrome seems to be a real thing, just like ADD is a real thing. But it’s also become a somewhat fashionable diagnosis… seen by some as a convenient excuse for behaving like an asshole. But I’ve seen more than my share of “Asperger-Like” behavior in my aborted aerospace career . Aspies are, or at least can be when utilized properly, a massive benefit to whatever organization or project they’re working for. But what I’ve also seen are Aspies whose skills are ill-utilized (“Wow, you’re a great design engineer. Here, be an accountant.”), coupled with entirely too many non-Aspie assholes in positions of managerial/political power. Zuppero makes several references to Aspies being like Spock from Star Trek, which is a reasonable analogy… but imagine if Starfleet had taken a good hard look at Spock’s record and decided that he’d be best utilized as a singer of jingles for the “Be All You Can Be, Join Starfleet” ad campaign.

Download his book. It’s a bit rough (it’s clearly a draft, and needs some serious editting), but what I’ve read so far is certainly engaging.

Bell Model D-18: Early Helicopter

aircraft, projects 11 Responses »

Nov 152009

No further data than this one illustration. Clearly an early transport helicopter… late ’40’s, early ’50’s would be my guess.

To filter or not to filter

awesomeness, photography, Utah 2 Responses »

Nov 152009

The addition of a “neutral density filter” to a camera can open up some interesting possibilities. Such a filter is simply a dark glass… with the chemistry worked out such that it darkens all colors equally. The end result is that if you have a tripod,a filter and a camera capable of longer exposures, you can make some interesting shots of objects in motion.

Typically if you take a shot of, say, a sunlit stream with an exposure of a second or more long, the image will be simply wiped out and overexposed. But a filter takes care of this. You can now take a multi-second exposure in daylight without overexposing the subject. The effect on runnign water can be all kinds of artsy.

Without filter:

With filter:

Without filter:

With filter:

And another with a filter:

Gravity’s Rainbow

awesomeness, drawings, new products, projects, science fiction, spacecraft, weapons 4 Responses »

Nov 152009

No, I haven’t read Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.” But a while back I saw a copy at a book store with this cover:

It occured to me that I recognized that illustration. And as it turns out, I do:

It’s actually Space Drawing 14, Wasserfall Zeichnung SKW 970 B, dated January 23, 1945. And yes you too can own your own copy. And for blisteringly cheap… $5.50.

Two new space drawing sets

awesomeness, drawings, new products, spacecraft No Responses »

Nov 142009

Get an early jump on your Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/Saturnalia/Jul/Drunken Apology gift shopping by buying Space Drawing sets 18 and 19. These two sets are closely related subjects, and took me a substantial amount of effort to prepare. SDWG18 is composed of 22 drawings (and their half-size versions for easier viewing & printing) spread through 4 ZIPped folders, totalling 92.5 megabytes – hense the split into four separate, more easily uploadable/downloadable ZIP files. SDWG19 has 15 drawings (with 15 halfsizes) in a single 10 megabyte ZIP folder.

When I get the webpages re-worked, these will go for $15 for DWG18, and $10 for SDWG19, for a total of $25. ~~But for the moment, get ’em both for $20.~~

Gah.

dumbassery, Gah., Obamazombies, politics 8 Responses »

Nov 142009

From the LA Times:

Gah. Whatever happened to “An American bows to no man?” Whatever happened to a polite handshake and a “Hey, how y’all doin’?”

Americans have no royalty. We threw off that tradition more than two centuries ago. The best of America involves the rejection of all that royalty stands for… caste systems, unearned political power, dictators who lord it over the “peasants.”

And yet, America has a love affair with royalty. If you look for it, it’s all around you. Look at Disney animated movies… how many of them have the “princess” as the heroine? How many products are aimed at little girls… with the notion that they are also “princesses?” Why was Michael jackson the “King of Pop,” and not the “President of Pop?” Why did much of the US go into spasms of grief when Princess Diana – who was not an American Princess, was not even an American, was not even any more in line to the throne – got mashed in a car wreck? Fortunately, we also have a vendetta agaisnt royalty: the closest we seem to come to it in the US are celebrities, who, like Jackson and whoever is the Pop Tart of the moment, get vast adoration ill-matched to their actual skills and accomplishments. But just as we liek to build up our royalty… we love even more to tear them down and see them ground into the mud. This, to my thinking, is a good thing. It means there’s hope that if anyone tries to become an *actual* King in this country… we will tear him to shreds.

From Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court:”

Well, it was a curious country, and full of interest. And the
people! They were the quaintest and simplest and trustingest race;
why, they were nothing but rabbits. It was pitiful for a person
born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble
and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church
and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor
king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor
the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him!
Why, dear me, _any_ kind of royalty, howsoever modified, _any_ kind
of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you
are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably
never find it out for yourself, and don’t believe it when somebody
else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race
to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones
without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people
that have always figured as its aristocracies–a company of monarchs
and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and
obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions.

If other nations want to have royalty… hey, great, whatever. But Americans are not supposed to have royalty, and should not view “royals” or “nobles” with any more respect than any other foreign government official. Bowing to royalty – be that royal the emperor of Japan or the king of Arabia – shows deference and lower status. And much as I dislike the current President, his status is *not* lower than some accident of birth. Obama should at least make an attempt at having some goddamned dignity.

For
instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men without
title and a long pedigree, whether they had great natural gifts
and acquirements or hadn’t, were creatures of no more consideration
than so many animals, bugs, insects; whereas I had inherited the idea
that human daws who can consent to masquerade in the peacock-shams
of inherited dignities and unearned titles, are of no good but
to be laughed at.

…

Even down to my birth-century
that poison was still in the blood of Christendom, and the best
of English commoners was still content to see his inferiors
impudently continuing to hold a number of positions, such as
lordships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of his country
did not allow him to aspire; in fact, he was not merely contented
with this strange condition of things, he was even able to persuade
himself that he was proud of it. It seems to show that there isn’t
anything you can’t stand, if you are only born and bred to it.
Of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had been
in our American blood, too–I know that; but when I left America
it had disappeared–at least to all intents and purposes. The
remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. When
a disease has worked its way down to that level, it may fairly
be said to be out of the system.

Movies that both do and don’t suck: “2012”

blather, dumbassery, Gah., science, science fiction 6 Responses »

Nov 132009

I caught an early showing of “2012” today. Coming as it does from the same folks who gave the world “Independence Day,” “Godzilla,” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” I went into it knowing pretty much what I was in for. And I was right… about two and a half hours of high-rez disaster porn. I also fully expected bad science, and I got that in spades. But what twerked me was that I got the bad science within the first two minutes or so of the movie.

I had been wondering what their excuse for the Earth going bonkers was going to be, and I must admit to having been a tad surprised. Instead of the “planetary alignment” causing tidal stresses, it turns out the sun is going into a more active phase. So far, so good. As a result of this, a neutrino detector deep underground in an Indian copper mine is picking up increased neutrino emissions from the sun. Ok, sure, that kinda follows. But where I damn near stood up and shouted “Wrongs! That is teh suck!!!” was when the particle physicist points out that the neutrinos have “mutated” and are now interacting with the matter in the core of the Earth, causing the core to heat up, expand, and go funny.

Fundamental particles “mutating?”

Neutrinos interacting with normal matter, causing a planetary mass of nickle/iron to heat noticably?

“2012” demonstrated a problem common in sci-fi flicks: an issue arises, and an on-screen scientist conveniently explains it, and gets it laughably wrong. This is due either to the writers not understanding science and thus just pulling some nonsense out of their asses, or assuming that the audience is too dumb to understand a more sensible explanation. But there are two solutions to this:

1) Get a scientific advisor who knows his/her business, and can come up with either a good explanation, or alternatively some nonsensical bullcrap that at least sounds halfway good

2) Don’t explain it at all.

I mean, come on. Every time Captain Kirk pulled the trigger on a phaser, did he stop and explain the operating principle? How about warp drive or the transporter? No, he just used ’em, and the audience accepted them without explanation. “It’s a ray gun, goes zap.” So if there’s something truly wacky and fundamental to the story, such as the Earth going bugnuts as in “2012,” if the plot does not require an explanation for the problem… consider not giving one. If the scientists did not know *why* the core was going bonkers, they’d still be able to make predictions, and the story could continue on sans laughable exposition.

And if you *need* to have some sci-fi explantion, why not try something truly unusual?

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