This is the local equivalent of a traffic jam.
Mar 162010
Mar 152010
Watch THIS, and let me know if Obama’s claim that employer’s health insurance premiums will drop by “three thousand percent” makes any damned sense to you. It sure as hell doesn’t to me.
If your bill drops by fifty percent, that means it’s cut in half. If it drops by one hundred percent, that means you owe nothing. If it drops by two hundred percent, that means that they now owe you the full value of the bill. If your bill drops by one thousand percent, then they owe you nine times the value of the bill.
If a health care premium bill drops by three thousand percent, then doesn’t that mean that the health care insurance company now owes you twenty-nine times the value of the premium? What the hell sort of business model is that?
No insurance company would or could stay in business if they had to pay you in order to insure you. Thus this is a tacit admission on Obama’s part that he plans to put the insurance companies out of business, as he previously claimed he wanted to bankrupt the coal industry. And when that happens… well, gosh, I guess the government will have to step in and just take over, won’t it.
I guess the only other point of view on this is that Obama is a moron when it comes to math, and simply didn’t understand what a “three thousand percent” decrease actually means. Anyone want someone that dumb in charge of the health care industry?
Mar 152010
Here’s an odd thing.
As previously mentioned, the eBay excercise is an attempt to determine the level of interest in the printed blueprints. The F-23A seems reasonably popular, which does not surprise me much. But what does surprise me: at this time, the Convair Hustler-derived SST is beating the tar out of the Convair Super-Hustler. Currently bid four times as high, ten times as many bids, twice as many watchers.
To my mind, the Super Hustler, a Mach 4 bomber, would seem obviously more interesting than a supersonic passenger transport. And the Super Hustler print is substantially larger, as well. Is it because “SST” in the title is recognizable, and likely the subject of occasional searches, while “Super Hustler” is not as recognizable and not likely to be the subject of as many searches?
As an aside: the print shop folks got kinda nervous when I handed over the flash drive with the blueprint image files and I said I wanted one each of the “F-23,” the “Dyna Soar,” the “NERVA” the “SST” and the “Super Hustler.” If you’re not an afficionado of arcane aero-lore, “Super Hustler” might come off a bit creepy, I suppose.
Mar 152010
Chances are good that within the next month or two the US Supreme Court will come down with a ruling on the McDonald vs Chicago case, and probably will rule that the Chicago gun ban is illegal and that the Second Amendment actually does apply to all US citizens. Since the 2nd states that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, what will follow will almost certainly be decades of lawsuits, as citizens try to obtain their rights and the most despotic urban hellholes try to maintain their power. Arguements will come down to such things as “what does ‘arms’ mean, does that mean private citizens will be allowed to own nuclear bombs” and that sort of thing.
There is of course a logical and important case to be made for limitations *somewhere.* Obviously, private ownership of nukes and bioweapons is a bit undesirable. However, the Constitution simply does not make any such distinction; in the late 18th/early 19th century, the military did not have weapons that private citizens could not own, if they had enough money. Remember, this was the era of the privateer, when ship owners would outfit their commercial vessels with cannons and go unload some black-powder-and-chain-shot-whoopass on the enemies of the nation.
So, there are two approaches to take:
1) Amend the Constitution further to make *explicit* just what is and is not allowed. This is the “best” option, and one that just ain’t gonna happen.
2) Pass a simple rule. Let’s call it the “Lowther Rule,” since I dreamed the damned thing up some years back. The rule is this: “The citizens of the United States shall be allowed to keep and bear any class of weapon, without regulatory burden or infringement, that is or has been used or posessed by any government internal policing system in the United States.”
The result? If the US does not want the citizens to have the class of weapon known as “Atomic Friggen’ Bomb,” then no police force, from Podunk Junction PD to the FBI to the IRS to who-the-hell-ever can be allowed to have A-Bombs. Same obviously goes for anthrax weapons, flame throwers or Sarin bombs.
I would imagine most people, including government drones, would see that as being a good thing. However, where it’ll get sticky is when someone marches to the gun store and demands to buy an actual assault rifle (a *real* assault rifle, select fire and everything), and shows a photo of some SWAT guy with an M-16. But you know what? Tough. If you are going to arm the cops – any cops – with assault rifles, there’s no logical or ethical arguement that you can make to ban them from private ownership. The last century showd quite clearly that agents of governments are far more deadly to innocent civilians than are armed civilians.
This makes gun control regualations real easy. Don’t want the citizens to wield rocket launchers? Then don’t arm the FBI with ’em. Don’t want folks to have access to full-auto machine pistols? Then better make sure the Presidents Secret Service detachment doesn’t have ’em. Microwave “pain rays?” Tear gas grenades? Sonic LRADs? Fighter jets? Attack helicopters? Armored cars? Tanks? Tasers? Phasers?
A further possible complication is the use of the National Guard for internal policing, such as was done after Huricane Katrina. My solution for this is a compromise: whatever class of weapons the National Guard wields or uses while beng deployed in an American state becomes legal *in* *that* *state.* I’m looking at you, Mr. Main Battle Tank With Fully Loaded Cannon. This would tend to cause the National Guard to back off on the use of certain military implements. The arguement that this would open the door for all kinds of chicanery in a time of crisis is of course foolish, as if it suddenly became legal and paperwork-free to own, say, a fully loaded Russian T-72 tank in the state of New York after the next series of Obamaconomy food riots causes the Governor to bust open with the National Guard, it’s not like Amazon.com will suddenly have a warehouse of the things ready for next-day delivery.
There. I’ve just solved one of the more vexing political questions of the day.
Mar 152010
Mar 142010
Ruh-roh…
http://news.discovery.com/space/star-predicted-to-blast-through-the-solar-system.html
Bad news:
An orange dwarf star named Gliese 710 is powering in our direction and an astronomer has calculated an 86 percent chance of the interstellar interloper smashing through the Oort Cloud, located in the outermost reaches of our solar system.
This could have the devastating effect of scattering the icy Oort Cloud objects (or OCOs), causing them to plunge toward the sun and the inner planets, potentially bombarding Earth with comets. … there’s an 86 percent chance the star will punch through the Oort Cloud (thought to be located about 50,000 AU — or nearly a light-year — from the sun). This may sound like a flesh wound, a near miss in cosmological distances, but any gravitational interaction with the huge chunks of cometary nuclei in the outermost extent of the solar system is bad news.
Good news:
In 1.5 million years.
Mar 142010
http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/careers/
Astronauts
Las Vegas, Nevada Facility
Who May Apply:
Bigelow Aerospace seeks professional astronauts to fill permanent positions. Qualified applicants need to have completed a training program from their government or recognized space agency and have at least some flight experience on a recognized space mission. Specialized training and/or experience (ie: Medical, Payload Specialist, EVA, Pilot, etc.) is not a pre-requisite, but is definitely a plus.
Possible opportunities will come in two areas:
1) Ground
- Working with Marketing Team to secure government and cooperate clients.<\LI>
- Working with Design and Fabrication Teams to help optimize layout of systems for on-orbit serviceability and ergonomics.<\LI>
- Working with Mission Control Team on final checkout of flight vehicles, both pre and post launch
- Help Develop Astronaut training programs for Bigelow Aerospace Professional Astronaut Corps as well as Client Astronaut Corps.
- Work instructing in the Bigelow Astronaut Training Program
2) Flight
- Perform as Professional Astronaut aboard Bigelow Aerospace Station Complex
- Manage all onboard aspects of employee and customer astronaut personal safety
- Maintain the Station Complex as required (mainly IVA, but some EVA as well)
- Help clients with payloads or experiments (primarily with regards to integration into station’s systems and communications)
Mar 142010
OK, these are just cheap on my part… NERVA artwork simply downloaded from various places on the Net. Meh, what are you gonna do…
Anyway, here are two paintings (essentially the viewgraph artwork of the day… feel free to compare to modern Powerpoint art and weep) of the early Aerojet 1963 Nerva design:
And here’s a much later (circa 1970) rendering of a NERVA engine. Note the long nozzle extension, which appears to be some sort of non-metallic composite. NERVA engines could get away with uncooled nozzle extensions for one simple reason: they weren’t really all that hot. Conventional hydrogen/oxygen chemical rockets have amazingly hot core combustion temperatures… and this is ok, because there are no solid structures within the cores of the engines. A considerable amount of cooling is required to keep the surrounding structures from melting, however. But solid-core nuclear thermal rockets like NERVA *do* have solid structures within the core of the rocket… that structure being the nuclear reactor. As a consequence, the sort of temperatures that a chemical rocket engine deals with regualrly would cause the nuclear reactor in a NERVA to simply melt and flow out the nozzle. So NERVA engines have much cooler exhausts than their chemical bretheren. The reason why even dull NERVA engines still produce higher specific impulses than the most advanced chemical engines is because the exhaust, while relatively cool, has an extremely low molecular weight. Running pure hydrogen, the molecular weight of the H2 exhaust is just… 2. But a hydrogen/oxygen engine running a mix ratio designed to produce a pure H20 exhaust has an exhaust molecular weight of 18. The Isp of a LOX/LH2 engine can be increased by running it fuel (hydrogen) rich… while this lowers the exhaust temperature, it also lowers the average exhaust molecular weight. Still, this can’t approach what a NTR can do.
Whoops, this image is hugenormous (2-point-something megabytes). Click on the link if you want to see it.
Mar 142010
I’ve put up another large photo print, this one of the Thor’s Hammer hoodoo in Bryce Canyon. I’ve got another framed and hanging on my wall… it really does look pretty damned awesome.
This time there’s a Buy It Now button. Item is listed here.
Mar 142010
