Just relaxing…
Mar 062010
Mar 062010
Mar 052010
Art and a photo of a full-scale mockup.
Mar 052010
I’m still short one computer and am thus a bit capabilities-limited, but in the meantime please enjoy this layout drawing of the NERVA nuclear thermal rocket engine from Aerojet, drawn in 1962. I’ve a bunch of different NERVA designs I’ll probably post if there is interest.
Buy My Stuff, such as aerospace drawings and documents and Aerospace Projects Review. Or you could just Donate. For more posts like this, click on the Unwanted Blog header up top and then click on the “Projects” category to the right (or just click the “Projects” link to the right, if you happen to see it).
Mar 042010
Well, I seem to be back online. The hard drive in my laptop is kaput and is being replaced, a job which would seem to need to take only a few minutes, but which will take 3 or so days. In the meantime, this Wisdom From beyond is being brought to you by the cheapest netbook I could find in Logan, Utah. I didn’t focus on it solely because it was the cheapest (though that’s incredibly important), but because it’s the only one loaded with Windows XP, not Windows 7. As it turns out, 7 won’ run pretty much *any* of my existing software, most of which is pretty old.
Pkus, it’s freakin’ tiny. Get used to lots of spelling errors. The keyboard is really small. Still, it seems to work, and gets me back up and running. Feel free to resume buying stuff again. no, really, start buying stuff.
Mar 042010
Seconds before it crashes again. Hopefully back up and running in a day or two. Expensive fix, lots of backing up and restoration, plus buying a “netbook” so I can have redundant net access. If you’ve ever contemplated donating, nows the time.
Sorry to those who have ordered. I can’t seem to ‘reply” via email right now. Will rectify soonest.
Mar 032010
I think it’s got a bug. It keeps crashing, so it’s going in the shop. That’s why I’m still up at o’dark-thirty, backing up files I don’t want to lose forever.
<> If I fall silent for a few days, it’s because I’m banging my head against a wall.
Mar 022010
One of the designs produced by Boeing for the AWACS program was very similar to the final product, a 707 with a large rotary radar “saucer” on dorsal pylons. But for the reasons of endurance, this 1969 design featured eight, count ’em freakin’ EIGHT, turbofan engines. The TF34-GE2’s were podded as on a B-52, and would provide greater endurance than the 707’s standard four engines (requirement: 14 hours, unrefueled). However, as the program continued the requirement for increased endurance faded, down to 11.5 hours, which the 707’s four engines could handle.
This is a vastly reduced-size and re-blued version of the actual on-hand print.
Mar 012010
When the Juno V passed from Army hands to NASA, the intent to make the first stage recoverable also came along. The design got a lot more detail, and the recovery systems stayed in place… at least for a while.
This painting shows the eight braking rockets around the tail, used for sudden decelleration just before splashdown:
A display model of a Saturn C1 also showing the braking rockets:
And here are some inboard drawings and section views of the Saturn C-1 first stage showign the “Recovery Gear” (parachutes) tucked neatly in the forward end, and eight “Recruit”braking rockets near the tail.
Later designs – well into the Saturn Ib era – changed the recovery systems drastically. Rigid-keeled Rogallo wings, parafoils, even hot air balloons were studied, with ocean splashdowns, runway gliding landings, and my personal favorite, being snagged by a ship and lowered onto the deck (this being one of the ballon-borne concepts). I’m hardly dogmatic about what system should have been employed… but I do know that *some* system should have been employed. Early recovery tests with the Saturn Ib would have informed the Shuttle program… either making it better, or making it redundant. Numerous design concepts were put forward for Saturn I’s with Titan III solid rocket boosters (see the MLV-SAT-IB-11.5 series and the Saturn Ib Improvement Study) ; coupling a recoverable Saturn Ib first stage with recoverable Titan III SRMs would have produced either a seriously awesome launch system… or a seriously flawed one. Either would have been good. Instead, we plowed right ahead into the Space Shuttle program… while a seriously awesome piece of equipment, it’s a seriously flawed concept and program. And soon we won’t even have that. Had the Shuttle flaws been noticed by, say, 1970, chances are far better that a better launcher would have resulted than the chances of a good launcher emerging now.
Mar 012010
From the Mail Online:
A seven-month-old baby girl survived three days alone with a bullet in her chest beside the bodies of her parents and toddler brother.
Argentines Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their children before killing themselves after making an apparent suicide pact over fears about global warming.
Their son Francisco, two, died instantly after being hit in the back.
Jeez. I’ve heard some lameass crazytalk attemptign to explain suicides before, but fears of global warming is a new champion in the field of gibberish.