As a followup to This Post, here are two more images of the ASSET test vehicle.
First, a McDonnell Aircraft painting of ASSET:
And a minimally labeled cutaway photo of the vehicle:
May 112010
May 112010
Friggen’ awesome.
Sadly, the story is jam-packed with dumbth. Behold:
http://www.news.com.au/world/wheelchair-bound-lawyer-molested-judge/story-e6frfkyi-1225865125098
Cheecho Mertsaris is confined to a wheelchair and needs constant care, due to cerebral palsy caused by brain damage sustained at birth, myFOXny.com reported today.
He cannot speak coherently and his arms and hands often move in an uncontrolled fashion.
“He cannot do anything by himself – even eat,” his father said. … a TLC judge accused Mr Mertsaris of grabbing her upper thigh and buttocks while they were alone together.
… The district attorney said the case is being taken seriously because it involves a charge of sexual abuse.
THIS is why the legal system is such a mess and needs to be reformed. Start by permanently disbarring 90% of the lawyers and district attorneys. Who the hell would honestly think that a guy who can’t control his hands due to brain damage is worth taking to court because he may have smacked someone in the keister?
May 112010
Topless woman saves apartments from fire
A Darwin woman who used a hose to save a burning apartment building was so caught up in the moment she didn’t realise she was topless.
Tash Bennett was sunbaking by the pool at the Alatai Apartments in Darwin on Thursday when she noticed specks of ash falling on her, the NT News reports.
When Ms Bennett looked up, she saw a nearby palm tree on fire.
Ms Bennett rushed to the reception for help before arming herself with a fire hose and returning to the tree.
It was only after the fire was out she realised she had no bikini top on.
Compare that story to THIS ONE. I’ll take our side, thanks.
May 112010
HERE is a slideshow of the 20 least-visited National Monuments in the US. Most are in the southwest, but the two least-visited are, perhaps unsurprisingly, in Alaska. Here’s Number 1:
1. Aniakchak, Alaska
No roads will take you to Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, on the Alaskan peninsula 450 miles southwest of Anchorage. To access this park you’ll need to hire an air taxi or a power boat. The park encompasses a 6-mile-wide, 2,000-foot-deep caldera formed by the collapse of a 7,000-foot mountain and offers visitors a taste of one of the wildest terrains in Alaska. Things to do in the park include hiking the caldera floor, sport fishing and rafting the Aniakchak River. This is beautiful, wild landscape but visitors should proceed with caution: Even in the summer the average temperature is only in the high 40s to 50s, and hypothermia is always a threat.
Visitors in 2009: 14
Yeah, baby… FOURTEEN. Sure it’s a pain to get to, but at least your chances of being swamped out by hordes of Horrible Little Brats seems vanishingly small.
May 102010
Me, I’m just some dork with a blog. If I gave all this up and went to work flipping burgers, rather than suffering for it, my income would likely *increase.* But some people make their living by writing or otherwise expressing their opinions. It is in the financial best interests of these people to *think* before they blather, for they might irritate their customers to the point that they lose real money.
Take, for example, Roger Ebert. A few days back, in response to a few American kids at an American high school wearing shirts with American flags, Ebert tweeted thusly:
Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July.
This clearly equates the American flag with the Soviet one… and equates the US with the USSR. Well, oddly enough, this seemed to irritate some people, and he’s been getting some flack for it. So how does he respond? By digging that hole deeper:
I invite you to perform four easy thought experiments:
1. You and four friends are in Boston and attend the St. Patrick’s Day parade wearing matching Union Jack t-shirts, which of course you have every right to do.
2. You and your pals are in Chicago on Pulaski Day, and wear a t-shirt with a photograph of Joseph Stalin, which is your right.
3. In San Francisco’s Chinatown for the parade, your crowd wears t-shirts saying “My granddad was at the Rape of Nanking and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
4. In Chicago for the Bud Billiken Parade, you and your crowd, back in shape after three hospitalizations, turn up with matching t-shirts sporting the Confederate flag.
Now, with just a moment’s cogitation, even the leftiest of lefties can see where his analogies fall entirely flat. Here, I shall re-write them to be more relevant to the discussion:
I invite you to perform four easy thought experiments:
1. You and four friends are in Boston and attend the St. Patrick’s Day parade wearing matching US Flag t-shirts, which of course you have every right to do.
2. You and your pals are in Chicago on Pulaski Day, and wear a t-shirt with a photograph of Harry Truman, which is your right.
3. In San Francisco’s Chinatown for the parade, your crowd wears t-shirts saying “My granddad was at the bombing of Pearl Harbor and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
4. In Chicago for the Bud Billiken Parade, you and your crowd turn up with matching t-shirts sporting the US flag.
Spot the differences? The kids who got in trouble weren’t sporting the flags of the “enemy” out in Morgan Hill, CA. Even with respect to Cinco De Mayo, the “enemy” flag would have been that of *France,* not the US. Who would get upset at a display of the US flag on St. Patrick’s Day? Or Chinese New Year? Or Pulaski Day? Or MLK Jr. Day? Nobody, that’s friggen’ who. And that’s the point: not that people who wear US flags on Cinco De Mayo are jackholes, but that those who complain about the US flag on any day ARE jackholes.
So, Chicago Sun-Times… if you’re looking for someone to spout opinions… I work cheap. And I’m substantially less of a moron than Ebert.
May 102010
Ah, remember the good old days when it was *Republicans* who were constantly being accused of using religion in politics? Well, welcome to today:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday urged Catholic leaders to “instruct” their parishioners to support immigration reforms, saying clerics should “play a very major role” in supporting Democratic policies.
“The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me and say, ‘We want you to pass immigration reform,’ and I said, ‘I want you to speak about it from the pulpit. I want you to instruct your’ — whatever the communication is,” said Pelosi…
Awesome.
And then there’s this:
The people, some (who) oppose immigration reform, are sitting in those pews, and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the gospels,” she said.
OK, I’m not Catholic. Not even Christian. But I’m reasonably sure that I didn’t read anything about that Jesus feller instructing his flock to go tresspass, steal, and generally wreck other people’s stuff.
“as a practical matter” it’s not possible to tell 12 million illegal immigrants to “go back to wherever you came from or go to jail.”
Ummm… wrong. here, I’ll demonstrate:
Hey, illegal immigrants? Go back to wherever you came from or go to jail.
See how easy that was?
Washington has been at a loss on how to proceed on new federal policies that could put millions of illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.
Hey, I’ve got a suggestion. We already *have* processes in place to put non-Americans on a path to citizenship. My recommendation would be to institute a fairly easy “documented worker” program that takes the fingerprints and DNA of prospective immigrants, puts them on file in the US, and provides for them free transport from wherever they are to wherever they are going in the US… and provides free transport *back* when the time comes. There would need to be a few conditions:
1) They would need to have a documented job waiting for them. This could of course be a “National Agricultural Job Pool” of so-and-so many hundreds of thousands, on up to a specific job at XYZ Corporation.
2) When their job ends, they go home unless they apply through the system for another job.
3) The process to get this documented job begins in their nations capital (such as, say, Mexico City). The prospective migrant worker needs to show up In Person at the “job fair,” run out of the US Embassy. If you do not show up in person, we can’t take your fingerprint & DNA, and thus you can’t get enrolled.
4) There would be a one-year grace period for those in the US illegally, allowing them sufficient time to hightail it to their national capitol and enroll. Those caught by INS illegally in the US after that period would have their fingerprints and DNA put on file, and would *never* be allowed entry into the US again. They would then be transported to the capitol of their home nation. If they are captured within the US a second time, they would be deported to somewhere else. Kandahar, say.
May 102010
As mentioned HERE, I currently have four of the Sat V prints, with more on the way. The printed areas are about 10.5 inches by about 74 inches.
When the full set of ’em gets here, I’m going to attempt to market them at $45 each, plus postage. But for now, I’ll take orders for the FIRST FOUR BUYERS at $35 each, plus postage… $6 for US orders, $8.50 for non-US orders. The postage amount and quantity price applies no matter how many you buy. Example: if you want 5 prints, they’ll be $35 each, plus $6 postage, or $181 total.
Again, this early-buyer offer applies for the first four buyers only. So if you’re interested, post a reply here ASAP.
May 102010
The 1970’s saw the first major “oil crisis.” The prospect of a world without cheap oil led NASA to seriously contemplate solar power satellites… satellites the size of Manhattan in geosynchronous orbit; covered in solar cells, these satellites would beam hundreds of megawatts of power down to Earth via microwaves.
Something the size of a city could not be conveniently launched atop small launch vehicles. Instead, the cargo launchers would need to be vast… hearkening back to the Post-Nova/Post-Saturn desgins from the early 1960’s.
One such design was Boeing’s “Space Freighter,” a two stage manned and winged vehicle. The first stage was powered by rocket engines burning liquid oxygen with methane; the second stage used LOX and hydrogen. The first stage was equipped with turbojets to allow it to fly back to the launch site; the second stage was a glider, but had the advantage of being able to return at will from low Earth orbit like the Shuttle, and thus was able to glide to the chosen landing site.
Vast as this vehicle was, it still only managed roughly the same payload as the Post-Saturn vehicles from 15 years earlier, with less ability to grow more capable versions.
Scale comparison of the Space Freighter with the Shuttle, Saturn V and a smaller heavy lifter.
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Heavy Lifter options and evolution
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May 092010
Part of the first stage of the Titan II booster from the Gemini 5 mission was recovered at sea. It was not designed to be recovered, it was not meant to be recovered and it was not expected to be recovered… but nevertheless it *kinda* survived to be recovered. It was far from being reusable, however.
The first stage was likely intact when it hit the ocean, but it snapped in half. Shown here is the somewhat flattened remains of the upper thrid or so of the stage, the forward portion of the oxidizer tank.
May 092010
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.