Ye gods…
http://www.inspiredsilver.com/p948_the-modern-claddagh-ring.html
If you don’t get why this is funny-fail, don’t worry… you’re probably better off. If you do get it, you’re probably like me, wondering if this was intentional.
So I finally got around to scanning the sketch of the Perigee West Company’s “Euclid” Ultra Large Launch Vehicle from Hujsak’s “The Future of US Rocketry.” It is not exactly as originally described HERE; instead of 18 M-1 engines, it has 20 STME’s. And instead of a million pounds payload, it has only a paltry 600,000 pounds payload. I assume that these discrepancies are due to design changes.
As shown, the sketch is not very detailed, and does not give across the idea that this was an in-depth design effort. However, most of the drawings in Hujsak’s book are drawn in this fashion, so it’s hard to say how detailed the original source drawings were.
If anyone knows of the source material, I’m interested. I don’t knot that much about the Perigee West Co. other than Edward Hujsak was the president.
Always coming up with new ways to annoy Raedthinn…
Disposed of some garbage tonight. Photos:
The XP-69 was an unbuilt fighter designed during WWII by the Republic Aviation Corporation. While appearing largely conventional, it was to be a large plane (span 51′ 8″, length 51′ 6″), and was to be fitted with the Wright R-2160 42 cylinder (yes, forty-two) radial engine behind the cockpit, driving the propellor with a long shaft. It was designed for high altitude operations (ceiling: 48,900 feet) and had a pressurized cockpit. Max speed was to be 450 mph, with a range of 1,800 miles. It was armed with two 37mm cannon and four 50 caliber machine guns. The program was cancelled in May of 1943.
A large 3/4-scale wind tunnel model of the design was tested by the NACA, drawing shown below.
http://www.connectmidmichigan.com/news/story.aspx?id=481793
Short form: There’s an increase in the use of privately minted coinage for economic transactions. Small stuff… gasoline, food, etc. In many ways a privately minted coin could well be far more “trustworthy” than actual US currency… a coin made out of actual silver has greater intrinsic value than the equivalent “value” of paper money.
One of the great founders of the space age, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, was a prolific scribbler of intersting ideas for how to get around and live in space. One of his concepts was for a conical “greenhouse.” This apparently simple structure would rotate around its long axis to generate artificial gravity; a hemispherical window at the wide end would let in sunlight. The greenhouse would be oriented so that it was always pointed at the sun.
An interesting (to me, at any rate) thing about this design is that virtually every time I see it illustrated, it is as a far bigger, far more developed design. Like this:
Something I’ve never been able to determine is how Tsiolkovsky’s simple scribble turned into the larger concept. Was the later design somethign he in fact drew later… or was this artistic extrapolation on someone else’s part, and it simply got picked up by others? I’ve no idea.
If you’re interested in Tsiolkovsky’s sketches, there are a bunch of ’em here:
http://www.ras.ru/ktsiolkovskyarchive/1_actview.aspx?id=84
The website itself is in Russian, so I’ve no good idea what exactly is going on or how to navigate it. But there it is. Enjoy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10707416
Summary: Star R136A1, 22,000 lightyears away, has a mass 265 times that of the sun and is about a million times brighter.
“If it replaced the Sun in our Solar System, it would outshine [it] by as much as the Sun currently outshines the full Moon,”
Stars far smaller than this blow themselves up as supernovae at the end of their lives. It would be interesting to know if that’s the fate for giant stars like this… and what that would mean for Earth to have a super-supernova that close.
Use technology. And have Hot Israeli Chicks operate it.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100713/FOREIGN/707129834/1002
It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick.
The aim: to kill.
Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army.
Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.
…
Another piece of hardware recently developed for the Israeli army is the Guardium, an armoured robot-car that can patrol territory at up to 80km per hour, navigate through cities, launch “ambushes” and shoot at targets. It now patrols the Israeli borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Freakin’ AWESOME. The Israelies are surrounded and massively outnumbered; and systems like these will allow them to defend themselves with less risk to their own people’s lives.
The TSR-2 is a cautionary tale. Or perhaps just the tail end of a larger cautionary tale.
From World War II through the 1950’s, the British aerospace industry was second to none. Their planes were top of the line, ugly as hell and gave the Russian military the cold sweats. Their industry was forward thinking, stuck liquid fueled rocket engines on airplanes just for giggles, produced a seemingly endless stream of quality products with terrible names and called no man Mister. Well, except for the Queen… seems they got all deferential and whatnot around her for some reason. Shrug. But with the 1957 “Defence White Paper” by Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys, things started going straight down the tubes. The white paper essentially called for the end of manned military aircraft, their roles supposed to be taken by unmanned missiles; it also called for the merger of Britain’s many independent aircraft companies into a few large companies, and promised to only offer contracts to such merged companies. Instead of doing the right and proper thing, and flinging Sandys across the English Channel with a giant rocket-boosted trebuchet, the British government and aviation industry actually followed the directives. Many promising programs were killed outright; the companies began to merge.
Developed in the early 1960’s by the British Aircraft Corporation (itself formed in 1960 by the merger of several formerly successful aviation firms) as a fast, low-altitude strike bomber. It was born as a program in March of 1957 with the release of General Operational Requirement 339, and somehow, apparently magically, survived the Sandys culling of manned aircraft projects. The mission was to fly low and fast, hugging the terrain to stay under the radar. A pseudo-stealth tactic then being designed for the Pluto nuclear ramjet and later utilized on cruise missiles.
It advanced as far as the first prototype taking flight (Sept 1964). Shortly afterwards (April 1965), of course, it was cancelled in favor of buying the General Dynamics F-111K which was thought would be cheaper. And as it turned out, the costs of the F-111 program skyrocketted, far in excess of the projected TSR-2 costs, so even the F-111K purchase was cancelled. Britain would not get a plane to fill the role until the Panavia Tornado.
The British Aircraft Corporation went on to not build any further military aircraft on its own, and was eventually merged with the other sad remnants of the once-proud British aerospace industry to form the nationalized company British Aerospace. Since it’s formation in 1977, BAe has gone on to fill the skies with precisely zero military aircraft of its own, only being able to produce the Typhoon in conjunction with Italian, German and Spanish companies. The Typhoon began its life with preliminary requirements from the RAF in 1971, and as of 2010 is actually in series production. Britain has developed no bombers since the TSR-2.
The lesson: bureaucrats wiped out one of the worlds great industries, virtually overnight, by a few simple proclamations. All that’s left are a few broken museum pieces, photos, film, artwork and drawings showing what might have been.
The source of this drawing is unknown to me.