The blog was offline for around 12 horus today due to “server maintenance” or some damned thing at Hostcentric. This was *really* annoying.
Sep 062010
Sep 052010
An idea out of Lockheed-California, circa March 1963 for a VTOL C-130. Featuring fore and aft rotors like the Chinook, but with only two blades per rotor, and the ability to align them for minimum drag during forward flight. However, the illustration seems to show a dearth of actual powerplants. The normal C-130’s four turboprops are here reduced to two… with no means of powering the props shown. No further data on this.
Sep 052010
I’m not normally prone to headaches. One or two good ones per year, maybe. But I’ve had a number of them the past several days… since the ATK test. I’ve correlated most of them to spending periods of time out in the yard… watering my few sad trees, standing in the driveway taking photos of the Milky Way, that sort of thing. Today I’ve gotten a whopper, even though I haven’t left the house. So that would argue against a “fallout” cause. Except… we’ve got a pretty good windstorm merrily roaring away just now, blowing crap all over inside my house.
Hmm.
Sep 052010
This is *beyond* sick and wrong:
ANY ITEM that looks like a gun will have to be licensed under several changes to the Weapons Act being considered by the Queensland State Government.
Even guns made out of materials as unlikely as soap or plastic may have to be kept under lock and key if they could “reasonably be taken to be a weapon”. …
Sep 052010
US Army Ballistic Missile Agency artwork from 1959 depicting the then-current configuration of the Saturn first stage. While generally much like the Saturn I that actually flew, note differences such as the large parachute pack in the nose for booster recovery.
Sep 042010
A standard practice around these parts is to burn farm fields after harvest. I gather it’s to clear the field so that the next year a different crop came be plants (crop rotation is the norm). In any event, it’s sometimes rather apocalyptic-looking, with hundreds and thousands of acres roaring away, shooting giant plumes of smoke into the sky. As seen below, there’s also a certain beauty to it, when the colors are just right.
Sep 042010
Sep 042010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467004575463833265055248.html
Navy Chaplain Terry Moran is steeped in the Bible and believes all of it. His assistant, Religious Programs Specialist 2nd Class Philip Chute, is steeped in the Bible and having none of it.
…
“He trusts God to keep him safe,” says RP2 Chute. “And I’m here just in case that doesn’t work out.”
Ha!
In all honesty, though, the chaplain here sounds like a Grade-A dimwit. Not sbout his religious beliefs (though his belief that the world is 6,000 years old is pretty dimwitted), but because he seems completely oblivious to the fact that he’s in a combat zone. If he wants to act the dumbass and win a Darwin award, hey, great… but unfortunately it seems likely he’ll put other people in harms way through his obliviousness.
“Tell the [expletive] chaplain to get behind the goddamn vehicle,” Gunny Shawhan yelled into the radio.
“Like bullets aren’t going to kill the goddamn chaplain,” he muttered to the men near him.
The chaplain does say one thing that’s terribly important to take note of:
“He’s familiar with the Christian doctrine, but he chooses not to believe it,” … “That’s what I find puzzling.”
To far too many True Believers of any religion, the idea that someone can be familiar with their faith and not be a believer is just mind-snappingly puzzling. It is, I suppose, much like the way I feel when someone tells me that such-and-such relatively mundane occurance was a “miracle” and “proof” that God exists/loves us/whatever, or when I hear someone say that all the vast collated store of data regarding paleontology, astronomy and geology somehow provide not evidence for an old universe that has seen evolution, but instead is easily handwaved away as being irrelevant to the story of how the Earth is only 6000 years old.
For some belief systems, there is no understanding of some others.
Sep 042010
Dead…
… and alive:
Sep 042010
Between North American Aviations famous P-51 Mustang and their famous F-86 Sabrejet was their less well known FJ-1 Fury.
The FJ-1 took to the air in 1946 as a rather tubby, barrel-shaped jet plane with straight wings. But it began its life in October 1944 as a concept, illustrated below via painting and model photo, as a somewhat sleeker jet plane… one clearly derived from the P-51. The cockpit canopy, wings and tail surfaces all seem to be minimally modified from the P-51, with a fuselage that still shows hints of P-51-ness.
Images courtesy Mark Nankivil, from the SDAM.
UPDATE: Author Tommy Thomason sends along this illustration comparing the FJ-1 to the P-51D. While nothing on the FJ-1 appears to be stock P-51D, it’s obviously composed of parts derived from the P-51D. The October 1944 FJ-1 woudl seem to be even closer to the P-51.
