And here’s an F-117 carrying conventional non-stealthy LGB’s. Also shown is the faceted pylon that would carry all of these weapons.
Sep 162010
Sep 162010
WANT.
http://www.amazing1.com/burning-lasers.htm
Laser Gun – A prelude to a weapon of the future – the technology is here! Now Available – hand held, battery operated, 500 joules of pulse energy produce an intense burst of light capable of burning holes in most materials.
Input Voltage: 12VDC @ 1.5AMPS, 20-30sec. Charge Time Rod: 3 x 1/4″ Nd:GLASS With Integral Mirrors Output: 1-3 Joules @ 1.06 Microns Infra Red Storage Capacity: 270 Micro farads @ 2 KV Flash lamp Energy @ 1000 Volts: 135 Joules, @1500 Volts: 300 Joules Single Collimnating Lens 120 to 150 Shots From Internal AA Batteries Certified Class 4 Laser Product
Yay!!!! Handheld laser weapons that can do actual physical damage, and that you can buy! Yay, capitalism!
LAGUNSYS – Lab Assembled with Flashlamp, without Laser Rod (NDGL) ………………………………………$1949.95
NDGL – 3″ x 1/4″ Laser Rod Nd:Glass 6% doped with mirrored ends, full spec and brand new >1J …..$595.00
BOOOO!!!!! Damned capitalists!
———–
Seriously, the product is pretty neat, but still pretty far from a full-up phaser. It takes 20 to 30 seconds to charge up between shots, and each shot might hurt a person, but would hardly likely be fatal. Plus, the ergonomics suck:
It appears to have both fore and aft “pistol grips” that look like straight tubes. If someone goes to the bother of building one of these, I’d hope they’d go the extra step of ditching the “lab equipment” look and put it in a fiberglass phaser rifle housing or some such. And replace the battery pack in the weapon itself with a backpack full of batteries… or, better yet, something like a methanol fuel cell. Tens of thousands of shots, and if the power source is jacked up, a much faster charge time. Additional cooling systems would also likely to be required.
If an individual shot is powerful enough to take out a bird or small critter… holy crap. Varmint hunting has just gone to a whole new level. No windage, no gravity drop, no muzzle flash, and probably pretty quiet operation. Instead of getting one shot and then watching all the ducks fly off except the one you shot… now you get to plink away for minutes on end, with the ducks simply flopping over dead with a small smoking hole in their noggins.
Expect this to be banned momentarily.
Sep 162010
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/dodd-unaware-of-interim-appointment-power-for-warren.php
The authority for the Treasury Department to grant an interim appointment — distinct from a “recess appointment” — comes from the financial reform law itself.
In dismissing the rumor last night, though, Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd — who authored the law — claimed he’d never heard of the interim appointment power.
“I don’t know what it is. I never heard of it before,” said a flabbergasted Dodd to TPMDC.
Do I even need to say anything?
Sep 162010
NASA artwork from the late 70’s or early 80’s showing the Shuttle SRB.
Sep 162010
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/75198
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009 on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex.
What?
$823,200 to teach African men how to wash their genitals
Sep 162010
I took the responses I got and fed ’em through Excel. Basically, I just listed everyone’s chosen topics in order and weighted them on a simple scale ( #1 gets a weight of “1,” #2 gets 0.9, #3 gets 0.8, etc) and then added everything up. The results:
b70 8.5
x15 7.1
a12 5.6
f23 5.4
icarus 4.6
2707 4.6
pluto 4.5
orion 4
l2000 3.3
hustler 3.6
bwb 3.2
sortie 3
X20 3
nx2 2.9
a11 2.7
serj 1.6
mistress 0.8
Turns out that the B-70 and X-15A-3 drawings are at the top of the list, while Pluto is in the middle, BWB is near the bottom and SeaMistress is *at* the bottom. Which is kind of a shame, since Pluto, BWB and SeaMistress are the drawings closest to being ready.
Day before yesterday I had a whole bunch of prints run off of a number of the drawing sets… Pluto, A-11/A-12, Sortie, SeaMistress. These were all full-D-size drawings, and are now scribbled on in red pen. The check prints showed a number of things that needed improving…some of the detail lines were set to too faint of a color (looks fine on screen, looks not-so-good on paper), for instance. Still, on the whole my impression is that most of them are really quite impressive.
And now that the stats are in hand showing that a full 8+ people on the planet are interested in the B-70 drawings, that’s what’s now in works. It’ll take a while, though… in order to get the B-70 drawing set complete, the X-15A-3 and the Dyna Soar drawings will also need to be completed.
Sep 152010
Does the BBC have a sense of humor, or are the names in this article real and relevant to the story?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-11294837
York choirgirl Isabel Suckling lands record deal
Dickon Stainer, president of Decca Records Group…
Really?
And the BBC tops it off with this bit of journalistic/editorial genius on the side of the page:
Mexico plans largest ever bicentennial
Biggest ever bicentennial, huh? How many bicentennials has Mexico celebrated?
Sep 152010
WordPress is at it again, demanding that commenters be registered and logged in before commenting. Hopefully I’ve flipped all the required switches back.
Last time was only July 2. These issues seem to be more frequent.
Sep 152010
NASA photos of a large model of the F-22 with some differences… a two-seat canopy and a whole lot of stuff hanging under the wings. This does not appear to be a standard wind tunnel model… it appears to be made of thin Kevlar-fiber/epoxy sheets. This would indicate that the model was meant to fly… whether dropped from a helicopter or other aircraft, or “flown” in a wind tunnel, I haven’t the data to say. The latter seems likely. Note that the control surfaces are hinged and appear to have actuators. Circa 1993.
Sep 152010
Just in case you were wondering. I have a number of job searches running… have for a long while. And results like the one below don’t exactly fill me with the sense of optimism about my future as a designer and developer of rockets/launch systems/spacecraft/starships that I once had:
How exactly a search for “solid rocket” leads to Golden Corral Restaurants, I’ve no freakin’ clue. In any event, it’s been half a year or more since there’s been a result that was actually relevant to my skillset. Putting my own doom-filled fate aside, the lack of apparent hiring opportunities for rocket engineers doesn’t inspire confidence that the US has much of a future in space.