While getting the mail, I saw one of the large local hawks circling low overhead, so I grabbed the camera to take some photos. When I got back outside it had climbed substantially, but it was joined by two others. For all I know, this was some sort of affection-filled mating dance, but it sure looked like these two were trying to kill each other…
In 1966, Krafft Ehricke wrote and had illustrated a paper describing the next 35 years in space travel. In his view, the future would hold Orion nuclear pulse vehicles, fusion powered spacecraft, mining operations on Mercury and manned missions as far out as Titan.
Here’s a chart illustrating the increasing number of deep-space manned spacecraft processed in Earth orbit or on the moon. Note that things really kick off in 1988, when nuclear pulse vehicles get going:
Also included were a number of poorly-reproduced paintings (is there any other kind) illustrating some of the missions, such as the establishment of a research station on a remarkably haze-free Titan in 1995:
And the landing of an expedition on “Jupiter VII” in 1997:
Ehricke got the environments wrong (he included things like manned landings on Venus), and he *really* got the timing wrong. In fact, on his chart showing missions over the next 35 years… not a single one of them, not even the smallest, has come about. But what’s interesting is not that he was wrong. What’s interesting is that a respected rocket engineer could make these predictions with a straight face and fully expect to be taken seriously. Quite possibly he did not expect that his schedule would be adhered to. But certainly he thought that some effort would be made to fulfill missions at least somewhat like these, at least somewhat on the schedule he foresaw. But within two years, the Saturn V production line would be ordered closed, and a few years after that NASA would be pulled back from the exploration mission entirely, restricted to low Earth orbit Shuttles and the odd minimal space robot.
But as seen from 1966… hell, we should be on our way to Alpha Centauri now.
Damn.
I just gave myself a sad.
Right on the heels of the blog shutdown comes a new bit of spectacularness: the Earthlink webmail thing doesn’t work anymore, won’t let me in. Tech support says “48 hours.” Fortunately there are workarounds, but it’s still one more fly in the ointment, a monkey in the wrench, another pain in the ass.
As a followup:
1) After the ATK test and until the day before yesterday, whenever I’d go out into the yard I’d get a headache. When I went back indoors, it’d fade.
2) Day before yesterday, a big windstorm blew up, and I had a headache pretty much all day while indoors.
3) Yesterday I futzed around in the yard some, and noticed that the rocketdirt had largely blown off of organic surfaces… wood deck, plant leaves, etc. Minimal headache.
4) Today, no headaches.
Correlation is not causation. This is a concept that confuses and infuriates a great many people. Still, correlation is potentially interesting data.
Egad.
It’s time we killed the air show
It’s time we killed the air show.
Canada has no need of American fighter jets, nor do we need to thump our chests on a holiday weekend best suited to the quiet appreciation of the corn dog.
…
Let me remind you that the Indy races, held on the grounds of the Ex, are also a thing of the past; performance car races serve no useful purpose unless it is to wreck machinery, ruin eardrums and waste fossil fuel.
…
I say we replace the air show — and the Indy race — with the biggest, fastest, most technologically advanced electric car race in the world, with huge prizes and glorious honour for the winners.
I don’t know who this “Joe Fiorito” is, but he sounds like… well, this being a family-friendly sorta blog, I can’t really seem to drum up a term to describe the guy that wouldn’t be considered NSFW. I guess I’ll just leave it with “Parents, if you raise your sons to be like this guy, you’ve failed.”
Some recent results of some recent photography, reduced in size some. Well, a lot.
If you are my age or older, you remember “Buck Rogers.” More particularly, you remember Erin Gray. And most specifically, you remember her spandex “uniform.” Otherwise, “BR” was a bad, bad, BAD show.
When Buck Rogers came out, I was at that transitional age when I was old enough to recognize that Erin Gray merited watching, but young enough to not quite understand exactly why. Well, it’s thirty years later (shut up, shut up), and the understanding is complete.
Erin Gray seemed to have pretty much evaporated after BR and a sitcom (“Silver Spoons” or some such). However, turns out she’s not gone the usual self-destructive former-Hollywood-hottie route, but has picked up decent work behind the scenes. Watch an interview with her about her role at DragonCon HERE. And at age sixty, it seems the years have been kind to her.
I’ve been putting together some possible drawings for release on D-size sheets. These are as yet still far from finished, but they show what might be made available if there is interest.
———–
“A-4 Rockets.” Includes winged variants (1/48 scale) and A-10 variants (1/72 scale).
——-
“A-11/A-12 Conceptual Reconstructions” in 1/100 scale (A-11) and 1/200 scale (A-12)
————————
“A-12 Avenger II Configuration” these 1/48 scale drawings – something I started a few years back but sorta wandered off from – will include external configuration, wing sections, “fuselage sections,” weapons loads, etc.
————-
ICARUS/ROMBUS drawings(1/250 scale): Upper right (1/144 scale) will be an inboard profile.
————-
Project Pluto: includes different design studies (1/60 scale), booster options (1/48 scale), the baseline (or at least, best-defined, 1/32 scale) design, and related/competing designs(1/60 scale).
—————-
Sea Mistress: 1/144 scale general arrangment with 1/250 scale comparing SeaMistress to C-5, P6M, Martin seaplane fighter, others.
—————
Space Sortie designs (1/72 scale) from Boeing, GD, Rockwell, with to-scale comparisons and carrier aircraft (1/144 scale).
————–
Super Hustler & Related: scale comparison (1/144 scale) of related designs, with detailed drawings of Fish and Super Hustler (1/48 scale)
——————
These are the big D-sized sheets, as shown HERE. These will be substantially less expensive than the full-color blueprints. Some of them may be issued in two ways: as a single sheet (such as the to-scale comparisons of the Space Sortie vehicles), or as a “pack” (with all the other drawings). Packs will be less expensive on a per-page basis, but will be the only way to get the other pages.
Other possible drawings include:
1)the BWB collection (1/1000 scale)
2) Orion “Battleship”
3) SERJ-X-15
4) delta winged X-15A-3 (yes, I do have really good drawings of that)
5) Lockheed L-2000 SST
6) Boeing 2707 SST (-100, -200, -300)
7) Space Shuttle (I never have seen a really good set of clear diagrams of that along these lines)
8 ) X-20/Titan III
9) Convair NX-2 nuclear powered bomber
10) B-70 (including XB-70, B-70/X-15A-3, B-70/X-20, B-70 SST prototype, NAC-60 SST)
11) F-23 (including YF-23, F-23A, NATF-23, FB-23)
If you have an interest or a preference… let it be known.
After all the bitching about how Arizona’s law telling state police to enforce federal immigration laws is going to cause racial profiling… the United States Federal Government, in the forms of both ATF agents and sitting judges, have decided that American citizens had better racially profile… or face jail time:
Yes, yes, I know… “Inforwars” is not exactly the high water mark of non-crazy reporting. But the basic facts of the story seem to check out through other sources:
1) One Paul Copeland was a private citizen at an Austin, TX, gun show in Jan 2010
2) He was there selling a handfull of firearms. Which, as a US citizen, he’s perfectly within his rights to do without obtaining a FFL or any such nonsense.
3) A group of undercover ATF agents as well as Austin PD were at the gun show and observed a group of four Hispanic males. “The agents observed only one member of the group was speaking English, and that the men were avoiding the licensed gun dealers at the show. These observations led the agents to believe that the men might be illegal aliens.”
4) One of the Hispanics (“Aviles”) wanted one of Copelands guns. After the usual haggling, Aviles agreed to buy the gun.
5) Copeland asked to see Aviles identification.
6) Aviles refused to show it.
7) Another one of the group (“Huerta”) produced a seemingly valid Texas drivers license. Aviles gave the money to Huerta, who then bought the pistol from Copeland.
8 ) Huerta then gave the pistol to Aviles. Copeland saw this and objected that he had sold the pistol to Huerta.
9) The ATF agents saw this, and rightly noted that this is what’s known as a “straw purchase…” when someone who is legally notallowed to buy a gun gives the money to someone who is, who then buys it for the other person and gives it to them. This is a federal crime. The criminals here, however, are the straw *purchasers.*
10) The ATF agents stopped Aviles outside of the gun show and determined that he was an illegal alien.
11) The ATF agents then hassled Copeland, claiming he’d sold a firearm to an illegal alien. Copeland countered that he’d sold it to the guy with the apparently valid Texas drivers license.
12) The ATF confiscated all his weapons (the ones for sale as well as the one he was wearing) and let him leave.
13) On March 2, 2010, Copeland was indicted on charges of selling a firearm to an illegal alien, arrested on March 22. At trial, Huerta was brought in as a witness, admitted to being an illegal, admitted to the straw purchace… and was allowed to simply walk out of the courtroom. He has apparently not been arrested for his federal firearms crime *or* for being an illegal alien.
14) Copeland was convicted in federal court on July 20, 2010, and sentenced on August 27 to six months in a “work camp.”
Let me sum up: Copeland was arrested for selling a firearm to someone with a seemingly valid ID. He had no way to determine the legal status of Huerta, Aviles or anyone else. The ATF agents made a preliminary determination that the group of Hispanic males were worth watching as potential illegals because of the way they looked and spoke.
It seems to me that anyone who now wants to discriminate against Hispanics – or pretty much anyone, I suppose – now has a legal precedent for it: simply wave these news articles in the face of anyone who complains. According the the US FedGuv, American citizens will face arrest and conviction if they do business with anyone who *might* be an illegal.
The obvious joke here would be for someone to refuse to serve President Obama a hamburger because he *might* be an illegal.
