Jan 112011
 

A few years back, I visited the NASA HQ historical archives. One of the folders I came across held originally classified hand-drawn NACA sketches of manned orbital vehicles… predecessors to the Mercury capsule, dated 3-3-1958. The first of these has been reproduced in various sources, re-drawn to look more polished. But it’s of some historic importance in the raw state. Given that theft was both unwise and unethical, I count myself fortunate that I was able to scan the pages.

I seem to recall that these, or at least the capsule cutaway, was sketched by Maxime Faget, who led the way to the Mercury capsule.

 Posted by at 6:40 pm
Jan 102011
 

So earlier today I wrote

I fully expect to see some interesting new laws being pushed in the next few weeks… gun control laws and speech restrictions (such as the Orwellianly-named “fairness doctrine”) specifically.

My prediction came true, but far faster than I suggested:

Carolyn McCarthy readies gun control bill

McCarthy’s spokesman confirmed the legislation will target the high-capacity ammunition clips the Arizona gunman allegedly used in the shooting, but neither he or the congresswoman offered any further details.

But wait! There’s MOAR!!!

Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told CNN that he also plans to take legislative action. He will introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress.

Because federal officials are more important than Little People.

Damnit, I just hit the gun show yesterday, and didn’t snap up the high-cap magazines. In retrospect, I probably coulda made my fortune if I’d known that the actions of a schizoid flag-burning communist Truther would lead to the usual pack of totalitarians in government to try once again to neuter the American people.

 Posted by at 12:32 am
Jan 092011
 

Clearly, he was urged on by liberal advocacy of violence, such as this call to murder Republicans by then-candidate Obama:

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

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It’s been interesting to watch the media go bonkers over the last day regarding the mass murder in Arizona yesterday. It is abundantly clear that the killer, Jared Loughner, was a grade-A nutjob, very likely schizophrenic. What little coherent political leanings he seemed to have appear to be at least vaguely left-leaning, such as listing the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf among his favorite books (but also Ayn Rand’s “We The Living”). There is not the slightest shred of evidence that this goofball even noticed the likes of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin… but the news channels and online forums are loaded to the gills with people who believe that this guy was motivated by some supposed threats against the Left made by Tea Partiers, Beck, Palin and company. Of course, many of these people also assumed that the Times Square bomber was a Tea Partier.

One very popular image over the last day is this one posted by Palin before the midterm elections that supposedly shows Dem candidates in “rifle sights:”

Notice those “crosshair” signs on the map? Small problem… those aren’t sniper rifle crosshaiors, those are “benchmark” symbols. And where are “benchmark” symbols used? Why… on maps, as it turns out.

And then there’s this map from the Democrat party… that not only does pretty much the same thing (but with “bullseyes” instead of benchmarks), but also uses entertainingly violent language… “targeting strategy,” “enemy lines,” “ripe targets.”

American politics is often described as a “blood sport,” and similar terms. Political opponants as “the enemy.” And every now and then, some psycho goes bugnuts and kills someone. Thing is, there need not have been a political reason for the killing, as seems to be the case here; but that won’t stop the conscienceless hacks from using that killing in order to tar their political opponants… as we’ve been seeing over the last day. I fully expect to see some interesting new laws being pushed in the next few weeks… gun control laws and speech restrictions (such as the Orwellianly-named “fairness doctrine”) specifically.

 Posted by at 2:45 pm
Jan 082011
 

In the 1970’s, there was a dubious flirtation with VTOL jet fighters for US Navy use. VTOL fighters would, theoreticaly, allow smaller ships to carry jet fighters, and could allow the cash-strapped Navy to weild decent air power without having to have a number of giant supercarriers. As it turned out, the whole idea fell flat.

But while it was ongoing, one proposed mode of VTOL operations was VATOL, for Vertical Attitude Take Off and Landing. In other words, tailsitters. Most of the designs were not tailsitters in the way that the Convair Pogo was… more in the way the Ryan X-13 was. They would not land tail-first on a  horizontal platform, but belly-first on a vertical platform. This way the platform could be hung over the side of the ship, permitting both easy rotation to horizontal for servicing while avoiding issues associated with a jet engine blasting directly onto a deck.

VATOL of course has the problem that the pilot can’t see where the hell he’s going while he’s laying on his back. So one idea was to tilt the entire cockpit forward by 90 degrees. Thus when the plane was in vertical position, the cockpit would still be in a comfortable horizontal position. No fighter jet had ever been built like that, so it was a concept needing some evaluation. NASA-Langley built subscale models of both the Northrop F-17 and F-16 with cockpits that would angle forward by about 90- degrees and flew them in vertical attitude. The tests showed that the idea was workable, but the weight penalty – and associated cost hits – helped make sure it never came to pass. The VATOL F-16 and F-18 were not true proposals; nobody seriously wanted VATOL versions of these craft. But they were convenient subjects for testing against known baselines. Photos below show a 1975 test.

 Posted by at 10:19 pm
Jan 052011
 

Here’s an actually heartwarming tale. A guy drives his life into the dirt with booze and drugs (apparently, it’s contractually required that every Heartwarming Tale begins with someone doing monumentally stupid things) and winds up begging at the side of the road. However, he has a good talent, gets video’ed by someone nearby who posts it to YouTube… and now he has some serious job offers, one of which includes a *house* as a perk.

Awesome.

 Posted by at 1:21 pm
Jan 042011
 

Well, here’s one way to get heavy lifting helicopters: nail a few existing helicopters together. A Piaseki idea shown in a report to the Navy in 1972 involved removing the tail from a more or less stock CH-53D and mating it with another almost stock CH-53D, using a rigid truss-structure to connect the two. Payload was to be up to 18.7 tons.

 Posted by at 3:46 pm