What was supposed to be:
Jun 082011
Jun 082011
How can you tell whether you’ve failed as a parent? There are a few ways. If you get arrested for your parenting, that’s a good way to tell. If your kid winds up on the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted, chances are good you’ve made a mess of things. How about a third way? Alright… if you spot your kid HERE, chances are good you did something really not quite right in the raising process.
Yikes.
Jun 082011
Yow. Keep an eye on the sky on June 9… should be some auroral displays from this.
[youtube Q_3u_0NN7OM]
Jun 082011
Jun 072011
The future of subsonic cargo aircraft, as seen from the vantage point of NASA-Langley in 1978:
Note that these mostly seem to be Boeing aircraft (or derived from Boeing aircraft at the very least). The “Twin” from 1980 was previously shown HERE. The “Spanloader” appears to be the Boeing Model 759-165A shown HERE. The “Advanced Freighter” and “Laminar Flow Control” can be seen in posts from the future (meant to, jsut never got around to it…)
Jun 072011
The more eagle-eyed of y’all might’ve noticed that the main website, http://up-ship.com/blog/, has not been changed in quite a long while. Additionally, the Drawings & Documents section has not been changed in even longer. This is because I haven’t had new stuff to add in a long time. I do have some new stuff to add, but changing the website is kind of a pain. So I’m planning on reworking things a bit. Instead of the links on the main Drawings & Documents page linking to the cumbersome “aircraft” and “spacecraft” sub-pages, they are going to be re-linked to individual blog postings. That means the blog is soon to be over-run with posts that are warmed-over versions of the existing Dwgs&Docs ads.
Hopefully this will help speed along new releases.
Jun 072011
Recently Sarah Palin has been taken to task for getting her history of Paul Revere wrong. But National Public Radio, no less, found themselves a history expert… who backs her up:
BLOCK: So you think basically, on the whole, Sarah Palin got her history right.
Prof. ALLISON: Well, yeah, she did.
The Washington Times adds some details.
Jun 072011
A design studied briefly in 1980-81 by Kentron International. A U-2 would be massively modified witha wing of much greater span and aspect ratio, with strut bracing to keep the thing from snapping off. The design was for a “research aircraft,” with a 31% improvement in cruise range over the baseline U-2.
This design had a wing area of 57.6 square meters, an aspect ratio of 20, an empty weight of 11,940 pounds, a loaded weight of 21,040 pounds, 7300 pounds of mission fuel, an unrefueled range of 3,073 nautical miles (475 minutes in the air) and a cruise altitude of 65,000 feet.
Jun 072011
U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions
Some people often complain that I blather on about politics when I should just stick with obscure bits of aerospace. Well… how The Hell is the United States supposed to have any kind of aerospace industry, let alone colonize the universe, when we have politically driven financial disasters like this???
Unless the US FedGuv gets spending under control – cut spending by 50%, for starters – the US is very soon going to be relegated to the “has-been” section of history.
Jun 062011
First of four photos. Same Martin Dyna Soar design as shown previously. Note that the mockup appears to be made of cardboard… cheesy, but perfectly adequate for preliminary layout purposes. Plus, some little kid may have gotten one hell of a spiffy Space Patrol Rocket to play in after its utility for Martin was finished.
. More likely, though, it got torched.