Another piece depicting a ground attack variant of the X-22. This time the changes are more involved, including a wholly new tandem cockpit. The turret is gone, but the trainable side guns remain. A substantial load of iron bombs is depicted.
[youtube nv_q8q6Z9_I&]
No home arsenal is complete without a nuclear recoilless gun.
A piece of artwork from the Bell archives showing a minimally-modified X-22 as a ground attack vehicle. The X-22 was surprisingly small, and if armed probably would have been capable of carrying much the same ordnance as the AH-1 Cobra.
It’s shown here with two trainable gun pods, an offset underside turret (looking not unlike the turret used on early Cobras) and a single deployable rocket pod.
I guess this is an end of an era:
http://news.yahoo.com/last-vietnam-era-draftee-decides-retire-085254385.html
Jeff Mellinger was drafted into the Army in 1972, and has decided to retire with the rank of Command Sgt. Major. In other words: not the man with whom to mess.
And while he didn’t actually go to Viet Nam (he was sent instead to Germany, which makes him a “Viet Nam Era Veteran”), he spent three tours in Iraq and survived 27 roadside bombings.
Fifteen years ago today the film “Independence Day” opened. While certainly not the most cerebral of all motion pictures, it was damned fine entertainment. Like the “Transformers” franchise, there was just a whole hell of a lot of it that was blatantly stupid. Aliens crossing lightyears to strip a planet of resources? Starfaring aliens needing human satelites for communications (what, they don’t have their own?)? City-sized spaceships that need a live-broadcast countdown… rather than a simple clock? And of course, an alien operating system that a mid-90’s laptop can easily interface with?
Sure, it was really cheesy and silly. But the first half or so of the movie, through the destruction of the cities and up to “Welcome to Erf,” was surprisingly creepy and effective. It led the way to later cinematic aliens trashing Earth on an epic scale, such as “War of the Worlds,” each of the “Transformers” movies and TV series such as “Falling Skies.”
The thing that has stuck with me most, though, may have been entirely unintentional. Months before the movie was released, the preview was shown in theaters. The climax of the trailer showed the White House getting zapped by the alien Death Beam and blowing up with a massive fireball. I suspect the intent was Drama. But the actual result weas… laughter. I recall the whole theater erupting into laughter and even cheers when the White House Got Blowed Up Real Good. I understand that that was a common reaction to the trailer all across the US.
While that almost certainly wasn’t the intent of the filmmakers, in retrospect it was probably inevitable. When Americans are at our best, we are busy showing no respect whatsoever to “our leaders,” A.K.A. politicians. We seem to accept that there must be some reason for ’em, but that’s no reason to not flip ’em the bird, moon ’em, throw pies at ’em or just point and laugh. And at the time – early 1996, IIRC – President Bill Clinton was busy turning the White House into even more of a joke. So laughing at alien invaders nuking the White House was pretty much a given.
Hell, just six months after ID4, “Mars Attacks!” came out and featured a “Martian Ambassador” who takes out Congress. This time, the response in the movie itself to this event was to have a little old lady shout “They blew up Congress!” then laugh herself silly.
I suspect if a movie had aliens or terrorists blow up the UN General Assembly, THAT would be damned funny too, no matter what the movie-makers intentions are.
Past few weeks have been “Cropdusting Season” around here. I believe I’ve only seen a single cropduster, but I’ve seen that single cropduster rather commonly; the pilot is certainly being kept busy. Most of the time the patterns are flown kinda tight… the tighter the turns, the faster the turns, and the sooner the job is done. But a few of the locations, such as farms butted up against Thatcher Mountain, require even harsher maneuvering.
It looks like a hoot.
Religion and science fiction have had an odd relationship. Take Star Trek for example: the original series rarely dealt with humans religions, but there were a few oblique references to Christianity being in existence in a few episodes. But by the time of Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry declared that humanity had thrown off superstition, and we as a species were now atheist. Oddly, though, just about everybody else in the universe was religious. And just as massively unlikely as it would be for humanity to become entirely atheist in just a few centuries was the unlikeliness of the mono-religious nature of every other species. Klingons all had the same religion, as did the Vulcans, the Bajorans and whoever else.
Babylon 5, on the other hand, had religion as a common and varied feature of many species, including humans. The only reference to religion fading out by the time of B-5 that I can recall was in one of the “Untold Stories” episodes that was filmed *years* after the series ended. But even so, other episodes showed that a thousand years after the time of B-5, the Catholic Church was still a force of some note.
Still, it remains an interesting question: what happens to religion if certain science fiction cliches come to pass? Perhaps the most likely ponderable is: “what happens to current human religions if we descover extraterrestrial life?” If that life is simple – bacteria, lichen, that sort of thing – I doubt any current religion would really care one way or the other. Where things get twitchy is if we come across a clearly intelligent species. If they come here, hover over our cities and land on the White House lawn. What happens if we learn to communicate with them and they turn out to be atheists? Religions around the world will be in an uproar. What if they turn out to have a religion that is directly comparable to, say, Hinduism or Catholicism? Clearly, those of the comparable religion will probably be pretty smug… those of other religions will probably feel… hell, I don’t know *what* they’d feel. And if they have their own religion(s) that is entirely unlike human ones, then what?
Many people of faith have tried to decide what the mere knowledge of intelligent extraterrestrials would do. There is a discussion of just that HERE. Some believe it would shake the Christian faith; others believe that it would strengthen it. Of course, all this would kinda depend on just what the aliens have to say about God.
One can hope that alien religions won’t include tenets like “kill all the humans” or “force everyone to convert,” but instead will be something more like “people can worship or not as they choose.” But even so, there is a likely source of trouble: humans. For some examples, take a look at this Free Republic thread. A sizable fraction of the respondants seem entirely convinced that since the Bible doesn’t mention aliens and the salvation thereof, they cannot exist. People tend to not react well when faced with the existence of what they firmly believe cannot exist. Other posters believe that any intelligent life discovered would be, in fact, demons in disguise. And while it would be sensible to be skeptical and cautious in the face of an advanced race of interstellar beings, going in with the assumption that they are, in fact, evil incarnate and that you need to fight and destroy them would *not* be the way to keep them from slagging our planet.
I suspect that one quick religious reaction to the announcement of aliens would be the creation of all new religions based around either worship of the aliens, or worship of whatever the faithful think the aliens worship. It will *not* be helpful if our first contact is with some smartass who decides to fork over his species equivalent of the “Twilight” novels with the claim that these are the holy texts worshipped across the cosmos.
Another source of trouble from humans would be the human missionary urge. What happens if they get here and are not only atheist, but had never even encountered the notion of God before? When the missionaries get to them, will the aliens laugh ’em out of the room… or go on a bender of conversions? Just what we *don’t* need is to have the aliens hovering over New York convert to Catholicism, while those hovering over Cairo convert to Shia Islam. Imagine suicide bombers with antimatter backpacks, and auto-da-feys using gamma ray lasers. Oy.
And then there’s another sci-fi cliche: time travel. Time travel features in a *lot* of sci-fi. But let’s face it, they tend to get the targets wrong. If someone had a practical, reliable time machine, you can bet your ass that one of the first targets will be a religiously important moment. How many Christians *wouldn’t* want to pop back in time with a video camera to catch the sermon on the mount… and to hang around for a little while to see the Crucifixion and – probably most importantly – the ressurection? How many Muslims wouldn’t want to go back to see Mohammad point at the moon and cause it to crack in half or ride off into the sky from the Temple Mount? How many Jews wouldn’t want to see the parting of the Red Sea or take a peek at the tablets with the Ten Commandments?
But sci-fi rarely features these episodes… and for good reason. If you have a time traveller go back to see Christ come back to life, unless you chicken out (the time machine is busted, the time traveller misses it by a few days or lands thousands of miles off course, etc.) you either have to confirm or deny the religion in question. If you portray this vital religious moment as hogwash, you piss off the believers. If you portray it as the real deal, you mark yourself as a religious nut. Eaiser to just avoid it. This is not to say that sci-fi *always* avoids the topic. “Behold the Man” for example, which is a tale sure to thrill the bejeebers out of the evangelicals in your life.
Time travel will, I feel fairly confident, remain the stuff of fiction for a very long time to come. But aliens? In principle, they could be here *now.* And if their existence is made known, you can be that every religion on Earth is going to notice. Whether that leads to good or bad will be left up to the believers. And given the history of True Believers, times will be… interesting.
OK, haloes, not a rainbow. But “rainbow” sounds better.
Photos taken at Hill Aerospace Museum a week or two back.
The SR-71 “trainer” on display at the Hill Aerospace Museum.
The left side of the cockpits. There is a small chunk taken out of the leading edge chine, revealing a white fibrous substance. I can’t say whether this is the original fiberglass material that composed a good portion of the leading edge, or just some later “spackle.”
The pointy end of the plane, showing pitot tube and air data sensor.
Where the piot assembly meets the nose of the plane.
Right side of the nose, showing the heads of the bolts that hold it all together
(This answers THIS CONTEST)
