Air Drawing 2: B-1 Model Drawing

 aircraft, drawings, models  No Responses »
Aug 082011
 

Large format drawing of the B-1A bomber. Scanned at 300 dpi grayscale from a 1/150 scale drawing (Rockwell, dated 1976), presents top/bottom, side, front views along with landing gear details and numerous fuselage, nacelle, wing and stabilizer cross-sections. Intended to aid model builders.
BONUS: Contemporary B-1 publicity material… “B-1 Mission Versatility” brochure, USAF B-1 Strategic Bomber Fact Sheet.
BONUS BONUS: Smaller, equivalent drawing of the B-1B. Shows changes from A to B model.
download order: $5.50

 Posted by at 8:37 am

Starships are not small: more

 awesomeness, blather, books, drawings, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, rockets, science, science fiction, spacecraft  9 Responses »
Aug 072011
 

As mentioned previously, I’m still plugging away on my Nuclear Pulse Propulsion book I’ve got the Daedalus diagrams mostly done… most of the actual drafting is probably done, but there’s some line formatting and layering to work on yet. Shown below is the full British Interplanetary Society Daedalus starship design in all its two-stages of glory on the left, with the stages separate on the right, the vehicle as a unit. Wedged in between ’em are the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle, looking small and inoffensive.

The Daedalus is at a scale where the Shuttle is just not doing the job as a scale reference. Does anyone know where I could get an *accurate* side view (either a CAD drawing or a detailed GIF/JPG) of the Empire State Building?

 Posted by at 8:57 pm

Yay! I’m on Spaceweather!

 photography  1 Response »
Aug 072011
 

Spaceweather.com posted one of my aurora photos:

The show was not restricted to Canada. Northern Lights spilled across the border into the United States as far south as Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska. (Note: The faint red lights photographed in Nebraska are typical of low-latitude auroras during major geomagnetic storms.) Observers in Europe as far south as England, Germany and Poland also witnessed a fine display. Browse the gallery for more examples.

Mine is the Utah photo, as may be apparent.

 Posted by at 5:09 pm

“In Defense of Flogging”

 awesomeness, blather, politics  6 Responses »
Aug 072011
 

Here’s an interview with an author who is suggesting that we re-introduce flogging into the penal code. His idea: give the convict a choice… prison time, or a rattan cane to the ass. Something like one whack per six months of jail time. It’s an idea I’ve considered for *years.*

The basic points:

1: It would be difficult to claim that this is “cruel and unusual punishment” if the convict *chooses* it. If the counter-claim is that “well, of course the convict would choose twenty lashes when faced with the prospect of ten years in prison,” you now have to ask if prison is “cruel and unusual punishment.”

2: Flogging a guy, having a prison doctor patch him up, let him recuperate in the infirmary for a few days then sending him on his way is going to be a damn sight cheaper than locking him up for *years* at taxpayer expense. Instead, he is back out at least *maybe* working a job.

3: No extended prison sentence  = no extended time hanging out with hardened criminals, learning to be more criminal and being involved with prison rape, violence and gangs.

4: The purpose of prison is supposedly to reform criminals. Ha. The prison system makes little enough attempt at doing such a thing, and of course the prison population itself works to make other prisoners as criminal as possible. Flogging would of course do nothing to “reform” the convict, but it would certainly stay clearly within his mind. Not an experience likely to be quickly forgotten, or lightly overlooked when contemplating recidivism.

It is a concept at least worth some examination. However, I’d bet good money that it’s a concept that doesn’t get past the “you’re a monster” or “you’re a racist” level of debate.

But ask yourself: you’ve been convicted of, say, tax fraud. You’re staring down the barrel of ten years locked up with violent felons. You will of course lose everything… job, house, finances, family. Or… you can get 20 lashes and be back out next week. Your job is probably gone and your finances are likely a mess, but you still have your family, some job prospects, valid and up-to-date contacts, etc. What would *you* choose?

 Posted by at 11:17 am

There’s a lesson here about “fine tuning”

 awesomeness, blather, religion, science  7 Responses »
Aug 072011
 

Creationists do so love to yammer on about how vanishingly unlikely it is that random chemicals will form themselves into even primitive forms of life. The implication is that since the numbers are huge, that means it can’t happen.

Well, how about an occurrence that has a statistical likelihood of “one in 18 septillion.” That’s 1/18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Well, guess what.

Meet The “Luckiest” Woman In The World

First, she won $5.4 million; then a decade later, she won $2 million; then two years later $3 million; and finally, in the spring of 2008, she hit a $10 million jackpot.

Unsuprisingly, it turns out that a lot of her neighbors seem to be convinced that this is all God’s Doing. As with the statistical unlikelihood of chemical biogenesis, or the supposed “fine tuning” of the universal constants that allow for life as we know it, there is no other explanation for this astronomically unlikely event.

Except, however, there *is* an alternative explanation. Turns out she has a PhD in statistics and may have figured out how to game the system. If so… good for her!

The point here is… believing that vanishingly unlikely stats prove that something is impossible without divine intervention may simply mean that you haven’t really understood the system.

 Posted by at 10:57 am

Air Drawing 1: R3Y Tradewind and Martin Sea Master

 aircraft, drawings, drawings&documents, projects  No Responses »
Aug 072011
 

Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation drawing 3-00001, “Three View, R3Y-1.” Packed with dimensional data, and with a Convair designers penciled annotations. Dates from 1952. Scanned at full color 300 DPI, 7417 x 3265 pixels.
“General Arrangement, US. Navy High Speed Seaplane Mine Layer,” AKA Sea Master. Full of dimensional and weight data. Dates from 1952; this is a pre-prototype design. Scanned at full color 300 DPI, 6016 x 3104 pixels

Download order: $5.50

See the full catalog of drawings & documents.

 Posted by at 10:02 am

Aurora animations

 awesomeness, photography, science  2 Responses »
Aug 072011
 

I took some of the photos of last nights auroras and made animated GIFs out of ’em. Since these things get really big really fast, below are dinkysized version; after the “Continue Reading” are larger (500 pixel wide) versions. They are sped up substantially… six second exposures, IIRC.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:02 am

Old-school NASA procurement

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, history, I'm from the government, news, politics, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  7 Responses »
Aug 062011
 

*THIS*, more than anything, is why NASA no longer stands at the forefront of leading the charge into the heavens:

New NASA moon rocket could cost $38 billion

According to preliminary NASA estimates, it would cost between $17 billion and $22 billion to ready the new rocket and Orion capsule for a test flight in December 2017 that would put an unmanned capsule into a lunar orbit. An additional $12 billion to $16 billion would be needed to launch the first crew on a lunar flyby in August 2021.

I usually make at least a token attempt to keep the dialogue vaguely “family friendly” on this blog, at least in the main posts. But here, I’ll make an exception.

Rockets and capsules are *not* that friggen’ hard. They are not that friggen’ expensive. Just as with health care, when you get a massively bloated government bureaucracy involved, prices skyrocket… because those paying the bills aren’t paying out of their own pockets, so they come to not *care* what the bills are. And those getting paid quickly realize that they can charge whatever the hell they like, and they’ll get paid. Much of aerospace has not only fallen into this cesspit, it has the added bonus of realizing that government accepts that major programs take two Presidential administrations or more to accomplish… but that there is every chance that changing politics will kill off the project before it gets built and has to prove itself. So go ahead and spend, spend, spend… you’ll probably never have to prove that your design was any good.

Of course, aerospace and healthcare are not the only areas that have been corrupted by “crony capitalism.” The Defense Department is hardly squeaky clean; the DoD has its own long, sad history of overpaying for projects that are doomed to cancellation. With that in mind, who can blame a company for raking in the cash and slapping together a crappy product using inappropriate second-hand commercial parts?

It’s utter bilge like “building a rocket that’s not even capable of *landing* on the moon will take $38 billion” that has ruined NASA. How to fix it? Well… much as I hate to appear to agree with Obama, slash NASA’s budget. Get NASA *out* of the business of building rockets… or even of overseeing the design of rockets. In the late 50’s/early 60’s, NASA involvement in rocketry was appropriate. Why then and not now? Because then… rockets to the moon were complete unknowns. We didn’t know how to build them. Now… we do. We’ve done it before. Back then, we needed Rocket Scientists to build a moon rocket. Now, we need Rocket Engineers.

NASA should pave the way in *science.* Leave the relatively mundane engineering to private companies which will be forced to compete in an honest system. Offer a contract to whoever provides the required launch capability to fulfill NASA”s launch needs… payment on delivery. I’ll bet you a nickel that if NASA offered $5B for the lunar launch requirement (with a $2.5B contract to the second-place competitor for backup), SpaceX will step up. Hell, Boeing and Lockheed will step up, if only to make sure that SpaceX doesn’t get the prize.

 Posted by at 10:04 am
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