Got take a look at the exciting photos and videos. It’s basically indistinguishable from Greek-style protests. Or maybe the aftermath of some major basketball game…
Keep it classy.
Nov 032011
Nov 032011
Shuttle and external tank boosted by a recoverable low-cost pressure fed booster, using propane for fuel.
Nov 022011
Nov 022011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15562928
An unmanned Shenzhou spacecraft docked with the Tiangong-1 space lab.
Congrats to the Chinese.
We’d better step it up, people.
Nov 022011
Operation could turn brown eyes blue
It seems that a laser can be used to blast the brown melanin in front of the iris. When its gone, light can penetrate further into the iris, and the end result is backscatter that looks blue (which is how natural blue eyes work).
This will be popular.
This will be *un* popular.
Last year I made mention of a skin lightener that’s marketed in India, and how that set off the professionally offended. It is, after all, the height of racism to suggest that a non-caucasian do anything to make themselves look more like a caucasian, such as lightening dark skin (it is, of course, perfectly proper for the lily-whitest white person to darken their skin or hair). So a process that can turn any of the billions of pairs of brown eyes on this planet into Himmler-approved Aryan blue will cause certain progressive heads to pop right off.
Not mentioned is a technique for turn brown eyes *green.*
Nov 022011
To me, one of the great missed opportunities in movie history was the movie “The Final Countdown.” For those of you who missed it, the short form is… the modern nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz enters a weirdass mystery storm out at sea, and winds up a few hundred mils from Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941. The Captain hems and haws about what to do, and finally decides to launch his combat planes the following morning to go swat the Japanese aerial attack force. But this being Hollywood, the storm returns just then, and all the planes return to the ship, and everybody goes home.
How much better it would have been had the F-18’s and F-14’s showed up over Pearl just as the Zeros started their run, and then blasted ’em to flinders. Perfect setup for the awesomest sequel in all movie history, as the Nimitz leads an unstoppable force directly to Tokyo Bay. But it wasn’t to be.
Well, there’s apparently another movie in the works that actually plans on carrying this sort of story all the way through: “Rome, Sweet Rome.” Short form: a modern US Marine Corps expeditionary unit vanishes from the outskirts of Kabul and appears near the Tiber River in 23 BC, and promptly decides to take down the Roman Empire.
Heh.
Heh heh.
HA!
BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!!!
Rome, Sweet Rome: Could a Single Marine Unit Destroy the Roman Empire?
Nov 022011
The Vought F8U-3 Crusader III was mentioned in the comments in a recent post, so I figured I’d throw out some images of it. This was a beast of a plane, looking like little more than a giant afterburning turbojet engine, a plethora of blade-like control surfaces, an afterthought of a cockpit and a whole lot of attitude. A competitor to the F-4 Phantom II, the Crusader III was able to get to about Mach 2.4 and probably had the radar cross section of a small moon. The large ventral stabilizers would fold horizontal for ground clearance during takeoff and landing.
And of course… there are detailed drawings of the F8U-3 available!
Nov 022011
The Shuttle and external tank, boosted by a manned glideback version of the Saturn V S-IC first stage.
Nov 022011
Nov 022011
Artwork depicting NAA’s design for the F-15.
