A-12 Avenger II: bits of it are for sale

 aircraft, news, projects  2 Responses »
Nov 212011
 

It looks like Purdue University in Indiana has the canopy from a McDonnell-Douglas A-12 Avenger II, and they’ve put it up for auction. Only a few hours left, so if this is what you’ve been needing to finish that A-12 in the garage… here ya go.

Jet Fighter Canopy

Thought to be from the canceled McDonnell Douglas A-12 Avenger II project, this canopy was obtained through the acquisition of a trailer to which the canopy was mounted. This is a wiki link to the failed A-12 II project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger_II.

Included is the canopy as pictured and a small box of miscellaneous parts. The large plastic wrapped item visible in some of the pictures is not part of the canopy and is not included with this auction.

Bidders may inspect the property prior to bidding.


 Posted by at 12:02 pm

B24-B recoverable pump-fed booster

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Nov 212011
 

A North American Rockwell design from March of 1971 for a Phase B Shuttle design. The Orbiter and the External Tank are certainly recognizable, but the solid rocket boosters are here replaced with a single liquid propellant booster located underneath the external tank. Equipped with four uprated F-1 rockets engines, it had the same tank diameter as the S-IC stage from the Saturn V. The Orbiters engines would ignite after first stage separation.  With a gross liftoff weight of 5,274,000 pounds, payload was 40,000 pounds into polar orbit. Splashdown weight of the booster was 460,000 pounds.

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 Posted by at 12:04 am

Early F-15 Art

 aircraft, history, projects  5 Responses »
Nov 202011
 

A piece of concept art from McDonnell-Douglas showing an early design for the F-15.

The most obvious difference from the final design is the wholly different main wing planform. Almost as obvious is the pointier nose. Less obvious, at this stage the design had two fairly substantial ventral fins directly under the dorsal vertical stabilizers… and the engine nozzles were 2-dimensional vectoring nozzles much like those in use on the F-22.

…

 Posted by at 11:00 am

Anybody want a kitten?

 cats, photography  6 Responses »
Nov 202011
 

One-eye’s little fluffy kitten has turned out to be surprisingly friendly, at least I can pick it up without it trying to flay the flesh from my arms (this is *not* the case with One-eye herself). We had our first real snow night before last, and it’s clear that the kitten isn’t overly fond with the snow, so today I snagged him/her and took him/her into the bathroom to warm up. The kitten wasn’t overly thrilled with that, but remained calm and well behaved. The kitten would, it seems, make a good pet. It was cordial with Buttons (who didn’t quite know how to react), and was downright friendly with Fingers (Raedthinn made it clear he wasn’t interested).

 Posted by at 10:17 am

Happy Evacuation Day

 awesomeness, history, humor  2 Responses »
Nov 192011
 

Sometimes even the Daily Show can come up with a good bit. Below is a recent one featuring a good case being made for the Thanksgiving holiday being set aside in favor of a return to recognizing Evacuation Day (an actual though now-forgotten holiday celebrating the British evacuating New York after committing some rather horrific war crimes).

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-november-17-2011/happy-evacuation-day

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More Americans died at the hands of the British in prison ships anchored in the East river through starvation, disease and other effects of intentional neglect and murder than died in all the battles of the Revolutionary War *combined.*

 Posted by at 12:45 pm

Who am I? Why am I here?

 science  4 Responses »
Nov 192011
 

Walking through doorways causes forgetting, new research shows

We’ve all experienced it: The frustration of entering a room and forgetting what we were going to do. Or get. Or find.

New research from University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses. “Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” Radvansky explains.

Kind of a poor system design.

 Posted by at 12:20 pm

Ta-da…

 awesomeness, models, news, science fiction  11 Responses »
Nov 182011
 

Modeling of the Space Station V is done. Still a bit of work yet… the photoetch layout (it will be steel, not brass) is being tinkered with, and the Orion III spaceplane needs a few more details. But the station CAD model, all 220 meg of it, is basically done.

 Posted by at 12:29 pm

New Lightest Material

 awesomeness, blather, news, science  8 Responses »
Nov 182011
 

Lighter even than aerogels, a lattice structure of joined tubes with a bulk density of 0.9 milligrams per cubic centimeter. Fark: the material is metal. Ultrafark: the material is *nickel,* which is a fairly dense metal.

Super-light lattice packs heavy-duty potential

And it turns out that the manufacturing process is fairly easy. A block of liquid resin is repeatedly zapped with criss-crossing laser beams of very small diameter. The laser beams cause the resin to cure, forming a mass of intersecting “hairs”. This is then coated with a 100 nanometer layer of nickel. The resin is then chemically dissolved away, leaving just the nickel shell… a series of connected thin-walled tubes.

Usefully, the material is “springy.” it can be compressed to 50% thickness, then rebound to 98%.

 Posted by at 8:01 am
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