It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, humor  10 Responses »
Dec 152011
 

It’s the time of year when TV stations start cranking out Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life” over and over and over. This is possible due to a screwup in renewing copyright… it ran out in 1975. As a result, anybody can play it for free without having to get permission or pay royalties. So, there ya go.

“Wonderful Life” is one of those Classic Movies You Are Supposed To See Many Times that I had somehow failed to see until a few years ago. It’s also one of those Feel Good Warm And Fuzzy Movies. But… it’s not. It’s really not. My first thought on watchign the movie was something akin to “yikes.”

Not long after seeing the flick, I heard an interview on the radio with the author of THIS PIECE. He summed it up far better than I could. At the time, the movie had just given me a sense of general, vague disquiet; the author here nailed *why* it’s a disturbing flick:

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

Nailed it.

I think at least part of the reason why my discomfort with the movie remained vague was because my over-riding thoughts revolved around it having been an alternate history story, and thus in the realm of science fiction… yet it’s never really described as such.

In the end, the character of George Bailey is still an angry jerk whose life had passed him by. In the end, he’s still on the hook for stolen money… he’s still staring down the barrel of serious jail time. In the end, things are so bad that the only thing that has kept him from suicide *isn’t* things actually getting better, it’s divine intervention from God Fricken’ Almighty… who hasn’t actually made the real problems of Bailey’s life go away. He’s still screwed.

A proper sequel likely would have had Bailey spending the next few days in a fevered, desperate attempt to be happy, followed by an arrest, trial and jail time. His life collapses, his family falls apart, the bank fails. Bedford Falls goes down in economic ruin. At the end, Bailey does finally die, a broken old man living in a homeless shelter sometime in the 1980’s. Upon death, that bastard angel Clarence shows him what Pottersville would have looked like… a thriving metropolis like Las Vegas. Troubled, to be sure, but at least still kicking, and a hell of a lot more fun than Bedford Falls.

At which point Clarence happily kicks Bailey out of Heaven straight into eternal damnation. Because that’s what his kind does.

 Posted by at 11:24 pm

Radial-Arm Space Station

 projects, spacecraft  8 Responses »
Dec 142011
 

A NASA artist concept for a three-arm space station, dated 1962.

This space station would be launched as a unit by a single Saturn V, with the arms folded down, forming a cylinder. In orbit the arms would hinge up and the space station would rotate, generating artificial gravity.

Dennis R. Jenkins wrote an article on such space station designs, published in Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N6.

A high resolution version of this is available HERE.

 Posted by at 11:15 pm

CL-1317 Lockheed Hydrogen fueled jetliner

 aircraft, drawings, projects  8 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

The Lockheed CL-1317, a 1977 design for a hydrogen fueled jetliner. Done for NASA, this was one of a large number of jetliners designed to use cryogenic fuels… hydrogen mainly, with several methane designs. For those who don’t remember 1977, it *sucked.* The era of petroleum seemed like it would probably end tomorrow, and so non-fossil-fuel system studies (such as Solar Power Satellites) were all the rage. A hydrogen fueled jetliner would seem obvious, but as can be seen from the diagram, the extremely low density of liquid hydrogen meant extremely large fuel tanks.

 Posted by at 11:01 pm

Wonderland

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., photography  16 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

It always seems that if you want to see some truly creepy abandoned territory, you look towards places run by collectivists. The horrible dystopias of the former Soviet Union, the unfinished and abandoned cities of China, Detroit, New Orleans. The Chinese have a remarkable place… an unfinished and abandoned “Disneyworld”-like amusement park given the name “Wonderland.” It would look right with aliens or zombies rampaging through it. The photos here are quite something.

China’s Abandoned Wonderland

 Posted by at 10:40 pm

“The Atlantic” makes the case for Gingrich

 awesomeness, blather, politics  31 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

Hey, Remember the ’80s? Gingrich Wants to Bring ‘Em Back.

Newt Gingrich’s economic plan is not Reaganesque. It is not, as so many of his Republican presidential rivals’ claim their plans to be, inspired by Reaganomics. It is Reaganomics, cryogenically frozen in 1981, thawed 30 years later, and pumped full of Newt-style steroids in order to save the American people from slow growth. The plan features massive tax cuts (which would largely benefit businesses and the wealthy), less government spending (through the privatization of entitlement programs), interest-rate hikes, and rampant deregulation.

Awesome. Of course, The Atlantic spins all this as a bad thing. One of their great complaints is that “tax cuts = massive drops in revenue,” which, of course, is just wrong. Gingrich wants to drop the corporate tax rate to 12.5% which would of course reduce tax revenues… until companies start flooding back *into* the US. Gingrich wants to eliminate capital gains tax… which would be a massive incentive to invest, and to sell when you *want* to sell, not based on trying to game the tax system. He wants to privatize Medicare and Social Security, which, despite what many leftist talking heads like to yammer on about, is a pretty good idea and can work quite well.

None of the Republicans are really blowin’ my skirts up. Cain looked good for a while, but he either pussed out… or knew that his past was about to jump up and down all over him. Romney…. ZZZzzzzZZzZZzzzsnorkZZZzzzZzz….  Gingrich has a supertanker of baggage, both real and invented, and kinda stinks at the whole “diplomacy” thing… but unlike the current resident of the White House, actually has a brain and some ideas.

 Posted by at 10:27 pm

V3N3 pre-preview

 APR  7 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

Work has begun on V3N3. None of the articles in the original version can really blow up the way some other recent articles have, so in order to flesh the issue out a bit there will be a number of new articles. Already have a few planned. I have four planned articles that should prove kinda-sizable, so they’ll have to spread out over four issues. They are:

1: McDonnell Douglas FVS… swing wing F-4 Phantom II

2: Titan III derivative designs… of which there were just a whole hell of a lot

3: Early American Stealth concepts… stuff like Quiet Bird, stealthy designs for the TFX program, etc. on up to the XST

4: Stealthy designs for the US Navy… in particular, the A-12, with a passel of detailed diagrams.

The latter two will of course share features with each other, and with the F-23 article in V3N2.

Question: which should go in V3N3? Is there a concensus?

 Posted by at 9:45 pm

This will go over well

 blather, I'm from the government, news, politics  6 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

NTSB seeks nationwide ban on driver use of personal electronic devices

Translation: the FedGuv wants to make it illegal to talk on the phone while driving. That includes hands-free phones.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Regardless of what the intentions are, what it will turn into is a cash cow for police, just like speed traps and stoplight cameras.

Speaking as someone who got screwed over second-hand by a jackass busy texting while driving, I’ve no problem with banning texting, as that requires your eyes. But *talking?*

 Posted by at 7:21 pm

Stratolaunch

 aircraft, news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  29 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

A giant descendant of the White Knight/SpaceShip 2 system seems to be under development. Paul Allen and Burt Rutan are behind “Stratolaunch Systems,” which would develop the worlds largest aircraft to carry a derivative of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher.

http://stratolaunch.com/

Carrier Aircraft

The carrier aircraft, built by Scaled Composites, weighs more than 1.2 million pounds and has a wingspan of 385 feet – greater than the length of a football field. Using six 747 engines, the carrier aircraft will be the largest aircraft ever constructed. The air-launch system requires a takeoff and landing runway that is, at minimum, 12,000 feet long. The carrier aircraft can fly over 1,300 nautical miles to reach an optimal launch point.

Multi-Stage Booster

SpaceX’s multi-stage booster is derived from the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. At approximately 120 feet long, the booster is designed to loft the payload into low earth orbit. After release of the booster from the aircraft at approximately 30,000 feet, the first stage engines ignite and the spacecraft begins its journey into space. After the first stage burn and a short coast period, the second stage ignites and the orbital payload proceeds to its planned mission.

The carrier aircraft is a twin-body design to be built – or at least designed – by Scaled Composites. The design is very much a Scaled Composites design, though rather slab-sided compared to usual Scaled designs. Payload would be on the order of a half-million pounds, and propulsion would be provided by six “747 engines.” The Falcon 9 rocket would be given a Pegasus-like delta wing, located very far aft. Payload delivered to LEO is 13,500 pounds, and could include the manned Dragon space capsule.

[youtube 8XvkXweoJKs]

Some images:

It’s unclear as yet what the actual status of the program is… whether it’s in the conceptual design stage, advanced design or maybe even construction (unlikely, that).

 Posted by at 3:53 pm
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