NASA illustration of the S-Ib first stage for the Saturn Ib launch vehicle.
Feb 112012
Feb 112012
Another of the CAD models I tinkered together with the notion of kitting it is the late 1940’s Hiller Helicopter VJ-100 jet-powered tailsitter. It needs work to the cockpit and the exhaust (especially the thrust vectoring vanes), but is otherwise pretty close.
Feb 102012
Two decades ago, I was a prolific producer of bad, bad, horrible science fiction *crap.* I had a few reasons for doing so that seemed good to me at the time; when the reasons for writing (publication was never a serious consideration) went away, so did the urge to write fiction. Since then, I’ve gone from an average output of a few pages a day to… well, I think I’ve written ten pages of fiction in twenty years. Amazing the effect incentive can have.
Anyway, a while back I posted some inane yammerings about problems I have with a particular form of time travel fantasy… where Our Hero finds his mind transferred back in time to his own younger body. Last night for no readily apparent reason I had a thought for a somewhat different take on the idea: instead of one person awakening to find that it is, say, 1986… *everybody* on the planet does.
Science fiction? No. Fantasy? Yes. Crap? Very likely.
But it seems there could be some interesting things to explore here If on, say, January 1, 2013, the entire planet wakes up to find it’s January 1, 1986, there will be some interesting outliers. For starters… what about people who had died between those times? Would John Q. Smith, who died on January 1, 2000, wake up on Jan 1 ’86 like any other day? Will he wake up brain dead? Will he wake up and find that he has been transported back from Oblivion/Heaven/Hell/Nirvana/Valhalla?
And with *billions* of people who have a knowledge of the future, there will be a mad dash to grab the wealth they know is coming. Ten million programming geeks will rush to re-create Facebook, despite the fact that the Internet of 1986 could not support it. People will awaken to find that not only are they young again, but they are no longer in prison for murdering that one woman… but they will also find that the widowed husband of that woman not only has his wife back (maybe?), but that he knows who the killer is, and is perfectly happy to hunt his ass down and kill him to prevent the murder. A young Osama bin Laden, if he’s not brain dead, will find himself of considerable interest.
Plus, survivors of genocides, civil wars, tyrannical crackdowns and such will be out for blood. Millions of people will invest large sums in the stock market, since they know the future… but the future is all different know, and millions of people will find their investments lost. Technologies that failed will not be pursued, or will be pursued differently, with unpredictable ends.
Will married couples still be married? Will people grieve for those born in, say, 1990 and who now won’t be born due to changed circumstances? Tens of millions of locks will stay locked because the combinations have been forgotten. Millions of crappy mindless jobs staffed by teenagers will find themselves un-done by the captains of industry who now inhabit those teenagers.
Oh, boy! Mayhem!
If you want to appropriate this idea… go for it. If this idea is not new – and I hardly expect that it’s original to me, I’m probably the latest in a long line of failed or unfailed “authors” to dream it up – I’d be interested in getting references.
Feb 102012
It turns out most people won’t notice the difference between paté and dog food, so long as the latter is suitably presented with the right sort of garnish. And as for our ability to discriminate wine, even experts may confuse a white wine with a red when it is served at room temperature in a dark glass.
Heh. I sense a business opportunity here… selling cheap crap at a high price to people with more money than sense. But I suspect that’s probably what was going on anyway.
Feb 102012
Kim Jong-un assassination rumours flood Twitter, Weibo
Apparently the Chinese version of Twitter is going bonkers with rumors.
Feb 092012
Another photo showing the insulation applied to the outside of the F-1 rocket engine during launch. So far as I’m aware, not a single model or toy of the Saturn V launch vehicle has ever depicted this.
See HERE for more.
Feb 092012
Feb 092012
First new nuclear reactors OK’d in over 30 years
Short form: two new reactors will be built in Georgia, providing 2.2 gigawatts and costing $14 billion.
And, right on schedule, the usual pack of baying anti-nuclear luddites are planing on trying to block this in Federal court.
Feb 092012
Growing up, I never really got into the “Marvel” comic books. Heck, never really got into comic books as a whole. So I’m certainly not a Marvel fanboy. Still, it’s impossible to deny that the Mavel people have, on the whole, done a bang-up job translating the comics into movies. There have of course been some less that stellar entries, such as the first Hulk movie and the Wolverine origin flick, but overall they’ve been quite good. They’ve of course been building up to the May release of “The Avengers,” which is probably going to break a number of box office records (it better… its production budget was $300 MILLION).
Two new trailers have been released in the last few days. In them, there are three *really* good lines… and they are all uttered by the character of Tony Stark. It does not surprise me that there’s some good banter… “The Avengers” was written and directed by Joss Whedon, after all. It would not be too overly surprising if Cap’n Mal and the other big damn heroes made a cameo appearance.
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Feb 082012
Two articles:
‘Rasputin Was My Neighbor’ And Other True Tales Of Time Travel
Where we read about a guy who knew Rasputin, a witness to Lincolns assassination goes on TV, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes shook hands with Presidents Adams and Kennedy, two of President Tylers grandsons are still alive, three Civil War widows survived into the 21st century.
Makes me realize that if I live to be an old man, I might be able to tell the younguns that I was alive when NASA last sent a man out of low Earth orbit, a century earlier.
Also: if you want to read about “5 Accessories Every Man Should Carry,” then that’s obviously the link for you. If you want to read the most hilariously snarky comments from people responding to an incredibly inane article about “5 Accessories Every Man Should Carry” written by someone safely described as “not a man’s man,” then that’s still the link for you.