The Boeing “Phantom Eye” drone has flown. This is a remarkably tubby aircraft… because it’s fueled with low density liquid hydrogen. The eventual goal is to cruise at 65,000 feet for four days, with a 450-pound payload. It won’t be much good for carrying ordnance, but it might do ok in the high-altitude, long-duration recon role… in areas where it can get liquid hydrogen fuel.
More info and a flight video here.
A photo gallery is here.
Yesterday the high temperature here was well over 90 degrees, and that was pretty awful. Today… snow.
While the snow didn’t land quite *here,* it did come close… maybe 2000 feet higher in elevation. The low temperature tonight is supposed to be just above freezing. If only there was a simple and cost effective way to store the heat from the hot days and exchange it on the cold days…
Fluffys Brother wandered by, showing evidence that he wasn’t smart enough to stay in out of the rain:
And the whole neighborhood was being watched over:
“Honor Flight” is a program that flies – free of charge – US military veterans from their homes to Washington D.C. to visit the memorials. Right now it’s focused on WWII vets, and vets of other wars with terminal illnesses; as time goes by, it is supposed to transition to Korea, Viet Nam, and so on.
The Wikipedia page describes the history of the project thusly:
The Honor Flight Network is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which works as an umbrella organization with local chapters and various subgroups. The network was conceived by Earl Morse, a physician assistant and retired Air Force captain. Morse worked in a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Springfield, Ohio, where he saw many patients who were WWII veterans. After the National WWII Memorial in Washington was completed in 2004, he asked many of his veteran patients if they were going to see it, and most said yes. “I would see my World War II veterans some three, six months later,” Morse said, “and I’d ask them if they’d gone to see it. Three hundred of them, and not one of them had been to it. Reality set in. They were never going.”[5] Morse offered to fly with two veterans to Washington to see the memorial, and after seeing them break down and cry and graciously accept the offer, he pitched his idea to a local aeroclub of 300 private pilots at a local Air Force base, proposing that the pilots would pay for the flights for the veterans to Washington and personally escort them around the city. Eleven volunteered, and the network was formed; by 2005, a board was formed, funds were raised, and volunteers had joined.
The first honor flight took place in May 2005, when six small planes flew 12 veterans to Washington. Due to high participation, the program began using commercial flights. At the end of 2005, the program had transported 137 veterans to the memorial. The program expanded into areas not serviced by commercial airlines in 2006 when a group in Henderson, North Carolina called HonorAir chartered a US Airways flight.[2] The Springfield group and HonorAir soon merged to form the Honor Flight Network.[5] Honor Flight Network says that as of November 2010 it has transported 63,292 veterans of WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War to Washington.
Clearly, in a relatively short span of years it has gone from a small idea to a very big one. This is gratifying… shows the power of good ideas in the private marketplace, to bring something good to some people who deserve it.
Also gratifying: the response of regular folks to Honor Flights. In march I flew to D.C. and back, the first time I’ve flown in several years (2008, I think). And I was reminded why I haven’t flown: these days, flying sucks. It’s expensive, annoying, time consuming (and luggage consuming, as I found out), and just plain intrusive, with scans and Xrays and gropings and what all. Airports are full of people who are reasonably described as “stressed out.” It’s the perfect breeding ground for bad feelings. But then this happens:
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Awesome.
NASA has recently uploaded to YouTube an early video presentation on the NASP, showing the initial “du Pont” configuration.
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The original Galileo 7 shuttlecraft is up for auction. Warning: it’s a bit of a handyman special.
Both figuratively and literally.
A few days ago Fingers went zipping across an overhead beam, and initially seemed somewhat startled to be there.
I posted a few more photos OVER HERE.
Just as the title described. A technically well-done taxidermy project wrapped a dead cat around a remote control helicopter. It’s a remarkable achievement that just gives me the willies.
And then there’s this…
Egad.
Short form: a science fiction author calls for implanting microchips in all babies. The ACLU comes out against this as a violation of basic civil liberties.
SF authors as fascist whackjobs and the ACLU on the side of individual liberty? What a world.
Granted, yes, having such implanted IDs would make a lot of things a lot easier and a lot more efficient. But history has shown that governments that desire efficiency out of their people tend to be quite horrible governments.
And if any western government tried to institute this, even as a voluntary program… holy crap. If the Obama regime thinks they’re having trouble with the Catholics, what with forcing them to pay for abortions, imagine the fun they’ll have with the entirely of Christendom if they suggest that everyone needs to get a permanent “mark.” Yowza.
How NOT to Haul a Propane Tank
Many long years ago I worked at a Kmart, in the back with the lumber and bags of cement and sand and such. I saw a whole lot of dumbass people load up a whole lot of stuff in an unsafe and unwise manner in and on a whole lot of vehicles that simply weren’t appropriate to the task. Ten 80-pound bags of cement in the back of a hatchback, for instance… it drove away, but slowly, with a whole lot of sparks. But I never saw anything as mind-snappingly stupid as what’s shown here.