Corporate Nightmare Fuel

 AARRRGH, blather, Gah., history  7 Responses »
Sep 062012
 

Yeah, yeah, 1961 was fifty years ago, and It Was A Different Time. Even so, I cannot for the life of me comprehend how this could have possibly been seen as a good thing, either for morale or for basic employee respect for management (from this ebay auction).

FUNMAKERS Boeing men entertain Who among us hasn’t dreamed of being a clown (ummm… me) someday of putting on out-landish make-up and costume and making people laugh? In the Rotogravure Picto-rial of Sunday’s Times, you’ll meet some men who have made the dream come true. They are members of the Boeing Supervisors, Klown Klub, a group of 15 men.

EEeeeeeeeeeee………..

UPDATE: AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!

 Posted by at 11:25 pm

Saudi Arabia: Energy Sink

 blather, news, nukes, politics  3 Responses »
Sep 052012
 

Saudi oil well dries up

Saudis use more energy per capita than Americans, largely due to air conditioning and water desalination plants. All natural gas produced in SA is consumed locally. They are expected to not be an oil exporter by 2030, and are trying to gin up 80 gigawatts of nuclear power.

Conclusion: they are over populated. Not surprising, given that SA is largely an unproductive desert. Perhaps they need to start a program of spaying and neutering their Wahabis?

 Posted by at 11:06 pm

Titan-boosted Shuttle

 art, projects, rockets, spacecraft  1 Response »
Sep 052012
 

Before Challenger ruined all hope of the Space Shuttle achieving its intended goals, there were many, many ideas put forth to increase the capabilities of the STS. Numerous concepts dealt with increasing the propulsion system… increased thrust and/or increased fuel mass. One of the less obvious ideas: stuff a massively reworked Titan II first stage underneath the external tank. This would increase liftoff thrust, increasing payload delivered to orbit. While Martin Marietta put some effort behind the concept, I don’t think NASA ever really took it very seriously.

This is from a slide scanned at the NASA HQ archive.

 Posted by at 11:00 pm

Reminder: Collier’s “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!”

 APR, art, awesomeness, blather, history, news, projects, reshaping the world, rockets, science, science fiction, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Sep 052012
 

The July/August 2012 issue of AIAA-Houston Horizons reprints the complete first Collier’s article from March 22, 1952. The original magazine layout included numerous ads and extraneous bits that were edited out of this reprint, and in several cases replaced with “Mini-APR” articles, several of which tie directly into the Collier’s series. This first article includes about 30 pages of the original Collier’s stuff. Future issues of Horizons will carry the complete set of Collier’s article,s including the Moon exploration and Mars exploration articles.

As always, Horizons is a free-to-download PDF. New for this issue, it is available in both high and low resolution.

Feel free to spread the word about this. The more it is downloaded from the AIAA site, the more interest is shown in it, the more might be done with this in the future.

 Posted by at 8:34 pm

Dumbth

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, history, I'm from the government, news, politics  7 Responses »
Sep 052012
 

If you are looking for profound, soul-crushing stupidity, you need look no further than elected officials. Take, for example Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx) asked in 1997 if the Mars pathfinder would photograph the flag planted by Neil Armstrong (guess what… she was on the House Science Committee at the time). Or take Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who in 2008 suggested that adding 8,000 US Navy sailors to Guam would cause the island to capsize and sink. Add to this list on monumental stupidity one Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), who suggested, in all apparent seriousness, that the biggest problem in Brooklyn of 1898 was all the Dutch people owning slaves. This was on the Colbert Report last night; while I was working on Dyna Soar models at the time, I caught that little news snippet in the background and was rather dumbfounded. Even Colbert seemed astonished, and gave her an opportunity to revise her remarks… and she just dug right on in.

These are the idiots who want to control the economy and healthcare system.

 Posted by at 7:21 pm

A Herd of Dyna Soars

 models, news, projects, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Sep 052012
 

Work progresses on the 1/24 scale X-20 Dyna Soar. Shown here are five of them… three under active development, two more on standby. The three are spoken for by clients, the other two are open. If you are interested, send me an email:

Also visible: an industry standard feline scale reference… and one of the printed “extras” that will come with the model. Note that the re-entry heat shields over the windscreens have embedded rare earth magnets to hold them onto the Dyna Soar. Not shown: the display stand and carrying case that will also be provided.

 Posted by at 11:57 am
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