2 terabyte DVDs

 awesomeness, news, science  No Responses »
Oct 162012
 

Neat!

Researchers Develop 1TB – 2TB Optical Discs.

Short form: optical disks the size of DVDs are being commercialized that will store 1 to 2 terabytes of data… something like 50 Blu-ray disks worth. This is done by stacking multiple layers (64) of recordable film onto a single disk, rather than making data storage density much higher as was done with CDs-DVDs-Blu-Rays. Even if the disks are expensive, this will be very helpful… I’ve had one 1 tB external drive crash on me taking everything with it, and another go “funny” (but I managed to copy everything over to yet another drive). Having optical disks that are insensitive to being bumped, dust, temperature and humidity will be a great asset.

Prototypes should be ready in about a year, supposedly. No mention of targeted price.

 Posted by at 1:27 pm

1970’s Teledyne Ryan Stealthy RPV

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects  4 Responses »
Oct 162012
 

A 1974 design by Teledyne Ryan for a stealthy remotely piloted vehicle While the general shape is certainly well within the norm for stealthy craft, the structure itself is quite different: it is basically a metal vehicle optimized for stealth, wrapped in a radar-transparent plastic skin optimized for aerodynamics. The only aspect of it that really seems to fail modern stealthy practices is the apparent straight shot in to the turbine face. From the Jay Miller collection.

The technology behind this was patented by Teledyne Ryan:

Aircraft of low observability

CORRECTION: This was originally posted as a TRW design, when in fact it was a Teledyne Ryan design. D’oh.

 Posted by at 11:51 am

Private enterprise has broken the lightspeed barrier!!!

 blather, news, ಠ_ಠ  6 Responses »
Oct 152012
 

Was it NASA who first sent a man faster than Warp 1? No, it was not. It was Red Bull:

Via Twitter.

As everyone knows, one of the problems with faster than light travel is causality violation. In short, it’s thought that FTL=time machines, or the possibility of parallel universes. Thus, don’t be surprised if you see people on MSNBC claiming that Joe Biden *wasn’t* a smarmy dick in his debate with Paul Ryan, because in some alternate reality, maybe he wasn’t.

 Posted by at 9:17 pm

False flag operations and journalistic malpractice

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, Obamazombies, politics, ಠ_ಠ  4 Responses »
Oct 152012
 

Last day or so the interwebs have been boiling over with engineered outrage over a photo of a man at a Romney rally wearing a T-shirt reading “Put the white back in the White House. For example, this:

Conservatives Want to ‘Put the White Back in the White House’

While it’s to be expected that leftists flacks will leap to this sort of conclusion, you also get minor snippets in “news” organizations like this:

Check Out This Mitt Romney Supporter’s Horrendously Racist Fashion Statement

And this:

Offensive ‘Put the White Back in the White House’ T-shirt spotted at Romney rally

The T-shirt is apparently newsworthy. But nobody has bothered to find the guy and find out if he’s really a Romney supported… or a plant. Remember, back in 2010 when the Tea Party movement was picking up steam, there was an organized effort to do This Very Sort Of Thing… the “Crash The Tea Party” movement. I pointed it out back then:

“False Flag Operations” against the “Tea Partiers”

It seems to me far more likely that this guy went there and wore what he wore specifically to make Romney look bad. Not only does the specifics of the case suggest it, but The Plan to do just this sort of thing has been in place for *years.*

The fact that journalists are happy to report this guy as a conservative racist without actually trying to find any evidence suggesting that’s the case, when there is a well-known and active effort to fake this sort of thing for political gain, indicates that the journalistic profession… just ain’t that professional.

 Posted by at 1:28 am

Dyna Soar booster concept #8

 aircraft, drawings, projects, rockets, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Oct 142012
 

A 1959 Boeing concept for an airbreathing HTOL booster for Dyna Soar. Compared to the other pure-rocket VTO boosters, this would have been a monster… far bigger, far heavier, far, far more expensive. Which almost certainly explains why not only did such a booster not get serious study further down the line for Dyna Soar, it didn’t even rate detailed diagrams in the reports.

 

Staging would have been an interesting show.

NOTE: The isometric artwork for baseline concepts 4-7? Not available, sadly.

 Posted by at 10:21 pm

Stagger Around #3: AGM-129 “Stealth” Advanced Cruise Missile

 aircraft, drawings, history, models, nukes, photography, secrets, weapons  4 Responses »
Oct 142012
 

Literally years in the making, I’ve put together two versions of a photo essay of several surviving examples of the AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile. Available free for the downloading is Stagger Around #3: AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile, Abridged Edition as a 13 page PDF booklet. This contains photos of the AGM-129s on display at Hill Aerospace Museum in Utah, the USAF Museum in Dayton and the Strategic Air & Space Museum in Nebraska, ready to print.

Also available is Stagger Around #3: AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile, Full Edition. This 34-page edition includes more photos of these missiles, along with the missile at the San Diego Aerospace Museum restoration facility, a rare General Dynamics display model, official USAF photos of the AGM-129 in test and in service and drawings of the missile, including 1/32 scale layout diagrams. This is available through MagCloud, either as a downloadable PDF ($5.75) or as a professionally printed and bound edition ($11.80).

Don’t forget to check out my other MagCloud publications, including Justo Miranda’s Reichdreams Dossiers, Aerospace Projects Review, Historical Documents, and Photographing Stuff.

And don’t forget to check out Stagger Around #1, F-104A Starfighter, and Stagger Around #2, Starship Enterprise.

NOTE:

If you liked this and want to see more like it… feel free to toss fifty cents, a buck, a hundred bucks, whatever, my way. Think of it as a donation to a worthy cause. Or a bribe. Whatever you’re more comfortable with.

 Posted by at 12:58 pm
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