Some more photos from a week and a half or so ago:
Looking west from Cache Valley…
Petersen Park:
Closeup on Peterson Park:
Nov 052012
Nov 052012
A painting found at the NASA HQ archive some years back depicting a Dyna Soar re-entering the atmosphere. This was an earlier design, launched sub-orbitally rather than orbitally.
Nov 042012
The LK model essentially complete. It’s shown below to scale with some models I downloaded… a LEM, because it’s directly relevant, and a CIWS turret, because why not and who wouldn’t.
Nov 042012
After homecoming, USS Enterprise to sail off to history’s scrap heap
Process:
1) Sail the nuclear powered carrier Enterprise to Norfolk, VA
2) Remove nuclear fuel; ship to Idaho.
3) Strip equipment from Enterprise.
4) Tow the now unpowered ship around Cape Horn to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Washington
5) Remove nuclear reactors
6) Cut ship into scrap
7) Sell to China (probably)
There’s lots about this story to dislike, such as yanking the fuel out in Virgina then towing the hulk around South America to Washington… why not just sail it to Washington and skip some steps?? But worst is the act of scrapping such a historic vessel. It would make a massive and magnificent museum… I believe it would make a damned fine addition to Muscatine, Iowa (the nearest city on the Mississippi river to Riverside, Iowa… figure it out). Or give it a dignified death and sink it somewhere to serve as a dive site/coral reef. Or give it a *really* dignified death, and use it as target practice for a nuclear-tipped anti-ship missile. But chopping it up in to razor blades and cheap Chinese cars? Weeeeeeeeaaaaak.
Of course, there is another option, one the Enterprise should long ago have been used for:
And a final option: attach four ridiculously large lift fans to it and turn it into a flying aircraft carrier. Ridiculous? yes. Doomed to fail because physics does not support such a concept? Yes. A better use of taxpayer dollars than most of the bullcrap the US FedGuv does? YES.
Nov 042012
A NASA-Marshall concept for a Nova launch vehicle. Nova began life as a vehicle somewhat smaller and lower-capability than the Saturn V, and quickly grew substantially larger than the Saturn V, ending its run as the “Post Saturn” launch vehicle (with designs such as ROMBUS and Nexus). This design features eight F-1 engines on the first stage, and has been, probably apocryphally, referred to as the “Saturn C-8.”
Yeah, yeah, I’ve posted this before…
Nov 032012
An interesting bit of sociological demonstration: some feller is wandering around Seattle with a video camera, getting close to people in public and semi-private places and videoing them without their permission. As the videos show, this upsets many people. And yet… they *don’t* get upset about surveillance cameras. Why the difference?
Offhand, I’d guess that the surveillance camera is an inanimate *thing*, as opposed to being a Guy With A Camera. Even though the results are the same, the unmanned camera doesn’t have a jackass attached to it, so people view it with disinterest.
[youtube KDumyGJdLrU]
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[youtube xVl_bLCKt8A]
While this seems like a potentially influential piece of agitprop, it also looks like a dandy way to get your ass *beat.*
Nov 032012
Don’t bother sending NYC assistance. They don’t need it, and what’s more, they don’t want it. Behold:
Davisburg trucker turned away in NYC after hauling power transformers
Mike James, an independent trucker, said he and three other truckers … slept in their trucks before attempting to deliver the 144 transformers to emergency workers.
When they arrived Wednesday, they were turned away by Con Edison employees because they were not union workers.
And:
Bloomberg: The National Guard in Coney is a bad idea
“We don’t need it,” Mayor Bloomberg said [regarding the National Guard coming in to provide security] “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.”
So if NYC doesn’t need electrical transformers or help providing security on the streets, then that sounds to me like their problems are pretty well solved. Certainly they don’t need any assistance (and definitely not dollars) from FEMA. And of course, that makes reports like the one below pure unadulterated fiction:
‘It’s like the Wild West’: Lawlessness and fear take over the outer boroughs as millions in misery endure a sixth day without power
Nov 032012
Standard Aircraft Characteristics sheets describing the Boeing XB-52 as of December 1949. This was not the B-52 as it was actually built… a number of design changes were yet to come. Most notable is that the wing is much closer to the nose. The cockpit in fact extends aft beyond the leading edge of the wing root.
SAC sheets used to be produced in large numbers to describe in concise form not only the aircraft the USAF was flying, but aircraft it was hoping to fly. These sheets would be produced by the USAF or by the contractors; contractors would often produce SACs describing conceptual or preliminary designs. There does not seem to have been a central clearinghouse for them… they were produced and distributed with no readily apparent rhyme or reason.
More images and data on this design are HERE.
Nov 032012
Nov 022012
I had occasion to use the facilities in a commercial establishment today. While sitting there minding my own business, I glanced at the ever-present inane scribblings you come to expect from such surroundings. But today I saw an exchange that made me laugh. I’m not in the habit of taking my camera with me on enterprises such as this, but I had my cel phone and took the horrible photo below. In case you can’t read it, one person wrote:
Strength comes from within
all the muscles in the world
cannot defeat the mind
To which someone else replied:
POTATO
Snerk.
There’s no such thing as a philosophical statement so heartfelt that “Potato” isn’t the perfect reply to.