An admittedly rather awful-quality CAD diagram of the “Dual Keel” space station configuration as studied by NASA sometime in the late 1980’s. This drawing is noteworthy for sowing what appears to be a very large parabolic antenna, probably a radio antenna or radar dish (seems far too large to be the reflector for a solar power system).
Scanned from a slide at the NASA HQ historical archive.
One of the local farmcats, an extremely friendly and un-named son of One-Eye, has recently realized that by sitting on a post on the railing on my porch, he can not only get a look into the house, he will also attract attention. And by doing so, the little mooch gets free food and pettings.
It’s clearly time to do some window washing.
The pneumonia well and truly kicked my ass. I’m well into recovery, but it screwed up my lung function but good, with a result being that I not only have exciting coughing fits for no readily apparent reason, but I also seem to have really low blood oxy levels. Damn near passed out a few days ago… because I stood up. Feh. The end result of all that is that my ability to get much done, or to even give much of a damn, has been drained. I have a few projects I need to accomplish, but progress has been really, really slow.
Blogging has, perhaps obviously, turned into something of a back-burner issue. So, please to enjoy this artists impression from the 1960’s showing a Douglas concept for a small space station launched atop a Saturn S-IVb stage (not sure if Saturn Ib or V), using Gemini capsules for logistics. This came from an eBay sale sometime back (that I did not win).
Several model projects, both physical and CAD, have fallen far behind. The physical ones will be most problematic… crappy lungs and solvents? Not good bedfellows.
Two projects *have* made a measure of progress… US Bomber Projects issues 03 and 04 near completion, and the sci-fi story I wrote some time ago and got promising feedback from a Published Author, has been revised into draft #5 and sent off to said author for a hopefully final and positive review. If so, I’ll send it on first to Analog, and see what happens.
USBP 03 and 04 should be out this week. If the story is accepted for publication, I actually have two followup stories partially worked up in my head involving the same characters. The three stories are quite different in plot and tone and even kinda genre. All are based on a “space opera” foundation, but one is intended as hard SF, one as a bit of comedy (with a bit of philosophy), one as a bit of horror. Ain’t sayin’ which is what. If they get published, it’ll be obvious. If they don’t, it won’t much matter.
Hmmm…
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Boy, they just can’t catch a break. Economic troubles for years, earthquakes, tsunamis, reactors melting down. And now news that Tokyo is to be trashed:
In a test flight, SpaceShipTwo reached Mach 1.43 and 69,000 feet after a 20-second rocket engine burn (after being carried to 45,000 feet by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft) . Still waaaaaay short of the operational goals, but getting there. Also demonstrated the “feathering” procedure.
Here’s your latest “movie that didn’t need to be remade” trailer:
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This looks like it has, apart from a few datapoints, virtually nothing to do with the original. The characters that carry over appear to be fundamentally different.
A ceramic material currently used in hip implants and the like – yttria-stabilized zirconia – has been made transparent. It’s much harder than glass and is safe for implantation, so chunks of the skull could in principle be replaced with the stuff. The idea is, apparently, that a transparent window would allow the brain to be not only seen by doctors, but operated on via laser without having to open up the cranium.
Bleah.
I can see the body modification weirdos going nuts with this stuff. Well, the rich ones, anyway.
Oddly, drugs and booze were involved.
It’s amazing to me just how tweaked people get on this subject. In this case, it was two friends, one Christian, one atheist, arguing until the Christian grabbed an AR-15 and popped the atheist. I’ve seen friendships shaken over just this sort of debate (though so far I’ve avoided gunfire).
Fusion power has been about 10 years away for the last 50 years or so. Still, experts in the field have from time to time gone ahead and designed operational reactors based on then-current assumptions. One such design study was done in 1972 by staff at the Oak Ridge National Lab, reported on in early 1973. This was a 1000 megawatt commercial fusion powerplant based on the Tokamak torus-type reactor. The work was sponsored by the US Atomic Energy Commission.
A 30,000 gauss superconducting toroidal electromagnet would serve as the deuterium and tritium containment and compression field, driving up pressure and temperature to fusion levels. Neutrons spit out by the reaction would be absorbed by a thick blanket of liquid lithium; absorption of the neutrons would cause the lithium to fission and create tritium at a rate higher than tritium is consumed in fusion, thus making the system self sustaining as far as tritium. While a reactor like this, if made workable, would not have the sort of safety issues associated with fission reactors (see: Chernobyl, Fukushima), there would still be the potential issue of many tons of molten lithium. At the best of time lithium and the oxygen in air do not get along well; melt the lithium and expose it to oxygen – say, via a split weld or a broken pipe – and you’d have one spectacular magnesium-like fire that would probably reduce the entire plant (including the concrete structure) to smoldering ash.
Needless to say, no commercial powerplant like this has been built. One like it is… at least 10 years away.
