Fairbanks man punches grizzly
And yet, it worked. Check out the very last sentence of the article…
Sep 162013
Sep 162013
So, a 17 and a 19 year old were out driving around, checkin’ out the hotties, when they happened to notice that one was being kidnapped. And what did they do? They messed up the “kids these days suck and are mean, evil and lazy” meme, that’s what.
Texas Teens Save Alleged Kidnap Victim Who Mouthed ‘Help Me’ From Car
[youtube rxds3Ugltus]
[youtube hU3u_aB5NtA]
These two fellers look like a hoot.
Bravo, guys. You get a cookie.
Sep 152013
DARPA To Start Reusable Launch Vehicle Program
Short form: a spaceplane to fly 10 times in 10 days (which would necessitate a system that is reliable, rugged and needs relatively little and cheap maintenance) that can fly up to Mach 10 (ouch… harsh) and carry a payload that could eventually translate into an upper stage capable of putting 1,800 kilograms into orbit for no more than $5M per launch.
DARPA released a few bits of concept art showing winged vehicles, but the XS-1 need not be winged… a DC-X clone might do the job. Illustrations taken from the presentation HERE.
The Mach 10 requirement is odd and confusing. The math on launch vehicle design rarely requires that a multistage launcher stage off the first stage much faster than Mach 5.
An Industry Day is coming in early October.
Sep 152013
DARPA has a VTOL program. Some fellers at Boeing-Philadelphia had an idea for a VTOL aircraft. So… they spent three days designing a subscale prototype, and two weeks building it.
[youtube 8N3RlaVYDdM]
It flies, if rather wobbly. Further tinkerage with the computer control system should clear that right up..
Three days. Think of it… not months and months of committee meetings and never ending analysis paralysis. Just design something that, while not being perfect, is good enough.
Interestingly, the same technologies (computers) that helped them design and fly the “Phantom Swift” this quickly are responsible in no small part for the aerospace industry grinding to a halt in recent decades. In the 1950’s and before, if you wanted to test an idea, you built it. Then stuck it in a wind tunnel, or launched it with a sounding rocket, or dropped it from a plane, or stuck an engine and an adrenaline junkie in it and actually flew it. But once computer aided design and analysis came on the scene, rather than spend lots of money building, flying and crashing, engineers spent lots of money designing and redesigning and reredesigning and rereredesigning until eventually the whole program got cancelled.
Sep 152013
Because people told me it was the key to prosperity, I got a Facebook page for Aerospace Projects Review a few years ago. Because those people were wrong, it kinda slipped my mind. I just took a look at it… it’s been *eleven* months since I last posted anything there. Huh.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Aerospace-Projects-Review/159434240833823
Sep 152013
During the heady days of the late 1970’s/early 1980’s Solar Power Satellite program, a number of fairly large launch vehicles were designed to haul the vast amounts of material needed in orbit. One that received a fair amount of press was a Boeing single stage to orbit design. Basically shaped like a Mercury capsule, this design became known as “Big Onion.” It’s unclear exactly how it got that name, and by whom; no official Boeing model number is known for it.
The Big Onion and the other heavy lifters of the time were not as powerful as the Post-Saturn vehicles studied a decade earlier. Where the earlier designs had million-pound payloads, “Big Onion” and its ilk topped out at around half a million. The purpose was low cost transport of vast quantities of material, not the largest possible payload in one shot.
Sep 142013
Jeff Wagner, running for mayor of Minneapolis, went from “Jeff who?” to “Oh, yeah, THAT guy” with one single totally awesome ad.
[youtube BODbfSBvnTo]
No idea what his politics are. But I like him already.
Sep 142013
A story about Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency.
The Cowboy of the NSA
Amidst the Tl;dr discussion of Alexander and the NSA, there’s this:
When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a “whoosh” sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather “captain’s chair” in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.
“Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,” says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.
Sadly, the article does not include photos of said Enterprise-like “Information Dominance Center.” Fortunately, the architects who built it have a website that *does* have photos of said sci-fi environment:
I leave it as a discussion topic whether:
A: Does this really look like the bridge of the Enterprise?
B: *Should* this look like the bridge of the Enterprise?
C: So, how about that wacky NSA, huh?
Sep 142013
An interesting story out of Switzerland:
‘Mystery figure haunting the Swiss woods for over a decade’
In short: for about ten years, there’s been a guy in a forest in western Switzerland who simply goes for a daily walk. This wouldn’t be newsworthy except for the fact that he wears a cape, some sort of military uniform… and a gas mask. He doesn’t do anything threatening or suspicious, just goes for a walk. Now that someone finally managed to get a photo of him, the local police want to talk to him and try to get him to tone down the scariness.
Hmmm.
Now, here’s my boggle. The guy’s not behaving in an ominous manner, he’s just going for a walk. A cape actually makes sense in a forest… keeps bugs (especially ticks) off you. A gas mask is itself non-threatening; while it may well be merely a fashion choice (though an odd one), there are numerous reasons why someone out and about may want filtered air, not least of which being pollen and allergies and such. So, all that said… if it’s fair to send the cops to accost this feller simply because he’s out *kinda* in public but hiding his identity, wouldn’t it be appropriate to question *everyone* who goes out in public with their face covered?
Sep 142013
Finally got around to creating web pages specifically for the US Bomber Projects publications:
http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/bomproj.htm
and
http://up-ship.com/blog/Book/bomproj.htm
You can order all of them from either of those pages. And feel free to do so… sales for #3 and #4 are half what they were for #1 and #2. Can’t help but see that as an unfortunate sign. Did the customer base go stale that fast? Hmmm…
Anyway, here are two illustrations from #4… the Lockheed-Martin FALCON Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle and the Lockheed nuclear powered cruise missile carrier from the 1970’s.
