Yow.
[youtube U71xF9fnBG8]
Dec 312013
Dec 302013
McDonnell-Douglas concept art of their briefly studied Advanced Technology Bomber design.
Everything I have on this, including some very reliable diagrams, is in US Bomber Projects #05. If you’d like to download the full-rez version of this (3000 pixels wide), it is available HERE. To access it, you’ll need the username and password given in the “USBP05 extra content” section on the first page of USBP #05.
Dec 302013
Grumman art showing an F-14 opening up with its M-61.
Dec 292013
This has been a little slice of hell, but it’s finally starting to turn around. The first few days were a nightmare of flu-like hot & cold, but the last few days have been a nightmare of non-functional lungs. For a while there I could only breathe in tiny gulps… in a burst of scientific enthusiasm, I blew bubbles and figure that I was down to a volume of not much more than a ping pong ball. If I remained vertical and immobile, the lungs would be more or less stable; but if I went more than 15 degrees off plumb, they’d go bonkers and I’d have horrific, pointless coughing fits that would couple with the minimal lung function to consume the very last erg of energy. Efforts to sleep have, for the last 48 hours, proven to be largely failures.
Today my lung volume is greatly expanded and they are more tolerant of off-axis conditions. You’d think that this would allow me to finally get some sleep… nope. Best I can do is lay there motionless for two hours at a stretch, with perhaps a few brief episodes of micro-sleep. My brain is still a mess due to the lack of sleep, but it’s coming back on line. Hour after hour propped in front of the TV staring blankly at overly-enthusiastic self-deluded fools chasing bigfoot didn’t melt my brain, but, sadly, neither did it put me to sleep. Gah.
Also: my appetite is *gone.* Yesterday I had two bites of a Hot Pocket and one slice of bread; today, three spoons of oatmeal. And everything just tastes *wrong.* Mostly everything – food & drinks – that I used to like, now I don’t. On the other hand, an energy drink that has always been pretty vile now tastes… not that bad. Shrug.
I have high hopes that today I will be able to get back to work on things. I spent much of yesterday with the laptop I do my US Bomber Projects diagrams on… but never once had the initiative to so much as turn the damned thing on. Freakin’ zombie apocalypse.
I also notice that pretty much the last thing I did before getting ill was working outside on cyanotype blueprints. I can’t help but put two and two together here… physical labor in the cold seems to have led to sickness. So… no more cyanotypes. Not until spring, anyway.
Dec 292013
Hmmm…
[youtube A4QcyW-qTUg]
Dec 272013
I am still quite ill. Fever. Considerable pain. Difficulty breathing. Nosleep. The result of all that is thatI have no cleverness or even good snark to add to the world just now. So I’ll just leave this here:
Victims Strip Suspect Naked, Take His Gun During Robbery In OKC
The criminals name is “Corneilyus,” which pretty much set him up to fail in life. On that line, here is a news story about a fella named “Damieian.” Go ahead and guess: is he an upstanding member of society, or a scumbag?
Dec 272013
Issue number 5 of US Bomber Projects is now available (for background, see HERE). This issue includes:
- McDonnell-Douglas ATB: The little know third competitor for the B-2
- McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing DF-9: A Mach 10 global-range strike/space launch system from the 1990’s
- Boeing Model 701-273-5: A supersonic bomber with an extreme inverse-taper wing
- Fairchild N-9: An early 1950’s nuclear powered concept
- Martin Model 223-5: A predecessor to the B-48 with canards
- Rockwell D645-5: A subsonic 1978 flying wing bomber designed to use a laser for defense against fighters and missiles
- North American 464L: NAA’s X-15 derived orbital spaceplane concept for the Dyna Soar program
- Boeing Model 464-17: 1946 four-turboprop strategic bomber, a step toward the B-52
USBP#05 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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Dec 272013
Be sure to check out the Complete Catalog for all the drawings and documents.
Saturn I Summary
A 44 page NASA brochure (from somewhen around 1965) describing all the Saturn I vehicles that were launched. Includes diagrams showing the different configurations and provides mission data and highlights.
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The Retro-Glide Booster Concept
A 20-page collection of information on the Martin-Marietta “Retro-Glide Booster,” an early Shuttle idea for using a winged and recoverable derivative of the Saturn V first stage. A 1971 NASA Space Shuttle History Project document.
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NB-36H Aircraft Descriptive Data
30 pages of Lockheed data on the Convair NB-36H (the B-36 equipped with a nuclear reactor for test purposes). This comes from the Lockheed “Competitive Data Group,” which was Lockheed’s collection of intelligence data on *other* companies designs and proposals. This report, largely hand-written, provides a program history as well as weight and dimensional data, with a number of sketches showing the general arrangement and internal layout.
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Handbook on Guided Missiles
212 pages of a 1946 War Department report on German and Japanese rocket powered missiles and aircraft. This rarely-seen classic (scanned from a photocopy) provides a vast pile of information, including a great many diagrams.
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Saturn Foldout
A NASA-Marshall publicity brochure on the Saturn V, dating to the mid-late 1960’s. Prints out full-size to 34 1/4 inches by 9 1/2 inches
Dec 272013
On the 24th, I started feeling indefinably “off.” The 25th was a nightmare of coughing and fever; the 26th was even worse coughing and uncontrollable shivering. Today the coughing continues but the temperature issue seems to have settled down, but since I can only breathe *real* shallow, I have all the energy of a used D-cell. Did manage to drag myself to the doctor and, yup, bronchitis again.
Gah.
And thus the lack of blogging recently.
Dec 262013
From the glory days of aerospace illustration, the B2707-200 supersonic transport. The full-rez illustration is a thing to behold!
