A piece of NASA artwork depicting the STAR Clipper, a Lockheed concept for a 1.5 Stage To Orbit space shuttle. Date is uncertain, probably in the 1967-1969 timeframe. Much more on the STAR Clipper can be found in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2.
For those who Don’t Get It, perhaps due to being non-American: there is a tradition of dubious value in the American public school system for kindergarten-through-grade-school kids on Valentines Day to set up little “mail boxes” on their desks to receive horrible mass-produced cheap Valentines Day cards. In some schools, what’s *supposed* to happen is that Lil Dickens gets a card for everyone in his class. What *actually* happens is that it turns into a straightforward way to measure popularity: the popular/attractive kids get a lot of cards, less popular kids get fewer. And then there’s the Ralph. There’s always a Ralph.
And because there’s nothing funnier than little kids learning real fast about the concepts of “unrequited love” and “the friendzone”…
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Sorry, I’ve got that fargin’ commercial stuck in my head. Anyway, check out the:
A little project at the Animal Rescue league of Berks County, Pennsylvania. The idea: kids can come in an read kids books to shelter cats. The cats become socialized with humans; the kids improve their public reading skills without having to speak publicly to *humans.* Apparently it’s a bit of a hit… kids are doing well, and cats are warming up to people. Cats seem to like the sort of droning, rhythmic speech of humans reading books… I’ve found that with my own cats.
There are numerous photos there… I’m pretty sure this is quickly becoming the most famous one as “Book Buddies” racks up press:
The CAD model is done. It has been saved as 98 separate STL files (one for each unique part… there will be, of course, many identical parts that will be cast multiple times) and shipped off to 3D print shops for quoting. So, at least for now… wooo! I’m done with it!
You have *no* idea how much time and trouble it took to crank out this one side-view line drawing…
Maybe…
Not just any court, but the *Ninth* Circuit Court of Appeals has admitted that “The right to bear arms includes the right to carry an operable firearm outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense.”
Neat! Now, presumably the state of California, which has so far claimed an overpowering need to keep defensive firearms out of the hands of people who are not rich celebrities or the politically connected, will take this case to the Supreme Court.
Here’s your dumbth-filled website for today. The stupid… it burns.
I can only guess how painful it must be for reasonable Christians to read pages of gibberish that use the Bible to try to convince people that Earth is the non-rotating, non-moving center of the solar system and the universe.
凸(0_.)凸
Currently fuming in my basement: one one-eyed angry feral mommacat and her angry feral kitten. Next Wednesday: she’s going to the vet to get fixed. I’ve known her for several years, and she’s always either been pregnant or had a brood of kittens in tow… it’s time for her to retire from that, and be able to relax a bit.
So, dear blog readers, here’s the question to ask yourself: is your money better spent on beer and hookers, partying, paying your mortgage and tax bills, funding your kids college edumacation… or helping me spay a stray? If you make the right decision…
Photos are crappy because… I dunno. Camera wasn’t moving and the flash went off, so they should have been pretty stable.
It’s from Russia Today, so, you know…
If the numbers are accurate, it’s not so much that CT created tens of thousands of brand-new felons as of January 1… they created hundreds of thousands of brand-new felons.
Oh Noes! The booze Obama served the French President only cost $125 for, apparently, three bottles!!!!!
Hmmm.
The stuff *I* drink tends to cost less than three bucks a *gallon.* ‘Course, it’s squeezed out of a cow, not out of a grape, and if it’s fermented, something has gone seriously wrong…
I have happy dreams of a US President meeting another major head of state with a Coke and a Subway sammich. “Want a bag of chips with that? We’re on a budget these days.”
I usually don’t just repost aerospace projects from other websites, but what the heck: An illustration of a 200 megawatt nuclear powerplant for aircraft. This single-reactor, four-turbojet engine would have been installed in a highly modified B-36 or B-60.
This powerplant is very similar to the General Electric powerplant intended for the X-6, which consisted of an R-1 reactor and a P-1 powerplant… four modified General Electric J47 turbojets. However, here the reactor is spherical rather than the R-1’s cylindrical, and the engines are described as Wright engines rather than GE. Wright was not a major designer of turbojets… this drawing might show engines based on the Wright J67, which was a license built version of the British Rolls-Royce Olympus. This nuclear turbojet concept is probably form fairly early in the design process.
The basic concept was simple enough. The reactor would replace chemical jet fuel by putting a heat exchanger where the turbojet would normally have a combustor. In order to get the heat from the reactor to the heat exchanger, a NaK (an alloy of sodium and potassium) would be used. NaK has the convenient feature of being liquid at room temperature (freezing at -11 Celcius), boiling above 785 Celcius. This means that in most conditions, even with the reactor off, the liquid in the pipes won’t freeze, and the liquid will stay a liquid, capable of carrying considerable thermal energy, at usefully high temperatures. On the other hand, NaK has the unfortunate problem of having a serious hatred for water and oxygen, merrily exploding in contact with either (especially at high temperature). If your nuclear engine springs a leak… watch out.
