This gave me a pain *right* *here*

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., history, Meh., news, photography, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  1 Response »
Jul 042014
 

American Apparel shares Challenger photo as ‘clouds’

Ow. Ow. My head. It hurts.

americanapparelchallenger

Seems likely that there are two explanations for this:

1) American Apparel is one of those annoying “edgy” companies that likes to push buttons, with the belief that “there’s not such thing as bad press.”

2) They hire monumentally stupid people, unaware of cultural icons.

AA has claimed that the real answer is #2, that the “international social media employee” who posted this was born after 1986, and thus, gosh, the little scamp couldn’t possibly be expected to be aware of Challenger. Uh-huh…

I vote #1. By being dicks, people are talking about them again. Hell, they even managed to get some space on the prestigious Unwanted Blog…

painrighthere

My interest here is not AA. I don’t give a damn about them or their shenanigans. But I find it sad that the excuse “whoops, too young to even know what Challenger was” is sufficiently valid to gain *any* traction. You know what? Hindenburg was slightly before my time, yet I think I’d recognize it in a photo, even if it was lightly Photoshopped.

hugemanatee

 Posted by at 12:10 pm

Rocketships

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  2 Responses »
Jul 042014
 

The photo archives of the Baltimore Sun newspaper is being sold off on eBay. A whole lot of really old glossies of every vaguely newsworthy subject… including rockets and spacecraft. Two which caught my eye are listed as “Dyna Soar” designs, but clearly aren’t. What they are is hard to discern. They have the look of late 50’s, early 60’s aerospace concept art, but the ships shown look a little too sci-fi to necessarily be products of the aerospace industry. Instead, they might be products of the *news* industry… someone wrote an article about the Dyna Soar, and someone at the Baltimore Sun – or perhaps the AP, the LA Times or some other newscorp – painted these images, dreaming them up out of whole cloth. The certainly look “cool,” but I’m much less convinced that they look “practical.”

This one depicts what appears to be a glideback first stage, designed around the F-117’s stealth facetting principles. Those wingtips look like they aren’t long for this world, as they will almost certainly be banged into the runway. Actually, it looks like they project substantially lower than the aft landing skids, meaning that the wingtips will *necessarily* dig into the ground. No date given; however, it appears to have been associated with the following image, which dates from June, 1959.

ebay 2014-06-29 1

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This image shows a USAF vehicle of some type. Again it is described as “Dyna Soar,” but it clearly isn’t. It appears to be a four-jet-engine aircraft, probably a bomber; the wide, flat forward fuselage is a bit of a stumper.

baltimore sun photo 1

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This one at least comes with good captioning, and is clearly an LA Times artist impression of a Dyna Soar vehicle based on a wind tunnel model.

ebay 2014-07-04 a

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They, especially the first two, are certainly interesting. But at $17 each, they’re a bit too rich for my blood. So if any of y’all pull the trigger and buy them, please keep me in mind if you take them near a scanner…

 

 Posted by at 8:58 am

Bales

 photography, Utah  2 Responses »
Jul 042014
 

Near Honeyville a month ago. Summer has, sadly, now arrived, with hundred degree temperatures and all the green baked brown, but April through early June around here was a nice verdant time.

2014-06-03 pano 01

 Posted by at 8:34 am

“Person”

 blather, I'm from the government, politics  1 Response »
Jul 032014
 

For the past few years, a lot of people have gotten their knickers in a twist over the Supreme Court and others equating corporations with people. The recent Hobby Lobby decision, the Citizen United decision, Mitt Romney pointing out that corporations are people, etc. The thing is, though, that this isn’t some recent bizarre conclusion, but settled law. Law that was settled a century and a quarter ago via the Dictionary Act of 1871 which defined “person” in Federal Law:

dictionaryact

This wording can now be found in the US Federal Code:

1 U.S. Code § 1 – Words denoting number, gender, and so forth

the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;

At this point, complaining “but corporations aren’t people” is pretty much exactly the same level of intellectual dumbth as “but evolution is just a theory.”

the-more-you-know

 Posted by at 3:01 pm

Patreon update

 blather, news, Patreon  No Responses »
Jul 032014
 

OK, things seem to be proceeding. The pledge level is at the “2 uploads per month” level, the first months pledge funds have been debited from the patrons and credited to my account. Due to fees and patrons that haven’t been debited – I’m guessing they’re signed up via credit cards that take days to verify or something – slightly less than 2/3 of the pledge amount actually comes through. So now that that’s underway, the next step is for the $10+ patrons to begin voting on *what* I’ll upload. I suspect that, depending on the vote, I’ll be able to make the uploaded drawings & documents available in around 10 days.

If you are one of the $10+ patrons, look for a message from me several hours from now. But right now I’m heading out to pick up a CD filled with large format scans from the print shop… and to drop off a number more large format diagrams to be scanned. Huzzah!

 Posted by at 8:37 am

RIP Fred Ordway

 AARRRGH, blather, history, news, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Jul 012014
 

https://www.facebook.com/NASAHistoryOffice

It is with sincere regret that we note the passing of Fred Ordway (1927-2014). A man of many talents, he was the youngest member of the American Rocket Society (now the AIAA), having been accepted as a member at age 13. His request for membership showed a talent and interest that belied his age, which the Society only discovered when he showed up for his first meeting.

Ordway had an illustrious career as an engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center, where he worked for Wernher von Braun. He also famously worked as the scientific consultant to Stanley Kubrick on “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In this image, Ordway (conspicuous in his tennis whites) talks with (l-r) astronaut Deke Slayton, Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick, and George Mueller (Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight) on set.

Ordway is the author of more than 30 books, including “Visions of Spaceflight: Images from the Ordway Collection, and (with Wernher von Braun) “History of Rocketry and Space Travel.”

Bah.

I had very limited interaction with Fred many years ago. Seemed a nice feller. And his influence on space history by way of his writing and his work on “2001” will echo down the ages.

 Posted by at 10:45 pm
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