Here’s what the 80’s would have looked like had we had modern computer graphics capabilities.
Feb 102015
Feb 102015
The next pair of pubs. The USLP layout shows not only most of the designs for the first issue, but also the planned format.
Feb 102015
An old, old, *old* school NASA educational film about the rockets to be used on the Saturn I booster, as seen from 1961 or so. Includes some cliched discussion of rocket thrust as being the same as recoil from a rifle… with a now-almost-certainly banned from public school film of someone shooting a gun to demonstrate the principle. It’d be interesting to see how this would go over in a modern grade school setting.
Feb 092015
It seems a Ukrainian missile found its mark near Donetsk. Reportedly, this night time attack struck a Russian separatist weapons dump/depot, with the result that the secondary explosion was *really* impressive. Apparently some nearby thought it was a tactical nuke.
Note that there are some initial faint flashes, followed about a second later by a truly spectacular blast (this is also apparent in the audio). This would seem consistent with missile or artillery strikes going off, followed by a far larger secondary. If t was a nuke, there’d be no precursors; it’d go straight to the main event.
Feb 082015
The next airline trend could be narrower seats
United Airlines is considering introducing an economy section on its long-haul Boeing 777-200 with hink it’ll be cars from here on out.rows of ten seats abreast-instead of the current rows of nine…
And here I was thinking that I might choose to fly on a jetliner at some point in the future.
I used to fly multiple times per year. But the last time I flew was in late 2013, and that was an unusual, not-to-be-repeated circumstance. I don’t know when the last time I flew before *that* was, but at least several years. Thanks to the nuisance of air travel coupled with the limitations of air travel and the increasing physical *pain* of air travel (not only are most airline seat rows far too close for my legs, the last time I flew I managed to catch the plague), I think it’ll be cars from here on out.
Feb 072015
While I’m hearing rumors that it’s been unnecessarily cold and snowy out east, here in Utah winter seems to have forgotten how to wint. According to weather.com, todays high was 61 degrees (though driving down the highway I saw 65), the low was 38. The average is 35 degrees. The high, set in 2007, was 57 degrees.
This does not bode well for a survivable summer.
Feb 072015
SpaceX to Try Rocket Landing Again with DSCOVR Satellite Launch
Launch set for February 8 at 6:10 p.m. EST (2310 GMT) and will be webcast live by NASA TV.
UPDATE: Scrubbed due to some tracking issue. Trying again tomorrow at 6:07 PM eastern time.
Feb 072015
Neil Armstrongs widow found a white bag in a closet, emptied it out and found it was full of clearly space-related stuff. So she asked the National Air and Space Museum for assistance in identifying it. Turns out… it’s bits and pieces of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. Most profoundly (to me, anyway) is the little 16mm film camera that looked out the window and actually filmed the landing, as well as Armstrongs descent down the ladder.
Lunar Surface Flown Apollo 11 Artifacts From the Neil Armstrong Estate
I don’t have much use for religious icons… but damn, if any physical objects merit such veneration, it’d be these. They are now on display at the NASM. The link above has a bunch of high-rez photos.
Feb 072015
Germany is battling a measles outbreak that is 10 times worse than the one in the U.S.
Germany has a higher vaccination rate than the US. But apparently it has a *worse* rate of *full* vaccination, or vaccinating kids early enough.
Feb 072015
Saw it. Review: Eh, it was ok, I suppose. The movie snobs seem to hate it with a passion, but I thought it was entertaining enough.
Technical note: there are two types of science fiction moves. There’s the type like “Interstellar,” which tries to be scientifically accurate; in these cases, the engineer in me finds all the science and logic flaws in the flick, and kinda obsesses about ’em. And then there’s the type like “Jupiter Ascending” or “Star Wars” or “John Carter,” where no pretense towards scientific accuracy is made, and the engineer in me takes a little nap, and willing suspension of disbelief takes over. You need a *lot* of that here.
The short form for the world of Jupiter Ascending: Humanity did not evolve on Earth, but some other world…a *billion* years ago. Humans found Earth some 65 million years ago and apparently promptly bombed the dinosaurs into extinction; 100,000 years ago, the local pre-human species were genetically tinkered into modern humans. The reason: bajillions of worlds are seeded with humans. When the world gets populated sufficiently, the Space Humans come along and “harvest” the planet, which process was not shown but results in the complete genocide of the humans on the world. The humans are processed for a Magical Youth Serum which is a glowy liquid (100 people are needed to make about a liter) and the most valuable substance in the universe, and people fight for it and dynasties are based on it, the spice must flow, blah, blah, blah. Point is: the larger Space People Culture is a horrible stratified and ossified society of aristocratic assholes who live 90,000 or more years due to Magic Youth Serum.
Yeah, you can pick that apart a hundred different ways: any Magic Youth Serum can probably be analyzed and stamped out by the metric ton via replicators and humanity is probably going to go *way* beyond meatspace long before a billion years are two that jump out at me.
But you don’t watch a flick like this for the rational discourse of logical probabilities; you watch it for the flashing lights and pretty colors, which this has in spades. The artists went absolutely bonkers in designing the ships here; I don’t know what a billion-year-old civilization would look like (my guess: dust), but this does look like a civilization so advance as to not give a damn about energy or mass. Plus, you can see “2001’s” Space Station V in one scene…
There was one genuinely funny sequence that bore a striking resemblance to “Brazil.” The fact that it ended with an appearance by Terry Gilliam was thus rather fitting.
So, if you watch it for what it is, it’s not bad. It’s gorgeous if somewhat befuddling space opera… without the sense of fun that “Guardians of the Galaxy” had. My prediction: it’ll tank.