The forward “Shuttle” of the Messiah is, at long last, done. Some 2D diagrams created from the model.
Mar 222015
Mar 212015
Eugen Sanger was an Austrian engineer from the early/mid 20th century. While largely forgotten by the vast majority of everybody today, he is remembered, at least in aerospace circles, as the originator of the Silbervogel (“Silverbird”) rocket-powered suborbital bomber. This work was performed during WWII for the German government, and included some substantial rocket testing; the odd thing – though wholly in character for the Nazi regime – was that this work was entirely separate from the development work on the V-2 rocket. Had the efforts been brought together, chances are that German rocketry would have been further advanced by the end of the war.
In 1934, Sanger published a paper on advancement in liquid propellant rocketry, work that would later feed into his Silverbird effort. “Recent Results in Rocket Flight Technique” not only reported upon work done in developing a gas-oil and liquid oxygen burning rocket engine, but also proposals for manned rocket powered aircraft. The paper was originally written in German and granted the catchy title “Neuer Ergebnisse der Raketenflugtechnik,” but it was translated into English by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in April of 1942. Why was it was translated just then? Depending on the speed of the translators, the work may have begun just after the American entry into WWII, which might indicate a bit more interest in German rocketry in certain portions of the US Government than has generally been understood.
The abstract & such for the report can be seen on the NASA Technical Report Server HERE. Or it can be directly downloaded as a 33 meg PDF HERE.
Note: my original plan for this writeup was to include verbiage along the lines of “Sorry that the two-bit black-and-white scan quality is so poor, but whatcha gonna do.” But in looking it up, I found that the original bleah-quality scan has been replaced with a higher quality full-color scan. This is a good thing!
Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon.
Mar 212015
Here are two fun items:
Ethnic Minorities Deserve Safe Spaces Without White People
Where it is libsplained that when ethnic minorities declare a place to be a “safe space,” they can exclude whoever the hell they like for whatever reason they like. In this specific instance, it was a “Racialized Students Collective” meeting at Ryerson University in Toronto that expelled two white journalists for being white.
The Law of Unintended Consequences makes for some interesting speculation. Are you a Christian baker of wedding cakes and you don’t want to make cakes for same-sex weddings? Why… your shop is a “safe space” where you need not allow non-Christians (Christians being a minority world-wide, the reasoning works). A library is a “safe space” from filthy bums. The “Racialized Students” were meeting not in a private residence or a business, but in a campus facility. This indicates that publicly accessible spaces can be shut off for racial – and thus presumable gender, religious, philosophical, political, etc. – reasons.
The author of the piece, a fourth-year-should-know-better student in journalism, agrees that someone simply stating that whatever’s going on is a “safe space” can effectively stifle the press and prevent them from reporting on it. Granted, Canada isn’t the US, so “freedom of the press” doesn’t exactly have the same meaning there, but it’ll be interesting to see if the Canuckpress actually buys into that “reasoning.” Imagine if Rob Ford, during one of his rambling weird press conferences, had suddenly shouted that the place was a “safe space” for drugged up whackos and that the press should stop reporting.
This being Canada, and me not being Canadian, I Officially Have No Opinion on whether the idea of racial segregation in Canadian “Safe Spaces” should be permitted. However, I *do* have suggestions in case it is. Journalists of excluded races should make a basic token effort to gain entry. And when not allowed in… speculate. Delve into the deepest heart of old-school yellow journalism. What are they doing in there? What do they have to hide?? We have heard rumors of planned bank heists, crystal meth being cooked up, animal sacrifices. Are they performing female genital mutilation behind those doors? Worshipping Cthulhu? Cloning Hitler? WE JUST DON’T KNOW!!!
And further south…
Person Putting “Whites Only” Stickers Around Austin Turns Out to be Liberal Social Justice Warrior
Color me stunned.
Mar 202015
Top violator of women’s rights around the world? It’s Israel says UN
And by “UN,” what is specifically meant here is the “Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)” which condemned a grand total of one nation… Israel.
I’m sure the womenfolk of Syria and Iran and Iraq and Egypt and Pakistan and Afghanistan and Sudan and Saudi Arabia are thrilled to hear they have it so good.
Feh.
I’ve said it before: the UN’s time is done. It needs to be replaced not by a deliberative body of *every* nation, but one that selects nations based on common agreed-upon cultural tenets. Sort of a NATO writ large.
Mar 202015
I am nearing completion of the “Deep Impact” Messiah model. Basically I’ve gone through most of the parts and hollowed them out and chopped them up into “kit parts” for printing. Some yet to do… the photoetched brass bits – shown here in yellow – need some work. The nose landing gear leg is a simple placeholder just yet. And a few other details I’d like to add.
Not shown here are the “booster rockets” the vehicle was shown with.
While a lot of the design replaced practical aerospace functionality with “huh? wut?” it’ll still be an impressive display model when available in 1/200 scale from Fantastic Plastic.
Mar 202015
Well, here’s a nice big splash of cold-water sadness for ya:
T.H.T.K.
It’s an artists blog. The art project: a collection of photographs that were sent to him that the original owners found “to hard to keep.” Basically because the photo brings up some unfortunate memory or the like. But the trick is that no stories come with the photos… just the photo. Some are pretty obvious to understand the source of pain. Some you can probably guess. Some are mysterious and intriguing. Some are no help at all.
Mar 202015
If you college or university can produce a headline like this one… then, yes. A load of nutters or the outright evil. Consider getting educated elsewhere.
College Students Want to Name a Building After a Convicted Cop Killer
Mar 202015
Because who doesn’t want a flamethrower? The potential uses are endless. Pest control! Home defense! Personal defense against muggers! Weed control! Urban renewal!
The XM42 will soon be available in the 49 least Californian states for the low, low price of $700.
They are supposed to have an Indigogo page to help crowd fund this project… but if you click on it it jsut goes to the main Indiegogo page, and a search for XM42 doesn’t turn anything up. The campaign doesn’t begin until the 23rd, so maybe that’s why the page isn’t up. Or maybe Indiegogo might have decided that a flamethrower doesn’t fit in with their usual hipster development projects. I suppose we’ll see in a few days.
Some aspect of the design are puzzling. What makes it go, basically. There are, seemingly, no pressure tanks to squirt the gasoline out. Pumping it out mechanically is possible I suppose, but leaks would be catastrophic. It looks like there’s a small propane burner, so maybe it taps into that.
One wonders if the US government might be interested in buy a few thousand and loaning them to the Ukrainian government…
Mar 202015
Here’s some nightmare fuel…
Mar 192015
An eye-tracking program, which uses infra-red sensors to very precisely determine the direction the users eyeballs are pointed, was married to a drawing program to allow an artist to sketch portraits while only moving his eyes. Most of the portraits look pretty “mmmbleah” to me, but I can see some serious potential here.