… three hundred pounds of North American Aviation documentation.
Sep 072016
Sep 062016
Soviet science fiction movies
With English subtitles or, in a few cases, English dubbing. I’m currently downloading “Solaris” to watch later; I’ve heard good things about that. One the other hand, the vast majority of these are completely unknown to me. And on the gripping hand… how can you *not* want to watch 1974’s “Teens in the Universe?” Just on the title alone it *screams* “I need the MST3K team on this stat.”
And then there’s the poster. Look at it. Look. Fabulously gay Soviet space scouts and the bell-bottomiest bell bottoms that ever bell bottomed.
Sep 062016
A politician completely losing control of her lungs during the course of a speech:
This has got to be a nightmare for a politician. As someone with bad lungs myself due to repeated bouts of bronchitis, coughing is for me an ever-present annoyance, something I have to work hard to suppress (such as during interviews on The Space Show). But the bulk of the work I do does not depend on me keeping coughing under control… unlike Hillary here.
So, how will this be spun? The initial spin will be, I’m sure, “It’s nothing, no big deal.” If this continues or worsens, “Look how much she cares, she’s willing to put her own health at risk because she cares so much.”
Sep 052016
Sep 052016
Produced by Bell Aerospace around 1960 as a promotional item was this “ticket” for a flight from New York City to Melbourne, Australia. The aircraft shown was a two-stage hypersonic passenger transport; the first stage was essentially a supersonic transport equipped with turboramjet engines; it carried on its back a rocket powered passenger spaceplane. At the time it was pushed by the likes of Walter Dornberger, who had previously publicized a two-stage all-rocket powered hypersonic transport. There was some link between this design and the Dyna Soar program, but it is unclear just how involved the engineering was on the HST. Artwork was produced and a good display model, but it’s hard to tell if it went any further than that.
I have uploaded high-rez scans (600 dpi) to the 2016-09 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is accessible to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above.
Sep 042016
I mentioned this film a mere five and half years ago. “Universe” is a black and white documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1960, and gives a general overview of the universe as revealed by astronomers. Some pretty spiffy visual effects are used; as a result, this film was one of the inspirations for the film “2001.” Additionally it was narrated by Douglas Rain… HAL 9000 himself.
It’s now available to view on and download from YouTube:
I’m generally not a fan of colorized films, but it’d be interesting to see what a skilled colorizer could do with this.
Another film that helped inspire “2001” was “To The Moon and Beyond,” made by Graphic Films for exhibit at the 1964 New York Worlds Fair. That’s one I’ve *never* seen, sadly, but much of the work done by Con Pederson and Douglas Trumbull on “Moon” was of great value for “2001.” “Moon” was projected onto a spherical screen, apparently something like an early Omnimax. The technical requirements for this might explain why the film doesn’t seem to have been shown since the 64 Fair. I don’t know if a copy even exists anymore, though it seems probable.
Sep 042016
Sep 032016
Several days ago word hit of someone with six file boxes of their fathers stuff, wondering what to do with it. Not an unusual occurrence. But in this case, the father was an important engineer at North American Aviation, worked on the XB-70, B-1 and Shuttle, and the files all related to that. In the end, the archive wound up on Craigslist, and sold shortly afterwards. It is now being shipped… to me.
I would not have been able to afford the archive – never mind the shipping costs – on my own. However, by working with the patrons on the APR Patreon , we were able to pool funds so that the total cost per person is *trivial.* When the archive gets here – all 300+ pounds of it – I will go through every single page and catalog it; the best stuff will be scanned and, barring ITAR & classification issues, all of the crowdfunders will receive the complete set of high-rez scans. And then when I’ve gleaned from it what’s worth gleaning, it will be donated to an appropriate archive… the Smithsonian, the SDASM, the National Archives, Edwards AFB, whatever seems best in the end.
The door to sign up for this crowdfunding project is now closed. It followed shortly on the heels of a similar project that scored an admittedly much smaller but definitely fascinating collection of F2Y Sea Dart documentation and diagrams, including much about operational follow-on attack aircraft meant to operate from ships and subs; and a similar archive that was crowdfunded a year or two back that scored a whole bunch of 2707 SST stuff. I’ve grown sick of seeing amazing stuff appear on ebay and then vanish into a black hole, never to be seen by anyone again; this way, aerospace history is preserved and shared.
If you’d like to be involved in this sort of thing, sign up for the APR Patreon and you’ll not only get the monthly aerospace goodies that comes with membership, but you’ll also be able to get in on these crowd funding efforts. You’ll save aerospace history, get a bunch of amazing stuff, and not have to spend a whole lot to do it.
Sep 032016
I honestly don’t know if they’re offering an actual product or not. I’m pretty sure not.
I think the fact that I can’t understand a word of it really helps to sell it.
Might be mildly NSFW, so it’s after the break.
Sep 032016
And from the looks of it, someday soon.
Drone footage showing the flood of people dying to get into the “Ark Encounter” five minutes before opening on August 28, 2016.
So what will the reworked casino/hotel version be called? “Trump Titanic II” seems obvious. TrumpTanic? Looking at the shape of the “Ark” I’d recommend making it into an Exxon Valdez tribute. Slight reworking of the island at the rear and a new coat of paint and you’re good to go.
That is one *hell* of a parking lot. The amount of carbon dumped into the air during the process of chopping down the forest, grading the terrain and laying down the asphalt, coupled with the solar radiation that will be absorbed by the blacktop and converted into straight-up heat… that parking lot alone will be responsible for the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the flooding of Florida.