B-70 Artwork

 aircraft, art, history, projects  10 Responses »
Mar 222017
 

Here are three pieces of art taken from North American Aviation documents from the early 60’s, part of the Spivak collection. Not the best reproduction quality, but whatryagonnado. The two with downturned wingtips depict the B-70 as actually built; the other is slightly earlier, with some differences from the final configuration. The most obvious is that the vertical fins have leading edge extensions; additionally the forward fuselage contours seem off, though that might be an artistic flub. As well, it does not appear to depict the existence of the wingtip fold hinges, which is either a mistake or artistic license for some purpose.

 

 Posted by at 2:23 am

Antidote For Nostalgia: Group Edition

 AARRRGH, Antidote For Nostalgia, Crazy, Gah., history, ಠ_ಠ  11 Responses »
Mar 222017
 

The unceasing cavalcade of bad 1960’s/70’s mens fashion ads continues with four images that will make you question your allegiance to Earth.

Questions to ask yourself, beyond the basic “why, in Gods name, why?” include such as “did these ads actually work,” and “why are so many of the models just so damned goofy looking?”

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:55 am

Tweeting deadly weapons

 Crazy, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  20 Responses »
Mar 212017
 

When I read the headline, at first I though that this was going to be another Amazingly Stupid Story:

A Grand Jury Just Called Tweeting an Animated GIF ‘Assault With a Deadly Weapon’

But in fact, the jury got it right. The animated gif in question is apparently one that flashes real fast in a way meant to cause epileptic seizures. The gif in question was sent by a stalker to a victim who he knew had epilepsy, in the hopes that it would cause a seizure. And the gif in question actually caused a seizure.

What a fascinating modern world we live in.

 Posted by at 11:24 pm

Duck and Cover

 AARRRGH, history, Hmm..., news, nukes, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Mar 212017
 

I can well remember the justifiable fear that the Soviets were going to nuke the US into oblivion. That fear of course went away when the USSR went the way of the dodo (well, went the way of genocidal ideologically evil dodos), but the last 8 years of feckless “leadership” coupled with a couple decades of brainless idiocy regarding the US nuclear deterrent program have led to a situation where it’s becoming increasingly likely that people will have to start seriously contemplating nuclear Armageddon again. Not only do we have leaders with poor impulse control in the US and North Korea casually threatening to nuke the bejeebers out of each other, there’s  KGB-trained psychopath in charge of Russia casually steamrolling his neighbors and carpet bombing civilians for giggles. Evenwhat passes for the medis are starting to take notice of the effect, if not necessarily the full set of causes:

Where to Hide If a Nuclear Bomb Goes Off In Your Area

This article gives some advice on the sort of building to hunker down in to provide some measure of protection against fallout. Oddly, the most obvious and important piece of advice about surviving a nuclear attack – “don’t live in a major metropolitan area” – was not provided. The data for the article was horked from a scholarly article from 2014:

Determining optimal fallout shelter times following a nuclear detonation

Which is available for download as a PDF. It provides some complex math to determine when you should shelter in place, and when you should run like hell… math that the average schmoe is unlikely to do in the aftermath of a nuclear blast, but, still, potentially useful if converted into some sort of chart (perhaps one of those plastic-disk “computers” like the old nuclear bomb effect computers).

For years after the Evil Empire went kaput, the old civil defense efforts of telling people how to survive nuclear attacks – efforts that ranged from the generally ineffective to the outright laughable oftentimes – vanished. But they seem to be coming back… probably as ineffective as ever.

 

So… as long as I’m on the topic, anybody know of a good, reliable and *affordable* geiger counter or other form of radiation detector? I’ve always kinda wanted one. While it would of course be useful in the event of a nuclear attack to scan for fallout, I always thought such a thing might be nice to have in junk and antique stores as well as while hiking. Plus, there’s that well with the indescribable color coming out of it…

 Posted by at 10:01 pm

More STD analysis

 AARRRGH, art, Crazy, Gah., Meh., science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Mar 212017
 

This here feller went through the Star Trek: Discovery teaser video and some other sources and has come up with some more information about the Klingons and their ships in the upcoming show. And… well… Sigh. Just watch.

If you care at all about even pretending to continuity, or respecting what has gone before, there is really only a narrow range of possible responses, from THIS to THIS to THIS to THIS to THIS to THIS.

With all the monkeymotions the STD production has gone through, from calculating the optimally political correct casting choices to changing every damn thing in the interests of “kewl,” they’ve forgotten this simple lesson:

 

 

 

 Posted by at 2:49 am

Laser-armed anti-drone trucks

 Hmm..., news, science, science fiction, weapons  3 Responses »
Mar 202017
 

An article in dire need of an editor describing a 60 kilowatt laser system meant to destroy small targets such as drones.

The Army Will Finally Be Able To Blast Drones With Lasers Soon

Behold:

Hopefully, days in which the U.S. Army shoots down drones with $3 million Patriot missiles will come to an eventually end when the service starts using a 60-kilowatt laser system in a few months.

…

And, of course, the Army wouldn’t shooting down drones with something that costs enough to buy a mansion.

The short form: a single shot from a solid state laser system such as this would cost about a dollar. Anti-aircraft guns shoot rounds costing perhaps dozens to hundreds of dollars per round. Missiles cost hundreds of thousands to millions each.

 Posted by at 9:37 pm

Nazi “Sun Gun” references

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, history, Hmm..., Meh., Patreon, projects, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Mar 202017
 

One of the oldest and most tiresome of the “Nazi Wunderwaffen” myths is that of the “Sun Gun.” The idea is that the Nazis were found to have been working on the design of an orbital mirror, miles in diameter, that would have reflected sunlight to the surface of Earth in such a way to cause enemy cities to burst into flames. This idea first hit the US press quite soon after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and *before* the nuking of Japan. Several articles appeared in the New York Times on the topic beginning in late June, 1945, and the idea reached its peak with an illustrated article in Life Magazine in July, 1945.

The “Sun Gun” was claimed to be a circular mirror one mile in diameter, orbiting at 5,100 miles. The mirror, it was claimed, would be made from large cubical and pressure-tight blocks, providing *vast* internal volume for the crew and their crop of oxygen-producing pumpkins.

Small problem: it’s BS.

Now, there *were* ideas for vast orbital mirrors. Hermann Oberth had proposed such a thing as far back as the 1920’s, so an orbital mirror was not unknown as a concept in wartime Germany. And in reading the lean details in the articles, it’s clear that what is described is the Oberth mirror as described after a round of “telephone.” The basic idea is Oberths, and Oberth even gets a shout-out in the articles, but Oberths ideas got mutated and bent out of recognition. Not leastways because an orbital mirror a mile in diameter 5,100 miles overhead *cannot* set a city, or even a dry piece of of tissue paper on fire. The basic physics of optics prohibits that. Thought experiment: take a mirror one inch in diameter. Can you use it to start a fire? If it’s precise enough and close enough to the target… sure. Now, move that one-inch mirror 5,100 inches from the target. Gonna set anything on fire *now?*

I suspect what happened is that the the US Army officers who reported on the “sun gun” were simply told about the Oberth mirror – which, by the way, was a far less insane idea than the “sun gun” in that it was essentially foil rather than a large solid structure – by Germans who either wanted to screw with them or, like von Braun, wanted to pump up their apparent usefulness to the US military in the hopes of getting transferred to the US. Given the conditions in post-war Germany and the risks of getting sucked into the black hole of the Soviet Union, it would make sense for *anyone* to try to wrangle a ride to the US for an actual job.

I have gathered together scans of newspaper and magazine articles on the subject and mashed ’em into a PDF file which I have uploaded to the 2017-03 APR Extras Dropbox folder. This is available to all APR Patreon Patrons at the $4 level and above. If interested, check out the APR Patreon.

patreon-200

 

 

 Posted by at 10:32 am

Trumps Proposed NASA Budget

 Hmm..., news, science, spacecraft  9 Responses »
Mar 192017
 

Trump’s budget would cut NASA asteroid mission, earth science

On the plus side: “Earth science” is being cut. Now, I’m not opposed to “Earth science,” it’s simply not NASA’s gig. The NOAA would seem to be the proper place for that, just like funding for ISS should come not from the NASA budget but from the State Department. On the downside, the asteroid capture mission seemed to me like one of the few useful missions for Orion/SLS.

A more involved discussion of what’s cut is HERE. Also cut is the Europa lander and NASA’s education program.

NASA’s overall budget is proposed to be cut 0.8% over the previous years. This is small compared to other proposed budget cuts across the federal budget… but it’s *YUUUGE* compared to the cuts that are happening in the entitlement programs. And that’s sad, given that entitlements are the areas that are sucking up the biggest chunk of the government and only getting bigger.

Here’s a thought: for a ten-year period, let’s flip the Medicare and NASA budgets, and then see how things stand.

 Posted by at 11:48 am

A modicum of fear-mongering to brighten your weekend

 awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, science, science fiction, spacecraft, weapons  2 Responses »
Mar 192017
 

Mini-nukes and mosquito-like robot weapons being primed for future warfare

Most of the article deal with the threat of nanotechnological weapons. I’m personally not terribly concerned about them… in theory they’re nightmares, but in practicality the chances of a mechanism the size of  a bacteria functioning for very long in the wild is low. “Nano-scale” metal is extremely fine dust… dust that will oxidize almost instantly in an oxygen environment. Dust that has such a vast surface area to volume ratio that thermal control would be virtually impossible.

I suspect it’d be possible to design nanites that will function in  specific environments. But The “gray goo” threat seems to me unlikely.

The headline contains a reference to something else that interests me more than nanites: “mini nukes.” But here again, the description seems more sci-fi than practical:

Nanotechnology opens up the possibility to manufacture mini-nuke components so small that they are difficult to screen and detect. Furthermore, the weapon (capable of an explosion equivalent to about 100 tons of TNT) could be compact enough to fit into a pocket or purse and weigh about 5 pounds and destroy large buildings or be combined to do greater damage to an area.

“When we talk about making conventional nuclear weapons, they are difficult to make,” he said. “Making a mini-nuke would be difficult but in some respects not as difficult as a full-blown nuclear weapon.”

Del Monte explained that the mini-nuke weapon is activated when the nanoscale laser triggers a small thermonuclear fusion bomb using a tritium-deuterium fuel. Their size makes them difficult to screen, detect and also there’s “essentially no fallout” associated with them.

The description seems to be a miniaturized version of an inertial confinement fusion system… lasers causing a pellet of fusion fuel to implode. So far in order to get a pellet the size of a grain of sand to fuse has required a laser system the size of a  warehouse; compressing all that down to the size of a briefcase seems… optimistic.

Still, *IF* that compression becomes possible, then these mini-nukes need to be put into production *now.* Not just for the military potential… but more importantly because they would finally make Orion propulsion clean and reasonably cheap.

What causes fear among the author and subjects of this article would cause great joy among people able to envision a wider view.

 Posted by at 3:10 am
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