Turns out that the “Museum of Flying” has on display a large model of the Douglas Model 2229 supersonic transport. This design was studied for the FAA in the early 1960’s, and would have gone up against the likes of the Lockheed L-2000 and the Boeing 2707… had Douglas not determined that SSTs were economically infeasible and dropped out early. Consequently, the 2229 is one of the more difficult designs to get any good data on. I’d love to get a bunch of photos of this model from every conceivable angle (especially orthogonal views) and, it at all possible (very likely not), I’d also love to get measurements.
For all I know the museum may also have a nicely detailed engineering study document tucked away in their archive, but I have no “in” there to find out.
The video quality is poor, but the content is interesting. A mid-1960’s promotional film for the US SST program (Boeing 2707), focusing on the economic benefits. A lot more reference to *gold* than you would see these days, and a lot more worry about the economic dominance of Concorde than reality would end up providing.
That first generation of SST’s almost certainly never stood a chance of being economically successful. The Boeing 2707 would very probably not have been the economic disaster that the Concorde was, but the oil crisis of the 1970’s and inability to fly overland routes almost certainly would have wrecked its ability to be profitable. However… a *next* generation of SST built on the lessons of the 2707? *Possibly* quite successful.
in the last year, 5.8 percent of boys reported dating violence compared to 4.2 percent of girls
As one of the authors points out, it is still socially acceptable for girls to hit boys. A girl can whallop a guy all she likes with little repercussion; if the boy defends himself, it’s off to jail with him. Of course there is perhaps a difference in scale… the 100 pounds soaking wet girl with her 250 pound linebacker boyfriend, there’s a bit of a difference in the damage potential of a half-power slap. But a punch is a punch as far as the law is concerned, and that little girl can do some fantastic damage with the stab of a knife or the pull of a trigger.
A: The open source Linux operating system runs a large fraction of the internet…web servers, WordPress (i.e. this here blog), Android phones, etc.
B: Linux has always been a meritocracy. If you are a coder and you have created a bit of code to make Linux better, you submit it, and if whoever runs Linux likes the code, it gets installed in the next update.
C: You don’t get paid for your work, but you retain copyright to it.
So far so good. But where things get unfortunate: the SJW somehow managed to force the people controlling Linux to adopt a “Code of Conduct” that prioritizes coders of certain special identity groups – women, non-whites, trans, etc. – over white male coders. (My first question would be “how would you even know anything about who wrote a bit of code?”) This new Code of Conduct include the ability to eject coders for violating SJW Holy Writ. OK, that’s bad enough. But where things get apocalyptic: the ejected coders retain their copyright on the bits of code they’ve written. Which means they can sue Linux to remove those bits of code if they are ejected by the SJW fascists. It seems that they can sue not only Linux, but anyone using it (like those web servers and WordPress and whatnot).
This would be the “kill switch,” as people who have been abused by SJWs can use the law to force a good chunk of the internet to cease operations. This would not be so disturbing if the idea of “being abused by SJWs” was some sort of laughable fantasy, but we’ve all seen that when SJWs get power the first thing they do is abuse it. I can see the SJWs involved here working overtime to throw out those dastardly white male coders, knowing full well what will happen. They would rather see the internet burn to the ground than let other people succeed based purely on merit.
If I was conspiratorially minded, I might entertain the notion that the SJWs are in part being puppeteered by the producers of competing for-profit operating systems that would replace Linux in the event that the coders bring it down. or perhaps… Putin did it.
The lesson for everyone: never, never, never give an inch to the forces of “identity uber alles.”
Circa 1960, courtesy Douglas Missile and Space Systems. Both the “flying saucer” and the lunar lander in the background are actually familiar designs, each having appeared from time to time in various media outlets. it’s unclear how *serious* either of these designs were, however. I do know that United Technologies, where I worked from 2000-2004, had an old model of a similar flying saucer on non-display in one of the shops. It was something like 3 to 4 feet in diameter and actually semi-functonal: it was mounted on a gimbal and fitted with a number of small plexiglas-fueled hybrid rocket motors. For displays the motors could be fired up and the saucer would, I believe, rotate and tilt and whatnot, responding to inputs from joysticks on the display stand.That always seemed a terrible idea: not due to the risk of fire or explosion, but because of the brain-melting screech those little rockets would put out.
I have no idea what happened to that display piece. Might’ve wandered home with someone. Might’ve moved on to another company. And chances are quite good that, like a whole lot of United Tech, it was simply trashed.
Satellites are getting *really* small, one of the things that makes me a little leery about the success of large boosters such as the BFR. There are now a surprising number of nanosats and cubesats in orbit, so this database might be of interest:
My day was going along… meh. Then I went for my evening walk, the walk that at the far end there are a number of cats that come out to me to say “hi.” So that’s always a bit of a high point in the day. Until this last evening, when I got almost to where the family of kittens lives just in time for the lady of the house to back out of the driveway and… well. Fill in the rest.
An advertisement from 1960, illustrating Marquardts work on the Project Pluto nuclear ramjet:
If you want more on Project Pluto – and who wouldn’t, as the idea of a locomotive-sized cruise missile flying at virtually unlimited range at tree to level and at a blistering Mach 3+ is fascinating – check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1.
I see people on both sides saying that this freakshow of a confirmation hearing will lead to an election landslide for their side: Dems are saying that everyone will see that Republicans are rape-apologists, Reps are saying that everyone will see that Democrats will stoop lower than a snakes junk to make stuff up in order to ruin lives. I guess we’ll see…
An ad for Thompson Products from 1958. The cargo rocket shown here is pure artistic license, with almost certainly no actual engineering behind it. It’s pure science fiction for the purpose of advertising razzmatazz. And yet… the similarity to the latest design of the SpaceX BFS is pretty remarkable.
“Thompson Products” may not be immediately familiar. But in October 1958 (about two months before this ad was published in Av Week, so… shrug) Thompson Products merged with the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, forming Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. … TRW. So… huh, how about that.
