Ummm…

 art, Hmm..., humor, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 312021
 

So, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa bought up the seats for the first SpaceX flight to the moon (scheduled for… sometime), and is going to take along some artists. So artists are trying to get in on that. *THIS* is the artist that YouTube’s algorithm decided I need to see.

She’s… well, she’s not the stoic Steely Eyed Missile Man ideal of the Apollo era. What sort of art she could come up with after a moon flight, I’ve no idea. But it seems to me her reasons for wanting to go are spot on. And gotta love the drill.

 

 

 Posted by at 9:35 pm

March 2021 rewards

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 312021
 

Just released, the March 2021 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:

Diagram/art: a large format scan of an artists concept of the XC-14. This was printed with a large number of signatures; they seem to be Boeing engineers.

Document 1: “Project Hummingbird.” An FAA document summarizing the characteristics of STOL and VTOL aircraft circa 1961, including bogh built and proposed types. This was scanned from a clean original!

Document 2: “The Thor Missile Story.” Old, old, incredibly old school media… a film strip propaganda piece about the statues of the Thor IRBM.

CAD diagram: the WWII era German DFS 228 rocket powered high altitude recon plane, proposed operational version.

 

 

 

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



Because I forgot to mention the January and February rewards… subscribers/patrons got these (new subscribers can order them as back issues):

January 2021: Titan IIIC/IIIM booster rockets; CAD diagram of Post-Saturn concepts; a Convair Heavy Bombardment Airplane brochure; a fractional XF-103 mockup review and technical description; a fractional Westland paper on VTOL; a General Dynamics report on a proposed turboprop transport for Saturn stages.

February, 2021: An Aerion SST brochure; a Lockheed SST diagram; Dornbergers report on a commercial rocket powered airliner (scanned from a clean vintage copy); an early Convair jet flying boat bomber brochure; a CAD diagram comparing General Atomics’ ten-meter Orions for the USAF and NASA.

 Posted by at 5:13 pm

This is why we need a “Stargate” program

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 312021
 

Suspect arrested, charged with hate crime assault in horrific NYC attack on an Asian American woman

So a guy in New York decided to continue the trend of attacking Asians for no recognizable reason by repeatedly kicking and stomping a 65 year old woman he passed on a sidewalk. If you watch the security camera video, it’s pretty clear that this was a crime that merits being sent far away from society forever. But here’s the thing:

Elliot was convicted of stabbing his mother to death in the Bronx in 2002, when he was 19, online court records show. He was released from prison in 2019 and is on lifetime parole.

He should have *already* been sent far away from society forever. In a better world with more sci-fi solutions, back in 2002 after his *first* conviction he should have been frog marched to the nearest stargate and shoved through onto some unpopulated world to make his own way among the alien flora and fauna.

I would also accept a “Sliders”-based solution where he would have been shunted to some alternate reality where humanity never evolved on Earth.

 

There are seven billion of us. We are in no danger of suddenly going extinct due to low population numbers. But we are in danger from some of our own kind. We don’t need them. We’d be better off without them. If your nature is violent and your self control is non-existent, you are a detriment to our species and our culture. Some people should, after a proper trial and conviction, never again be allowed to stalk our streets. Never  mind punishment or rehabilitation; they should be simply removed by whatever process. And sending them across the universe to distant alien worlds or across timelines to alternate versions of this one? Sure. Why not.

 Posted by at 9:46 am

Can anyone shed any light on this “tanker airplane?”

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., models  No Responses »
Mar 302021
 

From the National Archives, a few photos dated 1979 of a Lewis Research Center model of a “Tanker Airplane.” *FAR* higher resolution versions of the photos are available at the links.

TANKER AIRPLANE MODEL

 

And…

That’s certainly an unusual configuration. If it hadn’t originated at NASA, I’d think it was a college students design project. But then… there’s one more photo which might shed a little bit of light onto the subject:

Huh.

The text on the wing reads:

To
LRC from LeRC
November 8(?) 1979

This would seem to be some sort of a gag gift from Lewis Research Center to Langley Research Center, but the details of what, who, and why are not available to me. If anyone can shed light, please do so.

 Posted by at 10:11 pm

There’s something going on in there

 art, awesomeness, critters, humor, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 302021
 

Anybody who knows cats and dogs knows there’s something going on behind those eyes. There is a “person” of sorts in there. Having had ferrets, I can assure you that they’ve got it as well. Seems mammals don’t have the monopoly, though. Parrots, corvids, birds like that also seem to have rich inner lives… and cockatoos seem to exemplify this.

 

Bonus rounds:

 Posted by at 3:05 pm

CL-1201: Ummm… huh.

 aircraft, blather, drawings, Hmm..., news, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 302021
 

So about 2 weeks ago I posted yet another YouTube video that appropriated one of my diagrams without attribution. I sent the video maker emails asking about it, but received no response. Now, I have *no* problem with people using my diagrams to illustrate articles, books, videos, etc. about those subjects; all I ask is attribution. Hell, I don’t even demand *money*, just… let readers & viewers know where ya got it… and asking in advance is just common courtesy.

These diagrams are copyrighted; they are a sizable fraction of my income. It was pointed out to me that if you don’t make an effort to protect your copyright, you can *lose* that copyright. So, I took the one option that was available to me: I filed a copyright complaint with YouTube. I didn’t expect much to come of it, but, lo and behold, this is what you get if you spool up the video today:

The copyright strike takedown system gave the video maker a full week to fix the issue. A fix that could have been made by simply adding a note in the description of the video. But… no such effort was made. I never heard a thing from the maker. So a video with a few hundred thousand views went *poof.* This baffles me: surely YouTube must have in some way informed the video maker about the complaint in progress, the looming takedown? If so and the creators blew it off… well, that’s on them. But if YouTube didn’t inform them, that would seem to be on YouTube. I’ve heard a lot of complaints from video creators about the copyright strike system, so maybe that’s it.

For future reference: if you want to use one of my diagrams in one of your products, do two things:

1: Ask in advance… I’ll almost certainly say “yes.”

2: Say where the diagram came from… “Scott Lowther” or “US Bomber Projects” or “aerospaceprojectsreview.com.” It’s not that hard.

If you take one of my diagrams and incorporate it in a way that makes it come off as *your* work, though, I will take offense.

 Posted by at 2:35 pm

Clown World News Network: Murder is an “accident”

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 292021
 

Two girls decided to car jack a guy, speeding off with the owner of the car hanging out the door. They then flipped the car, killing him; in the video you can see one of the girls is much more concerned about the phone she left in the car than the man she just butchered.

So how does CNN describe this?

An *accident.* In which he was “fatally injured.” Let me correct the wording for them:

Police said the girls, 13 and 15, assaulted an Uber Eats driver with a Taser while carjacking him, which led to the driver being murdered.

Feel free to speculate why CNN might want to water down their messaging in this story.

One hopes that it leads to a felony murder trial and, if convicted, life in prison. But it won’t, what with them being underaged and all. They will be out back into the public with a *lot* of time left to ruin more lives. Fun side note: these two aren’t alone in their disdain for human life… they’re just the two that got caught on video.

 Posted by at 6:46 pm

A good business model

 Forward!, Hmm..., humor, politics, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 292021
 

This video is done as a joke… but I would not be surprised if there’s not a fair amount of truth behind it. Perhaps not window companies per se, but there are a lot of people making a lot of money – or accruing a lot of political power – by supporting the violence they then claim to want to defend people from. “Defund the cops” leads to more crime, which leads to politicians calling for gun bans, which leads to an increase in crime. *Someone* is making bank here.

 Posted by at 11:16 am
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