It launched, flew up, hovered, came down and landed. Woo! But then it bounced slightly when it landed, but still stayed upright. But then, some five or so minutes later, the damn thing popped up in the air and exploded; the lower propellant tank seemed to have cut open.
Eaglemoss creates little figurines of pop culture characters as well as starships. One of their current product lines is a chess set featuring Marvel comic book characters. You know, rooks, Queens, knights, pawns, that sort of thing. The characters are apparently sold individually rather than as one set.
One of the characters… I don’t know. Something about this sets my SJW-Outrage Senses a-buzzin’.
Ummmmmmm……………
SpaceX’s Starship SN10 is slated to fly this week (tomorrow, last I heard). These demonstrator craft have three rocket engines and require two of them for a safe landing. But on the last flight, when the landing engines were started, one failed and the ship tried – and failed – to land on a single functional engine. This time, the plan is to ignite all three engines and promptly shut one down if all three work… or shut down the one that’s not running correctly.
With luck, this flight will look something like this:
Soon to compete with SpaceX, the Rocket Lab “Neutron.” Building on their relatively dinky Electron, the Neutron will be able to orbit 8 metric tons (including manned payloads) and will feature a reusable first stage much akin to the Falcon 9 first stage.
It looks to be substantially stubbier than Falcon 9 which should make it much more stable on the landing pad which will likely be a ship or platform out at sea.
Rocket Lab is technically an American company, but the founder is a New Zealander and many launches occur from there as well. Much of the Electron manufacturing occurs in New Zealand; the 3D-printed rocket engines are made in California.
Rocket Lab, like SpaceX before it, should cause many, MANY heads to hang in shame. Who? Well, let’s start with the likes of Boeing and Lockheed. Those titans of the aerospace world should have had this sort of capability *decades* ago. But they chose not to. And the best they’ve come up with is the as-yet unflown “Vulcan,” which is *lame* comparatively. Who else? Oh… how about the United Kingdom? They used to have a planet-spanning empire. They used to have a pretty snazzy launch vehicle of their own, the Black Arrow… which they abandoned fifty years ago. And now New Zealand has not only surpassed *all* of the British Empire with their Electron (dinky as it it, its payload still exceeds that of the Black Arrow), if the Neutron comes along – which there’s no reason to suppose it won’t, though the initial launch date of 2024 might prove optimistic – then the UK will look *even* *worse.*
If Neutron works, then there’ll be no excuses whatsoever. Every nation on the planet *should* have their own launch capability… and in a number of cases, such as the US, their should be *dozens* of new launch vehicles competing to prove who can launch the most for the least.
The Babylon Bee has a useful graphic:
APR Patrons and Subscribers today helped crowdfund the purchase of a Boeing blueprint, an inboard profile diagram of the 2707-300 SST. An overly expensive item became reasonably affordable, and will be provided to each of the funders as high resolution scans in full color (and cleaned-up grayscale).
If you’d like to be involved in helping to preserve this sort of aerospace rarity, consider singing up for the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon or the Monthly Historical Documents Program.
From Polaris through Poseidon to Trident D-5:
Every one of those was proposed for alternate roles, from truck-towed and truck-launched land based strike missiles to air-launched and ground-launched satellite boosting systems. And they very likely *could* have done that. But they are just not really well suited for any role but sea launched ballistic missile due to the somewhat tricky propellants they use… high energy propellants so they can function adequately while still being able to fit in a small submarine. But for above-ground systems, they’d be somewhat dubious. The environment within a submarine is pretty consistent. For a missile stored in a warehouse and then hauled aloft by an airplane? The thermal and vibration environments will be highly variable.
It should prove interesting to see how this plays out given that there are multiple narratives at play here. In short, a Hasidic family was booted off of a Frontier Airlines flight due to Commie Cough Mask Requirements. According to the family, it was because their 18-month-old baby wouldn’t wear a mask (and those under two are not legally required to do so). According to Frontier, it’s because multiple adults refused to wear their masks (and they *are* legally required to do so). Were the people involved pretty much any other minority religious or ethnic group, the pile-on onto Frontier would be overpowering; the airline would most likely have used a firehose to spray out termination notices.
Narrative one:
Narrative two:
As we’ve seen over the past few years, people are seemingly incapable of waiting for the facts to come out before leaping on one side or the other. But in this case, I think we might not see the usual firestorm of the kind normally applied to situations such as this given that the “minorities” involved here are not politically advantageous minorities. Ilhan Omar, for example, seems unlikely to pop out of the woodwork to defend the family and demand that Frontier apologize.
Annnnnnd then there’s “overboard:”
The comments in that one are spectacularly toxic.
A lot of people have a lot of problems with “Star Trek: the Motion Picture.” The plot is a retread of “The Changeling.” It’s glacially slow. They’re wearing pajamas. Some of the effects are dodgy (especially some of the background matte paintings). While these are true, there are some aspects of the movie that are simply spectacular. The new Enterprise is a masterpiece of both design and model making. The intro with the Klingon ships was, for the time, spectacular cinematography. A lot of the visual effects remain beautiful. And unquestionably, the score by Jerry Goldsmith is not only the best in all of Star Trek, but is among the best movie scores ever. A lot of that may be due to the protracted development of the movie, which gave Goldsmith a lot more time to get it right. For example, here is his first take on music for the “beauty pass” scene where Kirk and Scotty fly around the Enterprise, giving six minutes worth of fan service to Enterprise aficionados. The first version… just doesn’t work. Had there not been more time, it’s what might have been included and the scene would have been lesser for it.
And here’s the first stab at recording the main theme for the movie. Interesting to hear the false start.
