Budget Bunker

 blather, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
Nov 092021
 

A few days ago I posted a link to a video of a professional underground bomb shelter. Lots of money, but also it looks like lots of reinforcement, with claims of lots of durability and a lifespan measured in centuries.

And then…

Shipping containers are freakin’ plentiful, and it sure seems like they’d make dandy homes and even underground shelters. But they are thin-walled and minimally reinforced… and as I understand it, they are not closed on the underside. The floors are *wood.* So unless a lot of work is done, if you bury one, the mud and water – if you bury it in a place that will ever see ground water – will readily flow right in. This is not to say that a shipping container-based underground bunker would be useless; depending on location, they might be just fine. But they are unlikely going to handle flooding, blast overpressure or trucks driving over them.

You watch *one* video of a bunker being built, and YouTube decides “well, this guy is clearly obsessed with underground shelters, so let’s show him all of them.”

 Posted by at 3:19 pm

Falsified Steel

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., news, ships, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 092021
 

Metallurgist admits faking steel-test results for Navy subs

And not just a few, but Elaine Thomas falsified strength testing data for hundreds of production runs going back to the 80’s while working for a foundry that provided steel used in the construction of submarines. The company she worked for only figured it out in 2017; they did the right thing in promptly canning her ass and letting the Navy know, but they apparently tried to pass this off as a series of mistakes, not fraud. Unclear why they would do that, maybe they thought that *they* would be on the hook more for having a dishonest employee rather than merely an incompetent one.

 Posted by at 10:39 am

I assume it has something to do with the blacktop

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 092021
 

Remember how “walls don’t keep people out?” And how “a few American rednecks with AR-15’s can’t fight off the US government with its F-15’s and nukes” (just before the Taliban took over an entire friggen’ country)? Well, now roads are racist and keep people geographically isolated better than force fields:

I half keep expecting to wake up one day and find out that the current administration has finally admitted that they are just a bunch of edgelord comedians whose practical joke in seeing how far they can troll a nation simply got out of hand.

 Posted by at 9:57 am

You get more of what you subsidize

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 082021
 

They *really* want to give your hard-earned money to foreign invaders. It’s astonishing. What’s perhaps more astonishing is that they think they can gaslight the public about this. Witness this professional example of a deputy press secretary doing her damnedest to pretend to be a freakin’ moron.

I *can’t* be the only person to watch this doofus’ performance and wonder if maybe she’d be better employed playing a “before” character in infomercials for useless products.

 Posted by at 8:18 pm

Signed B-47/52 book interest?

 aircraft, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, books, drawings, history, projects  No Responses »
Nov 072021
 

I have not yet heard how much it will cost me to buy copies of my new book for signing.  But for estimating purposes I think I’ll probably have to charge something like $50 each plus media mail postage. I don’t want to guess what it’d cost to ship them internationally. Yikes. But as I did with the SR-71 book, signed copies would likely have signed 18×24 prints as a bonus… in this case, probably 3 or 4. Subjects as yet undetermined. I’m far from taking orders, but I’m interested in getting a read on the level of interest.  If spending $50 or more on a signed copy sounds like something you’d want to do, send me an email:

 Posted by at 11:19 pm

*WOW.* Now this is *peak* Karen. (Or is it?)

 AARRRGH, aircraft, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 072021
 

This looks a bit like a skit… it’s kinda too “perfect.” The acting seems shaky and staged. And yet… I dunno, the world is full of whackaloons these days. Context would be handy. I wonder if this was created as a training video for aircrew?

I haven’t flown in years. I used to love it; even got myself a pilots license. But then 9-11 and the subsequent security theater came along. And since the Commie Cough floated over and turned *everything* into garbage, it sure looks like air travel has become not only laborious, time consuming, expensive and physically uncomfortable (my knees were typically mashed up against the seat ahead of me *before* they slammed them back), it now seems like far too many flights are equipped with violent or screaming entitled loonies.

 

@jeloy_25

She must have been having a bad day😢😢 – Watch Til the End #ctto #repost

♬ original sound – Anjelo Tavera – Anjelo Tavera

 Posted by at 7:35 pm

Shock waves on subsonic aircraft

 aircraft, awesomeness, Hmm..., photography, science, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 072021
 

The transonic flight regime can be one of the most difficult for aircraft. Drag goes up nearly exponentially as you approach Mach 1, which is why it’s expensive to fly at or just below the speed of sound; in principle, it can be more fuel efficient to fly *faster* than sound. And some low-supersonic transport designed were studied back int he 70’s and thereabouts, designed to move at up to about Mach 1.4 But as with every Really Cool Thing, the additional costs and complexities (including sonic booms rattling the suburbs below) ended up trashing the idea of slightly-supersonic transports.

The interesting thing is… a distinctly subsonic aircraft can move, at least in part, faster than the speed of sound relative to the air going by it. An airplane with an air speed of, say, Mach 0.8 needs to shove air out of the way. Air needs to flow around fuselages, wings and engine nacelles; by flying around these structures, the air – relative tot he structure – has to speed up… and then slow down again as the structure tapers off. This can often mean that air is flowing at or even beyond the speed of sound in localized regions. if you know what to look for, and if the lighting conditions are just right, you can actually make out the standing shock waves from airflow that has been shoved past Mach 1.

“Real world” shockwaves are difficult to see. They can be seen far more clearly in wind tunnels where the lighting can be carefully controlled.

 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 3:41 pm

That’s a nice bunker

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
Nov 062021
 

On the one hand, this setup is fairly huge. On the other hand, the end result looks pretty claustrophobic… especially if it had the planned 24 inhabitants. Such a structure would make a nice add-on to a house; useful as a damned quiet rec room or some such. Neither the video nor their catalog seem to give the cost of this setup, but I imagine we’re looking at around a million bucks of stuff and labor here.

 Posted by at 6:00 pm
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