SLS, Orion: Nope. We can’t afford them.

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., I'm from the government, Meh., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 022022
 

Finally, we know production costs for SLS and Orion, and they’re wild

…the operational costs alone for a single Artemis launch—for just the rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground systems—will total $4.1 billion.

…$2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, $568 million for ground systems, $1 billion for an Orion spacecraft, and $300 million to the European Space Agency for Orion’s Service Module.

…NASA will spend $93 billion from 2012 to 2025 on the Artemis program.

Gosh, If Only there was some alternative launch vehicle program that we could turn to that could potentially launch at a rate higher than once a year and at vastly lower cost…

 Posted by at 7:41 pm

EA-6B diagram

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon  No Responses »
Mar 022022
 

I got the gigantic EA-6B diagram scanned. This was done without chopping up the original paper; but the end result is a nearly two gigabyte file. Manipulating it was a challenge, requiring sometimes five or more minutes to carry out a single command, but:

1)I was able to chop it up into three half-scale sections

2) I was able to scale down the whole thing to a single 48% scale version that I was able to convert to grayscale and clean up. I present a vastly smallerized version of the original color scan and the grayscale cleaned version, together with a full-scale crop of the refueling probe from the ~48% version. The intent here is to include a half-scale version in a future APR Patreon/Subscription rewards voting-catalog. The two-gig full rez? Not quite sure what to do about that yet. i will probably attempt to convert it to grayscale and clean it up for archival purposes, but at nearly 60,000 pixels wide, it’s just simply *huge.*

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 

 Posted by at 12:54 am

Now THIS is how you run a tax system

 awesomeness, news, politics, russian empire  No Responses »
Mar 012022
 

No need to declare captured Russian tanks, other equipment of invaders as income – NAPC

Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption (NAPC) has declared that captured Russian tanks and other equipment are not subject to declaration.

“Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland! There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment, because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH 248,100),” NAPC’s press service said.

Also, there is no need in this case to submit reports of significant changes in property status within 10 days.

“Speaking by the letter of the law, combat trophies are not subject to reflection in the declaration for the following reasons: they were acquired not as a result of the conclusion of any type of transaction, but in connection with the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation on February 24, 2022 against the independent and sovereign Ukrainian state as a continuation the insidious attack of the Russian Federation on Ukraine launched in 2014.

Cool. The United States needs to enact similar policies: anything you take from burglars, home invaders, trespassers, illegal aliens, etc. is yours, free and clear, no taxes.

 Posted by at 11:45 pm

Russia liberates Ukraine from big box home improvement stores

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., news, politics, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 012022
 

In Putins quest to save the Ukrainians from Nazis, the Russian military successfully bombed an “Epicentr K” store in Chernihiv, Ukraine, which is apparently the equivalent of a Lowes or a Home Depot (which means there are probably a gaggle of dubiously-legal immigrants lurking around waiting to get picked up for some day labor). So be proud, Putin-bots! Your Great Hero is proving just how valid his invasion is.

Russian attack of Ukrainian home-improvement store seen in satellite image

 

 Posted by at 11:18 pm

All the really cool stuff is too expensive or too far away

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, news, science  No Responses »
Mar 012022
 

2 monster black holes are headed toward a collision that will rock the fabric of space-time

The two black holes are designated PKS 2131-021 are spiraling towards each other. PKS 2131-021 is a “blazar,” a major source of a relativistic jet. The average distance between the two is about 50 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto… but the combined mass of billions of times that of the Sun means that the orbital period is about two years. When the two coalesce into a single black hole, the gravitational waves will resound across the universe. Should be a hell of a show.

Two problems:

1) This will happen in about 10,000 years.

2) It’s about 9 billion light years away.

Bah.

 Posted by at 11:08 pm

Javelins

 awesomeness, news, rockets, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 012022
 

An interesting video about the Javelin anti-tank missile currently being used, apparently with some success, to relieve Russia of some of their excess armor:

The Javelin is, unlike an RPG, a guided and fairly long-range missile. It has a two stage motor, with an initial fast-acting booster that tosses the missile out of the launcher without sending a blast into the face of the guy who pulled the trigger. This has the result of making every launch look, for a split second, like a failed launch; the thing just sorta lobs out of the tube, starts to fall to the ground… then ignites the motor and launches itself into the sky.

Here’s a video from before the invasion that describes the missile in some depth:

 

Apparently they’re fun to dance with:

 Posted by at 7:30 pm

Is this “ironic” or “inevitable?”

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Meh., news, politics  No Responses »
Mar 012022
 

When a racist who advocates for the enslavement of other races and the destruction of her own society is grievously and permanently wounded by one of “her own people,” how should other people feel about it? Especially when “her own people” refuse to help the police investigate the attack, leading to those who did it getting off scot-free? Before you answer… consider an alternate case where a Klansman or a neo-Nazi gets almost-whacked by one of their fellows. Who would be too upset about that?

Charges dropped against suspects accused of shooting British BLM leader after witnesses refuse to cooperate

As a reminder, this is who she was and what she advocated for:

The linked article starts off with a photo of her in her hospital bed. I’m no brainologist but I can say with some fair certainty that her days of rabble-rousing have definitely come to a serious slowdown.

Moral of the story: get your priorities straight. Shrieking about a kind of violence so rare that it makes international news when it happens, when get capped in the head by your own associates is an everyday possibility, seems an unwise expenditure of effort.

 

 Posted by at 7:12 pm
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