America’s first eVTOL vertiport

 aircraft, awesomeness, Hmm..., news  No Responses »
Apr 132022
 

Huh. Right next door:

America’s first electric medical air-travel facility coming to Rock Island

The “The Corporal Jason G. Pautsch Vertiport” has begun construction, with the goal of one megawatt of recharging capability via solar panels to support electric VTOL “air ambulances.” It’s supposed to be completed this year. Whether there’ll actually be any electric VTOL air ambulances for it to service… shrug.

There are of course a number of hospitals in the Quad Cities area, and helicopters are forever zipping back and forth. The idea sounds interesting, but for it to work it’ll need actual rechargeable VTOL aircraft. And it’s also parked right next to the Mississippi River which has a tendency to leap right out of its banks every now and then and say “howdy.” And the skies around here are often covered with clouds, which tend to mess with solar panels. And the company building this, DIFCO, Inc., seems to specialize in historic building preservation… a laudable function, but it’s direct applicability to eVTOL vertiports is not immediately obvious. Maybe they can charge Teslas or something in the interim.

 

 Posted by at 1:34 pm

Another mass shooting to sweep under the rug

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 122022
 

So someone shot up a subway in Brooklyn. Amazingly, nobody was killed, but a lot of people were injured. The shooter seems to have done this for political and/or racial reasons. This is *exactly* the sort of thing that the news media should be all over. Except… this story doesn’t slot into The Narrative. Expect it to quietly evaporate from the headlines. Don’t expect to see marches, protests, riots, burning, looting, murders over this story.

Frank R. James, Brooklyn Person of Interest: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

He’s a black nationalist and a fan of the Nation of Islam. He disliked Trump and white people.

 Posted by at 11:03 pm

Stabbed the “Buy it Now” button

 aircraft, APR, art, eBay, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 122022
 

Just bought on ebay, a print of the Boeing “Space Sortie” vehicle.

So much for my “maybe I should spend less in these difficult times” idea. 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. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:09 am

Hahaha… no. NOOOOOO. Nope.

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, rockets, science, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 122022
 

There are certain things you don’t do. These folks seem to like to do them all.

Company that aims to race SpaceX to Mars plays with fire

They stand RIGHT FREAKIN’ NEXT to a sizable rocket engine as its being tested. With no protective walls, armor or even helmets, gloves or safety glasses. What’s better; the propellants are freakin’ toxic (furfuryl alcohol and nitric acid). They have to flee the cloud of nitric oxides.

The company website has a “Team” page with names and photos of those involved, but no links to their qualifications. This comes across more as a technically aggressive art project than an engineering one. I can appreciate the desire to charge ahead, say damn the safety weenies… but go-fever can get ya killed in some pretty horrifying-yet-entertaining-for-everyone-else ways.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 2:21 am

Almost exactly eleven years later…

 art, awesomeness, Crazy, history, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Apr 122022
 

April 4, 2011, I posted a link to the YouTube video of Orbital’s “The Box” originally from 1996. Through random chance, today (April 12, 2022) I stumbled across another copy of the video, this one at twice the resolution, posted onto YouTube almost exactly one year ago (April 15, 2021). Huh. Well, the commentary I posted way back when still applies: this is an interesting video that shows an unsettling Tilda Swinton moving through a city at a *really* slow pace. The effect being “alienation” or some such.

I first saw this at a weird time in my life, back when MTV still tried to be about music, and it drilled itself directly into my brain where it’s sat ever since. If you haven’t seen it, give it a watch.

 Posted by at 1:20 am

The robot uprising has begun

 Hmm..., news, science, science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 112022
 

Driverless taxis operate on certain streets in San Francisco during specific hours and weather conditions. But despite the fact that the cars have no human drivers, they are still subject to the laws of the road, including the need to drive with headlights at night. So the police are tasked with stopping these taxis if their headlights are out. But it seems the robots have different ideas about being pulled over…

 Posted by at 9:14 pm

Earth got whacked by an interstellar intruder

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, science, secrets  No Responses »
Apr 112022
 

An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal

It was small, only a foot and a half in diameter or so. But it impacted the atmosphere over Papua new Guinea moving at about 130,000 miles per hour. Sporty! At that speed, one kilogram of rock – or ice, or iron, or whatever – has about 1,688,688,236 Joules of kinetic energy. one kilogram of TNT has 4,184,000 Joules of chemical explosive energy, so that rock is 403 times more powerful than a conventional bomb by mass.

A one kiloton explosion would be produced by 2,481 kilograms of impactor, or about a car and a half.

 Posted by at 4:00 pm
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