500 Auto Max

 art, awesomeness, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 202022
 

This seems like *maybe* a bit much for home defense. But I’m not gonna judge.

The AR 500 From Big Horn Armory — Half Inch Holes

The 500 Auto Max round compared to a 5.56. Note that the itty-bitty 5.56 is often called “high power” by political hacks; imagine what they’d think of the larger round. Nine rounds fit in a magazine that would approximately fit 20 rounds of 5.56. Big and powerful as the round is, it appears to be short range only, losing a lot of velocity pretty quickly. Not surprising since its aerodynamics seem to more closely approximate that of a cannonball than a bullet. Twenty rounds seems like it’ll set you back fifty to seventy bucks, so unless you’ve got a financial agreement with the Chinese like the Bidens, make sure you hit where you’re aiming. A rifle itself runs about two grand. Seems like it’d be fun on the range.

 

 Posted by at 3:55 pm

“Whoa” is right

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., ships, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 202022
 

Yer got-dayum right, whoa.

Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Also, someone has some ‘splainin’ to do about this truly *quality* journalism on the topic:

At one moment, a massive wave smashes through the front windows of the boat, demolishing one passenger and flooding the entire cabin.

The wave was so powerful, you can hear the window break under its G-force.

Not clear the passenger was “demolished,” especially since the same article points out a lack of reported injuries. And I really kinda doubt that the wave broke the window through the gravitational field produced by the mass wave rather than, you know, the momentum of the wave.

 Posted by at 1:52 pm

Felicity Ace: A failure mode I hadn’t considered

 AARRRGH, news, ships, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 192022
 

Race to salvage fire-ravaged US-bound cargo ship drifting in the Atlantic with thousands of supercars on board including Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis with blaze fueled by batteries in electric vehicles

The cargo vessel “Felicity Ace” is burning, and will likely be destroyed along with its $120 million in cargo, due to a fire that may have begun in the batteries in the electric cars its carrying. There are 4,000 cars including Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis.

When you ship a car, you ship it with the fuel tanks empty. Saves weight and makes things less flammable. But an electric vehicle ships with the batteries. And whether the batteries are charged or not they weight he same; and charged or not, the lithium in those batteries remains insanely flammable. So you pack a bunch of those cars together in a ship with no way to separate them, and no good way to put out a lithium metal fire… well, there ya go.

 Posted by at 6:22 am

I hope he runs

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 182022
 

So a bunch of gullible saps donated to an organization that just used their money to bail a racist terrorist and would-be assassin out of jail. The best possible result of this would be for the terrorist in question to attempt to run, get caught just across state lines, and that bail money to go *poof.* If that happens, my response would be almost *exactly* the same as the first 16 seconds of this video:

 

 Posted by at 7:10 pm

Bell Model 266 Tiltrotor

 aircraft, art, history, projects  No Responses »
Feb 182022
 

Circa 1967, bell Aircraft produced a design for a tiltrotor VTOL aircraft that would be quite similar to the V-22 Osprey of 20 years later. the Model 266 had two T64 turboshaft engines, one at each wingtip. Each engine drove a three-bladed prop/rotor that could be tilted to provide vertical or horizontal thrust, with cross-shafts making it so that the aircraft could power both props in the event that an engine were to go out. The overall configuration was much like that of a spindlier V-22 with a conventional tail. The basic role was as a troop transport for the US Army.

 

The full-rez scan of the art has been uploaded to the 2022-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. 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 5:49 pm

So… how’s the blog working for everyone?

 blather, news  No Responses »
Feb 182022
 

Another hour on the line with tech support *seems* to have cleared up a few issues… the error message *should* be gone (a plugin to measure statistics is screwed up somehow, so I had to ditch it), the header image *should* be back (a problem caused by the *last* problem, with the HTTS-HTTP thing). A potential issue remains of some people apparently not able to access the Disqus commenting. I don’t know how widespread that is, but I do know comments are reduced of late. Could be any number of explanations for that, of course. Today’s HTTPS fix *might* fix the Disqus issue, dunno.

If you can comment, great (especially if you recently *couldn’t* but now can, lemme know). If not, maybe drop me an email or, if you’re so inclined, tweet about it at my (gah) twitter.

 

 Posted by at 1:52 pm

You don’t see this on eBay every day…

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, eBay, history, Hmm...  No Responses »
Feb 182022
 

T-33A Lockheed Shooting Star – Fuselage Assembly

Huh.

 

It’s not clear to me what an average Joe would do with a busted-up T-33, but I thought it was interesting. Might be nice to see someone get it and restore it. Not, perhaps to flight status, or even to reskin it… but as a “cutaway” display. Doubtless a lot of bits and pieces would need to be procured to flesh it out.

 

Plus… they got themselves a Thud. Huh.

 Posted by at 11:01 am

“Moonfall:” A Brief Review

 art, awesomeness, blather, science fiction  No Responses »
Feb 172022
 

“Moonfall” is, hands down, the silliest movie I’ve seen in a *long* time. That said, it’s also fairly entertaining.

You *have* to go into this one with your higher brain functions turned off. It’s not so much that they got the science wrong; it’s more like they took a look at the science and said “FU, Science!” and did what they wanted to do anyway. The moon has a white dwarf inside it. A Space Shuttle solid rocket booster just… shuts off for no reason. The Moon gets close enough to scrape the atmosphere and, somehow, gains a surface gravity as great as that of the Earth… and yet the Earth isn’t torn asunder. The US and Europeans are able to cobble together a manned lunar SLS mission in days; and then NASA is able to pull a Space Shuttle out of a museum, stack it up at Vandenberg, and launch it with a ground crew of *two* *guys.* A guy is able to land a completely powered-down space shuttle simply by twiddling some valves. Gravity and orbital dynamics follow the Star Wars model at the best of times.

Yeah, no.

Still, it was *largely* entertaining. There are a lot of plot-unnecessary diversions to The Folks At Home, with the now expected divorced parents, kids, hapless stepfathers. Some editing could chop those out and make a tight little hour of quality splosion-riffic entertainment.

Lots of pretty disasterpalooza.

The movie ends with a hook for a sequel. But given that the production budget was $140 million and int he first two weeks its brought in around $17 million domestically… yeah, I’m not betting on a sequel happening. The local theater is now down to two showing a day, and there were a grand total of two people in the theater when I was there. Well, at least the mask mandate thing could be ignored…

 Posted by at 7:02 pm
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