The modelling is nearly complete. Unfortunately, the fully assembled version of the CAD model is so complex that none of my computers would even attempt to render or shade it; all I seem to be able to get are wireframe images. That’s what I get for being poor, I suppose. The shuttles are themselves each as complex as many of the CAD models I’ve made.
Half off the price of their books, plus free shipping. Woo! So if you have any money left over after you buy suspiciously large numbers of copies of “SR-71” and “B-47/B-52,” go get you some books about ships and such.
And if you end up saving some cash on a haul of books, why not show your boundless appreciation…
Another “defund the police” success story.
Shocking video shows a man hurling a firebomb into a Brooklyn deli on Saturday. He tries to throw a second firebomb but is interrupted. Joel Mangal was arrested over the attack. pic.twitter.com/aTDxLwoCm8
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) November 1, 2021
Relevant commentary:
The rewards for October, 2021, have been sent out. Patrons should have received a notification message through Patreon linking to the rewards; subscribers should have received a notification from Dropbox linking to the rewards. If you did not, let me know.
Document: “C-131C Tactical Unit Support Airplane,” 1953 Consolidated Vultee briefing on cargo aircraft military capabilities
Document: “Aerodynamic Model test Report Titan IIIM Final Posttest Report 0.0535 scale Force and Pressure Model Phase II,” 1967 Martin Report Of Unusual Size (ROUS, 353 pages) describing with charts, data, model photos and diagrams, of the proposed Titan IIIM topped with a Manned Orbiting Laboratory.
Diagram: General Arrangement of the Douglas D-558 research aircraft (provenance unknown)
CAD Diagram (for $5-level and up): Medusa Spinnaker, second illustration of giant but lightweight nuclear pulse propelled spacecraft
If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. *ALL* back issues, one a month since 2014, are available for subscribers at low cost.
You *know* you’d pay to see this in IMAX.
Here is a Japanese “hoverbike” that is claimed to have a 40 minute flying time. Looks cool. Sounds *insanely* loud. It has electric motors driving the props, but an onboard internal combustion engine creates the power. it can be yours for a low, low $700,000.
As with the “Jetson One” showed a few days ago, this looks intriguing for a number of roles. But the noise issue is going to remain an issue for all vehicles of this type; the sound volume put out is roughly proportional to the “jet velocity” the lift system produces, and that gets faster the smaller the diameter of the propulsion system. Helicopters have, by comparison, *huge* diameters and they’re still loud as hell; until someone slaps together a functional repulsorlift or antigrav, this sort of thing is going to remain eardrum-shattering.
Lawrence Livermore Labs simulated popping off a 1 megaton nuke *above* the surface of a 100-meter asteroid. Low and behold, it blows the asteroid into flinders, an expanding cloud of bits. If done two months prior to an impact with Earth, 99.9% of the mass of the asteroid *misses* the Earth. And the thing is: even if it all still hit, from a certain point of view you’d rather have it blown apart into a bajillion tiny rocks than one big one. Yes, every satellite and spacecraft on that side of the planet is now likely in a world of hurt… but if your 100 meter rock is turned into gravel, ain’t none of that getting down to the ground as anything that could cause any real damage.
It’s easier to replace a sky full of comsats than a city or a country.
… but ethically and morally praiseworthy. A guy in Paraguay comes home to find burglars ransacking his place, so he runs them the fark over with his truck. As the narrator points out, this will likely get him in trouble with the law, since at this point he is no longer in direct danger; it is financially dubious since he does a *lot* of damage to his truck in the process. But… the people he plows into, and apparently for one of them, *over,* are burdens to society. He may well have done the local culture and economy a great service by deleting these guys from the burglar job market.
As previously mentioned, the story of Flashback is starting to come out. This article by Alex Wellerstein in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is mostly about the Soviet Tsar bomb, but also describes American responses with giant nukes of our own including the BTV and the Flashback.
Well. This will certainly calm everything down in society…
These are *illegal* immigrants, to be handed more money than some Americans will make in their lifetimes.
