It’s now “racist” to speak Welsh in Wales. How long before it’s “racist” to speak English in England? It’s already “racist” to expect people in America to speak English. Britain, you should have taken note of Americas failing in that regard. Now it may be too late.
Electric airplanes, like electric cars, currently have the problem of relatively short range, a problem unlikely to be greatly improved until energy density of batteries goes up by an unrealistic amount. Still… some routes seem like they’re be perfect for electric airplanes:
One Point Seven Miles. These islands look pretty windy… this seems like the *perfect* opportunity for electric aviation. Set up some wind turbines, use them to power battery chargers. Plane comes in, does its run, every now and then either charges up or swaps batteries. No need to bring in av gas.
So it turns out that China not only half-asses construction projects while at the same time going really big with them, China also half-asses *massive* building demolition projects. Here are fifteen high rises in the city of Kunming that were never finished and sat abandoned for seven years because they were unsafe, finally demolished in one giant spectacle. A spectacle that ends with one of the building *still* *standing,* just at an entertaining angle.
… in the 40-watt range.
An agricultural robot that uses lasers to zap weeds. Still far from a true general purpose AI, but clear evidence that the US should be spending money on developing this sort of thing rather than spending money on accommodating masses of immigrants to do the same job. The robots don’t commit crimes, require schooling, require feeding, require medical care, take up space in housing or on the road. Developing robots like this advance technology and provide good jobs.
Well, let’s see how this works. The blog will *probably* start looking like it used to, a year-ish or so ago, with more aerospace stuff and longer-form rants and such. This is due to transitioning away from the book projects, at least for a while, and getting back to the pre-book way of life. There are good chances of more books/bookazines in the future (one is already under discussion), but nothing is confirmed yet.
I also plan on taking a photographic research trip (in support for a proposed book a little further down the line) in the near-ish future. It could be of two stages… a day trip that I am almost definitely going to take, and a multi-day trip requiring motels and such that I *may* take. Because such things aren’t cheap, I’m considering pre-selling the full sets of photos that I’ll take. The number of sets I sell will determine whether it’s the short trip or the long one.
Or someone could just send me a million dollars, and I’ll take the grand tour of aerospace museums and archives…
The German V-1 “Buzz Bomb” was a relatively simple weapon, and one that a sufficient number were found sufficiently intact that the Allies were able to reverse engineer. In the US, copies of the V-1 were built by Republic Aviation by September of 1944 as the Jet Bomb-2 “Loon.” The V-1 was found to be a crude weapons, inaccurate and not particularly spectacular… but it was cheap and unmanned. In late 1944 the US was staring down the barrel of Operation Downfall, the forthcoming invasion of Japan. Nobody was quite sure how that was going to go; the only thing the expert were sure of was that it would be a bloodbath. So a stand-off weapon that could be launched in *vast* numbers to saturation-bomb Japanese targets while putting approximately zero American lives in harms way? It was an easy sale.
The JB-2 was externally nearly identical to the V-1 but had an active guidance system, theoretically making it more accurate than the fairly dumb V-1. But even with a radar-based guidance system the JB-2 was meant to be built in large numbers… the goal of 1,000 units per month by April, 1945. However, by the end of the war only a little over 1,300 had been built. Exactly how to use the JB-2 does not seem to have been nailed down; one reasonable notion was to use it as a “harassment” weapon: on days when cloud cover negated manned bombing missions, the Japanese might be expected to be scurrying around rebuilding and reprovisioning and generally getting stuff done… and then here come the buzz bombs.
Problem was, simple as the V-1 was, getting the thing to work right was not so simple. Testing of the JB-2 continued to about 1950, by which time it was woefully obsolete and was being used as an aerial target. But early on, simply getting the thing into the air, never mind flying stably, was a chore.
Which naturally leads to:
This story was *made* for sitting back with a bucket of popcorn and watching the intersectional fur fly.
If you have a few minutes to kill and want to learn some disturbing facts about the horrible, horrible animals that evolution saw fit to plop down onto the planet, “Casual Geographic” is the YouTuber for you. He’s informative, rapid-fire, deadpan and funny as hell. Note: this is nature red in tooth and claw, so if Bad Things happening to critters ain’t your thing, this channel might not be your thing.
Because why not: my SR-71 book currently has seven reviews on Amazon, all of which are five-star. So… huzzah! Now… to sell a million copies. For starters. If people will buy books about sparkly mopey vampires, why shouldn’t books about the evolution of the SR-71 sell like hotcakes? Anyway, Christmas is coming up. Make sure to stock up on copies of the book before the forthcoming collapse in the world transportation infrastructure leaves you flatfooted. “Sorry, little Timmy, but the PlayBoxStation 12 is still stuck in China. But here’s the best book ever written!”
Also: if you click on the Amazon link below (or use the Amazon search box up and to the right) and then continue on to search for and buy other stuff, I get a pittance. Woo.
If you’ve purchased a copy through Amazon, feel free to leave a review for the book there. The more reviews, the more it’ll likely be seen, and the more it’ll likely sell… and the greater likelihood of more books like this down the line. Maybe even a greatly expanded second edition.
George R.R. Martin has completed principal photography on a short film of the short story “Night of the Cooters” by Howard Waldrop. It’s been a few decades since I last read it (though it’s available online HERE), I recall it being quite entertaining: H.G. Wells’ Martians land in Texas, and it turns out Texans have guns and are ill-disposed to being invaded by illegal aliens; hijinks and kerplosions ensue.
The film has been shot on all-green-screen. So… hmmm.
I first read “Night of the Cooters” in the “Global Dispatches” collection. That is a collection of short stories written by a bunch of different sci-fi authors, all writing as historical figures from the time of the Martin Invasion, seeing the invasion from all around the world. Teddy Roosevelt comes across them in Cuba; Winston Churchill and H. Rider Haggard in Africa; H.P. Lovecraft in (where else) Providence, Rhode Island; and others.