This… is not inaccurate.
Apr 292021
Apr 292021
If your cruise missile test launch is going to fail… FAIL IN STYLE.
This launch of a Kalibr-NK cruise missile from the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov suffered a wee bit of a thrust vectoring issue. The Kalibr is hardly some shiny new experimental missile; Russia lobbed a few of these into Syria a little while back:
Sometimes things just don’t go to plan.
Apr 282021
And this round goes to SpaceX!
The 1Q report from @BryceSpaceTech on mass to orbit:
SpaceX: 116 metric tons (mostly Starlink)
China: 26 metric tons
All the rest: Lesshttps://t.co/2HXcqt9wYe pic.twitter.com/2Kh2YBuH8l— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) April 28, 2021
While it’s good that SpaceX continues to kick substantial ass in the field of launching stuff to orbit, expect the Chinese to do whatever they can to surpass. Note that Boeing/Lockheed/ULA doesn’t appear on here. SpaceX is essentially America’s *sole* launch provider. Great for them, but it makes them a single-point failure mode, vulnerable to screwups, physical sabotage, cyber attacks and regulations.
Apr 282021
So, “Godzilla vs King Kong” came out to gangbusters business. It was inevitable that The Asylum would produce a low budget mockbuster, and… well, here we are:
Oy.
What makes the existence of this thing worthwhile is the reaction of Alteori, an entertainingly excitable kaiju-loving Jamaican nerd-girl:
Apr 282021
The third and sometimes forgotten astronaut on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon has passed away. He died of cancer, which will doubtless be used by anti-spaceflight panicmongers to rail against the dangers of deep space… but he was *90.*
Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins has died at age 90
How many Apollo astronauts will get to witness the United States return to the moon?
Apr 272021
An interesting video depicting a star passing close enough to a black hole to be tidally disrupted. It’s bad news for the star, good news for anyone nearby who wants one hell of a show:
Apr 272021
My publisher has gone public with Book One, entitled
Boeing B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress; Origins & Evolution
Woo!
It is being published by Mortons out of Britain, is scheduled for release at the end of September, and is going to be around 250 to 280 pages (I’m still furiously working away at it). As those who have seen my work may assume, it will be loaded to the gills with diagrams, in this case covering the competitors to the B-47 and B-52, the original concepts, how the designs evolved and many of the proposed and built derivatives. You can pre-order at the link above. I’m getting confirmation on availability in the States… Amazon and Barnes & Noble and other sources. Will report back on that, but it does look like both outlets will carry it.
I will post more details – including glimpses of diagrams and some of the color art created for the book by Rob Parthoens – in the coming days. Feel free to ask questions.
Note: Book Two has not yet gone public. But Book Two should be published *first* since it is finished and edited; I’ve seen and approved the layout. All it’s missing right now is cover art, which is in process.
And…behold! An Amazon link, listing it as available in late November/early December. Just in time for Chrisnukkwanzayulmass! Note though that the “150 page” length listed there is incorrect… came from the original placeholder text.
Apr 262021
Good:
Supreme Court to take up major Second Amendment concealed handgun case
In short, New York state effectively makes it illegal to carry firearms outside of the home, openly or concealed. This clearly violates the “right to keep AND BEAR arms” part of the Constitution. This *might* be a step towards national reciprocity. If a Utah drivers license is good in New York, then a concealed carry license should be as well. Especially when you consider that CC license holders from probably every state that has concealed carry licenses are less law-breaking than the general population of New York.
Time to get on the right side of history:
Apr 252021
Something Huge and Invisible Is Making Nearby Stars Vanish, Scientists Propose
If I’m reading this right, and if it’s written right, it appears that the Hyades star cluster, some 153 light years away, has a few “tails” of stars and gas. But one of the tails seems to have had a number of stars yoinked out of it by something that is not visible. It seems that some scientists think it might be a mass of dark matter massing about 10 million times the sun.
It seems odd to me that there might be a ten million solar mass *anything* only a few hundred light years away…
Apr 252021
I wrote this around about the time I moved from Utah. It’s not a story exactly… no real plot or characters or any of that. It’s written as a report describing an artifact and what could be done with it. It is an attempt to meld a Certain Well Known Sci-Fi Franchise with a level of cosmic horror… but since this is a first draft, I’m dubious that it came off right. Probably needs a *lot* of editing, perhaps far more than would be worth doing. As originally planned it would have had a fair number of illustrations, but I only got partway through that when work stopped on it due to Actual Book Project 1. Still, I thought it might be of interest. There’s no charge for downloading and reading it, but if you like it – especially if you’d like to see it finished – consider hitting the Tip Jar.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mq8kqgxzvy3klho/Artifact%20L-374-Alpha.pdf?dl=0
Let me know in the comments what you think, positive or negative. Feel free to point others here who you think might be interested.
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