This is why we can’t have nice things

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., history, Hmm..., Meh., politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 022021
 

So a left wing propaganda outlet called “Earther” is outraged that Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame has a new show:

Mike Rowe’s New Discovery+ Show Is Big Oil-Funded Propaganda

The show in question is called “Six Degrees,” and from “Earthers” description it sounds like a new version of the old BBC/James Burke series “Connections.” I watched the hell out of Connections back in the day (along with Connections 2, Connections 3 and The Day The Universe Changed), because not only was Burke a hell of a presenter/science popularizer, the idea of the show was great: how did some seemingly random event, discovery or invention hundreds or thousands of years ago lead to some important technology or process in use today. Show was friggen awesome, and I remain ticked off that it’s not available in any reasonable form today, apart from some of the episodes scattered across YouTube.

Anyway, the leftist fanatics at “Earther” are outraged that “Six Degrees” is funded by the petrochemical industry and that Rowe points out in apparently every episode that hydrocarbons are vital to todays world. Well… duh. Power comes largely from fossil fuels. Propulsion comes almost entirely from fossil fuels. Our *stuff* is often made directly from petrochemicals, as are our medicines and lubricants and insulators. The wind turbines that these yahoos want to supplant natural gas and coal fired plants? Made from carbon composites and fiberglass made from petrochemicals. If you want to tell the story of how the modern world got built and maintained, you have to give it up to the petrochemical industry… or be a liar.

The article shills for solar and wind… and make ZERO mention of nuclear. The article excoriates the American petrochemical industry for “frying the planet,” but makes ZERO mention of the fact that the US has flattened CO2 output, while India is catching up and China has more than doubled US output. In 2017, the US was responsible for a mere 13.77% of the total planetary output of CO2 (doubtless substantially lower still today). But by all means, let’s focus on Mike Rowe’s little TV show rather than the ENTIRE PLANET burning everything under the sun.

 

ADDENDUM: Turns out that Connectiosn 1,2 and 3 are available in their entirety at the Internet Archive:

Connections by James Burke (Seasons 1-3)

 Posted by at 12:21 pm

IRL Lord of the Flies

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 012021
 

There have been a few televised attempts at replicating “Lord of the Flies” with actual children. Turns out they were as spectacularly successful as you might expect:

It’s unsurprising that kids left alone will eventually devolve into little monsters. But it’s rather surprising to me just how quickly this happened. One wonders how things might have changed had the children been raised in strict families that stressed discipline, or how it would have turned out with feral street kids. Could “properly raised” kids have permanently rejected the urge to turn into little ᛋᚻᛁᛏweasels? Or would it have only been delayed?

Perhaps the greatest force for civilization is self control. Children of course are not as capable of it as adults. But “not as capable” doesn’t mean “incapable,” and at the same time a whole lot of adults are incapable of self control (see recent posts on yeeting these mofos through cracks int he space-time continuum). Seems to me that self-control is something that schools should devote more time to.

 Posted by at 11:19 pm

Ummm…

 art, Hmm..., humor, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 312021
 

So, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa bought up the seats for the first SpaceX flight to the moon (scheduled for… sometime), and is going to take along some artists. So artists are trying to get in on that. *THIS* is the artist that YouTube’s algorithm decided I need to see.

She’s… well, she’s not the stoic Steely Eyed Missile Man ideal of the Apollo era. What sort of art she could come up with after a moon flight, I’ve no idea. But it seems to me her reasons for wanting to go are spot on. And gotta love the drill.

 

 

 Posted by at 9:35 pm

March 2021 rewards

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 312021
 

Just released, the March 2021 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:

Diagram/art: a large format scan of an artists concept of the XC-14. This was printed with a large number of signatures; they seem to be Boeing engineers.

Document 1: “Project Hummingbird.” An FAA document summarizing the characteristics of STOL and VTOL aircraft circa 1961, including bogh built and proposed types. This was scanned from a clean original!

Document 2: “The Thor Missile Story.” Old, old, incredibly old school media… a film strip propaganda piece about the statues of the Thor IRBM.

CAD diagram: the WWII era German DFS 228 rocket powered high altitude recon plane, proposed operational version.

 

 

 

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



Because I forgot to mention the January and February rewards… subscribers/patrons got these (new subscribers can order them as back issues):

January 2021: Titan IIIC/IIIM booster rockets; CAD diagram of Post-Saturn concepts; a Convair Heavy Bombardment Airplane brochure; a fractional XF-103 mockup review and technical description; a fractional Westland paper on VTOL; a General Dynamics report on a proposed turboprop transport for Saturn stages.

February, 2021: An Aerion SST brochure; a Lockheed SST diagram; Dornbergers report on a commercial rocket powered airliner (scanned from a clean vintage copy); an early Convair jet flying boat bomber brochure; a CAD diagram comparing General Atomics’ ten-meter Orions for the USAF and NASA.

 Posted by at 5:13 pm

This is why we need a “Stargate” program

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 312021
 

Suspect arrested, charged with hate crime assault in horrific NYC attack on an Asian American woman

So a guy in New York decided to continue the trend of attacking Asians for no recognizable reason by repeatedly kicking and stomping a 65 year old woman he passed on a sidewalk. If you watch the security camera video, it’s pretty clear that this was a crime that merits being sent far away from society forever. But here’s the thing:

Elliot was convicted of stabbing his mother to death in the Bronx in 2002, when he was 19, online court records show. He was released from prison in 2019 and is on lifetime parole.

He should have *already* been sent far away from society forever. In a better world with more sci-fi solutions, back in 2002 after his *first* conviction he should have been frog marched to the nearest stargate and shoved through onto some unpopulated world to make his own way among the alien flora and fauna.

I would also accept a “Sliders”-based solution where he would have been shunted to some alternate reality where humanity never evolved on Earth.

 

There are seven billion of us. We are in no danger of suddenly going extinct due to low population numbers. But we are in danger from some of our own kind. We don’t need them. We’d be better off without them. If your nature is violent and your self control is non-existent, you are a detriment to our species and our culture. Some people should, after a proper trial and conviction, never again be allowed to stalk our streets. Never  mind punishment or rehabilitation; they should be simply removed by whatever process. And sending them across the universe to distant alien worlds or across timelines to alternate versions of this one? Sure. Why not.

 Posted by at 9:46 am

Can anyone shed any light on this “tanker airplane?”

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., models  No Responses »
Mar 302021
 

From the National Archives, a few photos dated 1979 of a Lewis Research Center model of a “Tanker Airplane.” *FAR* higher resolution versions of the photos are available at the links.

TANKER AIRPLANE MODEL

 

And…

That’s certainly an unusual configuration. If it hadn’t originated at NASA, I’d think it was a college students design project. But then… there’s one more photo which might shed a little bit of light onto the subject:

Huh.

The text on the wing reads:

To
LRC from LeRC
November 8(?) 1979

This would seem to be some sort of a gag gift from Lewis Research Center to Langley Research Center, but the details of what, who, and why are not available to me. If anyone can shed light, please do so.

 Posted by at 10:11 pm

There’s something going on in there

 art, awesomeness, critters, humor, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 302021
 

Anybody who knows cats and dogs knows there’s something going on behind those eyes. There is a “person” of sorts in there. Having had ferrets, I can assure you that they’ve got it as well. Seems mammals don’t have the monopoly, though. Parrots, corvids, birds like that also seem to have rich inner lives… and cockatoos seem to exemplify this.

 

Bonus rounds:

 Posted by at 3:05 pm

CL-1201: Ummm… huh.

 aircraft, blather, drawings, Hmm..., news, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 302021
 

So about 2 weeks ago I posted yet another YouTube video that appropriated one of my diagrams without attribution. I sent the video maker emails asking about it, but received no response. Now, I have *no* problem with people using my diagrams to illustrate articles, books, videos, etc. about those subjects; all I ask is attribution. Hell, I don’t even demand *money*, just… let readers & viewers know where ya got it… and asking in advance is just common courtesy.

These diagrams are copyrighted; they are a sizable fraction of my income. It was pointed out to me that if you don’t make an effort to protect your copyright, you can *lose* that copyright. So, I took the one option that was available to me: I filed a copyright complaint with YouTube. I didn’t expect much to come of it, but, lo and behold, this is what you get if you spool up the video today:

The copyright strike takedown system gave the video maker a full week to fix the issue. A fix that could have been made by simply adding a note in the description of the video. But… no such effort was made. I never heard a thing from the maker. So a video with a few hundred thousand views went *poof.* This baffles me: surely YouTube must have in some way informed the video maker about the complaint in progress, the looming takedown? If so and the creators blew it off… well, that’s on them. But if YouTube didn’t inform them, that would seem to be on YouTube. I’ve heard a lot of complaints from video creators about the copyright strike system, so maybe that’s it.

For future reference: if you want to use one of my diagrams in one of your products, do two things:

1: Ask in advance… I’ll almost certainly say “yes.”

2: Say where the diagram came from… “Scott Lowther” or “US Bomber Projects” or “aerospaceprojectsreview.com.” It’s not that hard.

If you take one of my diagrams and incorporate it in a way that makes it come off as *your* work, though, I will take offense.

 Posted by at 2:35 pm
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