The Trident I and Trident II were fundamentally different missiles, despite the name.
Somewhere around here I have a technical paper on turning the Trident II into a satellite launcher. Been meaning to work that into an issue of US Launch Vehicle Projects one of these years.
Having reminded myself of James Burke’s “Connections,” YouTube gave me this:
Bonus round:
Gravity isn’t cancel culture… it’s consequence culture.
Note that clearly he bleeds black blood, like some sort of Ork from Mordor. His parents must be *so* proud.
Bonus points to those who get this reference:
But probably not terribly practical… looks incredibly fragile and more than a bot wobbly. But it *does* look terribly sci-fi. Now if the little floating glowing dots could be made to hover in space like that but without an actual physical support – as is often shown in “holographic” displays in sci-fi movies – then we’re finally have an explanation as to how Starfleet personel can accurately aim their sight-less phasers: they have holographic sights that are only visible within a restricted field of view.
The media is having a hell of a time. A little while ago they caught themselves a gold mine when a white guy shot up some Asian massage parlors… *clearly,* white supremacy, white privilege, white racism, all that. Then it seemed to come out that he was a sex addict, not a racist. OK, then a white supremacist shot up a grocery store on Boulder, Colorado… then it turns out he’s a Syrian Islamist import. Drat.
OK, then another white supremacist with an Assault Rifle 15 With A Shoulder Thing That Goes Up did a mass shooting in Orange County… whoops, his name is Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez and he used a pistol. Then Asians are getting beat up all across the country… by people who tend to be not at all MAGA types. Then today… oh, boy! A Q-Anon Trumpist White Supremacist attacked the Capitol in D.C. with a car and a knife. Clearly this was the Second Coming of the January 6 Armed Insurrection!
Noah Green, a former college football player and Nation of Islam adherent, was named as the knife-wielding, now-deceased suspect who rammed a car into a U.S. Capitol barricade, exiting with a knife and killing one Capitol police officer while injuring another.
The narrative-mongers are having a hell of a time. Now is the time to strike with the gun grabs and rights-deletions; every notable crime must be promoted 24-7 in order to gin up fear of evil black guns and evil white people. But the crimes keep not fitting the storyline. That has *got* to be annoying as hell.
Heh.
I’m shocked and appalled that the Race and Inclusion editor at a major newspaper, is, in fact, a racist. (And pronouns in bio, of course.) pic.twitter.com/lhP7mKTRj6
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) March 23, 2021
So a left wing propaganda outlet called “Earther” is outraged that Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame has a new show:
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:
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.
Biden has moved past Kids In Cages straight to turning bridges into concentration camps. Suddenly his interest in spending vast sums on infrastructure makes sense.
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.