Eaglemoss creates little figurines of pop culture characters as well as starships. One of their current product lines is a chess set featuring Marvel comic book characters. You know, rooks, Queens, knights, pawns, that sort of thing. The characters are apparently sold individually rather than as one set.
One of the characters… I don’t know. Something about this sets my SJW-Outrage Senses a-buzzin’.
Ummmmmmm……………
SpaceX’s Starship SN10 is slated to fly this week (tomorrow, last I heard). These demonstrator craft have three rocket engines and require two of them for a safe landing. But on the last flight, when the landing engines were started, one failed and the ship tried – and failed – to land on a single functional engine. This time, the plan is to ignite all three engines and promptly shut one down if all three work… or shut down the one that’s not running correctly.
With luck, this flight will look something like this:
Soon to compete with SpaceX, the Rocket Lab “Neutron.” Building on their relatively dinky Electron, the Neutron will be able to orbit 8 metric tons (including manned payloads) and will feature a reusable first stage much akin to the Falcon 9 first stage.
It looks to be substantially stubbier than Falcon 9 which should make it much more stable on the landing pad which will likely be a ship or platform out at sea.
Rocket Lab is technically an American company, but the founder is a New Zealander and many launches occur from there as well. Much of the Electron manufacturing occurs in New Zealand; the 3D-printed rocket engines are made in California.
Rocket Lab, like SpaceX before it, should cause many, MANY heads to hang in shame. Who? Well, let’s start with the likes of Boeing and Lockheed. Those titans of the aerospace world should have had this sort of capability *decades* ago. But they chose not to. And the best they’ve come up with is the as-yet unflown “Vulcan,” which is *lame* comparatively. Who else? Oh… how about the United Kingdom? They used to have a planet-spanning empire. They used to have a pretty snazzy launch vehicle of their own, the Black Arrow… which they abandoned fifty years ago. And now New Zealand has not only surpassed *all* of the British Empire with their Electron (dinky as it it, its payload still exceeds that of the Black Arrow), if the Neutron comes along – which there’s no reason to suppose it won’t, though the initial launch date of 2024 might prove optimistic – then the UK will look *even* *worse.*
If Neutron works, then there’ll be no excuses whatsoever. Every nation on the planet *should* have their own launch capability… and in a number of cases, such as the US, their should be *dozens* of new launch vehicles competing to prove who can launch the most for the least.
The Babylon Bee has a useful graphic:
APR Patrons and Subscribers today helped crowdfund the purchase of a Boeing blueprint, an inboard profile diagram of the 2707-300 SST. An overly expensive item became reasonably affordable, and will be provided to each of the funders as high resolution scans in full color (and cleaned-up grayscale).
If you’d like to be involved in helping to preserve this sort of aerospace rarity, consider singing up for the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon or the Monthly Historical Documents Program.
From Polaris through Poseidon to Trident D-5:
Every one of those was proposed for alternate roles, from truck-towed and truck-launched land based strike missiles to air-launched and ground-launched satellite boosting systems. And they very likely *could* have done that. But they are just not really well suited for any role but sea launched ballistic missile due to the somewhat tricky propellants they use… high energy propellants so they can function adequately while still being able to fit in a small submarine. But for above-ground systems, they’d be somewhat dubious. The environment within a submarine is pretty consistent. For a missile stored in a warehouse and then hauled aloft by an airplane? The thermal and vibration environments will be highly variable.
It should prove interesting to see how this plays out given that there are multiple narratives at play here. In short, a Hasidic family was booted off of a Frontier Airlines flight due to Commie Cough Mask Requirements. According to the family, it was because their 18-month-old baby wouldn’t wear a mask (and those under two are not legally required to do so). According to Frontier, it’s because multiple adults refused to wear their masks (and they *are* legally required to do so). Were the people involved pretty much any other minority religious or ethnic group, the pile-on onto Frontier would be overpowering; the airline would most likely have used a firehose to spray out termination notices.
Narrative one:
Narrative two:
As we’ve seen over the past few years, people are seemingly incapable of waiting for the facts to come out before leaping on one side or the other. But in this case, I think we might not see the usual firestorm of the kind normally applied to situations such as this given that the “minorities” involved here are not politically advantageous minorities. Ilhan Omar, for example, seems unlikely to pop out of the woodwork to defend the family and demand that Frontier apologize.
Annnnnnd then there’s “overboard:”
The comments in that one are spectacularly toxic.
A lot of people have a lot of problems with “Star Trek: the Motion Picture.” The plot is a retread of “The Changeling.” It’s glacially slow. They’re wearing pajamas. Some of the effects are dodgy (especially some of the background matte paintings). While these are true, there are some aspects of the movie that are simply spectacular. The new Enterprise is a masterpiece of both design and model making. The intro with the Klingon ships was, for the time, spectacular cinematography. A lot of the visual effects remain beautiful. And unquestionably, the score by Jerry Goldsmith is not only the best in all of Star Trek, but is among the best movie scores ever. A lot of that may be due to the protracted development of the movie, which gave Goldsmith a lot more time to get it right. For example, here is his first take on music for the “beauty pass” scene where Kirk and Scotty fly around the Enterprise, giving six minutes worth of fan service to Enterprise aficionados. The first version… just doesn’t work. Had there not been more time, it’s what might have been included and the scene would have been lesser for it.
And here’s the first stab at recording the main theme for the movie. Interesting to hear the false start.
Ragical the Unhallowed Knight is a Dutch YouTuber who presents videos created by others, with a bit of his own commentary. In this case, what makes the videos worth watching isn’t so much his contribution, but the videos themselves… recently he has focused on interactions between “Sovereign Citizens” and the police. “Sovereign Citizens” are a particular brand of goofy who think that somehow they are outside the jurisdiction of the local law; that they can drive cars on public roads without having drivers licenses, insurance or even license plates; that they can invade and occupy someone else’s property and declare it their own; that, in short, the laws don’t apply to them Because Reasons. They think that bloviation will cause police to back away in shame and confusion and let them get away with their foolishness. Nearly inevitably, of course, they find out otherwise, typically after escalating a minor interaction into a full-blown crime.
On one hand, such videos are sad because they depict the marriage of arrogance and stupidity, some of the worst examples that mankind has to offer. on the other hand, such videos are a hoot for exactly the same reason.
This one is a dumbass American trying to claim that he is immune to Mexican laws while in Mexico. Guess how it turns out for him (note: sometimes these doofii get away with it):
“Yankee Doodle” is a song that has a line that, as a kid, always stumped me:
“Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.”
Why would someone call a cap with a feather in it a kind of pasta? Because the “macaroni” being referenced is *not* a pasta, but a type of fashion. A fashion we’ve all seen in period movies and old illustrations; a fashion that I suspect most readers of this blog looked at with some combination of confusion and disdainful amusement. Behold, then, this helpful video about the rise and fall of this ridiculous, mostly-English, fashion trend:
In short, it started as a way for the super-rich and “social betters” of the time to visually distinguish themselves from the plebs who could not hope to afford this sort of extravagant garb. It started off goofy enough, but eventually morphed into full-blown ridiculousness before disappearing into a cloud of universal mockery, replaced with much more modest fashions. During its life it saw the male practitioners make themselves look more and more feminine… until they were replaced with a vastly more masculine and respectable look.
As has been said, history doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme. So *perhaps* the history of macaroni fashion might be a useful guide to our own time. The fashion then was for ridiculous self-absorbed jerks to wear ridiculous over-blown and de-masculinizing fashions… until society simply had enough and laughed them out of existence. Today? Hmmm. Sound familiar at all? Difficulty: back then, practitioners of macaroni could scrape the makeup off their faces, take off the silly wigs and stupid outfits, and put on a practical wool coat and a simple tricorn hat. Today, they’d have to do more than wash the blues and pinks out of their mental-illness haircuts and take off the cringey woke T-shirts and the fifty pounds of drag makeup and dresses, they’d have to reverse various body modifications. Good luck with *that.*
In a way, though, this sort of goofy fashion trend is useful for sane people: you see someone done up in duds like this, you know that that person is not someone to take at all seriously except as a vague threat.
