Nov 162020
 

This art was posted a decade ago. But behold! Now there’s dimensional and weight data. Woo.

An early-1960’s idea for a one-man “space pod.” Similar in concept to von Braun’s “Bottle Suit,” the Remora would allow an astronaut to work in a more comfortable setting than a full pressure suit, while giving the astronaut more tools and greater protection from radiation, meteoroids and other space hazards.

The name “Remora” comes in part from the fact that the “suits” would not, unlike normal EVA suits, have to be put all the way through an air lock. Instead, the “head” of the Remora would enter a small port on the spacecraft, lock in, the pressure would equalize and the transparent dome would open allowing the astronaut to climb right out. The pressure in the spacecraft/space station would be the same as that within the Remora, meaning no prebreathing and no dangerous and time consuming steps up and down in pressure. The art shows the astronaut wearing a pressure suit; this would presumably be a safety measure in case the Remora was breached. So long as the Remora stayed pressurized, the astronauts suit could have had little to no relative pressure, meaning that it would not be stiff and difficult to work in. The Remora was to be equipped with a reaction control system of some kind, but exactly what remains unclear. Options would include:

1: Cold gas, like pressurized nitrogen

2: Monopropellant like hydrogen peroxide or hydrazine

3: Bipropellant, either hypergolic storables or something like hydrogen peroxide/kerosene. Cryogens seem unlikely.

The Remora was clearly meant to remain tethered to its spacecraft/space station. One wonders if the astronaut was supposed to remove his suit gloves before putting his hands into the external gloves of if the one would fit in the other. Additionally, it seems like there should have been little pressure doors on the inside of the glove in case a finger gets punctured.

A vastly higher resolution version of this art is HERE.

 Posted by at 10:23 am
Nov 152020
 

Can’t wait to see how successful his schemes to solve the Commie Cough, “gun violence,” global warming and the economy pan out.

Tax filings reveal Biden cancer charity spent millions on salaries, zero on research

Short from: Biden started The Biden Cancer Initiative in 2017. It brought in $4.8 million in 2017-18, spent $3.07 million on salaries. it has spent hundreds of thousands on conferences and travel and zero on research grants. Since Biden started his failed bid to become a respected cognitively-functional President, the “charity” has essentially ceased operations. So for two years it served as a means to pay “salaries” to a few people and little else. The charity’s president got $428 grand just in 2018, about a quarter of a million the year before.

Gotta respect the grift, I suppose.

All that said: I would be willing to serve on President Bidens Gun Violence Task Force. If it is run like his charity, I will end up raking in tons of cash and they’ll end up doing nothing towards infringing on Americans rights to keep and bear arms. Sounds like a win-win to me.

 Posted by at 11:17 am
Nov 152020
 

Just because the left got what it wanted doesn’t mean that violence against their political opponents has stopped. Lots of videos of BLM racists and Antifa Marxists attacking folks for wrongthink:

WATCH: Antifa Accosts Women, Children, Elderly, and Restaurant-Goers After MAGA March

I expect this sort of thing to only get worse now that the truly worst people in American society feel emboldened, and very likely will be empowered from the top of the political food chain.

 Posted by at 11:04 am
Nov 152020
 

Currently scheduled for 7:27 PM eastern time, SpaceX is planning on launching a Dragon capsule to the ISS with *four* astronauts on board. This will be the first time since the Space Shuttle that more than three at a time have gone up.

UPDATE: thirteen minutes into the flight and first stage has successfully landed, capsule is in orbit and separated from the second stage. It’s dull and repetitive… Which is *exactly* what ya want to see. WoO!

 Posted by at 10:48 am
Nov 132020
 

During the campaign, trump events were raucous, well attended celebratory events filled with unafraid people. Biden events, in contrast, were highly controlled, sparsely attended events that might just as well have been done virtually from Bidens basement. So what will the inauguration be like? The article below says that some of the Biden people are afraid that if a normal sort of inauguration is held, there will be far more Trump supporters there than Biden, with the result that it’ll turn into a protest rather than a celebration. I have doubts, though… right wingers in the US will often turn out for a celebration, but much less often for a protest. In any event, there’s nothing saying that a Presidential inauguration needs to be a big public affair, just that a Supreme Court Justice needs to do it. Biden right now might well be planning on being sworn in by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in his garage.

Biden World Fears Trump Will Bring ‘Weird ᛋᚻᛁᛏ to Their Inauguration

 Posted by at 9:02 pm
Nov 122020
 

An interesting interview with a sci-fi author who decided to go against the political grain.

An Interview with Author Andrew Fox

I’ve not read his stuff, but he seems like he’s on the right track. He has produced fiction that shocks the modern conscience by being non-woke. Might be worth a look. Conservative and libertarian science fiction is basically what science fiction was in the days of Heinlein and Leinster and Anderson, back when Men Were Real Men and Capable Men saved the day against space emperors and bug-eyed monsters. You know, when science fiction was *good.* To contrast with THIS RUBBISH.

His most recent books on Amazon:

 

The Amazon description of “Hazardous Imaginings:”

Science fiction is NOT a safe space!

Two short novels and three stories by the author of Fat White Vampire Blues push the boundaries of taboo in science fiction. An English archeologist who yearns for the love of a young Jewish refugee sets out to convince a majority of the world’s population that the Holocaust never happened — hoping to not only wipe it from the annals of history, but also from reality. The Martian colony Bradbury sends an investigator to pursue a gay Uyghur murderer in a future Australian city where members of each ethnic and grievance group are invisible to all those who don’t belong to their tribe. A far-future academic treatise describes a rediscovered Fusionist liturgical text that combines the writings of radical feminist Joanna Russ and female slavery fantasist John Norman. An aggressively therapeutic State of Florida lovingly wraps its bureaucratic tentacles around those it deems unenlightened. A born-again Christian cafeteria worker in a small Texas college town becomes the only friend of an insectoid alien come to evacuate humanity from a doomed Earth. These stories leave no sacred cows unprodded.

 Posted by at 11:06 pm