A report I scored off ebay some time back had a number of conceptual Douglas designs for supersonic tanker aircraft. Gotta scan this in at some point…
Aug 112020
Aug 112020
The surrounding area is still filled with blacked-out neighborhoods with no power or not internet or both, but somehow I’m back… at least for the moment. Huzzah.
Aug 102020
The weather came through today and really did a number on the local power grid. I’m typing this on my phone, and will probably be otherwise offline for however many days it takes to get things up and running again. Emails, especially orders, will probably be spotty at best.
Aug 102020
Guh. Netflix’s “Away” is about the first manned mission to Mars. This *should* be all about the thrill of exploration and discovery, right? Right???? Nope. It all about how this Benetton ad full of Incredibly Diverse international astronauts are all emotional wrecks, how leaving home for three years will lead to tragedy and regret.
Hollywood… y’all suck.
Who the frak is this series even *for?* Science fiction fans? Doesn’t really look like it. Space exploration aficionados? Not from the looks of it. People who love weepy emotional barf? Maybe, but how many of those people will want to watch rockets?
Based on this trailer, there’s one way this series could be salvaged. Through the first season run, as we see our Politically Selected and Politically Correct crew being prepared by their UN-approved government program, you see distant background references to some private program. Make sure that whenever it is referenced, anybody responding to it does so with scoff and scorn. But in the last few minutes of the season finale, as our Diverse Heroes approach Mars, they detect radio signals from *ahead.* While nobody was looking, SpaceX got there ahead of them… landing at the US Space Force base that got there ahead of *them*. Season two starts with our Quotanauts landing at the USSF base and being welcomed to a hotel being assembled by the SpaceX crew. The Season One cast all look crushed and defeated, and then the camera pans over to the Season Two cast of American USSF and SpaceX explorers setting out to not only explore Mars but to begin mining operations. Season Two goes in an uplifting direction, with the idiots from the first season being bypassed and forgotten.
Aug 102020
For decades it has been the vogue to complain about the dropping of two atom bombs on the Empire of Japan. This has been argued ad nauseum, but I think a good summary of the better position is found in:
“Thank God for the Atom Bomb”
Written by Paul Fussel in 1981. He was an infantryman in Europe during WWII, and likely would have been killed – along with perhaps a million other American soldiers, sailors and airmen – had the A-bombs not been dropped.
The future scholar-critic who writes The History of Canting in the Twentieth Century will find much to study and interpret in the utterances of those who dilate on the special wickedness of the A-bomb-droppers. He will realize that such utterance can perform for the speaker a valuable double function. First, it can display the fineness of his moral weave. And second, by implication it can also inform the audience that during the war he was not socially so unfortunate as to find himself down there with the ground forces, where he might have had to compromise the purity and clarity of his moral system by the experience of weighing his own life against someone else’s. Down there, which is where the other people were, is the place where coarse self-interest is the rule. When the young soldier with the wild eyes comes at you, firing, do you shoot him in the foot, hoping he’ll be hurt badly enough to drop or mis-aim the gun with which he’s going to kill you, or do you shoot him in the chest (or, if you’re a prime shot, in the head) and make certain that you and not he will be the survivor of that mortal moment?
It’s very definitely worth reading.
Aug 102020
As time goes by, expect to see more people pushing back against the Commies:
And for informational purposes…
Aug 092020
You are not to be allowed security in your own home.
Aug 092020
Aug 092020
If there’s something that really shouldn’t be worthy of notice by the outside world, it’s YouTube “celebrities” going after each other. But sometimes it gets interesting, especially when the courts get involved and start setting legal precedent. it’ becomes especially interesting when you can tell that one of those involved in the spat is clearly the villain of the piece… and that they Keep Not Learning Valuable Lessons. Such is the case in the fight between “Akilah Obviously” and “Sargon of Akkad.” Short form, Sargon is a white anti-SJW, while Akilah is an anti-white SJW, and when Trump defeated Hillary in 2016 Akilah posted a video that Sargon took clips from for the purpose of satire. She sued him for copyright infringement; the court not only threw the case out, it recently awarded him legal costs. Doubling down on stupid, Akilah is claiming to be preparing an appeal. This is double dumb… not only because the case is essentially unwinnable for her on the merits, the judge who ruled against her has been bumped up to the appeals court and thus the appeal would go to *him.* Triple dumb, she has publicly smack-talked the judge. Yeah, she really is just that smart.
If you’ve got an hour to kill, or an hour to listen to something while you work (as I’m doing… for Book 2 I was successfully doing one diagram a day, but the most recent diagram tool the better part of a month… the average diagram runs about 800 kilobytes, this most recent one is a whopping 40 megabytes, so, yeah, a whole lot of bits), and you want to be amused by just how unaware of reality a professional SJW can be, check out this summary:
Note: in the thumbnail image for the YouTube video, that’s Akilah doing “whiteface.” Not unintentionally; she’s mocking the appearance of white folk while doing so. Not too long after, she said that she would never do white face, apparently having forgotten that she’d already done it. Way to go, Akilah! A winner is you!
Aug 092020
Just FYI, via Wiki…
These yields are approximated by the amount of the explosive material and its properties. They are rough estimates and are not authoritative.
| Event | Location | Date | Primary explosive material | Approximate yield (TNT) | Mean yield (TNT) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Halifax Explosion | Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada | 6 December 1917 | High Explosives | 2.9 kt of TNT (<12 TJ) | 2.9 kt of TNT (<12 TJ) |
| RAF Fauld Explosion | Staffordshire, UK | 27 November 1944 | Military Munitions | 2 kt of TNT (8 TJ) | 2 kt of TNT (8 TJ) |
| Port Chicago disaster | Port Chicago, California, US | 17 July 1944 | Military Munitions | 1.6–2.2 kt of TNT (7–9 TJ) | 1.9 kt of TNT (8 TJ) |
| Oppau explosion | Oppau, Ludwigshafen, Germany | 21 September 1921 | Ammonium Sulfate andAmmonium Nitrate | 1–2 kt of TNT (4–8 TJ) | 1.5 kt of TNT (6 TJ) |
| Port Beirut disaster | Beirut, Lebanon | 4 August 2020 | Ammonium Nitrate | 1–1.5 kt of TNT – Upper Limit (4–6 TJ)[103] | 1.25 kt of TNT (5 TJ) |
| DuPont Powder Mill Explosion | Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, US | 9 March 1911 | Dynamite andBlack Blasting Powder | 1.1 kt of TNT (4.4 TJ) | 1.1 kt of TNT (4.4 TJ) |
| PEPCON Disaster | Henderson, Nevada, US | 4 May 1988 | Ammonium Perchlorate | 0.8–1 kt of TNT (~4 TJ) | 0.9 kt of TNT (~4 TJ) |
| Texas City disaster | Texas City, Texas, US | 16 April 1947 | Ammonium Nitrate | 0.73–0.86 kt of TNT (3–3.6 TJ) | 0.79 kt of TNT (~3.3 TJ) |
| N1 launch explosion | Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 110, Kazakh SSR, USSR | 3 July 1969 | Rocket Fuel (RP-1) | 0.3–1 kt of TNT (1.5–4 TJ) | 0.65 kt of TNT (2.5 TJ) |
| Evangelos Florakis Naval Base explosion | Evangelos Florakis Naval Base, Cyprus | 11 July 2011 | Military Munitions | 0.48 kt of TNT (2.01 TJ) | 0.48 kt of TNT (2.01 TJ) |
| Port Tianjin disaster | Port of Tianjin, China | 12 August 2015 | Ammonium Nitrate | 0.28-0.33 kt of TNT (1.3-1.4 TJ) | 0.3 kt of TNT (1.35 TJ) |
The largest of these, the Halifax explosion, was caused when a French cargo vessel carrying high explosives crashed with a Norwegian vessel near Halifax, Nova Scotia. But perhaps the *dumbest* of these was the Oppau explosion which… well, here’s part of the Wiki description:
The plant began producing ammonium sulfate in 1911, but during World War I when Germany was unable to obtain the necessary sulfur, it began to produce ammonium nitrate as well. Ammonia could be produced without overseas resources, using the Haber process.
Compared to ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate is strongly hygroscopic, so the mixture of ammonium sulfate and nitrate compacted under its own weight, turning it into a plaster-like substance in the 20 m-high silo. The workers needed to use pickaxes to get it out, a problematic situation because they could not enter the silo and risk being buried in collapsing fertilizer. To ease their work, small charges of dynamite were used to loosen the mixture.
WT actual F.
