DC-3 launch stack

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 112020
 

In 1969, Maxime Faget of NASA-Manned Spacecraft Center (later renamed Johnson Space Center) produced a concept for a simplified version of the Space Shuttles then being designed. The idea at the time was that the Shuttle would be a two-stage vehicle, both being fully reusable manned flyback vehicles. The Orbiter would be much larger than the Orbiter that actually got built because it included substantial hydrogen/oxygen tankage. The boosters were generally *vast* vehicles larger than the C-5 Galaxy meant to fly higher and faster than the X-15. Optimistic to be sure. Faget’s “DC-3” design had the same basic architecture but attempted to produce a smaller, cheaper, less complex and more realistic design. The design, produced in-house at NASA, was picked up by both North American and McDonnell Douglas, who designed their own variations on the theme.

Here is the basic configuration of the NASA-MSC “DC-3:”

 Posted by at 1:31 am

Well, THAT didn’t take long!

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, news, politics, youtube  No Responses »
Jun 102020
 

The Antifa Autonomous Zone of Capital Hill, Seattle, already has its own warlords enforcing their own laws. With exactly the amount of “de-escalatory skill” and accountability that you’d expect from the sort of people who think that ACAB.

Honestly? Funny as hell, right here. Violence, threats of violence, claims of power and authority not based on actual respectable attainment or rule of law but sheer force.

I’m torn here. On one hand, these sort of nonsensical whackaloon “zones” should be rousted out by the National Guard, the leaders rounded up and deported to North Korea. On the other hand, it will be useful and instructive to let at least a few of them go on for at least a little while. They will demonstrate the result of leftist policies, the inevitable end-state of socialism. They also demonstrate gloriously the difference between anarchism and libertarianism… both disdain government, but libertarians respect private property (at least in theory). These socialist d-bags actively *disrespect* private property, and thus each and every one of them feels it good and proper to trash other peoples stuff. And clearly a good number of them are already falling into tribes with self-appointed headmen. As things devolve and get more violent and brutal, it will be interesting to see how many of these warlords are women or alphabetters.

Capital Hill Autonomous Zone Already Has Wannabe Warlords & Dictators

And…

Anarchy in Seattle

These are the ideologues that Pelosi & Co. are kow-towing to.

– – –

And in some lighter news…

And…

This seems somehow relevant:

 

 Posted by at 9:32 pm

Dude

 Forward!, Hmm..., humor, politics, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 102020
 

The wokescold fascists sometimes don;t play by their “1984” playbook. “Dude” is a way to *simplify* speech, compared to the never-ending intersectional expansion of gibberish that they want to inflict on daily conversations.

 Posted by at 1:07 pm

No Step On Snek

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, history, Meh., politics, THIS is why Trump won, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 092020
 

So, this leftist/socialist/Antifa take on the Gadsden flag has suddenly become popular:

We Will Tread

Now, there are two major facts to understand from this:

1: The Gadsden flag, and the snake in it, is defiance against authoritarianism and a statement of support of the rights of Man. To say that you will oppose that means that you support authoritarianism… and more specifically, the use of force against free people. To call the people who fly the “we will tread” flag fascists seems perfectly proper.

2: The person who designed this, and those who fly or wear it unironically, are clearly idiots. You don’t tread on a snake by grabbing it but by, you know, TREADING ON IT.

I fully support the flying of this flag. It’s good for the villains and morons to let the rest of society know who they are.

 Posted by at 6:58 pm

Dyna Soar launcher options

 aircraft, history, models, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 092020
 

A photo montage of Boeing display models showing a range of launch vehicles intended to put the early (1959) Dyna Soar into orbit. The three at left are clusters of Minuteman ICBM boosters; the next two are larger solid rocket motor clusters. The next is a Saturn I booster, followed by an all-new recoverable liquid rocket booster, the Titan II and the Atlas/Centaur. The Titan II design was chosen, though it could not actually get the Dyna Soar into a true orbit. To do that, solid rocket boosters needed to be strapped to the sides of the Titan II… leading to the creation of the Titan III.

 Posted by at 6:51 am

And now, predictably, they want to shut down STEM

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 082020
 

Here’s a thought: measure performance of STEM organizations and labs and companies and such on June 10. See if things such as productivity or morale take a downward turn or not as the woke “scientists” leave on the 10th. If things don’t get worse or in fact get better… then lay off those who left because clearly they’re just not that handy on the job anyway. It certainly seems like a day free of wokescolds and their lackeys would be an improved day on the job.

I went to the “shut down STEM” website to see what all line of  they’re running. And this warning popped up.

 

 Posted by at 11:24 pm

Not what you want to see your average neighborhood doing

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Hmm..., news, youtube  No Responses »
Jun 082020
 

In America we have a problem of uncivilized people burning their neighborhoods down. In Norway, their neighborhoods seem to want to go for a swim.

Landslide in Norway Sweeps 8 Buildings Into the Sea

The slide, which ran more than 2,000 feet along the shore and nearly 500 feet inland, was the largest the area had ever seen. A dog was carried out to sea but swam to safety.

Shocking, not once in the New York Times article do they blame Trump for this incident. Must be slipping (ba-dum-tiss).

 Posted by at 3:44 pm

The coming golden age of toy spaceships that shoulda been made 40 years ago

 art, awesomeness, models, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Jun 082020
 

So here’s some good news for those oldster sci-fi nerds who were/are fans of the original Battlestar Galactica, who wanted spaceships to go along with their toy figures, and who currently have buckets of money:

That’s cool and all, but I have two current concerns, apart from the cost:

1: The 3D printed nature of the things is still really obvious. Of course as printing tech improves, the surfaces will also improve. Eventually these sort of prints will be indistinguishable from injection molded parts. Not there yet, though.

2: Some corporate suit will doubtless fire up the Legion Of Doom Lawyers to drop a ban hammer. “Someone is making a nickel selling something we couldn’t be bothered to sell even though there’s clearly been a market for close to half a century? OUTRAGE!”

So, a bit of games theorizing needed here. Do you shell out big bucks now for things that are – to the right person – pretty cool, yet still rather imperfect… or do you wait for quality to improve and cost to decrease, while risking a Cease and Decist making them vanish altogether?

 Posted by at 2:43 pm

No, it *has* started

 AARRRGH, books, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, THIS is why Trump won, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 082020
 

From PJ Media, a piece from one Stephen Kruiser:

The Morning Briefing: We’ve Reached the Book Burning Phase of 2020 Riot Wokeness

The argument in the piece is that the woke fascists are *approaching* the stage of book burning, due in part to pieces like this blog post on taxpayer-funded NPR:

Your Bookshelf May Be Part Of The Problem

Where white people are castigated for having book shelves filled with authors who wrote, you know, actually *good* books. Why have Shakespeare, when you could have Maya Angelou? Why have books you like when you could instead have books that tell you how evil you and your family members are for being the race you are?

While mr. Kruiser has a point that those who hector others over not having a sufficiently woke reading list are on the road to being book burners, he makes a fundamental factual error at the end:

Obviously, people aren’t literally burning books just yet. The spirit of book burning is upon us, though. With what we have seen in the past ten days from the rage mob, expecting the leftist worst from them really isn’t a stretch.

Ummm… “people aren’t literally burning books just yet?” Allow me to introduce you to the pile of ashes that is Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore. Or DreamHaven Books & Comics, which was ransacked and saved from being burned down solely due to the incompetence of the arsonists. Seven other comic book shops across the country (Illinois and California) ransacked. Hell, even “progressive” newspapers get an entrashening. And of course there’s the winnowing of western literature from universities, social media censoring wrongthink and Amazon withdrawing books for political reasons.

Mobs are generally indiscriminate in their reckless hate, only avoiding those businesses that have Roof Koreans or which display, with adequate clarity, symbols of supplication. But those pushing the chaos often have goals… and wiping out wrongthink and the paper its printed on certainly seems to be at the top of their wishlist.

 

 Posted by at 12:32 pm
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