It belongs in a museum

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Crazy, dumbassery, history, Hmm..., nukes, projects, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 122023
 

Big bomb laid to rest

An article by Sandia Labs discussing the disposition of an old, old, OLD Mk 17 nuclear bomb “trainer.” Obviously this isn’t, never was, an actual thermonuclear weapon, but a training device; as such, it doubtless included a lot of the same parts as the actual bomb.

The Mk 17 was a giant of a bomb, deliverable only by the B-36; with a yield of about 15 megatons, it was delivered in 1954, withdrawn from service in 1957. Consequently, this thing is pushing seventy years in age. The article states that it was “transported to Kirtland Air Force Base for its end-of-lifecycle dismantlement and disposition.” One *hopes* that means it’ll be lovingly restored and sent to a good museum for display. One fears it means it’ll be disassembled and scrapped. That *seems* to be its fate based on the vague descriptions of what’ll happen to it.

 Posted by at 11:58 pm

This must be some sort of Golden Age

 AARRRGH, aircraft, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 112023
 

On the one hand, earlier today the FAA ordered a “ground stop” to all domestic flights, basically shutting down the aviation economy:

Buttigieg responds to latest transportation crisis as he faces continued criticism

On the other hand, eggs are becoming a luxury good, unavailable to regular folks.

Egg Shortage: What’s Behind Soaring Prices – and When Will They Go Back Down?

In the Midwest, a dozen large eggs cost an average of $5.17 last week, compared with roughly $1.50 in January 2022 and 94 cents in 2021. …In California last week, the average price for a dozen eggs reached $7.37, according to the USDA’s Egg Market Overview report.

 

This is apparently due to a bird flu wiping out chicken in industrial quantities.

 Posted by at 10:10 pm

Synthetic natural tire rubber

 Hmm..., news, science  No Responses »
Jan 112023
 

If it works, if it’s affordable, and if it makes us that much less reliant upon the crappier parts of the world… hey, great, soy-infused tires.

Goodyear’s New Tire Is Made From Soybean Oil, Rice Husks And Pine Resin

 

At CES 2023, the company revealed a tire in which 90 percent of its components are materials that come from sustainable sources. Goodyear says there are 17 sustainable ingredients that include things like recycled polyester and plant-based components like soybean oil, rice husk waste, and “bio-renewable” pine tree resin. It also uses steel with “high recycled content” and “ISCC certified mass balance polymers from bio- and bio-circular feedstock.”

There have been concerns about the availability of natural rubber (i.e. from rubber trees on rubber plantations in places like south east Asia) due to the usual concerns: climate change, China, diseases, etc. So if a perfectly cromulent replacement for natural rubber can be had from stuff that can be grown in the US… yahoo. For too long has the wealth of the modern world poured into other lands.

 Posted by at 8:18 am

Things don’t look great for Virgin Orbit

 AARRRGH, aircraft, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 102023
 

Virgin Orbit is Richard Bransons space launch company. Their launch system, LauncherOne, uses a 747 to haul a more or less conventional expendable rocket into the air for launch to orbit. yesterday they flew a launch attempt, the first orbital launch attempt from the UK. Note “attempt.” It got close, but something went wring and the vehicle didn’t attain orbit. That’s never a good thing, but things apparently weren’t good at the company before then.

Even before Monday’s launch failure, Virgin Orbit’s finances were dismal

The math seems weird:

Independent estimates suggest that, over that time, Virgin Orbit spent as much as $1 billion to develop and test its LauncherOne rocket and air-launch system. The company made its first successful launch in January 2021 and has averaged one mission every six months since then.

An obvious question is this: With such high development costs and a low cadence for a rocket that sells for $12 million per launch, how can Virgin Orbit be financially sustainable?

How indeed. $12M per launch would require 83 launches to make a $Billion, and that’s forty years at the current rate. And $12M is the selling price of the mission, not the profit.

 Posted by at 11:15 pm

Classified Documents: Cautionary Tales

 AARRRGH, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 102023
 

The President of the United States has at least one absolute power: the power to declassify secret documents. There is some discussion about the process, but is *seems* that all he needs to do is say “this document is declassified,” and that’s that.

The Vice President does *not* have that power.

 

Biden and his legal team don’t know what’s in classified documents found in his private office, sources say

 Posted by at 9:17 pm

What could *possibly* go wrong?

 AARRRGH, Crazy, critters, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 092023
 

Here’s your new “zombie apocalypse writing prompt:”

Study using mosquitoes to deliver vaccines has Chinese researchers buzzing

In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on December 16, researchers said they had developed new technology that can turn a mosquito into a flying vaccine carrier to immunise animals in the wild.

Oh, goodie. Commie scientists studying ways to deliver vaccines, drugs, plagues, manmade horrors beyond your comprehension, etc. via skeeters.

The ChiComs have already announced that they are working on genetic weapons to target specific ethnic groups for everything from death to dumbing-down. This seems like a decent enough way to deliver such a weapon in certain geographic regions.

 

Now, is the idea of immunizing wild animals against pandemics a good one?  Quite possibly. Is the use of skeeters to do this a good idea? Possibly. Would I trust anything produced by people who think that Mao and his policies were good ideas? Not a chance in hell, Skippy. If you buy into socialism, you’ve demonstrated a sufficient lack of critical thinking skills and judgement that you should be kept far away from anything more scientifically complex than a wooden block.

 Posted by at 11:34 pm

OK… Maybe a *little* excessive

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, wisdom  No Responses »
Jan 082023
 

Finally saw unedited video of the recent shooting of the armed (with a toy gun as it turns out) robber in Texas. With the edited videos, you can’t tell anything about the customer’s shooting of the robber other than at least one shot in the bad guys back. But with the edited video there appear to be *nine* shots, including multiple shots into the guy while he’s down… and a few seconds later, one more shot which kinda seems like it might have been a back-of-the-head shot. Which, you know… maybe a bit much. Do I feel bad that a robber got rubbed out? Not in the slightest. The fact that he had a fake gun doesn’t matter, the *fear* he was determined to generate was real enough. But riddling a dead guy with holes… people are gonna question that. But I dunno: you threaten to kill someone, chances are real good that that *someone* is going to get amped up on adrenaline, and might not be thinking to straight for a minute or three. I know the wokescolds and the prosecutors are going to yammer on about how he shot too many times… but when your life has just been threatened, how rational are you really expected to be?

The greater lesson here: if you don’t want to be turned into Swiss cheese, don’t go robbing people. Seems a simple enough rule of thumb.

 

 Posted by at 11:14 am
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