This is beautiful

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 042023
 

The last ten years or so have seen massive denigration of long-established fandoms. Star Trek, Star Wars, LotR, etc. These fandoms have deep and beloved lore, and many of the modern producers simply don’t care. Why respect the canon, when there is a message to deliver?

 

Fortunately, this is not always the case. Sam Witwer is an actor probably best known for voice acting. He’s voiced Darth Maul in the “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” series, and “Starkiller” in the “Force Unleashed” video game, where he also did motion capture. It’s that latter one that’s of interest here. Turns out that he was knowledgeable in Star Wars lore, and knew how to apply that knowledge… and the director of the game knew to respect that. (This was a 2008 release, before the modern age of garbage; but witness Henry Cavill’s love of Warcraft 40K secured him a post-DCU future.) Behold:

 

 Posted by at 3:41 am

Is there a polymer chemist in the house?

 AARRRGH, aircraft, art, Hmm..., models, science  No Responses »
Jan 032023
 

Something like 15-20 years ago I bought a 1/18 scale P-47D “Ultimate Soldier” toy. This line of large scale accurate fighter planes was sort of peak Golden Age Of Toys For Adults, even though they sold for a reasonable price at WalMart. They make great display pieces even without structural modifications or repainting, but they are generally screaming for such.

 

Anyway, the P-47D spent years on a shelf in my shop in Utah. From time to time it caught direct sunlight. This discolored the paint *slightly,* but it turned the originally crystal clear canopies milky white. I’ve left them in the dark for some years to see if that would help… nope. I boiled them… nope. I nuked them, if perhaps briefly, with UV; no change. Anybody got any ideas? Why did this happen? How can it be reversed? Scrubbing has shown that this is not a surface feature, but seems to be throughout the plastic.

At some point, recasting them with crystal clear resin might be the only solution, but it’s not one I’m fond of. None of the other canopies did this, so it would seem these two pieces of plastic came from a bad batch.

 Posted by at 8:56 pm

The constantly evolving “Enzmann Starship”

 aircraft, blather, history, Hmm..., Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 022023
 

The “Enzmann Starship” is named after Robert Enzmann, who “designed” it decades ago. Just exactly *when* has been an issue of some confusion in recent years.

It first came to light in the late 60’s or early 70’s, with claims that he thought it up around 1964 or so. The design is unique: a giant spherical ball of frozen deuterium fuel at the front, followed by a cylindrical ship, ending with a series of Orion-style nuclear pulse engines. It was an *ok* concept for a practical starship, though relatively recent analysis presented in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society argued that it was not nearly as good as imagined. It became something of a sensation in the 70’s after appearing on the cover of “Analog” in 1973.

Nothing has ever been produced, so far as I’m aware, backing up the concept with any sort of detailed design of analysis until that JBIS paper. No reports, proposals, pages of math, from Enzmann seem to be available… just text descriptions of a few sentences and some art. And that’s fine. But in recent years the claims have become more and more expansive. Enzmann, near the end of his life, claimed that the design for a nuclear-pulse vehicle dated not from the time of the Orion program, but back to the *40’s*.

I spoke to Enzmann on the phone a few times over the years. He was enthusiastic, verbose… and baffling. He made lots and lots of claims about having worked on this or that amazing program, but when asked for verifiable details… it was classified. Those who have picked up his mantle and are trying to carry his torch seem to be following in his footsteps there, continuing his claims without much apparent criticism. I’ve recently engaged their twitter contact to get some sort of verification of his claims… but we have now reached the point where not only am I convinced that no such evidence will be produced, I feel no reason to assume anything remarkable is true at all. Behold:

Claiming that nuclear powered aircraft were actually built in the fifties and then buried in a mountain? Yeah… no. I’m out.

 

Where the thread started:

 Posted by at 11:06 pm

APR rewards: December (and November) 2022

 aircraft, CAD diagrams, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 022023
 

The December 2022 rewards are available for APR Patrons and Subscribers. This latest package includes:

Large Format Diagram: AWACS model diagram

Document: “Preliminary Design of a Mars Excursion Module,” 1964 conference paper, Philco

Document: “Astronauts Memorial” 2 diagrams

Document: “Patrol Reconnaissance Airplane Twin Float,”  Convair brochure (via photos), 1944. Two piston engines, two turbojets

Document: “Hard Mobile Launcher,” Martin Marietta PR, two images. One photo, one artists impression

Document: “JVX Space Proposal” apparently a fragment, 1984 Bell maps of manufacturing facilities for what would become the V-22

Document: “Minimum Man In Space,” 1958 NACA memo describing proposals made to Wright Air Development Center for what would become the Mercury program

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 

And because I forgot to post about it at the time, the November 2022 rewards were made available a month ago:

Large Format Diagram: B-50A Superfortress Model Diagram

Document: “Design Study of a One Man Lunar Transportation device,” 1964 North American Aviation conference paper on a rocket “hopper”

Document: “Project EGRESS (Emergency Global Rescue, Escape and Survival System),” 1964 Martin conference paper on ejection capsule for aerospacecraft

Document: “The Hydrogen Fueled Hypersonic Transport,” 1968 Convair conference paper

CAD Diagram: Mach 3 turbojets: Allison 700 B-2 (J89), GE YJ-93-GE-3 (cutaway), P&W J58

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 Posted by at 10:54 am

I did not see this coming

 Hmm...  No Responses »
Jan 022023
 

Really I didn’t:

I would assume that it’s an automated thing, rather than a bagrillionaire giving a damn about my piddly little Twitter posts. But, who knows…

 

 

 

 Posted by at 9:38 am

Cyanotype update: irritation edition

 AARRRGH, blather, cyanotype blueprints, history, Hmm..., ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 282022
 

I have been poking away at resuming cyanotype production using the new setup and the old transparency negatives. In order to go forward successfully, I need to be able to print on transparent film up to 2 feet wide by six long. I have encountered a lot of trouble here, which has baffled me. No print shops within a hundred miles seem to be able to do that. I put in an order to buy a roll of the film myself to keep at one of the local shops to print off on as needed… and was informed today that the roll will be delivered no sooner than late *February.* The manufacturers don’t have the raw materials for it.

 

What’s baffling is that when last I worked with this, circa 2017 or so, getting these sort of prints was no trouble whatsoever. I’d send the files to a local print shop in Utah and within a few days the job would be done at reasonable cost, no sweat. Now, though… it’s just not done. And it turns out there is a reason: up until about 5 years ago, it seems people were still regularly using diazo-type blueprinting for architectural and other industrial diagrams, which required this sort of film. But around five years ago, digital printing finally drove the last nail in diazotypes coffin. Without the market, there’s no supply.

 

So, hopefully the film will still arrive. But I have a customer who kinda wants his custom job, and that’s an unreasonable wait. So something new is being done. The customers line diagram is being printed not on thin transparent film, but on thin *plexiglas.* I can see this resulting in superior cyanotypes; the plexiglass will be vastly less prone to being anything other than dead flat, so the prints should be sharper. But plexi is *far* more expensive (two full size prints will cost as much as the entire roll of film that’s hopefully coming)… and when not in use, I can’t just roll it up and stick it in the corner. If I get 24 inch by 72 inch prints on these, not only is storing them going to be a problem, I can’t even fit them in my car. Grrr. These are problems that will be solved, but, grrr. Everything is always harder not only than it needs to be, but than it used to be.

 Posted by at 1:57 pm
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