… sorta. As I’ve mentioned from time to time on my twitter (@UnwantedBlog), I’ve been helping out some friends for a bit. They’ve thanked me with a shiny new Anycubic Kobra 2 Max 3D filament printer. As such things go it’s a giant, capable of far bigger (but lower-rez) prints than my resin printer.…
Rumored and discussed for years, in 1962 General Atomic reportedly built a “Corvette sized” display model of the 4,000 ton Orion spacecraft as a spacegoing battleship. This model was shown to President Kennedy, and the reported reaction was… not great. The model was described by a few who had seen it, but all evidence of…
The rewards went out this AM bright and early. They include: Diagram: Two sheets of Rocketdyne schematics for the Space Shuttle Main Engine and propulsion system Document: “B-1B New Strength for America’s Defense” An early 80’s brochure on the then-forthcoming B-1B Document: “Aerojet propulsion for Space Systems,” a very nicely illustrated booklet on the AJ10-137,…
The USSF wants to actually be able to do their job. Could we see the return of the heady days of the Star Wars program? Now that we have actual almost-affordable and mostly-reusable space launch, we just might. Get ready for the pages of Aviation Week to be filled with artists concepts of space based…
A scientific paper published more than 20 years ago was recently rediscovered by the internet: Sugawara et al. 2003, “Destruction of Nuclear Bombs Using Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Beam” https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0305062 A lot of this goes over my little post-Covid head, but the summary seems to be that, theoretically, an advanced high energy collider, similar to but…
A reminder that at o-dark thirty tomorrow morning, SpaceX will, hopefully, launch the first all-private manned orbital mission. It’ll be the highest humans have orbited Earth (discounting Apollo astronauts who broke Earth orbit to head to the Moon), and will include a spacewalk with new spacesuits. Currently scheduling 2:38 AM central time. https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=polarisdawn
Here’s the first nearly complete set of “sellable” 1/18 scale Skybolt ALBM parts. Only things missing are a stand(s) and a clear cover for the star tracker. There’ll be 2 variants… complete, and a simpler one without most of the innards (build with the stages/warhead joined). It takes about 2 *days* to print a complete…
I miss having neat nature to take photos of. Utah was full of that. Illinois… well, it’s here, but usually obscured with buildings, power lines, light poles, etc. Still, every now and then something worth taking a photo of emerges.
Oh, Fᚪᛣᚳ… Maybe it’s the Old Guy in me, but this set off every alarm bell I have. Maybe this sort of thing would be good for people with serious mental issues, but for regular people? I can’t foresee anything but Black Mirror horrors. Replacing jobs with AI is bad enough; replacing human interaction…