Useless Fact
Oct. 15th, 2014 04:00 pmDon't mind the above thingy. I'm just doing that to enter a sweepstakes.
FreeWill Is Just Peachy
Sep. 2nd, 2014 02:34 pmIn Roald Dahl's kids' story James and the Giant Peach, 501 seagulls are needed to carry the giant peach from a spot near the Azores all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City. But physics students at the U.K.'s University of Leicester have determined that such a modest contingent wouldn't be nearly enough to achieve a successful airlift. By their calculations, there'd have to be a minimum of 2,425,907 seagulls involved. I urge you to consider the possibility that you, too, will require more power than you have estimated to accomplish your own magic feat. Certainly not almost 5,000 times more, as in the case of the seagulls. Fifteen percent more should be enough. (P.S. I'm almost positive you can rustle up that extra 15 percent.)
Oddly enough I noticed that the film version of Jonathan Livingston Seagull was available on DVD from Oldies.com and I was rather curious about that. Was it a sign?
Fantasy Flight
Aug. 14th, 2014 08:29 pmSuperman 2 was on one of the TV networks we get this afternoon, and I have to say it hasn't aged as well as I expected. It got me thinking about things like speed and how we perceive motion.
I'm about average size for a human being. If I went like the Man of Steel and flew at a rate of my own body's "flight length" per second, that's only about 5 mph--or jogging speed. Just to put this in perspective:
* A WW1 biplane fighter at combat speed travels at five times its length per second.
* A WW2 heavy bomber or transport plane at cruise speed will also be moving at about five times its length per second. (Because of the difference in size compared to the smaller planes of WW1, this would mean double the actual speed!)
* A WW2 fighter at its combat speed would go 15 times its length per second.
* A modern fighter jet at Mach 1 would be moving 25 times its length per second.
* A NASCAR or LeMans race car at 200 miles per hour goes nearly 20 times its length per second.
We don't think of these things when we watch fantasy movies (or sci-fi space opera) because we don't want to suspend our disbelief. When Harry Potter is on his broomstick we don't clock his progress because he's moving at the speed of plot, not 45 miles per hour.
FP
If I Could Fly...
Nov. 25th, 2012 12:07 amBut before that, we were driving there and talking about the relatives on Lynn's husband's side of the family...how their kids and their needs were going to play out in the near future. He mentioned that having all three of us, myself and my siblings, in college at mostly the same time almost brought the family to financial ruin. Now, only my brother Dana made it all the way to a four-year degree; Lynn dropped out to work and I had to settle for a two-year Associate's degree.
Dad reassured me, though, that he never regretted the fact that I went to flight school and completed it as much as I could. He'd wanted that for himself all his life, and couldn't because of an eye defect he had. So I wasn't just doing it for my own selfish ends.
I don't know if I'll ever get back in the cockpit again, but I guess I can't be so down on myself that I couldn't work in aviation like I wanted.
(no subject)
Nov. 21st, 2012 12:14 pmYour redesigned thrust vectoring matrix is finally operational. Love those new nozzles! Moreover, you've managed to purge all the bugs from your cellular tracking pulse, and your high-resolution flux capacitor is retooled and as sexy as a digitally-remastered simulation of your first kiss. You're almost ready for take-off, Sagittarius! The most important task left to do is to realign your future shock absorbers. No more than a week from now, I expect you to be flying high and looking very, very good.
ACK! My leather jacket! I haven't had time to get it repaired!
One out of every four of us is afraid that we have missed our calling -- that we have misread our soul's code and failed to identify the labor of love that would provide our ultimate fuel for living. If you're among this deprived group, I have good news: The next six weeks will be an excellent time to fix the problem -- to leave the niche where you don't belong and go off to create a new power spot. And if you are among the 75 percent of us who are confident you've found your vocation, the next six weeks will be prime time to boost your efforts to a higher level.
You know my song, "I Wanted Wings/till I got the darned things"...
I feel like I'm in unknown territory, although things should be stable and reliable. The landscapes of my dreams are unfamiliar and make little sense to me.
Once upon a time my Mom said, remarking about my difficulties finding work, that I would probably have to invent a completely new vocation and be its first professional. I wonder how true that is...
What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.
The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.
Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"
Two flight sim trailers behind the above cut.
Soaring With The Eagles
Mar. 2nd, 2011 02:36 pmAce Combat: Assault Horizon is currently having a contest for new paint schemes. My page is based on their download but expanded and improved upon.
The powers behind the contest say three entries per person, so I intend to submit a few. Watch this space.
Latest Piece Of Stupf-Lust
Dec. 6th, 2010 06:00 pmA set of Pilot's and Co-Pilot's instrument cluster panels from a Convair CV-240 transport (which was also used as an Air Force trainer for navigators and flight engineers). I put it on my personal Amazon wishlist. One more entry to go for the Sweepstakes!
FP
Field Trip
Nov. 18th, 2010 02:11 pmPS: THIS WHIRLYBIRD was there today. Santini Air, or Team America?--You Decide!
That bush plane looks relatively tame but it has three to four times the horsepower the plane was originally designed to have, and super-tough landing gear to go with those monster tires.