Been a fan of Whittle's work since EjectEjectEject and supporter of Declaration Entertainment. Mechanical Engineer, Father, former Chair of the AIAA Nuclear and Future Flight Technical Committee, and turtle.
If you aren’t sure, here is the context: https://www.apolloartifacts.com/2015/01/apollo-7-flown-paul-haney-are-you-a-turtle-cue-card.html https://www.americaspace.com/2012/09/23/50-years-since-sigma-7-a-tale-of-turtles/
I am increasingly thinking that we (and by “we” I mean those of us Americans who believe in individual Liberty and in Fair Play and Rule of Law) are a Cargo Cult. At least those of us who are politically active. For those who don’t know what a Cargo Cult is, Infogalactic (https://infogalactic.com/info/Cargo_cult) explains: The […]
With Bill fearing that AI mechanical design will put engineers out of work, I thought I’d post some recent articles on it: https://www.mmsonline.com/articles/what-this-seat-bracket-says-about-the-future-of-automotive-manufacturing https://www.mmsonline.com/articles/generative-design-generates-new-interest-in-a-range-of-manufacturing-options https://www.machinedesign.com/3d-printing-cad/article/21121975/data-ai-and-the-generative-design-revolution I’ll point out that for now there is NO danger that AI part design will end human engineering. I doubt it will even reduce the amount of human engineering. In […]
An interesting video about Camp Century, a Cold War Nuclear Powered American Town built under artic ice and a Boy’s Life article by a Boy Scout who lived there for six months. https://books.google.com/books?id=Wa2333FvqG4C&pg=PA33&dq=%22camp+century%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiw2JaDkNvvAhUlB50JHaYVDPMQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0477706.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/711862.pdf
I suspect Greg Gutfeld’s use of the name “after party” is a blessing in disguise. I’m sure EVERYONE in LA and the movie and theater business knows what an After Party is and has warm fuzzy feelings about it. But I would have to use up half my elevator pitch explaining what an “after party” […]
Bill talks about the hive mind or flash mob style problem analysis on the internets where a self-organizing group will come into existence to tackle a problem and then dissipate when it is over, like with the Rathergate debunking… I think one of the locations that is going on with the current voter fraud is […]
Before I get into the details of propulsion systems and vehicle design I want to make 2 brief post about the units of measurement I’ll use when discussing these things. No, no… don’t go to sleep. It is really interesting stuff. Or at least more so than you may suspect. I will generally use British […]
Early unmanned interstellar exploration is likely to be a combination of better astronomy and very tiny unmanned probes used to characterize the interstellar resources around us. This would include not just habitable planets around nearby stars but also exploring the local interstellar medium (it is hard to design a ship to sail on a sea […]
After Bill talked about the likely prevalence of brown dwarfs and the implication for them as stepping stones between stars in interstellar exploration and colonization, I got curious and looked around for information on the subject. I came across some very interesting Youtube videos by Isaac Author on similar (but not exactly the same) topics […]
Bill mentioned in Stratosphere Lounge 258 that he plans for his story to take place in 200 years. He had previously mentioned that he wanted to tell the story as happening in more than one generation of time. I wanted to post this figure* that shows the travel time vs technology to various interplanetary and […]
In the previous post I suggested that a giant linear accelerator in our solar system couldn’t propel a manned spaceship to relativistic speeds because even accelerators thousands of miles long would still have to crush the crew with impossible gee forces to get to relativistic velocities. Well… that isn’t exactly true. That is only true […]
Let’s say, for whatever reason, someone wanted to come up with an interstellar propulsion system that didn’t require any “magic” and included the really tense requirement of the interstellar starship diving through a hollowed out asteroid (or similarly visually impressive structure) on the way out of the solar system. Building some sort of (probably electromagnetic) […]