Adrian Hunt, the collection’s executive director, told me that putting a pilot in the V-1 turned out to be a terrible idea.
“The theory is that you open the cockpit and you jump out just when you’re getting close to the target,” he said. “There’s a slight design fault there. Once you open the cockpit, that’s the intake for the rocket – and it tends to suck in things, including people.
Sorry for the short notice, but I forgot to mention that I’ll be on Fast-Forward Radio tonight, in less than an hour. Fortunately (assuming you care) it will be available for download later.
A brief survey of potential global warming solutions. What is more interesting to me than the engineering is the politics and ethics of all this. Asteroid diversion falls in the same category. But at least some of these things could drive a need for low-cost space access in an unprecedented manner.
But this is one that doesn’t really seem to be in this category, unless it were mandated. It’s more of a “think globally, act locally” approach:
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the ultra-low-tech approach of painting rooftops white to reflect sunlight.
We’ve been thinking about doing that anyway, just to reduce our air conditioning bill. With a gray cement tile roof, that soaks up a lot of sun, it’s hotter than Hades’s kitchen in the attic this time of year, and that could really cool things down.
Jon Goff has a truly excellent post on what will be required for space settlements, with useful historical analogies. I’ve always considered the LDS analogy quite apt, both in terms of types of technologies and infrastructure needed for the emigration, and the motivations. As he notes, unfortunately, the space community often uses unuseful historical analogies and/or fails to recognize where they break down.
But what he describes would be a true “Interstate Highway System” for space, as opposed to what Mike Griffin considers one (Ares/Orion).
Although the Climate Security Act does direct some spending towards low-carbon energy research, it is basically a wedgist scheme. If something like it is adopted by the next presidential administration, we will find out which side is right. If the wedgists are correct, cutting carbon dioxide emissions will produce a modest increase in energy prices resulting in the deployment of a wide variety of readily available low-carbon energy sources over the coming decades. If the breakthroughists are right, energy prices will soar provoking a political backlash. In which case, perhaps one need only peer across the Atlantic to the spreading protests against higher fuel prices in Europe to see the future.
Yup.
One of the most disturbing things about McCain is that he has bought completely into the hysterical climate-change claptrap, and is unamenable (so far at least) to reason.
There’s been quite a bit of commentary about the technological backwardness of the enemy. That is certainly a key distinction between this war and World War II and the Cold war, in which we were at war with technologically advanced industrial states (Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union), whereas the hirabis have virtually no industrial or weapons-making capability, short of nail bombs. I think that it was Rich Lowry who compared the two cultures by writing something like “…we build skyscrapers and jet airliners–that’s our idea. They hijack our airliners and fly them into the skyscrapers–that’s their idea.”
Anyway, there was some buzz recently that they had developed a computer graphic of a nuked Washington DC for one of their propaganda videos.
Nope. They had to lift it from a western video game. They’re not only incapable of carrying out our destruction, they’re not even capable of simulating it. But it does speak strongly to their intent if they ever get their hands on advanced weaponry, something that, with advancing technology, will become more and more of a problem in the future.
…would you rejuvenate? Randall’s choices would make a lot of sense for me, too. Though I’m not sure how useful this is as a thought experiment. How likely is it that we’ll actually be presented with such menu?
It’s a pretty common occurrence for a little kid to be disappointed when he loses his grip on his balloon, but this is in a different class entirely:
The former paratrooper had hoped his “Big Jump” — starting 40 kilometers (25 miles) above the Earth’s surface — would set new records for the highest jump, fastest and longest free fall and the highest altitude reached by a man in a balloon.
But those hopes drifted away over the plains of Saskatchewan in Canada when the balloon escaped.
I think he should give up on the balloon thing, and just wait for a rocket ride.