Rain Gryphon

Once again, and long overdue, America has a true heavy-lifter!

*****

I am delighted beyond words to live in a country which has so vanishingly few problems that congress can devote their time to fretting over Taylor Swift tickets.

It's the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight.

I now know, by association, my second person to have Covid-19: My mother's hairdresser's son. He's asymptomatic. I have yet to know anyone, other than by reputation, who's had it. I don't doubt that the situation is all serious and terrible and a public health emergency, etc., but it's very difficult to be much excited about it when it just doesn't seem to really affect anyone.

I've shaken hands with more men who've stood on the moon than I have met Covid-19 sufferers.

I've had a beer (and a sit-down chat) with more men who've held the one-lap speed record at Indianapolis than I have met Covid-19 sufferers.

I've met more people who've stood face-to-face with Adolf Hitler than I have Covid-19 sufferers.

*****

This is interesting. This would account for the extraordinarily low instance of death among black Africans.

The astronauts have capacitative fingers on their gloves, so they can use touch screens. At least one is using a tablet. The capsule looks way open and roomy. Everything is on the screens - no switches or dials. I tend to wonder what happens if the onboard computer locks up.

The Dragon has red and green navigation lights. You get a wonderful view from the ISS cameras as it backs away, with the little thrusters stuttering. All of the maneuver burns seem to be broken up into a series of bursts.

The Warsaw FD's new fire truck is orange and black. It's odd-looking, but quite attention-getting. Like most emergency vehicles these days, it's pretty much encrusted with LED flashers anyway. You can't overlook it.

The road repair crew all have LED bands surrounding their hardhats, which looks absolutely surreal at night, especially the first time you see it.

India's gonna launch a lunar lander/orbiter pair tonight! The whole thing looks very much like a Titan/Centaur clone to me. If you look closely, they've even got those roll modifier tanks, one on each strap-on, and then apparently two on the core stage. There's even a shroud around the core engine mounts, and an openwork adapter between the main and the sustainer. I wonder if that's what those two little tanks on the core really are? That makes less sense the more I consider it. And, I wondered then if those were some sort of humongous ullage motors, but the Indian's core motors start a few seconds before SRB burnout just like a Titan/Centaur, so you'd not need that. Some kind of trajectory modifier to keep the used stage from falling on land? It's a mystery to me.

Good luck to them!

UK is going to build a launch facility in northern Scotland That seems a questionable choice of locale to me, that far north, where you can't much benefit from the planet's rotation. Even Baikonur isn't that far off the equator. Still, Lockheed/Martin are involved, so...

*****

They finally caught the guy that murdered April Tinsley those 30 years ago! They caught him the same way that the guy who killed Arlis Perry was caught a few weeks back - by comparing DNA samples to an online database. I don't know how big of a case this was outside of the upper midwest, but here it was huge. He not only raped and murdered the little girl, but made it abundantly clear that he had enjoyed it, and wasn't the least bit sorry. He amused himself by sending obscene messages to little girls (and I think perhaps a few boys too) about what he'd like to do to them. One can only imagine the effect upon one's psyche at that age. I think the only real doubt about the outcome here is whether he'll survive prison long enough to stand trial. I personally won't be too upset if someone saves Indiana the expense of a trial.

I keep expecting some lawyer to claim that it's unconstitutional to use DNA, since that wasn't an available technology at the time of the murder. The sad thing is that I can kind of see the 5th amendment applying there.

Gonna see some regime change soon in the Congo, I betcha!

*****

Blofeld's hollow volcano is erupting! You Only Live Twice, despite it's absolutely goofy-ass plot with logical holes you could drive a truck through, remains nonetheless one of my three favourite James Bond movies, with the other two being the much more logical Goldfinger, and Thunderball. You Only Live Twice has the best of the opening sequences, I think, with a catchy song (although it can't hold a candle to Shirley Bassey's snarling performance in Goldfinger) and the Japanese parasol motif. It just works very well for me. The conceit of the villain having his HQ inside a hollowed-out volcano is absolutely breathtaking (and I know by all the times it's been parodied I'm not the only one who reacted to that), plus the sequences where SPECTRE's spaceship engulfed the two capsules, and especially the Russian one with the cosmonaut on his tether, were absolutely haunting. It's all like something from 1940s radio drama. The whole thing is so engaging that I'm willing to completely overlook all the reasons this won't work.

*****

You know, were I a politician, and did I desire to be loved by all, Democrat and Republican alike, I'd propose the abolition of Daylight Savings Time.

*****

And, on review, I find that it was the American astronaut whose tether (technically an umbilical, since it was a Gemini) was severed by the SPECTRE ship.

The Soviet capsule, while looking nothing like an actual one, was, IIRC, reasonably close to speculative picture of a Voshkod that was current at the time.

Interestingly, to me, is that my first reference for the word "umbilical" was to a Gemini spacewalker's umbilical. I didn't know it was a biological term until several years later

And, as magnificent as the Falcon Heavy is. it can still only loft about half of what a Saturn V could...

*****

Wikipedia claims that the engine was named "Merlin" after the magician. Considering that their other engines are Kestrel and Raptor, I'm gonna say "no"...

Voyager One's ACS thrusters finally wore out. So, they used the Trajectory Correction thrusters instead. The thing is, those hadn't been fired since 1980. They worked perfectly.

I have friends that weren't even born when those motors were last used.

That probe is nineteen and a half light hours out now. I remember when it crossed the heliopause, and you could dial a number and listen on the phone to the carrier tone from the little spaceship as it left the solar system.

So, now I'm back home from Memorial Day. I got to see Takuma Sato, one of my favourite drivers, win the Indianapolis Five Hundred, and hang out with mom for a few days as well.

*****

It's probably safe to say that Takuma Satop isn't one of this fellow's favourites. I think that on the one hand, it's sad that anyone would still feel resentful three-quarters of a century after the war*, but on the other hand, firing the man was IMHO an over-reaction.

* A war, moreover, in which we administered one of history's most comprehensive beatdowns since Carthage pissed off Rome, then completed our victory by rebuilding their society to be pro-American.

*****

At 5'5", Sato is apparently the shortest man to ever win the Five Hundred. Surprisingly, he's one of about six or so who won their first Five Hundred when they were over 40 years of age.

*****

Delicious cherries and cold milk! Now we'll see if I'm harder to kill than Ol' Zachary Taylor.

*****

When regarding the hundreds of thousands at the Speedway, I'm always reminded of Hannibal's statement before the battle of Cannae, as true today as it was then: "In all that vast host of men, there is not one named Gizgo".

*****

Space-X static fires a Falcon Heavy core unit. I love Elon Musk's attitude: "One way or another, launch is guaranteed to be exciting".

*****

I am disappointed in the Smithsonian. When you're converting the thrust to rotary motion, it's no longer a "jet". It's a turbine engine.