DRA, DRA Rasputin...

President Putin today said of the UK's support for Ukraine that (a) he's very angry and (b) has a nuclear weapon. This is because the long-range strikes hitting corner-shops nearby appear to be provided almost exclusively by UK drones like the ULTRA up there or ~ if not Molloy Aeronautics ~ the HYDRA seen down there.

Thing about humans is, we were designed for tangible threats viz. world on fire, not an issue but great TV; my house on fire, an issue as I've no TV.

Therefore we go on about climate change and how concerned we all are, but aren't really until there's no water emerging from the tap.

Likewise, war with Russia is not something to exercise any of us until a Russian drone lands on a Tesco warehouse and sends our burgers up in flames.

The reason we have a representative democracy in the UK as elsewhere is, as with the death penalty, the government feels it is more enlightened than the rest of us and should 95% of the populace not want to go to war with Russia, it doesn't matter for it will all work out well in the end; or at least until those big mushroom clouds start popping up here and there.

It's a great question though ~ appeasement or war ~ isn't it? Do we let apparent bullies do their worst, or fight back... ideally by getting others to do it for us first?

Was Nietzsche right, and does war reinvigorate a culture? Or does it simply ruin plans we had for the coming weekend?

Discuss... all night in an underground shelter.

Ed. Today's blog-post was sponsored by the Russian embassy, and I'd nothing to do with it.

Vertical (Taking) Flight Society

As a paid-up member I was taken aback to read it's membership has declined by some 10% in recent years, which they attribute to:

(a)    Government travel restrictions (Ed. on the gravy-train?)

(b)    Aerospace market contraction

(c)    Declining research funding

(d)    The 'bowling alone' effect

(e)    An ageing workforce

I would add that its location in the US, formerly a benefit, will be of declining value. A look at the expo in Shenzen if nothing else (the size of fourteen football fields) will convince most of us that the real innovation in vertical flight is all taking place with drones, and practically all of that in China. DARPA's heavy-lift challenge was entirely welcome in this regard, but looked like a village fete in comparison.

The VFS has too been bank-rolled by the military-industrial complex, with members in the US and Europe with a sour-grape 'not invented here' purview of what is going on with drones. This in turn means ~ they paying the piper ~ there has to be wholly more articles on incremental improvements to conventional means of flight than on any other. Which is of great interest to the aging community referred to above, but of little or no interest to my fourteen year-old son.

Organisation of the UK chapter, from which I was ejected for suggesting we meet at bars on Harley-Davidsons and sleep with menstruating women by way of induction, is a case in point. Organised by one man in Glasgow and one in Liverpool, invariably they arrange meets in London ~ because that's a half-hour from Farnborough where most of the MIC is based.

But to a great extent it is down to the digitisation of every means of doing anything. For what makes driverless taxis worth reviewing is not the car so much as what is making it tick ~ and as that's a series of charges on a silicone chip it doesn't make for good copy. I headed up training in full-motion simulators that were literally the front end of airliners; but what I did is done nowadays by a company called LOFT which relies on VR headsets to do much the same thing for a fraction of the cost.

Do I have a remedy? Yes, but it is to relocate to Atlantic City, rebrand as a Vertical Fight Society and let the academics have it out in a cage whilst we place bets during a global livestream.

Ed. And can we have this published among correspondence in 'Vertiflite' please?

Crash Investigation Investigation

Are crashes really worth investigating, aside from the cracking TV series they make? 

I'm throwing that out there because yesterday the main arterial road between the south of this great nation and its northwest ~ not least Scotland ~ was closed all day northbound. It was also closed southbound as screens were erected, because we all love a pile-up. Note to government, robotic cars don't.

But we've already the lowest productivity in the developed world, and diverting cars and trucks through Little Snoring all day won't have helped. But the fact there was one fatality and several injuries involved in this collision involving three trucks and a car required an investigation.

At the end of the day, however, it is difficult knowing how anyone will benefit. The dead won't be coming back, the insurers will be paying out regardless and anyone sent to prison in the UK as a consequence will be out sooner than expected and will emerge a criminal if not already: especially as nobody will be hiring them afterward. 

A full twenty percent of accidents occur due to one or other driver nodding off, the bulk of these at the circadian witching hour of 03:00 a.m. The accident here took place at 04:10 a.m. and it is much harder to attribute blame to the sleepy driver than it is to the drunk or drugged-up, for like an ice-bullet it leaves no trace. 

Offset that against a knock-on effect of billions of pounds and countless cats kicked at home by people like me who've had a bad day. As Jason Arday's case proved we already treat each other as inhumanly as possible, and I foresee a day when rather than investigate scenes we'll bulldoze wreckage out of the way and treat motorists involved as road-kill.

Now turn your papers over children, and:

"Is this a world that you would want, or anyone but Colin would want? Discuss."

                                                                                                            10 marks

Ed. Colin is bitter for he applied for a job at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch and failed, principally because his executive summary on the set investigation read 'Shit happens, mate.'

Air Wear

What do tricks and golf balls have in common? Surface textures designed to help fill the void behind each in order to move more efficiently, or farther in the case of the latter. These vortex generators produced swirls in the air that help fill that gap that would otherwise create suction at the rear.

The treatment below is rather more of a quandary, but sidewinds squeeze into the gap between cab and trailer creating drag, and I'm guessing this is less of an issue if there's an 'air curtain' between the two made of high-energy swirls of the same?

All a bit of a green box-ticking exercise in view of the fact a fifth of trucks on roads are running empty, but beats doing nothing at all.

Flower Power

There's a man round the corner keeps a spectacular display of dahlias going through the summer. But here's the thing: he can't see it except when he's tending it as his garden and house are the other side of the fence.

The important thing is, it makes me feel better and if you could all do something to make me feel better each day then the world would be a better place for me mainly.

Rocket Men

Only right that this should eventuate where amateur rocketry began with Goddard back in 1926, but here an amateur rocket with two stages besting the Karman line.

Only two gripes: where was the onboard camera for a Sputnik-eye view and what kind of name is "Dear Rodeo" for a team of rocket men?

They do have the advantage of the Nevada Desert for a playground too, which beats Mitcham Common hands-down.

Dash Cam

It appeared a man on a unicycle was set to win the women's 800m final at those European Athletics championships in Birmingham this week; but it's a cameraman tasked with close-ups that are beyond drones or else our old friend the spider-cam.

Watching it, I wonder if you like me found your mind straying toward the Gulf War?

Dean Kamen pioneered the self-balancing electric unicycle which he went on to call the Segway. As I recall it was developed as 'Project Ginger' and demo'ed to tech bros like Bezos and Gates in secret. They all agreed it would change means of transport on a revolutionary scale, which just shows that brilliant people can be as stupid as the rest of us.

But move on, and Segway would be sold to an ex-coal-miner from Leeds, who made his money developing those cages ~ or baskets ~ filled with rocks and used to build defences in places like Iraq. Sadly he died reversing his Segway off a cliff whilst making way for a dog-walker. History doesn't recall the dog-walker in question, but he has to be up there with the 'man from Porlock' in the English annals.

The Segway would be evolved into a more compact version altogether by someone based in the UK who co-founded Y Combinator in the US ~ and this (unless it is the Australian equivalent) is what allows us to enjoy the efforts of local athlete Keely Hodgkinson at Birmingham.

I can't leave off the reflection however without recalling my own efforts in the 1980s to build a unicycle; lost to posterity because digital photography was yet to escape Kodak's clutches. It was not electronically stabilised, however, and proved a dismal failure.

I like to think there was a life lesson there, but if there is one at all it is not to be so stupid.