Shock and Awe

In the days leading up to a photo-shoot and possibly after reviewing CCTV footage, operators of the local playing-fields imposed a height-restriction at the entrance of the car-park that the platoon had identified as the perfect drop-zone for a PR shoot.

Taking a leaf out of Napoleon's book at Austerlitz, Gromit and I rose before dawn to load the vehicle and raise it to working temperature before departing in a cloud of AdBlu. Within minutes and in view of the entrance, the 4x4 scaling the grassy berm alongside like a Panzer negotiating the Ardennes. And there ~ without even a dog-walker in defence of the ramparts ~ we found ourselves unopposed in the car-park.

Ed. Signed colour-prints depicting the operation are available on our merch pages.

Let's Do the Space Warp Again

The timber yard around the corner sells a set of flags like this with which to stylishly pave the back garden... a circular table at its centre perhaps for the glass of Pimms in the sunshine. 

This tho' is the heat-shield from the top end of Artemis 2, adorning the ass of the uppermost capsule that contains the astronauts and which they rely upon during re-entry.

The figure to remember should anyone ask you about re-entering the atmosphere from a trip to the Moon is twenty-five. You'll be travelling at 25,000 m.p.h. and the temperature of that surface will be around 2,500°C... and what lies between you and that super-heated sauna is 25% plastic.

What most strikes you about space-flight is the level of near-perfection required in its attention to detail. The far depths of the oceans and farthest reaches of the sky are as unforgiving in physical terms as anywhere on the planet; as the losses of the Titan submarine and Columbia space-shuttle attest.

I always figured these tiles were ceramic, so that for future commercial off-the-shelf builds you could drop by Home Depot to search among kitchen and bathroom tiles.

What they are instead is a sort of cake-mix of epoxy resin, plus glass microspheres and silica fibres. These are popped into a form of baking-tray in the shape of a steel hexa-comb like honey-bees make, and then popped into an autoclave on low temp while you join friends at the pub for pre-meal drinks.

Artemis 2 (crewed) was preceded by Artemis 1 (uncrewed), with which they would experiment with a single-skip entry to Earth's atmosphere ~ like a pebble on a pond ~ with which to help reduce the speed. Except what it meant was that gases crept into the seams of the tiles and expanded upon re-entry to blow parts of the tiles off.

What they told the crew prior this month's re-entry therefore was that they'd go for a 'ballistic' or full-on entry instead. Which is one reason why what the astronauts do is sit down with the kids and the household paperwork, explaining what to do with it should tiles designed to a 1960s recipe fail.

Incidentally the difference with moonshots is that unlike a return from orbiting the Earth, there's an extra 8000 m.p.h. to dispose of; and the best way of imagining it is that the gravitational pull of the planet acts not unlike a coin-vortex. What you're on is effectively the solar system's biggest roller-coaster, because it's all uphill for a small part of the way leaving the Moon, and accelerating downhill for the remainder.

Used to tell my own child at amusement parks how coin-vortices were ideal means of visualising the warping of gravitational fields as suggested by Einstein; he turning to me as often as not to say "Yeah right, loser."

Completely Floored

They said it would need adhesive but as I said to the vicar, it fit like a condom.

On the strength of replacing this toilet end-to-end I have bid for the upgrade to the facilities on Artemis 2, which failed spectacularly only recently.

The bid required a name and they accepted 'Moonshine' only after rejecting my first suggestion, which was 'Moonshite'.

Transferable Skills

Used on the drones for many years since, an ideal way to drive holes through dodgy sheet material like alloys or carbon-fibre... or indeed vinyl flooring. To make holes for the piping, pre-drill a block and centre it over another before driving a spade-bit through. Access for pipes enabled here by running a Stanley knife from the edge.

Carpet Bombing

Blog's going great guns and there's even a faction out there with a forum discussing aspects of replacing bathrooms suites by my own methods. And whilst I could have patented this one here, it is intended purely for the benefit of humanity and funded by my philanthropic foundation.

Lacking the necessary carpet-fitting skills I found a get-around in the shape of this giant paper template of the bathroom, for a cut-out-and-keep vinyl floor using the bargain-basement off-cut that I shall soon be running around on naked.

There's a book out there somewhere about a man who planned to make a 1:1 scale map of the world, and once the floor is down I shall be offering this life-size map of the bathroom which ~ stitched together with your own contributions ~ can be used to bring his dream to life.

As I said to that pizza-delivery guy, 'It's all about what you can do for others' and 'Where's the fucking mayo?'.

Captains Blog Stardate 21-APR-26

Need to get the drone over to the car-park at the local playing fields for a PR shot for the website, but they've put a height restriction in at the gate. Options, re-design for a six-inch shorter cat or find an alternative way in... which looking at it on the way home yesterday evening looked eminently possible.

Thereafter it is waders on and over to the local fish-pond for a static flotation test ~ if the locals are still as hostile I shall threaten to block the straits. Expect the craft still to float nose-down at rest, which can be solved with more weight at the rear in shape of battery-packs. For aerodynamic reasons I do not want the C of G migrated rearward unduly, so shall look at options to up the buoyancy at the forward end.

On the domestic front in preparation for the new toilet ~ and you don't get pulled off projects for that at Lockheed Martin ~ I've put new flooring down myself at a cost of just £50, undercutting the original quote by nearly 90%. Yes, Elon Musk has done that with launch-vehicles... but can he do it with vinyl flooring?

Merchant Mania

A brief but honorary mention for one of my own favourites in the form of the Vickers Vanguard, it's sibling the Viscount in the background. The latter was altogether the more successful, its turbo-prop engines bridging a gap between stressed-out pistons and the jet-engine in the 1950s. Arriving too late on the scene, therefore, it proved altogether more popular flying freight at night when re-purposed for the role by the Canadians. Called the Merchantman, it was loudest airliner I ever heard as it taxied past our humble Shorts in the dead of night at Coventry Airport.

Ed. the airport is set to close after ninety years as a part of a government scheme to ready British society for a possible war with Russia, and who knows who else.