Do You Want To Get High?

No!  We Are Not Pushing Drugs Here
Nor do we condone their use, apart from the caffeine in tea, without which your humble scribe would be a gibbering wreck,* as he gets through about three pints of it per day - 
      - although, to some, reading this blog does give you a sense of "This is your brain on drugs" due to the choice of subject matter and frequent digressions, non sequiteurs, the presence of Art, Oscar and Steve and our Cyborg Sentry Cat.

Art, dressed for his date with Mara Corday

     Where was I?  
     Oh yes:  Space elevators.  No doubt there is a band that goes by this name, which is not what - hang on, let me just see - 

Conrad: correct nine times out of eight

     - not what I want to talk about, or at least introduce, as the subject has a lot to it.
    Let us have a picture of a space elevator.  Art?

See where the "High" comes from?

     The idea is to have a great big counterweight at a height of 22,500 miles, from which you dangle a cable, since at that height the cable stays fixed in position as gravity and centrifugal force balance each other out.  Groovy, eh?
     The idea is well over a century old, and was put forward by that crazy Ruffian beatnik bopping bandit scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whom we might have a picture of.  Art?

Konnie, in his wild youth

     He proposed a tower, rather than a cable, that reached up beyond geostationary orbit, being inspired by the sight of the Eiffel Tower.  Unfortunately a tower of such colossal proportions would collapse under it's own weight long before it reached the desired height, even if you built it on a mountain-top to shave a mile or two off the total tallness to be topped.  So current designs look to replace the tower with a "tether", which the more down to earth - Do you see what - O you do - of us would call a cable -
 - which is where we'll leave it for today, as there is lots more to come and I've hopefully already piqued your interest, not least with my wickedly deceptive title for today.
     Now to fire the motley's ejection seat whilst the jet is upside down!**

Poor motley

Speaking Of Which -
You are probably not quite au fait with the wonderful world of ejection seats, though you must be familiar with the general idea and have probably seen pictures of them in action.  If that day-dreaming sluggard Art will put down his plate of coke -

CAUTION!  Can cause friction burns.

     Back in the day, in the early days of ejection seats, they were not necessarily powerful enough in the ejection department, which was a bad thing, as most jet fighters have a big, solid, metal tail that you really don't want to hit at Mach 2, since being dead is a serious cramper for your flying career prospects.     Thus!  Was born the downward ejection seat, which might sound a little odd, but there's a whole lot less impedimenta beneath a jet that you might run into.  Art?
       That's a Lockheed Lightning F104 at port, and some Sinister aerial beast at starboard, both demonstrating the principle of the thing.

As for this -

     Someone is pulling your leg.

     I never meant to go off at such a tangent; however, I refer you to the second paragraph of the Intro.  "Frequent digressions".  There, I'm covered.
     Food!  Food is calling me!  Don't go away, gentle readers.
     O what a surprise, a small furry visitor has come to grace me with her presence, purely for the pleasure of my company and nothing to do with the food here present, eh, Edna?  (Like a heel I ignored her pathetic starveling gaze and slavering whimpers and ate the lot myself).

Going Back To Our Remit
Part of it, anyway: the bit about zombies and tanks.  You might not think it, yet a tank - yes a great big mobile metal fort - can become a zombie, especially those of the Second Unpleasantness, coming back to a kind of half-life long after they should have been broken up for scrap.  Art?


     There you are, a blurry real-life monochrome and a colourful kit.  As the description has it, this is one of the Teuton's mobile metal forts, namely the Bison II with-some-word-salad.  This beast was created, Frankenstein's monster-like, by chopping up and sticking together the chassis of a Panzer II - Art?

Thus

     This was a Teuton panzer produced in large numbers pre-war, which turned out to be rapidly obsolescent once the shooting began.  So, take the unfeasibly large and clumsy sIG 33 (Infantry Gun 33) - Art?

Thus

     - take the wheels off, drop it into your Panzer II chassis and - Hey Pesto!  A mobile piece of medium artillery.  I bet the horses were grateful.

Finally - 
Because this has to make sense (as much as anything round here) I shall now go have a short chat with Tom Hanks, seeing as we're such best buds and everything.  He was in the neighbourhood with a gang of his.  Rowdy lot.
     Hi, Tom!  How are you?
     What's that?  Sorry, I didn't - Tom, Tom, you're mumbling.
     Er, Tom - you look a bit peaky.
     Are you - hey, cut that out!  Friends do not bite one -     OH GOOD LORD ALOFT TOM'S A ZOMBIE!  RUN - RUN - FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!

Tom Zom

     Until tomorrow, or the end of the world, whichever comes sooner - this is Conrad signing off as he legs it into the sunset.***


  Those who respond "How do you tell the difference?" will be shot!
**  I'm a terrible person.  But we already knew that.
***  Or is it a thermonuclear explosion?