Let Us Roar - About Dyna-Soar!

Okay, I'll Settle For A Muted Growl
It is a bit early for loud yelling, after all.  I can also tell what you're thinking - no, I'm not telepathic it's just I have access to a very special ECG-fitted helmet that DARPA have lent me, long term.*
     "The old fool has finally lost it!  Not only is he still banging on about dinosaurs, he can't even spell them properly.  Shocking!  A letter to The Times is in order -"
     Still your flapping and ill-advised piehole.  By now you ought to realise that grammar, syntax and spelling all do what Conrad tells them, which is to say the right stuff.

Incorrect yet apt.   No Tazer for Art.  Yet.

     Here an aside.  "Syntax" came up in conversation at work last week, and it was said to be an unfamiliar word by one of my compatriots.  You know Conrad - not only did I know what it meant 'the structure, arrangement and analysis of language construction', I then had to look up where it came from.  Greek, I guessed, and guessed correctly.  From "Sun" meaning 'Together' and "Tassein" which means "Arrange", hence to "Suntaxis" which does sound like a cab firm** - and more bad puns to come!

Sic

     Anyway.  What I refer to in today's title is in fact an experimental hybrid spaceplane, the X-20, whose title was a contraction of "Dynamic Soarer", so you can see that there are other people out there who pun as badly as I, and who probably got paid a garage-load of money to boot.  The idea was that the Dyna-Soar would loft into orbit or even space from a ballistic launch vehicle (South Canadian for "a bloody great missile"), do whatever needed to be done (e.g. potting Sinister satellites) and then glide back to Earth in a controlled descent.  Art?

Soaring and dynamic

     Sadly, Dyna-Soar never did: it was expensive and the authorities regarded it with suspicion, since it was being run by the South Canadian Air Force rather than NASA.  So they pulled the financial plug.  The design work did, however, influence the Space Shuttle and the later (rather diddy) Sinister testbed version thereof.  Art?

Artists impression
<sigh>

     And because I can, here's the scale testbed Sinister version, known as the BOR-4, which isn't a bad pun, but which does rhyme.

Sic.

     Oh dear.  Just as I am looking at pictures of Sixties spaceships, what comes up in a completely separate conversation but - Sixties spaceships.  I think the universe is trying to tell me something once again ...

A Rod For My Own Back
As you may already be aware, Conrad has a whole lot of books scattered about his Sekrit Layr, including several hundred in a cupboard only accessible via a tall ladder, and which were piled in with absolutely no order to them.
     So, I decided to extricate the whole lot, bin a few, put the rest back in one layer at a time, take a photo or two of each layer and thus have a record of what's where.  Art?

 

The book cave, emptied

     Yes, I actually threw books away, including a 1921 edition of "From Private to Field Marshal" by 'Wully' Robertson, because it was disgustingly mouldy and smelt horrid - and if I, with no sense of smell, thought that, then it truly needed to be binned.
     Of course this won't be a quick process, as there are many, many books to sort through.  Art?

"Books, Sir!  Fahsands of 'em!"

     The very real danger, of course, is that I'll 'just have a quick flick' through a volume, and will end up reading it, only realising that it's now gone 1:30 ante meridian and I have to be up at 6:00 ...

"The Charm School" By Nelson De Mille
One of the novels I dug out of those hidden at the back of those layers.  Set in the Sinister Union (circa 1986) before it all went toes-up, it does deliver a fair genius loci.  The charm school of the title is definitely not the sort that young debutantes went to in order to learn how to gracefully get out of a car.  Art?

The edition I have

Nothing To Sneeze At: Another Dinosaur Extinction Event Theory
I cannot find the picture I am looking for about 2000AD, and I don't intend to dig through a thousand back copies.  It was a 'Time Twister' IIRC, about a chap WITH A BAD COLD who invents a time machine, and who goes back to Permian times in it.  You know, when the dinosaurs were abroad.
     As soon as he arrives, dinosaurs attack him.***  However, he then sneezes on the nearest one, which immediately collapses and dies.  No resistance to the common cold, you see.  Dead as a dodo.
     Cue a cascade of dinosaurs dying like flies, as the entire global population is wiped out.  Plus, one of them collapses on the time machine, simultaneously wrecking it and tripping the 'On' switch.  Oh well, just one of those days, I suppose.


     Since I can't find any photos of sneezing expiring dinosaurs, have a Norwegian spy ship instead.  Oooh Arrrr Jim lad!


*  Oh, alright, I stole it.
**  Sorry
***   Not house-trained, obvs.