We Have Covered The 'Sprint' Missile Before
But not for ages (code for I can't remember when and can't be bothered to look). Okay, I looked and didn't find. There. Happy now? Art!
Sprint: so fast the colour film can't keep up
The Sprint was designed to be a last-ditch interceptor missile that would intercept - the clue is in the name - incoming Sinister ICBM warheads in the last fifteen seconds before impact. The idea was that, being so low in the atmosphere, all their penetration aids and radar decoys would have been stripped away and there'd be no problem identifying them. Art!
CAUTION! Can prevent cities
You can see the problem here: with such a short time to intercept, the Sprint needed to move like shizzle off a shiny shovel, which it most assuredly did. If you see Youtube video of the launch, it looks like a real-life version of a Looney Tunes cartoon; there one second and gone the next. Let me see if I can get you a few images. Art!
Being driven by a very careful driver, because not only is this stuffed full of the most incredibly powerful solid-fuel propellant (stabilised, as much as you can stabilise it, nitroglycerine included), it is also armed with a low-yield nuclear warhead. We'll get to that in due course. Art!
Here we see Sprint being rammed out of it's silo by a rocket-propelled piston, because Hot Damn! they wanted this thing to leave the ground in one heck of a hurry. Art!
Suitably apocalyptic! You can just make out the silhouette of Sprint, which looks as if it was born in the fires of Hades. Once clear of the silo the first stage engine fires, and the fun begins. Art!
You can just see the missile beginning to slant it's course. I can't get an accurate count of how far into the launch sequence we are here; I can tell you that the first stage burnt out after 1.2 seconds, by which time Sprint was travelling at Mach 10. Art!
Here you see the first stage separating and immediately being destroyed by aerodynamic stress as the second stage goes haring off at 100G. The outer skin became incandescently hot thanks to atmospheric friction, reaching temperatures higher than the exhaust plume. Art!
A twinkling little star, indeed. That glow is from plasma, created by the heat shield without which it would have vapourised. Sprint was so insanely fast that, when test fired from it's silo the first time, the launch team thought it had blown up on the ground, only realising their error when they picked it up on radar.
This technology is from 1965. Think about that for a minute.
We'll have to come back to the nuclear warhead, or this whole blog will be about Sprint*.
Ranting And Tanting And Heirophanting
Nope, not going to tell you, go Google it. As usual those pikers who compile the Codewords have been pushing the conceptual envelope to the point where it looks more like a doily than anything intact. Let the frothing indignation begin!
"AXIOMATIC": No, this is nothing to do with the human our nervous system. It is (I think) a derivation from classical Greek philosophy and rhetoric. It technically that which cannot be argued with or debated about as it is self-evidently correct, as in <thinks> "First Bus are a bunch of incompetent bodging layabouts who drink tea and eat biscuits for seven and a half hours per day with all of fifteen minutes work after their comfort breaks". There you go, an indisputable axiomatic statement. Art!
"One of First's luxuriously-appointed fleet"
"TRAPEZOID": I bet this has a Greek root. Let me just go check - yup, from that wibble merchant Euclid and his "trapezia" which related to a table, a table in ancient Greece always having four legs. It's supposed to be a geometrical shape that does not have parallel sides or something. Art!
WHAT ARE WE ALL GEOMETRY EXPERTS NOW? <seethes quietly)
"HEXAGON": This isn't that obscure a term, I admit, although COME ON another geometrical shape from the dawn of history? and once again I bet it has a Greek root. In fact I'm so sure I cannot be bothered to check. Hexagon? I put a hex on you that will indeed render you gone! Art!
I shall have to stop there as the red mist threatens to descend. Alas that the Remote Nuclear Detonator is still being serviced!
"Compline"
No, not "Complain" in Australian dialect - although I bet it does sound exactly the same - but yet another word that percolated through my brains this morning as I unplugged myself from the mains supply awoke from my slumbers.
Your Humble Scribe had a pretty fair idea of what it was. You see, back in the days of mighty monasteries, the monks and friars had a strict prayer routine which divided the day. There were Vespers - Art!
??? Art! - O I see**.
<sounds of a Tazer charging up>
- and Compline. Allow me to check teh Interwebz (typing this at work with no Collins Concise to hand) -
There you go. Now we all know more than we did five minutes ago, and Art can go put salve on those burns.
Quickly!
There's no time to waste - are Mystery Jets still alive and well? Nurse! O and Art, too.
Yes!
Phew, that was a close one. Okay, you may all carry on as you were doing - except you, Motley; juggling bottles of nitro-glycerine is not going to end well.
They were warned ...
Finally -
You're not getting away without another small selection from "Tormentor", ha-ha! So, let us continue. I have tried to edit out all the sweary stuff, but if any sneak through, close your eyes and hum loudly.
‘Let her!’ retorted Jennifer. ‘If I wasn’t wearing tracky-bottoms I’d flash
her.’
Louis grimaced in horror.
‘C*****, Jen, don’t even think about that! The
neighbours think I’m weird enough already!’
‘Bye!’ Off she
went, with a wave and a bounce in her step, one of that breed of irrepressible
teenagers convinced of their own immortality.
After calling her mother to warn of her daughter’s imminent arrival, Louis watched her walk up
the street to the main road and turn left, out of sight. By that time, and at that distance in the
twilight, the only visible sign of her was the fluorescent shoulder-bag
containing her work. It was only a
hundred yards from the street corner to the front of her mother’s house,
although Jennifer usually went down the alley at the rear and got in that
way. He sighed without realising and
went back indoors. For the first year
he’d walked her home, until she gently chided him for being so silly, after all
he wasn’t quite her dad, was he?
Things take a turn for the worst after this, believe me.
* Heck, it wouldn't bother me, but some of you out there would doubtless complain. Or fall asleep.
** Vesper Lynd. Art being funny.
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