I Lust! I Lust!

For Unmitigated Thrust!

What, you thought this was going to be a piece of sleazy scurrilous seediness?  WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS!  (Again).

     I refer, of course - obviously! - to the Sinister-era N1 super-heavy launch vehicle (which we would otherwise call a 'rocket' but hey the pseuds have taken over), which was designed as an analogue and competitor to the South Canadian Apollo.  Art!

     This puppy was essential to the Sinister plans to invade and occupy explore the Moon, and here Conrad has to bring in the Sinister Lunar Lander, which would have been carried atop the N1 as it's payload.  We put up a graphic of it yesterday which was an unflattering as could be, since it looked like a mutant insect as designed by a committee of seven-year olds.  Art!

With puny human for scale

     You see, for all the brute force of the N1 with it's 30 individual engines, it could only carry 66% of the Apollo's payload, which meant design strictures that resulted in the tidgy Sinister LL.  Crewed by a single cosmonaut, which is a definite health and safety hazard if you ask me.  Let us have a comparison with the South Canadian LEM*.  Art!

Someone didn't eat their greens

     Back to N1.  It's a shame that it used a LOX/Kerosene fuel mixture, as if they had used hypergolic fuels I could have title this blog as "It's the Hypergolic Thrusts That Really Send You Insane", which would horrify all Rocky Horror Picture Show fans, probably.  As you may appreciate, having 30 separate rocket engines that need to be plumbed and wired to operate together is a major technical problem, and guess what?  The Sinisters were pursuing a political agenda here ahead of technical or scientific rigour.  Sounds familiar?  Yup, Herr Schnickelgruber, looking at you.  The Kremlin wanted results and quickly so they could beat the South Canadians to the Moon, in order to occupy/explore/liberate it <delete where applicable>.  To this end the N1 never had the funding for a full testing programme - they had the R AND no D - and was never test-fired as a complete 30-engine unit <tuts forebodingly>.  This meant that the four test launches were all complete failures, the N1 blowing up thanks to excessive vibration, which destroyed fuel lines and plumbing.  There were other problems, too, which, again, would have been discovered and remedied had they done proper development.  Art!

WE MUST INVADE THE MOON FIRST!

     So there you go, the consequences of suborning scientific endeavour to political expediency, and yes we have mentioned the "P" word once or twice but it's so long ago it's historical.  Were they RANDy?  Not very much.

Progress Report

Conrad has hit Page 1,400 of "Reclaiming History" by dint of sheer hard reading commitment <pause for applause> and we are still dealing with Olly Stone's "JFK" which Ol' Vinnie is ladling with venomous criticisms - all entirely justified, it has to be said.  Art!

Proud father with offspring

     I don't think I'll be able to finish it in time to trot down to Babylon-Lite on Saturday afternoon along with another nine books to balance the book-in, book-out system.  Conrad will give it a go, mind!

From Charming To Chilling

You ought to recall that, yesteryon, Conrad brought forth a picture showing Wally The Wonder Weasel positively gambolling, perhaps even giring and gimbling, in the snow.

     Today's picture has a more sinister mien.  Art!

Courtesy Sitaram Raul

     According to the photographer it took weeks to set up this shot, using his own fresh blood as bait learning the habits of these fruit-bats in order to find an appropriate window of photographic opportunity.  Well done Sitaram!

And Whilst On The Subject Of Sinister ...

Let's return to "The Sea Of Sand" where things have more than a touch of the shape of a pear, as the TARDIS has vanished and our travellers are stuck in the middle of a barren desert.  Oo-err Matron!

She did have a point, thought the Doctor.

‘You’re forgetting that the Time Lords have diverted us here, Sarah.  They have a reason for that, even if we can’t see what it might be at present.’ Silence fell for a minute while the Doctor turned to look at the desert in all directions.  ‘And even if the reason quite escapes me, also.’

Sarah mimicked the Doctor’s searching, not seeing anything except dust and sand and rock, all hazed and vague-seeming thanks to the ever-present heat.  The desert undulated erratically, like the ocean suddenly frozen in one second of time, stretching limitlessly to the horizon.  No trees, no houses, no rivers, no animals.  Nothing, in all directions.  The air lay still and dead, without any movement.

In fact, were they still on Earth?  That aircraft might well have been an alien aeroplane.  Sarah didn’t recognise the markings.

‘Do you know where we are, Doctor?’ she ventured.  ‘I mean – is this still Earth?’

The Doctor took off his hat, and dropped it upon her head, making a cautionary gesture.

‘No, no, you keep that on.  Prevents sunstroke.  Here, sit down.  Conserve your energy.’  He patted the sandy grit next to himself as he settled into a yoga position.  ‘Is this Earth?  I suspect so, Sarah.  From the evidence of the TARDIS sensors and what we’ve seen so far, I think we may have landed in the midst of one of your species’ interminable efforts to exterminate itself.’

‘War.  Even better.  Lost in the middle of nowhere, during a war.  Doctor, can things get any worse?’

O Sarah, you had to ask!  Yes, things can get worse.  Just wait and see!

Conrad: Irked To The Max

Don't think that, just because I haven't been frothing with incoherent rage, that I've mellowed at all.  Not even a lunch of garlic ginseng ginger oysters washed down with a snifter or ten of gin can assuage <not a word you ever expected to see today> my temper, for those Codeword pikers are at it again.

"TARSI": Good job I didn't settle for "FARSI" isn't it?  What the Dog Buns! is or are 'Tarsi"? because Your Humble Scribe had no idea.  Thanks to a touch of Google-fu, I discovered that - 

1. a group of small bones between the main part of the hindlimb and the metatarsus in terrestrial vertebrates. The seven bones of the human tarsus form the ankle and upper part of the foot. They are the talus, calcaneus, navicular, and cuboid, and the three cuneiform bones.
2. 2.

   a thin sheet of fibrous connective tissue which supports the edge of each eyelid.

WHAT, ARE WE ALL PODIATRISTS NOW?

"SISKIN": No, nothing to do with admitting that your sibling is actually related to you, rather than an alien wearing a human disguise.  Hmmmm.  The irony, the irony.  This is actually a species of bird, and if Art will stop sucking the marrow out of that nuclear fuel rod -

WHAT, ARE WE ALL ORNITHOLOGISTS NOW?

     Conrad knows this because he's widely-read, but just think of all the poor benighted semi-literates out there who would have just given up and gone into a decline because they had no idea what this word meant.

"APLOMB":  I know what you're thinking.  Not because I still have D.A.R.P.A.s prototype Telepathy Helmet, simply because you're all so predictable.  Go on, go on:  "Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating a Christmas pie.  He put in his thumb and pulled out aplomb and got a clout round the ear for handling food against regs."

     NO!  'Aplomb' means to be unflappable and of a cool demeanour.  Jack wasn't exactly aplomb with his plum, was he?  Art!

Finally -

Glad I wore my jacket today.  Yesterday's gamble didn't pay off as by the time I emerged from the Dark Tower it was raining.  Fortunately we outran the storms and by the time we reached the hills atop hills it was a little brighter and drier.

*  Lunar Excursion Module, NOT Stanislaw.