A Bit Of FODder

No!  That Is Not A Typo

Nor is it a pun, exactly.  Whilst we're hear, I do remember the late great Sir John Peel playing a rather odd cover version of Blondie's "Sunday Girl" by the Family Fodder, and if Art can bear to put down his bowl of coal -

     They still seem to be a going concern after almost 40 years, though they must be about my age and probably cannot project that 'youthful rebellion' vibe so essential to rock 'n' roll.

     Onto the meat of the matter, with apologies to any vegans now reading.  You may recall Conrad mentioning Professor Justin Bronk, who has now matured in appearance and looks eighteen rather than a callow seventeen-year old.  His formal title is "Senior Research Fellow for Combat Airpower and Technology" which is far too much of a mouthful to bother with, so I'll just call him 'Prof'.  Art!

The Bronk.
Is stronk.

     The Prof was speaking on "Silicon Curtain", Jonathon Frink's Youtube channel that features lots of smart people, and inevitably - that 'Combat Airpower' bit doncha know - the subject of Ukraine acquiring F-16's came up.  Art!

A reminder

     Here we come to a real-world factor that Conrad was dimly aware of, that being an intrinsic difference between Sinister and NATO aircraft designs.  Sinister aircraft are intended to be able to take a lot of incidental wear and tear, whilst NATO aircraft are not, they're intended to be what they're supposed to be, not tractors or bulldozers.  This means the Sinister designs can tolerate or shrug off Foreign Object Debris on their runways, whilst NATO designs, and notably the F-16, cannot.  Art!

 

     That above is what happens when crud on a runway gets into a jet engine.  Sinister jets were designed with vents to deal with FOD as they anticipated operating from less-than-pristine runways.  Whereas - 

     This is the South Canadian Air Force doing a "FOD Walk" and yes, they walk down the whole runway looking for things that might damage an aircraft's engines or landing gear - nuts, bolts, screws, wire, bits of tarmac, etcetera.  It's a vital if tedious job.

     How serious is FOD?  Take a look at this - Art!

     Which insignificant bit of kit caused this - Art!

     We know how that ended.

    What the Prof also had to say was that F-16s in Ukraine will require immaculate runways, which means FOD walks, which may give away their location to the Ruffians, who will be keeping their eyes peeled for just such a thing.

     Hmmmm maybe.  The Ukrainians are clever and inventive and Conrad can see all their runways suddenly acquiring a "FODbot" runway sweeper drone or two.  We shall see, one supposes.

     Now for an abrupt shift in focus, and to be honest the FOD theme is being stretched a little thin here, but - Art!

     This is the Project Icarus 'Endeavour' spaceship design.  All those cylinders are fuel containers to sustain the engines.  The mission payload in on the end of a trellis network of girders, to avoid all the nasty radiation and fast neutrons the engines emit.

     The design underwent various iterations, as engineers like to futz around and make changes all the time, until project management puts their foot down with a deadline.  Art!

     Here you see the isometric and side-on views of the Endeavour, showing the sheer volume of the fuel tanks.  Art!

     What you might call Endeavour-denuded, displaying the engine structure unencumbered by the obscuring fuel tankage.  Here you see the original 5-engine arrangement that was later amended to a 4-engine arrangement, and I put this picture up because it shows, quite starkly, both engines and the payload.  Art!

     What you see here is the protective shield, that larger disk which protects the payload from impacts with any matter in the interstellar medium.  This kind of FOD is a big deal because it's mass may be low but it's velocity will be enormous, thanks to Endeavour's acceleration.  I believe the shield is either made of beryllium or molybdenum.

     There is a question here - why aren't the fuel tanks protected?  I think the answer is redundancy as there are so many of them, and their external walls may well be sufficiently robust to survive impacts from micro-meteorites.  Art!

     You may call it a 'bridge', Conrad calls it FOD.

Koh Nang Yuan Island

My laptop's standby screen has generated a few intriguing locations around the world, which of course - obviously! - are as grist to a mill to BOOJUM! and this one is no exception.  I cannot be bothered to wait until I've ignored the keyboard long enough to generate standby mode and get the camera out, so I'm just going to Google for it.  Art!

     Yes, it looks idyllic.  Want to bet it's hotching with hideous venomous creepy-crawlies and that the ones which aren't poisonous are big enough to carry off a small child, and there are mosquitoes and pirates and typhoons?  As the Barf of Avon put it, "A man can smile and smile and be a villain" and so can a tropical island.

Conrad Is ANGRY!

Yes, I am still fulminating over the "M.E.N." Codeword solutions, because it appears they have run amok whilst I wasn't keeping a jaundiced yet wary eye upon them.  What they need is a once-over-lightly with the Remote Nuclear Detonator, that'd teach them, the pikers.

      ANYWAY let the farrago of fraudulent froth pour forth.

CADENZA:  I have no idea.  An elaborately decorated horse-drawn hearse?  Italian inventor of a financial scheme to swindle people?  A crater on the Moon?  Let's check the trusty "Collins Concise":  "virtuoso solo passage occurring near the end of a passage of music, formerly improvised by the soloist."  Art!

Cadenza made concrete

HETERODOX: I think you can see why I'm annoyed at this one.  It means to be against establishment views and have wildly different opinions, which will NOT BE ALLOWED when I take over.  You have been warned.  Art!

Conrad in one of his more cheerful moments

MYRRH:  BAH! sums up my attitude to this one.  I mean, come on, how fair is it to have, as a solution, a word from Akkadian?  Which language, I might point out, died off almost 3,000 years ago.  If you want a definition, it's aromatic resin.  Art!

More of myrrh

"City In The Sky"

For those of you bored by this novel-length fan fiction, be of good cheer, because we're not far off the ending.  The Doctor is about to cause merry mayhem aboard the Lithoi baseship, with a gaggle of accomplices.

     ‘What are your names?’ asked the Gallifreyan of the two lesser Lithoi, who exchanged glances with each other and Orskan.  ‘Oh, I see.  Too low-caste to have names?’

     ‘I am Artificer, First Class, 1089’ said one alien, before indicating the other.  ‘He is Technician, Second Class,  3462.’

     ‘Art and Tec,’ declared the Doctor in dubbing them, feeling the tug of a pop-culture moment that passed without recognition.   ‘I predict that our friends in the Bridge will shortly discover that you’ve escaped and send along a party to investigate.  Let’s find a new home.’

     Such a consultative approach baffled the aliens for a second, until the Doctor moved off and they simply followed.  He cautiously began to ascend the port stairwell with his trio of rescued in tow, and not a second too soon: as they vanished up the spiral stairs the sound of an opening lift came from the prison level. 

     ‘This is the Commissary,’ explained Orskan, when they drew level with the next floor up.  His explanation wasn’t necessary because the faint smell of food wafted to them.  Bland and homogenous, judged the Doctor, with the nose of a man trained in sixteenth century cordon bleu.

     ‘Right!’ he declared.  ‘Let’s go begin sabotage!’

     I think a little less levity is called for.

How Very Apt

Xi Jin Ping, autocratic despot of The Populous Dictatorship, is nicknamed "Winnie The Pooh" thanks to his rotundness.  He dislikes this shockingly irreverent christening, which is all the reason BOOJUM! needs to keep saying it.  Art!

     A particular thorn in the side of the jackbooted authoritarian government agencies is a Chinese dissident, Li Ying, who has for the past couple of years been exposing the truth about TPD on social media.  They do not like this.  Not one bit.  Quite besides exposing crime and corruption, Li has annoyed TPD because it wants to control all the info all the time, and it can't*.  Art!

What if it's a Manx cat?

     I think that's enough talking about pooh.

*  Tee Hee!