New VISTAs

Okay, We're Going To Start This

Without knowing how long this particular Intro is going to be, nor exactly how it will end.  First of all, as we are wont to do here at BOOJUM! we need to look at the word "Vista" itself and see from where it originates.  I shall now check out my trusty "Collins Concise Dictionary".  Which says <pause to check it out> ah yes as I thought, from the Latin "Virdere" meaning "To see", which mutated into the Italian "Verdere" and hence "Vista".  Which has a couple of definitions, the first being: "A view, especially through a long avenue of trees" and the second being: "A comprehensive mental view of a distant time or a lengthy series of events".  Art!

     This is possibly the most famous vista there is, and no, there's no CGI involved.  It's the 'Dark Hedges' in Antrim, Northern Ireland, as featured in "Game Of Thrones".  Yes yes yes, I've still not watched any of the first 3 seasons I have on DVD, which has been in my To Watch Mountain for probably a year now.

     ANYWAY this 'VISTA' is nothing to do with games, thrones, trees or exotic poisons, which you may have guessed from the use of upper case.  Art!

     Yes, another picture from the 'Galleries' section of "Interstellar Research Centre", which is cheating a bit for reasons I will most certainly go into.  This is the 'VISTA', and it's the only picture extant.  Once again no exposition, nor is there any on their Blog pages.  Art!

     So, once again Conrad went a-digging, as these orcs are doing - no, they're not sprouts, they're hand grenades, without fuses fitted, so they probably won't die whilst shovelling.

     ANYWAY AGAIN Your Modest Artisan did manage to dig up an academic paper, which is incredibly long and detailed, with far more information about VISTA than even the most eager technophile would want to read.  

The concept was to use a 2 MJ Krypton Fluoride laser. The engine would be initiated by a 1 MW nuclear reactor. The spacecraft would detonate small capsules at a rate of 100 Hz pulse frequency, using 3.72 tons of deuterium–deuterium fusion fuel, augmented with 4100 tons of expellant fuel. 

     This is a very small sample of the whole article.  In it they explain the acronym: "Vehicle for Interplanetary Transport Applications" with a magic "S" appearing from nowhere.  Art!

     This is an 'Inertial Confinement Fusion' reactor, which smushes Deuterium together to fuse into Helium and release energy.  The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in South Canada came up with the VISTA design, powered by the above, and worked on it from 1987 until about 2003, when they seemed to give up on it.  Ha!  Little did they know that fusion reactors are very nearly within reach, just 22 years later.

     You can see from the scale bar above that this engine is only about 10 yards across, so comparatively small compared to a number of the monster robotic probes we've already covered on the blog.  This is because VISTA was intended,  not for interstellar travel, but to make the journey to Mars, and to return back to Earth within 100 days.  Again, a fraction of a fraction of the mission elapsed time for interstellar probes, which clock in at 40 years at a minimum.  Art!

Mars.  Just so we're clear.

     Now, one reason for the odd conical shape of VISTA was due to the horrid nature of a fusion reactor's output, which includes fast neutrons and x-rays, neither of which are good for living creatures and especially the squishy meatbag crew.  Thus the engine was kept away from Hom. Sap. 

     Total payload would be of the order of 100 tons, which is not bad for a relatively small spaceship.  Total mass when fuelled-up would have been 6,000 tons, of which 189 tons would be a shield to protect the payload (and crew, one assumes).  The VISTA would accelerate for 25 days, getting up to about 200 miles per second, then cruise for another 20 days before decelerating 6 days before Martian orbit.  Art!

     

     This is Kelvin F. Long, author of the verrrry long paper I've cribbed from.  His paper was submitted for publication and was published in August 2022.  I hope he kept a back-up copy as the Excel tables included have lost all their data.

     Ol' Kev did conclude that VISTA was one of the more reliable design concepts he'd read about, thanks to being based on very solid practical experience with laser-initiated ICF engine technologies.  Whish is not a sentence you ever expected to read today.

     Right, other vistas beckon!

 

Railing Against It

One of the more obvious design inclusions in modern firearms, as opposed to those of, say, forty years ago, is the use of a mounting rail on said weapon.  This enables your average squaddie to add on things like foregrips, under-barrel grenade launchers, flashy laser sights, cheaper optical sights, bottle openers and sundry items.  Art!

     These rails are known as 'Picatinny Rails', which has puzzled Conrad, as there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason for such a name; it's not as if you get Picatinny plates or shovels or bookmarks, is it?

     With a bit more digging, it all became clear.  Art!

    There you go.  These people got involved with designing the rail-mounting system back in 1994, which is why they get their name bestowed upon said kit.  Now we all know more than we did five minutes ago.

"City In The Sky"

The evillll alien Lithoi are by now wishing that Arcology One had, indeed, stayed in the sky, rather than descending to Earth, because said descent is going to be right on top of them.

The lunar regolith glowed, fissured, cracked and resisted, fumed, split and came apart – too slowly.  One of the Lithoi technicians slewed the cannon across an arc that went beyond the protected base of Arcology One and vapourised a swathe of the braking parachute, removing a substantial area and reducing the braking effect by at least twenty per cent.

     The sphere came down sharply and suddenly, eighteen thousand tonnes deadweight dropping like a hammer on a nail (the Doctor would have been simultaneously satisfied and horrified at this serendipity).  Nearly all the remaining Lexan windows shattered inwards and outwards, inflicting hundreds of injuries; one of the internal bracing legs sheared at the half-way point and came smashing down across the interior, killing dozens of people in a flurry of soil, plastics and wicker.  The sphere’s base rang like a drum, bouncing people off their feet or onto all fours, and a hideous crunching noise began, growing louder by the second.  Davy watched the landscape outside slowly rise, jerkily, and wondered what had happened – nothing terminal or he wouldn’t be able to watch.  Desperate but not serious?

     Bit of an 'Oooops' moment, that.

A Moot Question

This afternoon I took Edna for a walk, just as it was spitting*.  Inevitably it got heavier and we cut the normal 20 minute sojourn to only 15 minutes, which was wise as the wet only got wetter.  Art!

     This is a question that occurs every year, some years more than others.  Conrad considers that the British climate is one of the primary driving factors in the creation of the British Empire, because people wanted to live where it was sunny and dry for at least 3 months of the year, not 3 days.

Latvia Strikes Back!

Latvia is one of the Baltic republics, which traditionally for centuries looked westward to the Teutons rather than their somewhat barbaric neighbours the Ruffians.  They were an unwilling part of the Sinister Union until independence dawned in 1991, which they grasped with both hands, and couldn't join NATO fast enough.

     This, inevitably, went down like a yamulka at a Nazi party shindig, and the sulky Ruffians have been protesting at how dare Latvia be Latvian.  Art!

     This is an ex-colleague, Simona, who hails from Latvia.  I would put up a picture of Zander, but I can't find any, so Simona will have to do as a representative of her nation.  I remember Zander complaining that she needed to be fluent in Ruffian to get a government job back home, which was long before the Special Idiotic Operation began.

     Hang on!  I have a picture of - ZANDA!  Art?

     I have fond memories of this young lady.  She realised that I was on Emergency Tax rate, so I got a nice big rebate thanks to her.  Her English was so good she could do the MEN Codeword, which is quite beyond a lot of native English.  Sorry guys, she returned home years ago and has probably been snagged by one of the locals.  Same story for Simona.  I wish them both all the best!

     ANYWAY enough of Conrad's past female compatriots - why this post here?

     Well,  because the Latvian army had officially decided that from henceforth, the Ruffians are going to be de-capitalised: from now on they are going to be the 'russians'.  This is known to drive the orcs into a frenzy as they hate hate hate being mocked or diminished.

     Tee hee!

*  British vernacular for 'very light rain'.