We'll Come To Exactly What I Mean In A While
Firstly, though, when I created that title, it rang a rather loud bell, because it seemed to be have a connection with Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective.
Well, kind of. Ol' Sher is mentioned in the novels and short stories as occasionally indulging in cocaine or morphine which is bad BECAUSE DRUGS ARE BAD! okay message delivered. He used to inject himself with a seven-per cent solution of cocaine - don't ask me, I've no idea if that's a lot or a little - which is what rang those cacophonous chimes. This chemical is what he resorted to when there were no interesting cases to solve. Also - Art!
That's quite the stellar cast you've got there. Not only that, the production design was by Ken Adam, Teuton emigré ex-RAF tankbuster pilot turned film set designer.
I did think I'd seen at least part of this film, except that turned out to be "The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes", which involved midgets crewing a secret submarine that masqueraded as the Loch Ness Monster. Honestly, I'm not making this up. Art!
It was terrifying in those days.
Perhaps.
ANYWAY TSPCS was rather well received. It is the film version of a pastiche novel written by Nicholas Meyer, who doubled up as the film's director.
Jumping back to TPLOSH, because who needs a linear narrative? you may recall the title of another sea-monster, 'Leviathan'. Art!
And here we rejoin Conrad's relentless campaign to defeat the San Ti, the invading enemies of "3 Body Problem", with their evillll invasion fleet underway on it's four-century long journey.
STEP FIVE: You may remember Conrad whanging on about various exploratory robot ships that came under the aegis of 'Project Icarus' and the 'Interstellar Research Centre'. Their mission brief was to get a robotic probe to one of the nearer star systems such as Alpha Centauri or Barnard's Star, and to do it in a century or less. The technology had to be achieveable in the near future, which was a rather elastic concept. Thus we come to the 'Leviathan' design. Art!
Nowhere in the literature can I find any details on size or length or any other dimensions, but this thing is a monster. Assembling it would very probably take decades and be carried out in space. Well, that's okay, we've got four centuries to play with. The power source is of course - obviously! - a fusion engine, but with two different types of fuel. The first would be Deuterium, which would boost the Levvy up to 2% of lightspeed over the course of 6 months. Then it would switch to He³ and Deuterium, which the designer say would save 15,000 tons of fuel - I told you this was a monster - meaning it only required 35,000 tons of fuel. Erk. Art!
Levvy in profile
That stage is the deceleration engine, which would have been used to reduce speed upon approaching the target system. In our weaponised version of Levvy, this stage would be absent; we don't want any reduction in speed!
Which is intended to be 4% of c, and there you have today's title. In fact, if the deceleration engine is omitted, then there would be less mass to shift and less propellant required and probably a shorter assembly time.
The designers state that Leviathan would have a payload capacity of 150,000 tons, which seems immense but we'll roll with that. Imagine, as it closes in on the hapless Trisolarian invasion fleet, explosive charges scattering the payload of one and a half million sub-munitions massing 100 kilograms each. Some would be inert, others fused to explode on contact or proximity and a few thousand would be remote cameras transmitting images to Earth. Art!
Scientists model an inert sub-munition
Thanks to that velocity, the San Ti fleet would be intercepted after less than a hundred years into their journey. The Levvy, carrying on at 4% of c, would be directed to impact their abandoned home-world, just to be on the safe side.
There you go, problem solved. Now to hope that the twod mods on Facebook don't delete my post because 'It was trying to gain traffic via deception', which is pretty much all that BOOJUM! is about. Pikers. Art!
BALLISTIC MISSILE PIKE
Kyle's Isles
You'd better believe that, if Conrad made careful annotations about all 15 of Kyle "Geography King"'s Interesting South Canadian islands, you are going to get the benefit, and no whinging about it at the back. Today we have City Island, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Art!
There it sits, squarely in the middle of the Susquehanna River - a name I defy you to pronounce correctly, non-South Canadians - with a road bridge and pedestrian bridge linking it to both shores. Art!
Of all things, it houses a baseball stadium, and is home to the 'Harrisburg Senators', a Minor League baseball team. Whoopee for them. There's also facilities for playing volleyball, ballfoot and miniature golf, should the insane passion to go and be sporty ever strike.
There. Wasn't that a refreshing change from interstellar mayhem?
STOP TRYING TO EMPTY MY WALLET!
Your Humble Scribe doesn't get paid for another week, and what has been saturating Youtube and now Facebook? Lots of adverts for Gerry Anderson kit. Originally it was all about the 'S.H.A.D.O.' Technical Manual - and I would be lying if I said it wasn't verrrrry tempting - and now Facebook has joined in on the act. Art!
The pikers don't dare put up how much it costs, do they? You might also notive TB1 looks a little soiled and shopworn, which is beca
NO! Go away. Not buying your 1/144 scale model kit. Art!
Yours for only £28
WHICH IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN
More Maudlin Mathematics
One of the things that motivates me to get out of bed of a morning - apart from the being-paid-to-work bit - is to see how the fortunes of the grandiosely-named 'Trump Media & Technology Group' are faring.j Not too well, to be honest. Tee hee, I ought to add. Art!
This graph is for the past 6 months and you can see that it's lost about 2/3 of it's share value in the past 4 months. Ol' Farting Felon is probably having kittens over this slide in value, because the soonest he can sell this 'meme stock' off is September, which still allows for another 11 days of falling value.
O, here's another exemplar of maudlin mathematics. Art!
I'm guessing that the improvement in exchange rates was caused by the Ruffian Central Bank burning through more FOREX - actually only Chinese Yuan are left in the vaults now - and gold to prop things up. Somewhat unsuccessfully, I would say, wouldn't you? Yet another reason for Putinpot's minions to steer well clear of windows and pots of tea they've not made themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment