Skunk Works is the story of Lockheed's fabled prototype and black production outfit that produced the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117A stealth fighter among other projects. The Blackbird is a must-see at several air museums today, notably the Smithsonian at Washington's Dulles International Airport.
The accelerated schedules and almost routine technical breakthroughs are a breath of fresh air compared to today's decades-long projects that result in disappointments like the B-2 and F-35.
This book is worth the price just for the summaries of Blackbird training flights: literally coast to coast and border to border and return in less than four hours… leave home in Sacramento, take off about nine am, refuel over the Pacific, fly cross country and north-south, refuel again near Miami, return in time to play tennis before cocktail hour.
Photograph all of North Korea in ten minutes (that’s how they found the USS Pueblo sequestered in a North Korean port.)
And on and on.
I went out to the Trump venue last night as planned. It is an outdoor amphitheater at the Pier Park mall and town center, SRO capacity about 10,000. Reportedly about the same number outside; the venue was overwhelmed and parking slammed throughout the mall complex and feeder streets. The weather was excellent.
The assembling crowd was 99.99 percent white, mostly older although many children and younger couples. Signs and demonstrations were discouraged, and except for just a few over-the-top t-shirts no untoward behavior. I found a spot outside the fence but in earshot of the stage. The warm-up speakers were local and regional politicians, ministers, candidates, and Republican officials. Trump ran almost an hour late; I left before he arrived.
The warm-ups were disturbing to me. The atmosphere was almost Pentecostal camp meeting, with Hillary Clinton as Satan and Donald Trump(!) as Savior.
One candidate did a chant exhorting: "Christians, hold on! Donald Trump is coming!" "Nation of Israel, hold on! Donald Trump is coming!" "Neglected military and veterans, hold on! Donald Trump is coming!" ...and on through the unemployed, the displaced, a litany of despair to be relieved by... Trump. Rousing cheers in response to each declaration of this mystical Coming of Trump.
Other speakers brought up other lost or endangered causes: gay marriage, guns, abortion, law and order, deep trouble across the land. All laced with Hillary Clinton's crimes and malevolent plans to degrade society.
About 7:30 PM the outside crowd had realized there was no hope of getting inside, so people started finding listening spots along the fences. This seemed to disturb the authorities and police, who commenced herding the crowd back to the hopeless entrance and yellow-taping the street to keep people from some of the remaining spots with audio access. When the police got stern and brought out their K-9, I left. I have zero tolerance for police dogs. Still no Trump.
I drove 30 miles home and watched Giuliani and Trump on local TV (kudos to WMBB-TV, the local ABC station that pre-empted ABC's network schedule).
Rudy Giuliani's intro was heavy on Hillary's crimes and FBI special treatment, and his total confidence in Donald Trump to restore order. Trump gave his usual word salad stump speech, with little evidence he even knew where he was. The crowd loved it and interrupted often with applause.
I'm concerned about what happens after this election. These candidates and speakers left no space for reconciliation or engagement with Democrats, win or lose. It seems quite possible a Trump loss would move a large faction to isolate themselves even more from government, becoming a large hostile tribe akin to the Orange after the Northern Ireland Troubles. Let's hope and pray not.
This cross-posted from my comment on Philip Greenspun's Weblog. Went to his link from a post on the Sully movie and read the accident report. Long but you don’t have to read it all. Sully did a great job but not just stick-and-rudder. He instinctively started the auxiliary power unit and thus retained all the automation and hydraulic power needed to ditch in the “normal law” fly-by-wire regime which protects the plane from stalling. I had presumed he was in one of the degraded regimes that are more dicey. They were also fortunate to be in one of 20 USAir A320’s equipped for over-water (more than 50 miles offshore) so they had slide-rafts and did not have to depend on 150 shocked passengers finding and donning life vests. A few people did, and some more removed their seat cushions, but the rafts plus the wings kept everybody out of the 42 degree water, which would have killed some trying to swim unassisted. Finally, it was also very fortunate to land on a busy ferry route with professional crews. And, as philg said, the airframe exceeded it’s structural design by remaining almost intact despite an impact almost double the design conditions.
I have not seen the movie but it can’t be much better than the report for a tech or aviation enthusiast. Lots of background stuff on FAA , engine design, Airbus and the bird strike problem in general.
Hurricane Hermine passed 100 miles east, landfalling at St Marks, FL as Category 1 with 80 mph winds. A non-event here as we were on the dry side and it really was a minor storm. Weather Channel and all kinds of "responders" in a frenzy for a week in advance. I'm too old to get excited and certainly too old to go to a shelter. It'll be Michele's house in Decatur, Georgia for us if we ever evacuate. Our storm supplies (six gallons of water) intact.
The ascent of Donald Trump has separated me from the Republican party. Went to the elections office and changed to No Party Affiliation. I thought from the beginning that Trump was not serious, and still think he should not be nominated. The GOP should forfeit the presidential rather than embrace this embarrassing fool.
Ghost is a new blogging platform that I'm trying, having a little urge to write about the 2016 election and a few other things.
In time it may be about
I'm cross-posting to my.1999.io/users/donhodges because Dave Winer's 1999.io is another javascript-based blogging system I'm interested in. Ghost has a slightly different approach and I found it easy to get space for it by creating an instance at Red Hat's OpenShift free service.