Month: July 2019
Astronaut Captures Image of Hurricane Barry
NASA astronaut Christina Koch shot a panoramic photo of tropical storm/ hurricane Barry from her perch on the International Space Station and posted it to Twitter on Thursday.
NASA’s Aqua satellite also imaged Barry after it made landfall at Intracoastal City, Louisiana at 2PM EDT on July 13. Barry was a hurricane for about three hours in the late morning and early afternoon on July 13, but weakened to a tropical storm after it passed over land. Nevertheless, the system will likely bring widespread flooding to the area as well as the lower Mississippi Valley. The storm is projected to move into Arkansas into Monday.
Winnipeg Riverwalk One Day Later
How high’s the water, mama?
Two feet high and risin’
Winnipeg Riverwalk
There has been some major downpours in the Winnipeg area over the last few days. The Riverwalk is suppose to get flooded in the next while. A few pics from today before it goes under.
Scud Clouds over Southern Manitoba
Near Letellier, Manitoba one day ago.
While we are at it, colorful sky over Winnipeg 3 days ago.
Stuntman jumps out of a plane at 25,000 feet without parachute and lands in a net
Skydiver Luke Aikins Sets Record For Highest Jump Without Parachute
Luke Aikins jumps from a helicopter during his training on Monday, in Simi Valley, Calif. Hong/AP
Luke Aikins on Saturday became the first skydiver to jump from a plane without a parachute or wingsuit and live to tell the story.
In a stunt called “Heaven Sent,” the 42-year-old daredevil leaped 25,000 feet to Earth — setting a world record. To accomplish this feat, Aikins had to direct his body in free fall using only the air currents around him to land safely on the high-tech 10,000-square-foot net (about a third the size of a football field) laid out to catch him.
The jump was aired live on television via the Fox network during an hourlong special. Aikins fell for about two minutes above the California desert, appearing to soar effortlessly, arms extended, face downward. And as he neared the ground, with a mere second to go, he expertly flipped onto his back and landed without incident.
He then climbed out of the net and embraced his wife, Monica, who was among a cheering group of family and friends, including their 4-year-old son, Aikins’ dad, two brothers and a sister, who’d all anxiously watched the breathtaking spectacle.
Aikins, who said during the broadcast that he’d been preparing for this jump for two years, had previously done 18,000 parachute jumps and performed a variety of stunts, including for Iron Man 3.
“Everyone is calling this my ‘coming-out jump,’ which is ironic considering I’ve been skydiving since the age of 16,” he said in a press release prior to the jump.
In fact, Aikins, whose grandfather co-founded a skydiving school after serving in World War II, is a third-generation skydiver. The family owns Skydive Kapowsin near Tacoma, Wash.
Further to his credit, Aikins is a safety and training adviser for the United States Parachute Association (USPA), where he provides advanced skydiving training to elite military special forces.
Early in the broadcast of “Heaven Sent,” there was almost a change in the script that might have taken away a tad of the excitement around Aikins’ jump.
According to The Associated Press, “Just before climbing into a plane to make the jump, Aikins said he had been ordered to wear a parachute but indicated he wouldn’t open it. As the plane was climbing to 25,000 feet above the drop zone he said the requirement had been lifted and he took off the chute.”
The Doomsday Jet
The Boeing E-4 Advanced Airborne Command Post, with the project name “Nightwatch”, is a strategic command and control military aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). The E-4 series was specially modified from the Boeing 747-200B. The E-4 serves as a survivable mobile command post for the National Command Authority, namely the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and successors. The four E-4Bs are operated by the 1st Airborne Command and Control Squadron of the 55th Wing located at Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska. An E-4B is denoted a “National Airborne Operations Center” when in action, it is to be a command platform in the event of nuclear war.
The E-4B is designed to survive an EMP with systems intact and has state-of-the-art direct fire countermeasures. Although many older aircraft have been upgraded with glass cockpits, the E-4B still uses traditional analog flight instruments, as they are less susceptible to damage from an EMP blast.[
The E-4B is capable of operating with a crew up to 112 people including flight and mission personnel, the largest crew of any aircraft in US Air Force history. With in-flight aerial refueling it is capable of remaining airborne for a considerable period (limited only by consumption of the engines’ lubricants and food supplies). In a test flight for endurance, the aircraft remained airborne and fully operational for 35.4 hours, however it was designed to remain airborne for a full week in the event of an emergency. It takes two fully loaded KC-135 tankers to fully refuel an E-4B. The E-4B has three operational decks: upper, middle, and lower.
In January 2006, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced a plan to retire the entire E-4B fleet starting in 2009. This was reduced to retiring one of the aircraft in February 2007. The next Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates reversed this decision in May 2007. This is due to the unique capabilities of the E-4B, which cannot be duplicated by any other single aircraft in Air Force service, and the cancellation in 2007 of the E-10 MC2A, which was considered as a successor to the EC-135 and E-8 aircraft, and could also perform many of the same tasks of the E-4B. As of the 2015 federal budget there were no plans for retiring the E-4B. The E-4B airframe has a usable life of 115K hours and 30K cycles, which would be reached in 2039; the maintenance limiting point would occur some time in the 2020s.
All four produced are operated by the U.S. Air Force, and are assigned to the 1st Airborne Command Control Squadron (1ACCS) of the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. Maintenance and crews are provided by Air Combat Command. Operations are coordinated by the United States Strategic Command.
When the President travels outside of North America using a VC-25A as Air Force One, an E-4B will deploy to a second airport in the vicinity of the President’s destination, to be readily available in the event of a world crisis or an emergency that renders the VC-25A unusable. When the President visits Honolulu, Hawaii, an E-4B has often been stationed 200 miles away at Hilo International Airport on Hawaii Island.
Battle Staff Cabin
A right front view of an E-4 advanced airborne command post (AABNCP) on the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) simulator for testing.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, is a short burst of electromagnetic energy. Such a pulse’s origination may be a natural occurrence or man-made and can occur as a radiated, electric or magnetic field or a conducted electric current, depending on the source.
EMP interference is generally disruptive or damaging to electronic equipment, and at higher energy levels a powerful EMP event such as a lightning strike can damage physical objects such as buildings and aircraft structures. The management of EMP effects is an important branch of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) engineering.
Weapons have been developed to create the damaging effects of high-energy EMP. These are typically divided into nuclear and non-nuclear devices. Such weapons, both real and fictional, have become known to the public by means of popular culture.
THE LURID WORLD OF CULT MOVIE POSTERS
‘The Pit” aka Teddy (Canada 1981)
‘Andy Warhol’s Dracula poster’
Jesse Franco’s ‘Lorna the Exorcist’ (France, 1976)
‘Invasion of the Love Drones’ (USA, 1977)
‘Desperate Living’ Italy
‘Reform School Girls (1986)
A nicely creepy image for Roman Polanski’s ‘The Tenant’ (France 1976)
‘Polyester’ (UK)
‘Night Tide’ (1961)
‘Confessions of a Teenage Peanut Butter Freak’
‘The Seduction of Amy’
‘Sexual Kung Fu in Hong Kong’ (1974)
Dangerousminds.net
U.S. is developing new Super-Drone
DARPA is building a drone to provide ‘persistent’ surveillance virtually anywhere in the world
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is on track to unveil a working prototype of its “Tern” drone system in 2018 that could eventually give the Navy and Marines persistent surveillance and strike targeting “virtually anywhere in the world.”
If it’s implemented, the Tern program would see fully-autonomous drones on small-deck ships throughout the world that can take off and land vertically. Once in flight, they transition to wing-borne flight at medium
altitude and become the eyes and ears for its ship for long periods of time.
Among the things the Navy wants is a drone that can provide surveillance capability and strike targets, but with greater range than a traditional helicopter. It also would likely be used to gather signals intelligence from foreign adversaries — one of the main missions for US submarine forces.
Tern, short for Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node, is a joint program between the Office of Naval Research and DARPA, the Pentagon’s research and development arm. The agency just funded a second Tern test vehicle for the next year that’s being built by Northrup Grumman.
If all goes to plan, Tern will move to ground-based testing in early 2019, before being tested at sea later in the year.
“We’re making substantial progress toward our scheduled flight tests, with much of the hardware already fabricated and software development and integration in full swing,” Brad Tousley, director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said in a statement.
“As we keep pressing into uncharted territory—no one has flown a large unmanned tailsitter before—we remain excited about the future capabilities a successful Tern demonstration could enable: organic, persistent, long-range reconnaissance, targeting, and strike support from most Navy ships.”
Tern isn’t the only drone program DARPA is working on. The agency has also been working on something called “upward falling payloads,” a program that would station drones in water-tight containers around the world’s oceans until they are called to the surface.
Here’s a concept video of how Tern is supposed to operate: