Convair had experimented with parasite aircraft prior to advances in aerial refueling.  With the extended range and high cruising speed of the B-36 Peacemaker, fighters of the day had difficulty keeping up.  Jet fighters didn’t have the range, and prop fighters didn’t have the speed.  The solution was the X-85 Goblin, designed to hang from a hook in one of the B-36’s bomb bays.  It wasn’t a great solution; I’ll do a future post about it.

In this case, though, Convair proposed an two-piece parasite; one manned, the second unmanned.  The host aircraft would accelerate to Mach 2 so the ramjet on the parasite had enough airflow to fire up; once released, it could hit Mach 4, which made it invulnerable to fighters and surface-to-air missiles of the time.  It would land like the X-15; on a belly skid. 

There were immense problems with this idea.  First, the parasite was probably to heavy and produced too much drag to allow the host B-58 enough speed for the ramjets to fire up.  Second, the B-58B program was cancelled while development continued. 

The Fish (as it was called) was ahead of its time: it used ceramic materials to help with supersonic heat and absorb radar; it was shaped to limit radar cross-section; it featured a lifting body design to extend its range to nearly 4000 miles.  All this in the 1950s. 

Links to much more detail and excellent pictures over at aerospcaeweb.org.

Additional editorial commentary: it amazes me how little progress has been made in aerospace since the middle of the last century.  In the recent controversy over the Obama administrations proposed cancellation of the Constellation project, some key thoughts have been overlooked.  First, the great advances in aviation were often made by small teams of engineers at private companies like Lockheed and Convair (and even Boeing).  NASA today has become a huge bureaucratic mess; it takes 25,000 employees several months just to refurbish the Space Shuttle for one launch.  NASA’s plan to return to the moon and go on to Mars was described as “Apollo on Steroids”; but Apollo, while a magnificent feat, was done with unlimited budgets and the only motivation to beat the Russians.  After the moon, interest died and NASA turned into a jobs program.  People want more aerospace research; funding NASA is unlikely to provide progress, any more than funding the Post Office (contemplating 5-day delivery, still at a loss) is more likely to produce better mail delivery or funding Amtrak more (Acela – too many compromises and priced too high, especially compared to Asian and European systems) is likely to produce innovative rail service.  For innovation in aerospace, look to Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and innumerable other small companies.

In the late 1940s, the boys at Wright-Patterson were already trying to capitalize on the supersonic breakthrough of 1947, when Chuck Yeager popped the sound barrier in the Glamorous Glennis (more formally known as a Bell X-1, aircraft #46-062).  Those beautiful minds at Convair (cf. B-36 Peacemaker) came up with a sharp-nosed, wasp-wasted, delta wing design:

The wasp shape was deliberate; such a shape smoothes out shock waves generated by supersonic flight.

Under the wings were four J79 engines from General Electric, good for 15,600 lbs of thrust each (a version of the J79 also powered the F-104 Starfighter, the Corvette of fighter planes and subject of a future post).  These were good for a speed of about Mach 2, if the plane could operate at altitude as designed.

Other unique features include the large pod, designed to carry nuclear weapons (either a B43 or a B61); a strange escape capsule (image credit to Wikipedia user J_Clear) designed to protect each crew member during a super-sonic ejection; and an early and sophisticated inertial navigation system.

Improvements in Russian surface-to-air missile technology drove the Hustler into a low-altitude penetration role.  The range of the plane was already problematic, and flying at low altitude made things worse. The B-58 was not an easy plane to fly; nearly a quarter of all production aircraft were lost to accidents.  These drawbacks got the Air Force thinking about the B-1 Lancer program (and were pretty much ignored with the ultra-crazy B-70 Valkyrie).

The B-58 is high up on my list of personal favorites.  It’s a beautiful aircraft with extraordinary capabilities.  If you’re ever in Dayton, go over to WPAFB and check it out.

Note – I’m an amateur enthusiast, and so I’m always open to feedback and corrections to any information.

I’ve always liked having scriptures on my PDA or phone, but since moving to a BlackBerry from Windows Mobile, it’s been a bit of a pain.  The only real option is MobiPocket, which I’ve found to be a little clunky and slow, even on a relatively fast BlackBerry (Curve 8900).  I used YanCEyWare on Windows Mobile; if you’re on a WinMo phone, it’s head and shoulders the best solution.

Anyway, back to the Kindle.  If you’re looking in Amazon’s Kindle store, you’ll see a few options with rather idiotic reviews and no details about what’s contained.  My key requirements were semi-decent speed, inline links to footnotes and cross-references, and sizable text.

Well, the answer is to use the BlackBerry version provided by LDSBookClub.com.  This is a partially stupid option, but you can get the file for free this way.  The reason it’s stupid is because you have to download an executable in order to get the file itself, and it’s not set up to really just “work” for your Kindle.  Not tricky, but honestly, it’s just a little shady to take a publication the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints makes available for free and use it as a loss leader for your own sales.  Just make the file available.

Anyway, once you’ve gone through their installer, you should have the file stores someplace on your hard drive.  You can run their launcher, right-click on the “LDS Scriptures” book in the MobiPocket PC app, and select “Open Containing Folder”.  That will put you right there.  Take the file (LDS Scriptures – Blackberry.prc) and drop it in your Kindle’s documents folder.  Voila.  It’s a very workable, well-linked set of Scriptures for your Kindle.

I hope this helps save someone some time and effort (not to mention some money).

First, the hit points.  Diablo in Normal Mode of Diablo 2 has 13818 hit points (according to the useful Diablo Wiki).  So we can rule out that little piece of numerology.

Second, the error message.  We need to see a screen shot of the error before we can really be confident.  Otherwise, someone is just playing around with hex.

Third, the item.  I’ve never encountered a "Gnaw Fold" ring in my play, and I can’t see a note of it in the item lists I’ve checked.  Though I’m open to the idea, I don’t think it exists.  The solution might be to install and not update, then play through single-player in an attempt to find it. . .maybe someone else has the time.

So, with no item, we can’t test the theory and get a screenshot.  I call this a fun myth until someone can show me otherwise.

• The Engineer’s teleporters can now be upgraded to level three. It will recharge faster the higher level it is
• The Engineer’s dispensers can now be upgraded to level three. It will give out metal and heal faster as it is upgraded
• Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground or from health cabinets
• Some changes to the second part of the first stage of Goldrush to give the attackers more of an advantage
• Any weapons that fire bullets (shotguns, sniper’s machine gun, heavy’s minigun, etc.) can now break apart the Demoman’s stickybombs
• The icon on the HUD for a person calling for Medic will now give more information to the medic (if the target is low on health, on fire, etc.)
• Added an achievement tracker that will allow people to choose specific achievements that they are trying to get
• There is now a custom icon for death messages when the player was killed from a critical hit
• Added a new particle effect for when a player enters the water
• Added smoke to the feet of a rocket jumping soldier
• Players will now have some particles swirling around them so other players can see when they are overhealed

Kudos to the guys at Valve for sneaking a nice little update in.

Anyhoo, everyone hates those crazy impossible packages, right?  Here’s where the IRONY attacks.

The device designed to save us from this terrible packaging comes in exactly the packaging it decries.  Looks like I’ll be using my poor teeth once more, like the lady seen here.

Today’s article comes from Autoblog.  Here’s the line that prompted a post:

The economy appears to be swooning, and before we land softly (or crash hard), company’s have begun to circle their wagons and reduce unnecessary spending.

Leaving aside the questionable sentence construction, let’s address the apostrophe problem in the word "company’s".  The correct plural of "company" is "companies".  You can, if you want, use an apostrophe to indicate plurals of letters or numbers: mind your p’s and q’s, x’s and o’s, crazy 8′s, and so forth.  That’s not a hard and fast rule, however; there’s some disagreement among the Masters of Grammar (such as they are). 

Today’s example comes from Engadget: "Zealots lineup for Jobs’ keynote".  The word "lineup" is always a noun; it could define a company’s range of products, or a viewing gallery of suspects at the local precinct.  When used as a verb, the words "line" and "up" need to be separated.

The apostrophe at the end of "Jobs" is correct; you could get away with "Jobs’s" as well, but I agree with the poster here.  We’ll probably have to get into apostrophes at some point, but not today.