Insiders are unhappy that the "circus of lies" didn't work. They aren't sorry.

 

 

Democrat 'knife fight' for control after $1.5B Kamala 'circus of lies' https://t.co/OYdysV304i via @MailOnline --- GOP barely wins, and sits comfortably on a foundation of sand. There needs to be a reckoning within the GOP too. This shouldn't even have been close. But it was.

— BootsandOil (@BootsandO6892) December 14, 2024

 

 

There's no adequate answer to the machinations of the left

Piecemeal tactics is no substitute for an over-arching strategy.

I may be connecting some dots that really don't connect.  But here goes anyway.

In an earlier, seemingly unrelated post, I discuss space colonization in terms of a talk given by Jeff Greason many years ago.

Greason discussed this very thing that I'm mentioning here.  He discusses that we're basically stumbling around in the dark, trying these tactics with respect to what we're doing in space.  He says something UNIVERSAL here, which may sail over your head if you're not thinking about it.  Well, it sailed over mine.

What's our strategy in space, he asks.   But that question has universal applications.  In other words, it is higher ordered thinking.  We are applying lower-level thinking to a high ordered problem, in other words.

The left has a strategy to take down civilization. Study what they do, and verify this for yourself. A counter strategy must be found and enacted in order to preserve this civilization, or they will succeed. We are not doing so well. Everything we do is a reaction. We need to be PROACTIVE.

All this reminds me of a Star Trek movie. Yep. That's probably not smart to mention, because it may trivialize my point. Those writers of that script were on to something. The scene about it being "easier to destroy than to create" is the point. The left is about destruction, so the counter strategy implies that the task to sustain and to create is the answer.

The left is attacking the opposition's very right to exist. But what about THEIRS?

Turnabout is fair play

Or payback is a beach, main.

Lefties Suddenly Shocked to Find They're Not the Only Ones Who Can Topple Statues https://t.co/7LsIakTwDs

— BootsandOil (@BootsandO6892) December 14, 2024

(Repost) The Mighty Mississippi to Run Dry?

12/13/24:

More true than ever.

11/13/13:



Note:

It seems appropriate to include this "blast from the past".  What do you do when the your source of wealth runs dry?  Life becomes a matter of survival.  You have to be able to live off the land.

With respect to growing algae, chickens, ducks, and goats, I'd say you could probably do that in the driest desert on Earth---that would be the Atacama Desert in Chile.  If Algenol produced the water from its ethanol producing algae, you can take it from there and grow everything else.  Algenol claims to be able to take seawater and make fresh water out of it.  It so happens that the Atacama desert is next to the Pacific Ocean.

So, if the Mississippi runs dry, you can still survive.  There is a way.

But not if you trust in money.  The country is said to be divided between the cities and the countryside.  Who do you think will make it when things fall apart?


So, here's the post---




 From theTrumpet.com

What is the single greatest reason America is so wealthy? According to the analysts at Stratfor, it is because of a river.

What is wealth?  It is a term that is not precisely defined.  Some may say it is the amount of money that you have stashed away in your bank account.  But if a catastrophe occurred, that money wouldn't mean much to you.  You can't eat it.  You can't build a house out of it.  It can't keep you warm in winter and cool in summer.  It is merely a medium of exchange.

Another way to define wealth is to say that it is a store of knowledge.  Without knowledge, where would you be?  Wealth has to begin with knowledge, I would think.

In my post about machines, I wondered if we have become too dependent upon them.  An individual's knowledge should include a basic ability to stay alive.  If one is too dependent upon machines, one's own life is hostage to the machine.  That could be said to be another form of poverty.

I'm all for raising the level of civilization.  But fundamental things should not be forgotten.

Just before my father died, he liked to talk about living off the land.  He knew how.  He was born and raised in the country.  But being a city boy all my life, I only know about living off the land- not actually doing it.  I wonder if all my knowledge gained from books in school is worth nearly as much as being able to survive off the land, as the old man said.

Colonizing space is just another way to survive.  But living off the land is where is all began.  Wealth cannot even have a meaning if you can't use it for survival.  You have to eat and have shelter and so forth.  You shouldn't die just because there's a drought.  Or any other force of nature, like an asteroid strike. You need to be able to survive, or your wealth means nothing.

A commenter on Free Republic included a link to the following video. I think it is appropriate to the post, so I'll include it here.  It's Hank Williams' A Country Boy Can Survive.



Update:

I guess the bottom line is this: if it can't keep you alive, it isn't worth much.  If you were to choose between alternatives, then the longer something can keep you alive, the more it is worth.

Wealth then is about value and how to properly evaluate it.

To forget useful skills do not make you richer, but poorer. To know how to make a fire could be a life saver. The electricity could be out. No matches could be available. No cigarette lighters to be found. You need a fire, what do you do if you don't know how? You may die.

Another thing to remember is that we almost allowed the knowledge of molten salt reactors to be forgotten.  Not good.  We may desperately need that energy some day.

Also, those in high places who think they are superior may be forgetting what the true value of religion is.  There was a reason for it to exist for all that time, mainly because it helped keep people alive.

Plane attempts landing on highway, crashes

Must have been an emergency landing. Looks like it would've been okay, except there was traffic at the intersection.

🚨#BREAKING: A small plane makes a emergency landing and crashing into multiple cars on a busy interstate ⁰
📌#Victoria | #Texas

Emergency crews are on the scene in Victoria, Texas, after a small plane crashed into three vehicles at a busy intersection. Video footage shows… pic.twitter.com/wA1pR49yhb

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) December 11, 2024

Elements of a gas harvesting mode (Loxleo)

12/13/24:

 

To be continued on the second blog.

 

12/12/24:

 

What might be done with Artemis II?

 

Indeed, what is to become of the SLS now that Trump is coming back into office?

 

This post is about something that isn't entirely inconceivable, as it had been previously researched.  It may be considered too ambitious, even at this stage of SpaceX's advanced rocketry. It would also seem that in situ resourcing on the moon could be considered too ambitious.

 

But if goals like these are too ambitious, then how is landing on Mars any less so? Just asking question is all.

 

Quick update:  Perhaps no less ambitious than this.

  11/22/24:

 

Here's a kind of brainstorming session, which will combine a few concepts into a plausible way to harvest gases at the edge of space. This is called Loxleo ( liquid oxygen at low earth orbit --- don't you love these acronyms?).

 

I've done this before, and as before this will include a speculation alert.

 

The elements include the use of Parkins concept in his doctoral thesis in order to get a high ISP propulsion with a lot of delta-v, saving a lot of fuel. The energy will be supplied by the use of solar panels posted at GEO. There would have to be an array of these panels, which would include all of the necessary hardware to beam the microwave energy down to an orbiting aeroshell that is on the edge of space, in very low orbit. The solar panels at the edge of space comes from a concept in the book Mining The Sky. The author, John S. Lewis suggested that this was a way to get the space program on a paying basis. You could manufacture the solar panels on the moon, and send them back to GEO in order to make some money for the lunar base.

 

As could be seen on those spectacular videos of Starship's re-entries, there's plenty of atmosphere that could be gathered up. It is also creating a lot of friction on the Starship, which causes it to lose velocity. If you add a gas harvester, it will create even more drag. In order to keep the Starship up in space, you need to fire up some sort of engine that will keep up the delta-v at orbital levels. So the microwave energy is beamed down from GEO, and it heats up an aeroshell. From there, cold gases are injected to cool down the aeroshell, as the Parkins concept showed. The gases would be ejected out a nozzle, thus creating thrust. The ISP that might be achievable could be comparable to a nuclear thermal rocket. More than twice that of the best chemical engines.

 

The Loxleo concept itself was an idea that orginated back in the sixties. ( or possibly sooner) That concept included nuclear thermal engines to keep the vehicle up to orbital speed. The concept's weakness was in how to get energy to the thruster. A nuclear reactor in orbit tended to make people nervous.

 

Perhaps the harvested gases themselves could supply some, or perhaps all of the reaction mass that will provide the thrust. The trick would be to harvest it faster than it would be used up! It just won't do to end up with less mass than what you started with. The atmosphere consists of oxygen, nitrogen, and argon. The argon is only about 1% of the atmosphere, so you may have to mix some nitrogen in there with it. The most valuable resource could well be the oxygen. Hence the name, "loxleo". You'd want to keep all of that you could gather. Argon, by the way, is a noble gas--which means it doesn't react with other elements very easily or at all.

 

The advantage of loxleo is to reduce the number of launches from the deep gravity well of Earth. Oxygen would provide as much as 80% of the reaction mass to run the Raptor engines. In order to refill the Starship, it will be necessary to launch multiple times from the ground. The advantage should be obvious if you could make loxleo work. It is in situ resourcing, which is better than bringing everything you need from home.

Begun, the Biden hangover has

The GOP in Congress should've known better and got control over the spending. If revenues aren't increasing, then spending MUST not continue apace. But they did it anyway.

https://t.co/AP0B1ilHc2 -- Economy not as good as we were told, in other words, Biden lied again. Revenues the same as 3 years ago! The only growth was in government!

— BootsandOil (@BootsandO6892) December 12, 2024

Jaws: Quint gives the low-down on the shark

He's right as far as he goes. The town is going on welfare unless that shark is killed and quick. But Quint is also nuts.

The Mayor wants to pretend the shark away, but he is also wrong.

I don't know the moral of the story, but the screeching at the chalkboard is pretty cool, so I thought about it as I ponder over the current situation that exists in the real world.

I don't know who's crazier, the people coming in, or the ones going out.

Western civilization is on the way out unless something changes

 

The forces of destruction are gathering. What is our response?

It seems to be only confusion. The primary source of confusion is this Marxist dogma that is getting drilled into the skulls full of mush. Who are these skulls full of mush?

The younger generation seems willing to change. The older generation seems content to die off and send the rest of the survivors to the bottom of the drink with them. In some respect the dumb asses are the old generation, but the new generation lacks the perspective of experience. Too bad the old geezers don't want to use their brains, or could it be that they can't?

Polls seem to show that the modern left gets a lot of its support from us old geezers. Perhaps I'm reading it all wrong. The youngsters might be okay. But that's hardly guaranteed. The young need some guidance, but where's the older and wiser gang? Doesn't seem to be very many of those.

The same youngsters are voting for change, but the older types still read the New York Times and watch the boob tube. It seems to me that a significant segment of the population is willfully blind. If they don't get weaned off the leftist propaganda, the remainder of them will send our culture to the bottom and it will be too late to stop it. It may already be too late, but better late than never. You have to get started sometime, but when?

You gotta to teach the old dogs some new tricks. Good luck with that.

There are good things developing in tech, and some bad things. The good things might prevail, but at the current rate? I'm not so sure about that.

I think rockets are good. AI is really bad. AI is the easy way out, and will likely win. That's unless people start thinking for themselves, which seems unlikely. The love for convenience and the gravitation towards ignorance and the baser motives are going to win out. Hate to be such a downer, but optimism seems to be self-delusion. The reality is that people haven't enough tendencies to do the right things, but do have a tendency to do the wrong things. Unless something happens to change all that, the bad things will win.

Wow.

 

 

The idea of taking a blob that seems worthless, and turning it into something worth near 20k bucks, just boggles my mind.

 

 

 

 

This came out of the same blob, refined silver:

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Glenn still "go" for 2024 launch?

A quick view of what launch platforms that may be available to substitute for the SLS yields the New Glenn as a possibility in terms of its size and payload capabilities.

Starship can lift the mass, but how do you fit it into the cargo bay? It is rather large, even for Starship.

This doesn't mean that the New Glenn is suitable, though. It was just a quick view. There may be other constraints I don't know about. But it does have the girth. Falcon Heavy would be unwieldy and may not fit on it anyway in any event.

Blue Origin hasn't got much of a track record. For orbital it has zero launches. So they got that going for them.

Blue Origin says first New Glenn launch still scheduled for 2024 https://t.co/o1lN9PRNtg via @SpaceNews_Inc --- Waiting for the FAA license. Sounds like a familiar story.

— BootsandOil (@BootsandO6892) December 11, 2024

This is very ungood

A general may not speak like this unless he resigns. If you cannot obey a lawful order, then you must resign. His claim otherwise would have to be shown in court.

But he doesn't have a place to be withhold confidence from the commander in chief. He cannot substitute his own judgement, or he has to face a court martial. When Douglas MacArthur disagreed with President Truman, he did the right thing and he RESIGNED.

Besides that, he is insulting a broad swath of voters to whom he has sworn an oath to defend.

He is unfit for command. As a citizen, he can say what he pleases. He is setting up the conditions for a military coup.

Since election day, this is what I have worried about. It is the last thing these people have yet to try.

What will happen to Artemis II?

Who the f**k knows? A quick glance would show that this would mean a complete re-work of the whole danged thing. Not gonna happen without a lot of tears and flapdoodie.

Posting has been light

And there's no explanation for it.

Did that large lettering cause you to flip, like in those Peanuts comics? In case you don't know what I'm referring to, go back to the part of the video when he is talking to the "psychiatrist" (aka "Lucy"). She ticks off a number of ailments which he may have, and she mentions one, and Charlie Brown exclaims "that's it!" ( look for it beginning at about 2 minutes in )

Now that's an explanation for ya. For what it is worth. I've been spending a lot of time watching things on Tubi, which I've mentioned. This morning I watched something about Einstein. It makes sense to me. Perhaps others will watch that stuff, and get bored, or what have you, and turn it off. I like this kind of stuff. Because I do, it may make me seem pretty weird to some folks. Maybe most folks.:-)

How do you explain that to people? You probably can't. There are people who can relate to it, but most people do not. Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done, but to pretend I'm interested in stuff that others are interested in. I don't like to pretend.

Anyway, there's not a lot to blog about because lately I think I've been "out there" in space. I see that it doesn't get people excited or anything. Some folks are, but most aren't.

They'd destroy Elon Musk if they could. That's why I posted that he was the big winner in this recent election. If it were up to the left, they'd be all over Musk like hot molasses. He couldn't run his company like he wanted to, and he'd become a failure like Boeing has become. Indeed, the left is making this country fail across the board. They won't be happy unless they can destroy it utterly.

There are some who can relate to what I just wrote, but most people cannot or won't. Otherwise, the left will become like the dinosaurs. But instead, the left will make US the dinosaurs.

Think about that one for while, if you dare.

Why does Einstein's theories make sense? Well, the part about experiencing time differently depending on where you are makes sense. It makes sense because measurable quantities, such as time, came be experienced differently depending on circumstances as well. An example? Take temperature. Temperatures can be lower at lower points in a room than near the ceiling. Cold air sinks, hot air rises. In that "frame of reference" temperatures can be different. It isn't the same everywhere. Does that make sense? If not, then why not?

I noticed this phenomenon of temperature when it seemed colder in there than what my thermostat said it should be. I put thermometers around the joint, and it did seem to differ in different parts of the room. Hot dog! I just discovered something interesting. Or it's interesting to me. But that's me. Someone else reading this will think I'm just weird.

To hell with the crowd. I'll use my own brain, thank you very much. The political left doesn't want people to think. They want you to be stupid and they think that that is a good thing.

Charlie Brown Christmas

I remember seeing this when it first came out. It says here that it was in 1965, and that should be about right. I recall where we were living at that time. It was a whole different time. But I repeat myself.

You know the average kid is probably being taught that it was the Dark Ages of something like that. I only have warm memories of it.

A CHARLIE BROWN
CHRISTMAS (CBS, 1965)
Created and Written by Charles M. Schulz pic.twitter.com/Sb1bU0hN69

— Classic Movies & TV Shows (@ClassicFilmTV) December 3, 2024

At Huntington Beach Pier, California one day...

Somebody made a request...

Reaction to a reaction

12/8/24:

I wrote that I wasn't sure why I clicked on it the reaction to the Star Trek episode mentioned.

It so happens that I had recently watched the history of how Star Trek came to be.

It may have also been a curiousity to see how the younger generation would respond to what the "boomers" were into at that time.

One can't help notice the social programming, and it stood out to me like a sore thumb.

Hence, the post.

People seem to be a product of their times. Same goes for me. Back in my time as a youngster, Americans were more patriotic. But that is not so today. I think it is a shame. I think this girl and a whole generation (or two!) of Americans have had it drilled out of themselves. The results won't be pretty. In fact, it may be catastrophic.

12/7/24:

This girl has her reaction to the Star Trek episode of "Space Seed". I'm not so sure why I clicked on this, but it did interest me enough to do so, and here I am.

Having watched her reaction, I can see a whole bunch of things that tells me why we are where we are today.

Basically her attitude is that today's women are better than yesterday's and so forth.

Has she bothered to look at how today's women don't have children anymore? The left loves to talk about sustainability. How sustainable is a culture where it does't reproduce itself? In short, she seems to think that what she has been taught is a good thing, when in fact, all it has taught to her is how to make yourself go extinct in a few generations.

And so that is exactly what's happening. She will never say that though, because the thought will never occur to her.

Post Script:

People might misunderstand what I've written here. That's another beef for another day. What I wrote is not a defense of the past. But it might well be taken that way.

The problem is that people don't think things through very far. She even uses that phrase herself in this reaction.

Did anybody out there who defends all these social changes ever considered what downstream effects that it would have? No? Well, there you go then. Otherwise, it is just another "conspiwacy teowie" that some of us might think all this cultural destruction just may have been friggin' intentional.