* Astronaut kidnap!
* “Pimp my cascade“
* Africa Command stands up
* MRE = malnutrition?
* Friendly fire cockpit vid
* GoogleMaps spies Blackbird
* NYT eyes orbital debris
* Contractors gobbling up the gov’t
* “The briefcase that changed the world“
* Raptor to Japan?
* “La la la la la! I can’t hear you!”
(Big ups: RC, MA, Dad)
Just in case someone didn’t know yet, that SR-71 on the carrier deck is from the Intrepid Museum in New York (http://www.intrepidmuseum.org).
Ditto on the Blackbird/carrier image.…USS Intrepid Air Museum, NY. Still a cool image. Neat place to visit too.
Back in the day, they used to have some pretty killer reggae concerts there, too. Well, right next to the ship. But still, it made for a hell of a contrast.
I can’t view the friendly fire vid though (Firefox keeps crashing); does anyone have an alternative link?
As for the Blackbird, here’s a google url for the A-12 the CIA’s trying to steal from the Minnesota Air Guard Museum (not as clear a pic…):
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=19&ll=40.764456,-74.00002&spn=0.000892,0.002682&t=k&om=1
http://www.local.live has a much, much better picture of it using the “bird-eye” view, but you can’t grab the URL for it. Search for “Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Minnesota”, zoom in on the airport with map mode, to the NE corner area of the airport, switch to “aerial” view, zoom in further, then finally switch to “birds-eye” view for quality pics. The Museum is in the NE corner of the Minneapolis Intnl Airport. Start searching for a row parked C-130’s and the museum isn’t too far away to the NE.
Re: the blue/blue vid — I wonder…has it occurred to anyone in the media that a part of the problem is a policy that relies on essentially indiscriminate bombing/attacking from the air as a means of controlling the ground situation? I mean, sure they go by what they think they see (rocket launchers, in this case), but there are a) no eyes-on-ground, no human-human contact, and b) Id bet this has happened w/ innocent Iraqis, to. I wonder if this ever occurred to the higher-ups, too, that this is a damn shitty force-multiplier in any kind of fight that’s not “uniformed army on uniformed army”.…
Here’s another SR-71 at the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=huntsville,+alabama&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=19&ll=34.712106,-86.654446&spn=0.001497,0.002623&t=k&iwloc=addr
It’s not a great picture of the SR-71, but if you scroll down a little, you’ll see a Saturn V rocket lying on the ground. There’s also a Saturn 1B standing upright, and the Space Shuttle Orbiter “Pathfinder” (used for static testing) attached to an external tank and SRBs — just scroll around a little.
Found some alternative sources for the blue-on-blue vid:
YouTube:
part 1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=AV_16PdWnBo
part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFdJ4X_wWj0
Google Video:
web view: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-297944469677991983
avi d/l: http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0&secureurl=tgAAAOueOzDkuth7fHgVv9WDncq5Hg-89iYqtVKWO5LG156eS2NLXW0ZJcoDMwMyoCM2-rZeQctWHQoqdK-WjqZSkUOVAGHBW1YvBvVur97zhvGkuRGgMsUqq192fXKD3IS0m30c1ZrjGxDd8-OjoIp_gFEuYWbtI2br4n27zOMhy2Ap6dWaPT55cUJPv2VT3pWHz9PgoBkauV7Y2K70qNO9YkoI3Zlv9UtNhJ_SJEHsUxqW5QyN_70FsfAM4Te-FncLaw&sigh=PU0nBDi8HWO_LSC3Zey5fv_sPhk&begin=0&len=921000&docid=-297944469677991983