Mikey's
Amazing Stuff!
The following is a list of things I have found interesting on the Internet:
Inflatoplane an amazing little plane that Goodyear made in 1960 that is inflatable.
Ever wonder how or what Spread Spectrum radio's are?
Interesting article explains possible reasons behind the global warming rumours. I would like to add to this a bit, recently some of the eco' folks have been saying that Mar's is warming up because we sent a few rockets over it and their exhaust is causing a greenhouse effect on Mars. Do they have an excuse for Venus yet? I think this planet was hot even before man destroyed it. When someone can explain just what a cloud is and why the water vapor doesnt disperse then perhaps I'll listen to some of these ideas on global warming. Recently a 'peace' protest was held in Washington DC and some of the reports asked the protestors holding up eco signs how long it takes the Earth to orbit once around the sun and the protestors explained they don't have time for all that science stuff. GREAT... Also, man has made accurate temperature and weather records for perhaps 200 years. The Earth has been around slightly longer than that, perhaps even a few billion years more. I think people who are sure we can destroy the Earth with our automobiles ego's are larger than they should be. Man is an insignifigant spec on this planet compared to its own weather systems. Once agai, when we can 100% accurately predict next weeks weather then perhaps I will believe predictions for our weather decades ahead. Automobiles actually make up a small part of our pollution. Why not protest electrical power plants and big industry? How about the volcano's that can fart out more CO2 in one blast than every automobile up to this point in time has produced combined? A lot of these people claiming we are destroying the environment are also saying early man killed off the wooly mammoth.
Tech Central Station's article on global warmingAlso allows you to post comments and partake in polls
Why the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth
Informative (especially for a commercial site!) site on how tubes are made and work from Svetlana Electron Devices
Web page that briefly explains the Edison effect (how tubes work)
Surfing the Aether! A brief history of radio. Nicely organized into a timeline.
How stuff works!(A good starting point for interesting things work)
Video Recording and Reproducing. an excellant semi-technical comparision of the various video tape formats. From "Television Technical Theory"
Now everyone must agree that we havent had a lot of snow in the U.S. this year. (Unless you live in Georgia or Texas!) Click on this interesting site to have the only house on your block with *SNOW!* Site contains pictures and diagrams and links to weather as well as other useful information.
If you want to save yourself an easy half a minute of time each day try this simple idea: When making your morning coffee, add the cream and sugar first. This way when the coffee is poured in, it will mix itself! Half a minute each day may not sound like much but that add's up to two and a half minutes each work week, ten minutes each month or about two hours each year! Thats enough to watch two hours of Star Trek on TV every year for free!
Naval Vessel Register check on USN ships, search by name, hull type etc.
Haze Gray & Underway fact filled site with all kinds of naval information for all nations.
Pearl Harbor map locations of the ships in Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
Timeline of the Pearl Harbor attack compiled from the decklogs of ships in Pearl Harbor
Warships.com a comprehensive site with useful easy to find information.
NAVIES - BATTLES - WARSHIPS - LOSSES World War 1 - Inter-War years - World War 2 - Falklands War including military & political background.
UBOAT.NET by far the best example of what and how HTML should be used. Plus filled will all sorts of information on Uboat's, their technologies and skippers. Well worth checking out!
Story about the Sultana. This was a riverboat carrying Union soldiers back at the end of the civil war that suffered a boiler explosion. More people died from this disaster than on the Titanic but it has gotten very little publicity. This website is from the descendant of one of the survivors.
A lot of people may also think that flame throwers where another 20th century invention. These where actually first used militarily in 480 B.C. at the Battle of Salamis. This was in the form of flame throwers, a pump with a brass nozzle was mounted on the bow of ship's and used to set enemey ships on fire. Greek fire was refined in 671 A.D. by Kallinikos. Later on in the year 812 A.D. when Krum captured Messembria grenades and artillery where fashioned using the same mixture.
Term paper on greek fire.
One of the earliest 'modern' battleships has to have been the HMS Warrior. This ship was made in answer to the French enclosing a ship (the Gloire) with 4" of iron plating. Up until this time most improvements had been simply to add more guns or make the ship larger. The HMS Warrior one upped the Frenchs use of Iron plating by completely making the Warrior of iron and the addition of 10 Armstrong breech loading guns that fired a 110 pound shell. One of the other things that made this ship great for its time was the addition of Penn steam engines and a 10 ton, 23 foot Griffith's propeller. The early paddlewheelers proved too fragile for any serious military use. The funnels could be lowered and the screw raised to cut back on drag when wind power was being used.
US Battleship development contains a nicely detailed timelime of US battleships.
The Battleship Page! deals mostly with the Iowa class of US battleships.
Pre-Dreadnought presevervation
One quick note that I wanted to mention that I never bothered considering too much before I got the Lego Mindstorms kit was how the connecting rod's really worked on a train. In order for these to work properly each wheel must be connected to the wheel on the other side of the train by a solid axle. The connecting rod's of each side must be 45 degree's apart. This allows one side to have maximum leverage while the opposite side connecting rod is in line with the axle at its weakest. Since the pistons of a reciprocating steam engine work in a push pull fashion this also explains how a steam locomotive can get started regardless of where the connecting rod ends up when it stops.
I originally added this page after doing a few web searchs to see how the brakes on trains worked. Earlier on I just supposed that the locomotive generated a vacuum which would then subsequently release the brakes in the train and then as needed the vacuum would be released allowing springs to re-apply the brakes. This would allow abandoned cars to sit in a yard even on a grade with the brakes locked as soon as the brake lines where disconnected without having to manually brake some of the cars. I also found that brake springs that could be unsprung by just vacuum pressure would either be weak or require very large cylinders.
Vacuum brakes used early in the UK but thats about it.
Another good illustrated site on train brakes
Building a 21st Century Heavy Haul Steam Locomotive
International Working Steam Locomotives 2002
HUGE site dealing with everything 'Train.'
The railroad extra! Well set up and interesting!
Story of the 'General' the great train chase in the war between the states
Book on the operation of a locomotive circa 1890
Operation of a steam locomotive. Explains how superheating works, water injection, differences between oil, coal and wood boilers.
Steamlocomotive.com this name says it all! Very interesting site. Allows you to 'design' a steam locomotive. Contains information on odd locomotive types including articulated, 3-cylinder arrangements and others!
Want to try your hand at running a steam locomotive? Download this simulator!
Excellant comparision of steam power vs. diesel. Why did diesel really replace steam power?
Rockets where invented and used well before the 20th century. The Chinese where the first to invent rockets and these where just used for ceremonial purposes for many years. Possibly the first military use of rockets was also by the Chinese at the battle of Kai-fung-fu in 1232 AD. Congreve Rockets even made an appearance during the American Revolution. Robert Goddard did a lot of the research for the modern rocketry program and most of his research was done in Worcester Massachusetts. Wernher Von Braun was responsible for a lot of the improvements and rocketry advances during and after WWII including the V-2. Von Braun was arrested by the Gestapo for proposing that rockets could be used to put satellites in orbit and even one day make trips to the moon. In 1946 Von Braun even drew up plans for a space station.
| V1 (Fieseler Fi 103) | A4/V-2 | Scud-B | Al-Hussein (Scud-B variant) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| range | 150 miles | 199 miles | 186 miles | 370+ Miles |
| propulsion | pulse-jet | Liquid-fueled rocket motor | Liquid-fueled rocket motor | Liquid-fueled rocket motor |
| thrust | 660 lb | 60,500 lbs | ||
| fuel | 80 octane petrol | Liquid oxygen & Methanol | Kerosone & Oxider (UDMH and RFNA?) | Kerosene & Oxider (TMI85 and AK271?) |
| Maximum altitude | 9,845 ft | 60 miles | ||
| Maximum speed | 390 - 410 mph | 3,110 mph | ||
| guidance | Gyroscope | Gyro Preset | Gyroscope | Gyroscope/accelerometer? |
| payload | 1,832 lb Amatol | 2,006 lb Amatol | 1697-2094 lbs | 1102 lbs |
| preparation time | 90 Minutes | 90 Minutes | ||
| Active use | 1944-1945 | 1944-1945 | 1957 - early 80's | 1982- |
A good site on the V-1 buzzbomb, doodlebug or whatever is at www.fiddlersgreen.net
An excellant site on Germany's victory weapons is danshistory.com's section on the victory weapons.
The story of Antwerp an interesting write up of the V-1 buzzbomb's
Be sure to check out www.wernhervonbraun.com
Center for Nonproliferation studies report on IRAQ's missle and supergun programs
The Scud Missile Syndrome a nice write up of how Scuds are used and who has which versions by Col (Retd) EAS Bokhari
IRAQ's first attempts at a space program where to patch together some SCUD-C missiles for project Tamouz.
World Missile Chart who has what
A nice write up of rocketrys early years by John F. Graham.
History of our space program from NACA to the space shuttle. Includes very detailed information and descriptions of the X-Planes, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo flights, SpaceShuttle countdown, as well as space craft drawings, timelines and more!
I just wanted to add a bit of detail here regarding the incident with Liberty Bell 7. This was the Mercury mission piloted by Gus Grissom. Soon after splasdown the hatch blew resulting in the loss of the capsule and near drowing of Gus. Nasa and most of the press placed a lot of the blame on Gus. I wanted to point out that this was the first time an emergency hatch with explosive bolts was used on a Mercury spacecraft. This door was also rushed into Liberty Bell 7 at the last moment. During the final countdown there where issues with the hatch not being totally secure and it had to be re-torqued shut. I think these issues and the fact that Gus later gave his life in the Apollo 1 disaster (Clearly a design fault here.) gives me reason to believe the fault with the hatch may very well lie elsewhere.
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center movie gallery see video clips of the X-Planes and others from the X-1 to the SR-71!
J-Track satellite tracking a really interesting site for tracking satellites. Can be used to try and spot satellites from the ground or just to satisfy a curiosity. Check out J-Track 3D for a real-time display of tracked satellites around the Earth. This site also has a nice tribute to the MIR space station.
Encyclopedia Astronautica a good place to start for any research into spaceprograms. Includes 5" & 7" gun launched research probes, Chinese space programs and more! This site is very detailed and easy to navigate.
How did man get into space before the use of rockets? The USAF had project Man-high. This was an ambitious project using baloons to explore to outer edges of the Earth's atmosphere and tests exceeded 100,000 feet!
As amazing as Man-high was at the time the USAF continued on after this project to Project Excelsior in which these pioneering astronauts parachuted from the capsules at these great altitudes! Read "Leap of Faith" on the Air Force's on site. Captain Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr. was the first and I believe so far ONLY person to break the speed of sound without aid of a vehicle!
Project Corona was the worlds first useful spy satellite program. Corona or KH-1 satellites where quite simple at first, basicly a satellite was put up into polar orbit (this way it would cover the entire globe) and when needed a radio signal would be sent and a motion picture camera would start recording. Once this recording was finished the satellite would deorbit and be 'scooped' up by a plane in flight.
Deepspace 1 is NASA's testbed for numerous new technologies including ion propulsion and autonomous navigation. This is part of NASA's New Millennium Program.
IGM Research German company that helped with Deep Space 1
ION Propulsion - Over fifty years in the making. An excellant article from Nasa on the history and how ION propulsion works.
The Space Place! an amazing fact filled site I could (and have!) spent a lot of time browsing!
Space.COM an excellant starting point for everything 'space!' Contains space news, SETI information, activism get yourname@space.com here!
HobbySpace.COM from model rockets to real! This site is a online encyclopedia of rocketry.
This ones special! The X-Prize is a contest for the first private team to build a reusable space vehicle to carry three people to a height of 100KM and be ready to re-fly within a two week period!
NASA TV on the internet!
Useful site has plenty of formula's for model rocketry, including max altitude, speed etc.
The Steam Automobile Club of America
Fact filled page on Automobile History from about.com (The Human Internet)
Early Adventures with the Automobile from Eyewitness. History through the eyes of those who lived it.
The Duryea automobile was made in Springfield Massachusetts. The Duryea was the first gasoline powered automobile made in the US.
Springfield airport (Now Springfield Plaza) was the home of the Gee-Bee racing plane which set many early aviation speed records.
These 'super' guns where first used in WWI and hurled manmade objects into the lower reaches of space before the use of modern rockets.
The most well known 'super gun' would probably have to be the Wilhelmgeshuetze Paris Gun which could lob 106KG shells up to 75 miles away. The Paris gun had a bore of 357mm and a barrel length of 30m
Pictures of some superguns used in WWI
Perhaps by far the largest super gun and also the only one made recently would have to be "Baby Babylon." This was an Iraqi 350MM prototype gun. Once fully tested and developed Gerard Bull was going to help the Iraqi's build the full sized 1000MM gun.
The V-1 and V-2 where not Hitlers only Victory weapons. The V-3 Hochdruckpumpe was a supergun designed by Saar Roechling in WWII. This was no ordinary super gun. Instead of using one extremely large charge several charges along the length of the barrel where used.
I belive the V-3 may have gotten the base idea from the Valier-Oberth Moon Gun which was drawn up in 1920 and used the same priciples as the V-3 this was a step closer to reality than Isaac Newtons Orbital Cannon proposal back in the 17th century.
Super guns where not only used in modern times but also in ancient times to break through the walls of Constantinople in 1453 by Muhammad II's forces using a 1200 lb cannon.
Big Bertha was a howitzer designed by Alfred Krupp and named for his wife. (Flattering huh?) This gun could fire a 2,200 lb. projectile over 9 miles.
Though not exactly a 'super-gun' the South African G5 has been put here as a comparision of a very worthy gun that is in modern use. The G5 is a 155MM gun that can be fired as a regular gun, mortar or howitzer. This gun can fire a 19 lb shell almost 25 miles.
| Wilhelmgeshuetze Paris Gun |
Big Bertha | V-3 Hochdruckpumpe | Baby Babylon | G-5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Range | 75 miles | 9 miles | 102 miles | 466 miles | 24.25 miles |
| Muzzle width | 357mm | 420mm | 150mm | 350mm | 155mm |
| Muzzle length | 30M | 140M | 45M | ||
| Projectile weight | 233 lbs | 2200 lbs | 308 lbs | 19 lbs |
A descriptive write up of Space Guns.
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