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I intentionally linked the video at 0:47. Do you freakin’ hear that? I want that elation someday in my future engineering career. HT to SpaceX, Elon Musk, and all the indviduals who made the Falcon 9 first stage landing even possible. Third time is always the charm.

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Since I’m pretty much sunk myself into the career search blues, I’ve decided to turn the unemployment free time I have into something positive. So what am I to do? Well I’ve got a set of skills that I’ve rightfully built up and earned but are languishing and atrophying at a worrying rate since I graduated, one of which is 3D CAD drafting. So I’ve decided to try an produce one CAD model every week/two weeks starting next week of varying degrees of assembly and difficulty. So for my first project in celebration of the new Star Wars film, I’ll be drafting up Luke Skywalker’s pilot helmet from Episode IV: A New Hope with a bit of DFM/DFA (Design for Manufacture/Assembly) practices in mind, or aka, design it as if I am going to fabricate this in a composite molding autoclave. Wish me luck!

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The Rock Has An Inspiring Message For People With Depression

Johnson shares how an episode of depression eventually led him to professional wrestling, and what he learned from the experience. 

WATCH THE VIDEO

GIFS VIA.

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This is a team of US high school students who represented their country at the International Olympiad for Astronomy and Astrophysics this past summer in Romania. The IOAA is an international astronomy competition for students grades 9-12.

Before this, the U.S. has participated in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and even computing Olympiads, but never in either of the astronomy Olympiads. Disappointed that national astronomy organizations told us they didn’t have the resources to create a U.S. astronomy Olympiad, I and five other high school students started our own National Astronomy Olympiad. With almost no money and little outside help, we created a test, administered it to around thirty kids around the country, and picked the top five scorers to compete (above). This year, we are adding additional rounds of competition to encourage students with a wider variety of skill levels. The first round, in February, is multiple choice, with a practice round in December, while the second round, in April, will be extended response.

Though we hope to grow, we cannot do it without help. We need help in some of the following areas:

1. Money. Financing the students’ travel to the international competition costs money, and just as the other Olympiads do, we want to finance students’ travel so that no student is prohibited from competing at the international competition because of money. In addition, we want to hold a training camp on a university campus to give contestants practice with telescope observation for one part of the competition, and that cannot happen without money. The universities charge us per student for stay and food, so the camp cannot happen without money. Unfortunately, the donations right now aren’t tax deductible, but we are working on becoming a non-profit, and once we do they will be tax deductible. However, we promise that none of us profit AT ALL from any money collected. It all goes into the organization savings and student travel finance.

2. Writing/grading tests: we need qualified teachers, astronomers or physicists, and even college students and graduate school students to help us create test questions and grade tests.

3. Spreading the word. Many students don’t know about this opportunity, so we need to tell as many people as we can.

So if you can donate or help grade and create tests, please email the team at usioaateam@gmail.com or message me, spacelover17. Also check out our website, www.usaaao.org, for information about competition, last year’s test, NAO and IOAA syllabus, and more. The PayPal link has now been added on our website. In addition, SIGN-UPS FOR THE FIRST ROUND ARE NOW AVAILABLE UNTIL DECEMBER 12! If anyone is interested in preparation help, they can message me and I can send them my notes and practice problems that I’ve created for my astronomy club at my high school. I don’t promise it’ll be comprehensive, or that I’ll get around to all topics on the syllabus, but it’s a good starting point.

If you cannot do either, please reblog at least! And also tell anyone you think might be interested in this, because many other people don’t have tumblr. You never know who might want this more than anything. We are new and unknown, and do not have much help for publicity, so the more people find out, the better. So please reblog and spread the word. Thanks!

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See TIME’s new cover: The Year Ahead featuring NASA's Scott Kelly http://ti.me/1wHK72o .

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Century Series Sundays: F-105 Thunderchief Photo Credit: Lindsay Peacock, Global Aviation Resource

Fun Facts:

Weighing in excess of 50,000 lbs, it was at one point was one of the heaviest single engine, single seat aircraft in the world.

The only U.S military aircraft to be withdrawn from active service due to obscene combat losses, losing an appalling 334 aircraft out of the inventory of 833 in the Vietnam War.

Due to distinct technological development, size, weight, and combat role similarities, it's often compared to the upcoming F-35 Lightning II JSF. **

** depending on your perspective & opinion of the F-35 and the JSF program, that statement alone is an omen of all kinds. 

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X-PLANE FRIDAYS! THE LTV XC-142!

The LTV XC-142 was developed is response to investigating alternative options to alleviating the shortcomings of rotary aircraft of the time. Due to their venerable vertical lift capabilities, helicopters paid the price of having slow speed, short range, and limited payload capacities in comparison to the fixed-wing aircraft they meant to augment.

Thus the XC-142 was born.

Fun Facts:

It is the largest V/STOL aircraft ever made.

Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites fame, had a hand in the development of the XC-142. During an RC design conference, he proudly emphasizes how the XC-142, despite being developed in the 60's, still surpasses the V-22 Osprey in performance and capability.

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SWEEEET JEBUS

Just rolled into Ponoko to see how much mounting for an Arduino Uno would cost if I did the modeling myself and had it printed there. Turns out other people were thinking the same thing and done it looooong ago for the cheap on the Ponoko showroom page. This site is awesome.

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shtuff

Over the course of one year I've gotten a hold of some decent hands-on experience, and also software and hardware to get the ball rolling on some hobby and school-related stuff. My laptop is fixed, I finally have SolidWorks again, I bought and got reasonably familiar with an Arudino set, and the garage is filled with plenty of tools. Who knows where this will take me, but I'm preeeeeeeetty sure it'll be fun along the way :)

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Comparison between 5th generation fighter projects of the United States and China.

I’m calling it. If anyone expects future planes of the 6th generation type to get their profiles more stealthier than the 5th, say goodbye to vertical stabilizers/tails and large control surfaces (I’m ESPECIALLY looking at you and your canards, J-20) and say hello to 3-D thrust vectoring.

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With 28 Units Left to Finish My Aerospace BS Degree

I finally come to the conclusion that in my school of engineering, aerospace is the douchebag major.

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So during class this week, we're covering topics involving volumetric flow rates, pitot tubes and head losses, and some guy named Ventruli who got his named stuck on things like reducers and exhaust cones n' stuff. Needless to say I needed to get excited about these topics to actually learn about them. So, I watched a video of a Falcon 1D engine attempting to launch a building off the ground.

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忙しい~

今週は、本当に難しかった。たくさんエンジャニアのラブすれば、僕は、つかれている。でも、彼女は、僕にいつも手伝った。たとえば、コーヒー買ってあげて、朝ごはんつくってあげた。 手伝ってくださって、ありがとう~ヾ(＠⌒ー⌒＠)ノ

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Today...

I realized that after two years of taking Japanese, I still suck. In such, I will try practicing here by writing once or twice a week here, in whole paragraphs at best. 今日、試験を受けるの時に、しっぱいしました。僕の日本語は、本当に上手でわない。毎日、日本語を練習するべきですよ。

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Flag Designs for Earth & The Solar System in 2020 and Beyond

Redittor thefrek has designed a kick-ass series of flags for the Solar System and its planets. But flags, as we all know, change over time. So he’s also created possible revisions for those flags reaching as far as 800 years into the future.

Here you’ll find thefrek’s concept designs for “Earth/Solar flags throughout the future,” but we highly recommend checking out the banners he envisioned for each individual planet, and especially this batch of future-flags from a Martian Revolution, when the Red Planet “declares itself to be the dominant force in the Solar System, and claims all other planets as part of its empire.”

Earth’s flag

2020: Humanity is only present on Earth and the Moon.

2044: Humans have settlements on Earth, the Moon, Mars and its moons, and Ceres.

2087:Two more objects in the Asteroid Belt have been colonized as well as Europa and Venus.

2204: Humans have settled on every large body in the Solar System. Terraforming is well underway on most planets, and interstellar voyages are beginning.

2355: Another star system is incorporated into the Solar Federation.

2412: Another system has been conquered.

2484: The Solar Federation now has too many systems to show them on the flag - Each circle represents one star system, with the Solar System in the centre.

2514: Yet more systems are being settled.

2544: Expansion is occurring at a breakneck pace.

2639: Several different alien races now exist within the Solar Federation, co-existing peacefully with humanity.

2812: 800 years into the future, the Solar Federation is the leading force in the galaxy, with all denizens of our galaxy being given equal representation. Humanity has taken the responsibility to ensure peace and prosperity everywhere in the Milky Way.

Check out more examples of thefrek’s futuristic flag work over on reddit.