National Air And Space Visit

While in Washington, I visited the National Air and Space Museum. It is like some kind of Lovecraftian Costco warehouse filled with a mix of priceless artifacts encased in layers of plexiglas and cheezy recreations, carnival-like educational attractions, and disguasting food courts and kiosks.

Overhead, like beached whales or a giant boy’s toy models, hang famous air and space ships. They have just about everything you could think of – Spirit of St. Louis, Space Ship One, a Brietling Orbiter, even the original Wright Flyer. They all look lifeless and sad, especially the spacecraft.

I was a bit overwhelmed by the craft collection, but it’s the little things that I enjoyed seeing the most. They have, side by side, Nestler sliderules that used to belong to former z/k Korolev and former Sturmbannfuhrer Von Braun. Missing is the Nestler that used to belong to Albert Einstein. I also wonder who now owns the two two-copek coins that were Korolev’s lucky charm. I also wonder if Von Braun used to have a lucky charm.

The only remaining piece of the original Sputnik – an arming device that was removed prior to launch, an equivalent of little strips of paper you sometimes find in remote controls and other battery-powered gadgets.

It was interesting to notice how many aircraft were put together using slotted instead of philips screws, like these huge ones on the Soviet ICBM.

I don’t know why, but I stood for a good while admiring the hypnotic twists of a handmade screwdriver that used to belong to Charlie Taylor, Wright’s mechanic.

Soviet space kitch collection is vast: from magnetic Mir-flown chess (something of a 70s vintage space look to them)

to all kinds of space crappers (a low-tec suction bulb is probably safer where your privates and vaccuum are involved).

The nose cone from the Spirit of St. Louis is signed on the inside, but you have to cram yourself into an uncomfortable niche to see the swastika and signatures of well-wishers, including Wrong Way Corrigan. Apparently early aviators frequently used not yet befouled by Nazis swastikas as good luck charms.

One of the last things I saw, a crazy looking British pusher airplane had such an amazing Star Wars look that I maybe even gasped a little.

The Not So Golden Arches

I don’t know if you noticed, but the golden arches of the McDonald’s logo are not always “golden”. McDonald’s allows for a surprising range of color variations, like this green logo that was necessary to downplay the shameful existence of Mickey-D’s in an uppity Sedona community. They even planted a shrub to hide the logo.

A fine example that might explain the failure of the The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention is the sinister looking logo on the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. The color harmonizes with the silhouette of A-12 Blackbird above on the deck of USS Intrepid.

By the way, I always thought that Grimace was chicken nugget gone bad. As it turns out, I was wrong about the chicken nugget part, but was right about the gone bad part. Grimace used to be a four-handed villain hellbent on stealing shakes. My favorite quote from one of the number of the Mystery of Grimace websites: “Grimace wasn’t marketable as a fat ass purple thief, but is marketable as a fat ass purple nice guy“. Well, at least the Hamburglar is continuing his life of crime. And I am afraid Ronald might join him soon enough after being fired in Japan.


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WML : Lord of the Custom Cases

I am a little weird when it comes to organizing stuff. I am kind of like this dude in Chekhov’s “A Man in a Case”. I like cases. In particular, I like custom cases.

For instance, if you purchase an expensive telescope, chances are it will come with a case. This case will be a box filled with a special kind of foam. This foam has a pre-cut silhouette of the scope and accessories. This way everything fits exactly.

This reminds me of the Kazbek-U Soyuz spacecraft couches that are custom made for each cosmonaut.

A chair made for Norman Thagard at the National Air and Space Museum.

I’ve seen cooler chairs in a museum in Moscow when I was a child, probably from Salyut or maybe even Vostok missions, but I can’t find any references.

Anyway, back to custom cases. I really want a case for my bedside table. It should hold my glasses, keys, wallet, watch and wedding ring. This may look comical, but is rather convenient. I can’t just leave all this stuff on the tabletop because Tilde the cat likes to play with things. Tilde already “disappeared” my nice titanium wedding ring. I don’t want to just put everything into a box because I don’t want my keys to scratch up my really, really expensive glasses.

So anyway, the are three steps in making a custom case. Get a box. That’s easy. Get some foam. That’s a bit harder, but you can get it a good photo store like B&H or Adorama. Now comes the hard part. Cutting the foam.

My first attempt failed miserably. I tried cutting the foam with a sharp blade, and I could not make any straight cuts. Then I tried to cut the foam with a hot knife. That generated a lot of stinky smoke and the results were not very good. But finally I found a solution on the Net.

It’s really ingenious.
What you need to do is soak the foam in water, wring it out and then freeze it. Frozen foam can be easily cut with a knife or drilled with a drill or a sharpened pipe.

Here is the article.

Of course, it’s best to use multiple layers of foam to create the relief effect like this: