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18 votes
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Forth: The programming language that writes itself
10 votes -
Russia’s Potemkin miracle: The story of Ural Airlines flight 178
11 votes -
Chuck E Cheese's grew into an enormous, world wide chain, but has since suffered two bankruptcies, fierce competition, and a decline in popularity. Let's explore its fascinating and turbulent history.
29 votes -
Drexel and alumni increased the importance of private credit
3 votes -
The untold history of Barbie Fashion Designer, the first mass-market ‘game for girls’
9 votes -
The oldest craft brewery in the US is officially out of business, closing yet another chapter in San Francisco's vanishing history
27 votes -
Watching paint dry: The chemical engineering of car paint
16 votes -
The environmental disaster lurking beneath your neighborhood gas station
19 votes -
One of the happiest moments in Tigers history needs a deep rewind | Detroit v Oakland 2006 ALCS
11 votes -
Why so many baseball players are Dominican
7 votes -
How RVs get their swishes, swooshes, and swoops
5 votes -
87% missing: The disappearance of classic video games
27 votes -
How Tabasco fills up to 700,000 hot sauce bottles a day | Big Business
25 votes -
The making of Noctis, the 'No Man's Sky' forerunner whose creator retreated from the world
12 votes -
A journey into hip hop lore to discuss one of its forgotten '90s legends; Canibus. Why was he so hyped, why does nobody remember him, and why is his legacy so important?
15 votes -
Why turtle soup disappeared: An elite, rare delicacy intersected with the advent of industrial canning, leading to supply exhaustion and backlash in consumer sentiment
17 votes -
Going Rogue: A history of the origins of Rogue, Hack, and NetHack
21 votes -
Measuring the amount of lead (Pb) consumed when drinking from lead crystal glassware. Is it safe?
5 votes -
A brief overview of Shibboleths, including their use during WW2
9 votes -
Wrong turn at Taipei: The crash of Singapore Airlines flight 006
20 votes -
America's music road: Go on a glorious 350-mile drive that embraces the entire history of popular music, from gospel to soul to jazz to country to rock
9 votes -
The history of Soulless 6. How Guitar Hero players perfected an impossible April Fool's song.
7 votes -
We made an epic fireworks display to explain the science of fireworks
8 votes -
How Stuart Little uncovered an avant-garde masterpiece missing for almost a century
16 votes -
The surprisingly sinister history behind Texas’s cliff chirping frog
5 votes -
A brief history of the Magic Wand
9 votes -
Sonic The Hedgehog was released this day in 1991 on Sega Mega Drive. What are your memories playing Sonic?
I still play thanks to emulation, back then when i was a kid never had a console and only played with friends. What are your memories playing Sonic?
42 votes -
NASA's "rubber room", the emergency egress bunker located below the Apollo launch pad
13 votes -
The US's flirtation with nuclear powered jet aircraft
If everything had worked perfectly, it still would have been a bum airplane." - Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States attempted to design nuclear...
If everything had worked perfectly, it still would have been a bum airplane." - Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States attempted to design nuclear powered aircraft. This was part of a larger "nuclear craze" in the era where everything and anything was proposed to have nuclear technology applied to it. This led to all kinds of things like the Chrysler TV-8 and "peaceful" earthmoving construction projects. The only place where nuclear power or propulsion really took off was for large ocean going ships both for military navies as well as civilian tankers, cargo ships and icebreakers. Spacecraft technology was the only other "success story."
Nuclear powered aircraft, while more realistic than say nuclear cars, never quite caught on except for a few experimental engines and just one actual working aircraft. The most extensive efforts towards this during the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program were the HTRE-2 and HTRE-3 experimental nuclear reactors with heat transfer assemblies designed for nuclear powered aircraft at the Idaho National Laboratory. Rather than burning fuel, the jet turbine would use the heat from the nuclear reaction to heat air sent through a compressor which would then be expelled as exhaust for thrust.
On of the more fascinating tests were the test flights of the NB-36H which while conventionally powered, flew while carrying a working nuclear reactor to test the protective shielding of the crew. It carried an air-cooled 1 megawatt reactor. The engineers and crew worked within a specially shielded nose cabin with 12-inch-thick lead-glass windows.
The project was canceled by the Kennedy administration a few months after taking office in 1961 citing high costs, poor management, and little progress towards a flight ready reactor saying:
At the time of termination, the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program was still in the research and development stage, with primary emphasis on high performance reactors. Although a number of research and development achievements can be credited to this program, at the time of termination an airplane had never been flown on nuclear power nor had a prototype airplane been built. - Joseph Campbell, Comptroller General
and
Nearly 15 years and about $1 billion have been devoted to the attempted development of a nuclear-powered aircraft; but the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote. - John F. Kennedy, POTUS
Footnote: This post is a rework of a reddit post I made here a couple years back. It's not really meant to be a coherent or lengthy article but has some links and thoughts which I found interesting.
20 votes -
The Battle of Fishkill: When Domenic Broccoli set out to expand his restaurant empire in upstate New York, he didn’t expect to find a grave site — or start a war
6 votes -
The history of the Seattle Mariners
15 votes -
Judd Apatow interviews Mel Brooks: "The Immortal Mel Brooks"
11 votes -
We're back at the Royal Astronomical Society to look at some awesome antique moon globes
9 votes -
The first two botanists who surveyed, and survived, the Colorado River
5 votes -
Andrew Ridgeley on George Michael and life after Wham!
7 votes -
Upcoming Netflix WWII film, Six Triple Eight, stars Kerry Washington in film about unique Black female American unit
15 votes -
Tango may be most closely associated with Argentina, but it also has a long tradition in Finland
13 votes -
Freedom House Ambulance Service - a history of the USA's first paramedics
11 votes -
The original fettuccine alfredo with no cream
29 votes -
Rewinding Jimi Hendrix’s national anthem
9 votes -
Some historians say that the last US Revolutionary War battle was fought in India
14 votes -
Gini global inequality at lowest level in nearly 150 years
13 votes -
Anthony Fauci on Larry Kramer and loving difficult people
12 votes -
On the history of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and the rise of Walt Disney
15 votes -
Help me build my “woke” Fourth of July playlist
As the holiday comes up, I’m building a tongue-in-cheek party playlist that speaks to the full color of this beautiful country we Americans call home. I’m kicking it off with these songs, but what...
As the holiday comes up, I’m building a tongue-in-cheek party playlist that speaks to the full color of this beautiful country we Americans call home.
I’m kicking it off with these songs, but what would you add to this playlist?
- Uncle Sam Goddamn by Brother Ali
- This is America by Childish Gambino
- National Anthem by Lana Del Rey
- American Pie by Shea Diamond
- Holiday / Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day
- Know Your Enemy by Rage Against the Machine
- Gentrify by Propoganda
What songs would you add to this playlist? I’ll add songs to my playlist as we go!
63 votes -
Savate: The real origin of Karate kicks
3 votes -
Near Dayton, Ohio there's a lookalike of the Wright Brothers' Model B, a 1910 aircraft with no cockpit. It's a modern plane with a very old design, and I went for a ride.
21 votes -
How this train beat the plane: The TGV story
8 votes -
The controversial gay priest who brought vigilante justice to San Francisco's streets
17 votes