| A Machine Gun Jetpack? Yes, Please! Posted: 04 Dec 2012 09:09 AM PST  Randall Munro, who draws the geeky and very funny xkcd comic strip has recently taken up the mantle of Internet Science Answer Man. As suits his strip, though, he doesn’t’ take on the usual questions like “Why is the sky blue?” or “Will I die if I eat 200 marshamllows? Asking for a friend *burp*”. No, he takes on the truly important questions like “Can I do that thing Yosemite Sam does where he shoots his guns into the floor and flies up into the air, but bigger?”
The answer, you’ll be pleased to know, is “yes”. The hitch is — and since this is science, there’s always a hitch because you can’t get anything cool out of science without one, like flying monkeys who by dint of their blasphemous mutations also have a taste for human flesh — you need a really big gun, or one that fires ridiculously fast, to get off the ground for very long. Fortunately for us, such guns do exist. The GAU-8 Avenger fires up to sixty one-pound bullets a second. It produces almost five tons of recoil force, which is crazy considering that it's mounted in a type of plane (the A-10 "Warthog") whose two engines produce only four tons of thrust each. If you put two of them in one aircraft, and fired both guns forward while opening up the throttle, the guns would win and you'd accelerate backward. To put it another way: If I mounted a GAU-8 on my car, put the car in neutral, and started firing backward from a standstill, I would be breaking the interstate speed limit in less than three seconds. As good as this gun would be as a rocket pack engine, the Russians built one that would work even better. The Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-6-30 weighs half as much as the GAU-8 and has an even higher fire rate. Its thrust-to-weight ratio approaches 40, which means if you pointed one at the ground and fired, not only would it take off in a rapidly expanding spray of deadly metal fragments, but you would experience 40 gees of acceleration.
In your face, Bob Costas, you sanctimonious little garden gnome! Guns do have a real benefit!  |
| A Few Words on Failure from Chuck Wendig’s Time Capsule Posted: 03 Dec 2012 10:32 PM PST  Last week on The Delivery (link to come, once I get caught up on the show posts!), I talked about failure and how you can make it work for you by failing well, learning something useful from every failure and adding that tidbit of knowledge to your next venture so you don’t fail the same way again. Chuck Wendig had something wickedly smart to say about that very subject in a post stuffed full of valuable (and curse word-intensive, so click with that in mind) advice on failure, fear, and a bunch of other things.
Here's the thing: we are the culmination of our successes but our successes are the culmination of our mistakes. Mistakes and failures beget success because we learn from them. Success is a slim margin — a narrow door — and everything outside that door is considered error. And that's okay. My toddler knows how to walk now — oh, right, you have a kid but we'll get to him — and the act of getting up and noodling around on those two pudgy cake-pillars he calls legs only happened through lots and lots of experimentation. Translation: he fell a lot. Still does. Into everything. You'd think he was drunk. He looks like Baby Fight Club most days. Point is: you need to fall. Falling is how we learn to walk. It's painful, but the pain is instructive.
And one more clip worth remembering. This ought to end up on one of those cute little inspirational graphics you see on Pinterest or Instagram. Growing up means taking responsibility for who you are, what you want, and what you've done and will do. But growing up is also about knowing when to power down the adult side and let the crazy T-Rex that is your childish side loose on those poor goats in the goat paddock.
Someone make that happen, please? (Why yes, I would like that link to corner the Google market on the phrase “Chuck Wendig had something wickedly smart to say”. That’s called blog-fu, yo, and I do know how that game is played! Also, because I think Chuck rocks harder than a hangar full of Led Zeppelins and you should buy as many of his books as you can.)  |
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