Scientific to the point of suspicion @suspiciouslyscientific - Tumblr Blog

the xenomorph from alien drawn in bacterial culture on agar plates

Man o' War.

These things aren't actually jellyfish, but a colony of hydroids. They work together, consuming whatever their tentacles catch, and reproduce. It's a simple life. The large, sail-shaped bubble on top actually helps them float to the water surface. Relying on the wind for movement, they haven't evolved many features for locomotion. This unfortunately makes them vulnerable to washing up on shores.

09/05/26, 17 colours ~ prints

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Night City Cover Art by Doug Anderson

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Act like Megalochelys atlas and smile, because it’s Fossil Friday! One of the largest known land turtles, scientists think this massive reptile could reach heights of 5.9 ft (1.8 m)—tall enough to look a grown human in the eye. This specimen’s shell measures some 7.4 ft (2.3 m) long and in life, it may have weighed more than 2,000 lbs (907 kg). Megalochelys lived during the Late Pliocene about 2 million years ago. The fossil on display in the Museum’s Hall of Vertebrate Origins was found in 1922 in Chandigarh, India. You can spot this giant, and more, at the Museum! Plan your visit.

Photo: © AMNH

Alt: A photo of Megalochelys atlas on display in the Museum. The giant turtle's skeleton is a dark brown color.

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Sunfall by Chris Foss

thevaultoftheatomicspaceage

suspiciouslyscientific

This is the Buran, the Soviet Union's response to the space shuttle. The fun thing is, it may well have been a better space shuttle than the actual space shuttle. The program got canned, and then the Soviet Union fell apart, so we'll never know for sure, but the orbiter and rocket combination could have potentially avoided many of the problems caused by the shuttle's plumbing needing to directly link the orbiter and external tank.

thevaultoftheatomicspaceage

Space Frontier by Robert McCall . Early 70's

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North American X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft attached to the wing pylon of a NASA Boeing B-52 Stratofortress mothership.

Vehicle Identification: North American X-15.

Mothership Identification: Boeing B-52 Stratofortress.

Speed Record: Holds the official world record for the highest speed ever reached by a manned aircraft, reaching Mach 6.7 (4,520 mph).

Altitude Record: Set an altitude record of 354,330 feet (over 67 miles high), crossing the edge of outer space.

Purpose: Operated by the U.S. Air Force and NASA to collect data on flight conditions at the edge of the atmosphere for the space program.

suspiciouslyscientific

Fun fact: A rocket plane was also the first manned aircraft to break the sound barrier. It was also an X-plane, and it broke mach 1 on October 14, 1947 piloted by Chuck Yeager over the Mojave desert.

The aircraft was noted by the pilot to be extremely cold due to the liquid oxygen used as oxidizer, and thus probably didn't make anyone wish for a nuclear winter.

The Ekranoplan: A bit of flying, as a treat

The ekranoplan represents one of those fascinating possibilities that never was, in any real sense, but perhaps could have been.

They tend to look like short-winged, stubby aircraft with a weird engine configuration, with profiles ranging from relatively normal:

To... less normal:

(I promise, it's not missing its wings, it just looked like that)

These aircraft were built to skim the sea at an extremely low altitude, practically touching the wavetops. There, the wings could compress air against the water, creating a zone of high pressure that the aircraft could ride, dramatically increasing the efficiency of its wings, and allowing the carriage of a hefty payload.

They were only ever seriously tested in military applications (both images are Soviet military prototypes), but a part of me can't help but wonder if these machines couldn't have served a lot better in a civilian role.

Now, obviously, there were issues, the inherent danger of flying this close to the waves not least among them. But I do wonder if, perhaps, they couldn't have been solvable.

The efficiency of this concept actually increases as the aircraft is scaled up, letting it ride higher above the water and carry a bigger payload. Perhaps, in some alternate world, instead of transatlantic passenger transport being dominated by aircraft, which mercilessly outcompeted passenger liners, we could have gotten ship-planes which combined the speed of an aircraft with the comfort and capacity of a ship.

#aircraft #engineering #science #history #cold war aircraft #cold war era #retro futurism #alternate history