#mix fact with fiction

[petermorwood]

Based on reality...ish.

After seeing this post, @elizabethgoudge wondered:

"Wasn't there a real prototype like the Hydra plane in Captain America?"

TL:DR -Yes, there was. Indeed there were several, though "real" is a bit bit up in the air (or not, considering that none of these things ever flew...)

*****

"Captain America: The First Avenger" based some of its hardware on four or maybe even five Nazi-era prototypes, "real" in the sense of having a nebulous existence as sketches, blueprints, or concept / wind-tunnel models.

The film's design department clearly knew their stuff. They may have used other things instead or as well (there were so MANY), so the following is just my own speculation, based on many years of making many model kits :->

The Hydra mini-sub...

...seems based on a cross between the (real) "Seehund" midget submarine...

...and the design-concept Focke-Wulf Ta 283 ramjet aircraft.

Red Skull's escape plane, though never clearly visible...

...wasn't just based on but WAS a Focke-Wulf Triebflügel ("powered wings" - meaning the ramjet-driven rotor blades around its waist).

This was a proposed tail-sitter VTOL interceptor where taking off straight up might (?) have been possible, but landing straight down and backwards would invite all sorts of unwanted excitement.

It also made a brief background appearance in "Loki".

The Valkyrie flying wing…

…was based on, and hugely upscaled from, the Horten H.XVIII, one of many pie-in-the-sky "Amerikabomber" projects.

Resemblance to a Northrop YB-35 (props) / YB-49 (jets)...

…is coincidence based on form-follows-function, since - and rather importantly - the Northrop planes were built for use by the US Air Force, not the Luftwaffe (though given the way some plotlines went, their use by Hydra is another matter…)

The flying bombs which it carried...

...seem based partly on a Messerschmitt Me 334 project fighter...

...and partly on a Sombold So 344 bomber-destroyer, which had the same detachable-bomb arrangement.

The So 344's explosive nose was meant to be launched into a formation of Allied bombers, after which - despite aerodynamics now wildly out of whack and a bunch of angry escort fighters in hot pursuit - the piloted part would land safely.

Yeah, right...

*****

Despite "what if...?" suggestions on the "History" Channel that one or other of these contraptions could have "won WW2", they didn't even help to lose it less severely.

IMO their probable main purpose was to keep numerous engineers and designers safe(-ish) with pencil and ruler in workshops and at drawing boards, rather than very much not safe with rifle and grenade on some bomb-and-bullet-swept front line.

*****

Besides the midget submarine, there's one other exception to all this based-on-paper stuff, and that's Red Skull's car...

...whose inspiration seems to have been the Mercedes Benz W31 G4 heavy staff car and a Hispano Suiza H6A limousine custom-built in 1923 for the King of Spain.

All of which goes along with my own notion, that starting with a real - or merely "real" - object is a great way to make fantasy objects look, and sound in description, more convincing.

Or, as @dduane says, "The more truth you mix with a lie, the stronger it gets..."

:->

[luthienne]

from "11 POEMS—TITLES BY AZIZ SHIHAB—FROM HIS NOTEBOOKS" as featured in Naomi Shihab Nye's Transfer: Poems

[nyaskitten]

I finally get it... I finally get the toxic yuri of Jordana and Sora... I am thinking many thoughts... maybe very toxic one-sided and unreciprocated feelings that Jordana mixes in with her hatred for Sora... she DESPISES this girl but every time she thinks of her her stomach churns and aches and her heart hatefully longs... I GET IT !!!

[reksink]

hi I really love your spec bio hornet designs it’s amazing how much detail goes into this

:O!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!! Hornet's designs are some of my favorites to workshop and refine, and I'm really glad you like them! Like I said before, the possibilties for her are endless, both for her external and internal structures. Capturing details that are both logical from what we know about her and real life spider while then fitting that knowledge into her design is something I'll always love about the process A small collect of roughs for the eyes:

Again, thank you so much for send this, it's really sweet to hear :}

[mariocki]

Shadows of Fear: Come Into My Parlour (1.10, Thames, 1971)

"A tube ticket?"

"Not a ticket. The ticket."

"Which one?"

"The one that should have been in my pocket."

"Was that your crime? Everybody's done that, some time in their life..."

"Not everybody gets caught."

"It's nothing."

"The most important thing that ever happened to me."

[kendrick-lamar]

.

[brightlotusmoon]

[evelhak]

Can I have 17, 28 and 30 for the label game?

Thank you so much 🥰

Sure! I'll just continue with KnB. :D

17. Wished had less screentime: Hmm. I don't have an easy answer for this, so I'm going to look at it another way: Sakurai. (Listen, everyone, before you get ready to knock me cold.) I wish he had less of the kind of screentime he has. I wish he was portrayed differently, and not as a joke, because he's clearly very traumatized, and it's not hard to picture what kind of past and/or present he would have. It really irks me that he's basically just a comic relief, I find it a really tasteless kind of joke. It's really like a slap in the face for people who've been through certain kinds of abuse.

28. I would be besties with them: Uughh, noo, I don't want to be friends with any of these characters, I just want to write them. This is getting too personal for me. How about I put it this way: I would welcome any real person in my life who closely resembled Kagami, Furihata, Momoi, Kise, Takao, Izuki or Murasakibara. They all have qualities my current or past close friends already have, so it would seem like a good match.

30. Straight up enemies with this character: Same logic as before. I'm sure I would be enemies with someone who used the tactics of Hanamiya, Haizaki or for heaven's sake, Akashi's father.

Sorry I butchered all the questions, V. It seems that I have already used my tolerance for blurring reality and fiction for today. (It's a low tolerance.)

[nicoscheer]

X

Recent Alex Turner

[stoertebeker]

Wanted to read this book about the German navy before my trip to Norway this year so I'd already know a bit when visiting museums but have completely forgotten about it until now ... guess I'll have to catch up on the entirety of German naval actions 1939-1945 in two days huh

[rhys-ravenfeather]

I will admit upfront that this is just 100% me being bitter, and probably a bit petty, not to mention basically just repeating myself since I’ve said stuff like this before in previous posts, but as a biracial person, I really wish that there was more representation/recognition of biracial people, and the mixed-race experience, not only in canon media, but in more fandom circles.

[maxellminidisc]

Truly TRULY not everything requires you to write fan fiction about it. I swear to god you people have toxic waste between your ears or something....

[mystacoceti]

literally the dream chapter in Crime and Punishment

[greenleaf4stuff]

Hii - didn't want to make the chain too long, so I started from the original post again. Thank you SO much @valar-did-me-wrong, @wowstrawberrycow, @varda-starqueen and @itwillbeourswansong for tagging me! <3

...seven you say, huh? (I am defining the term "fictional ex" veeery loosely since I usually only pair up characters with each other and not with myself) (I do not envy the person who has to fight all seven of these)

Zero pressure tags: @askereiniongilgalad @themalhambird @plotdesigner @withallthatisleftofmyheart @janacariad @biodead-on-the-biobed @radiant-sunlight-blueberry @gingeragenda @myblacksailstales @acenby1999 @thephoenixandthecrocodile and whoever else wants to play <3

You: If we're gonna date, you may have to defeat my seven fictional exes. Them: ...seven fictional exes? You: Yeah Them: ...fictional. Is that seriously a thing? You: you can say no. Them: What do I have to do? Tear up a book? *laughs* Okay! You: Don't say I didn't warn you...

so the question is...who are your seven fictional exes?

[sharry-arry-odd]

MAZER: The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures. KOTAKU: That's an oversimplification of the issue. MAZER: The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people, with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world, don't you? I'm terrified of that world, and I don't want to live in that world, and as a mixed-race person, I literally don't exist in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Koreatown, Los Angeles. And as any mixed-race person will tell you–to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing. And, by the way, I don't own or have a particularly rich understanding of the references of Jewishness or Koreanness because I happen to be those things. But if Ichigo had been fucking Korean, it wouldn't be a problem for you, I guess?

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

[deep-space-netwerk]

What do you mean by Venus floating cities?

I'm hoping to write a science fiction story about visiting Venus as part of the space race and I would love your input

Alright so the thing with Venus is that we're all very familiar with her horrible hell-death clouds and 900°F surface temperatures. We all understand the surface of Venus is not a fun place for humans to be.

But, nobody ever talks about the fact that ABOVE the hell-death clouds, Venus is a paradise. The most Earth-like environment we know of in the solar system, beyond Earth itself, is actually in the skies of Venus.

About 30 miles above the surface, the pressure is ~1 atmosphere, and the temperature ranges from 30 - 100°F, which is Happy Human™ standard pressure and temperature.

What's more, a breathable mix of oxygen and nitrogen provides over 60% the lifting power on Venus that helium does on Earth. In other words, a balloon full of human-breathable air would float to the habitable range of Venus's atmosphere. We could float a ship with the very air we breathe.

The other great thing about this is that it avoids one of the big problems with Mars colonization. On Mars, any habitat on the surface full of breathable air is vulnerable to leaks and explosive decompression, a la the Martian.

Floating on Venus, a balloon full of breathable air doesn't have a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside. Which means, any leaks or tears would be very slow and manageable. You could fix that shit with duct tape!

Similarly, because the environment outside the balloon is so Earth-like, humans living there wouldn't need any big fancy pressurized suits for extravehicular work. We'd need air to breathe, maybe some heat protection, and protection against the acid rain. That's it. 

Venus also provides the tools to keep us fed! It's atmosphere is made primarily of carbon dioxide, even above the dense horrible clouds. What likes carbon dioxide? Plants from Earth!! Lets grow FOOD on FLOATING PLATFORMS in the SKIES of VENUS.

This whole idea actually came out of a NASA effort exploring potential Venus colonization. The program was called HAVOC - the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept.

It hasn't really gone anywhere, and as far as I know there are no real plans to revisit it. Unfortunately, from a practicality standpoint, Mars is a much more viable target for human colonization. Not only is it better poised for outer solar system exploration, being farther away from the sun, but living on Venus would come with too many complicated contingencies. In the event of a major failure on Venus, you'd need to fly to another base, or fuck off all the way to orbit. I understand why people aren't really in a hurry to live somewhere where landing on the surface means certain death.

But that doesn't mean I won't be forever and always enamored by the skies of Venus. Here's one of the artist concepts to come out of HAVOC.

I want to be there.