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Incredibly pat historical occurrences

In 1943 the Allies went to great lengths to keep any advance knowledge of the Casablanca meeting between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt from leaking, lest the Germans get wind of it and took action. In fact the Germans did find out; the Spanish somehow acquired quite detailed information on the Casablanca conference and promptly passed the information on to the Abwehr, giving the Germans plenty of time to plan something. The Germans didn't do anything because a misunderstanding in translating the message from Spanish to German made them think the meeting was taking place in Washington - 'Casa Blanca' being Spanish for 'White House'.
 
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Franklin D. Roosevelt being both the guy who saved the US from the Great Depression and defeated the two most evil empires ever while being afflicted with polio, would, in another TL, be seen as the author just wanking some obscure politician for fun.

"Let's take the nephew of that big badass President Theodore Roosevelt - because his son would be too obvious - and let's wank it a bit... oh no, too easy, he needs to be a crippled, yet a crippled BADASS, because it is even cooler."
 
In french Facebook sounds like Fessebouc. Fesses is butt, while BOUC mean... ram (as in > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram a male sheep)

Hence facebook, or fesses de bouc, means "the butt of a male sheep" which doesn't seem very attractive when you think about it.

Google is hardly better, because it is ananagram of gogole, which is slang for dumb. "Espèce de gogole = you idiot"
 
Neither Hitler nor Geobbels nor Goering looked like the aryan stereotype nazi Germany adorated. By the standards of aryan beauty, they should have shot themselves.
 
During World War Two, one of the most important sources for British Intelligence on what was going inside Nazi Occupied Europe wasn't Enigma, it was the German press, despite it being heavily censored. Reading newspapers isn't as exciting as decrypting messages, but can provide a lot more detail; it just doesn't make for a thrilling story.

More insight is derived from OSINT than any other source to this day. It's not glamorous because collection is risk-free and almost effortless, but analysis is more important than collection by a massive margin (says the former collector).
 
In french Facebook sounds like Fessebouc. Fesses is butt, while BOUC mean... ram (as in > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram a male sheep)

Hence facebook, or fesses de bouc, means "the butt of a male sheep" which doesn't seem very attractive when you think about it.

Google is hardly better, because it is ananagram of gogole, which is slang for dumb. "Espèce de gogole = you idiot"

What if Facebook had been founded by someone with the actual English/American name of Buttram?
 
Be reassured, Yahoo (Ihahou) doesn't mean anything bad in French language. Nor Twitter (twouitère, also it sounds a bit like tourtière - a pie as in an apple pie), or Instagram (instagrame). Or Whatsapp - Houatsap !

By contrast be cautious when using anything with the word "chat" inside. First, "chat" in french is "cat" Except the "t" inside do no pronounce. If you pronounce it, as in the english word "chat" then it sounds like the female cat - chatte.
Then you guess where this is going... the unfortunate word for "female cat" (the very chatte) has the very same (and very gross) meaning as his english counterpart... pussy.

Hence snap-chat... fortunately "snap" doesn't meanch anything in French. Snape-chatte ?

But long before Snapchat was Internet chat (chat rooms, anybody remember them ? met my girlfriend there, in 2005).

When chatrooms invaded France in the early 2000s, you guess there were all kind of very stupid and lame jokes around that word. Meow rooms, cat rooms, and obviosuly, pussy rooms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

Reddit sounds like "redite" which mean "same word repeated twice". Une redite.

Pinterest is quite funny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gascon_language
In Gascon slang "pinter" means "getting drunk"
Hence "pintes et restes" exactly mean "get drunk and stay" (rester = to stay) "Allez, viens pinter et reste dormir après" (come have a drink and stay at home afterwards)
 
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Of Russian rocket engines, Matryoshka dolls, and Ukraine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll

1955 a serious rival to Serguey Korolev enter the space race - Yangel. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Yanguel

He beats Korolev on the ICBM front with his (murderous) R-16 but lose on the civilian space race. Because he is an ukrainian, he goes to Leonid Brezhnev - another Ukrainian - and together they outsource yangel rockets to that Soviet Republic. Which become, de facto, a space power, and build the largest and deadliest Cold War ICBM - the R-36, aptly nicknamed Satan by NATO.

Fast forward to 1976 and the decision to build Energiya Buran. Construction of the Zenit boosters is outsourced to the former Yangel shop in Ukraine. Zenit can also fly alone and replace the Proton as a heavy lifter. The RD-170 engine of 800 tons thrust and advanced technology, however, will be manufactured in Russia, making the Zenit an unfortunate Ukraine - Russia bastard rocket (you can see where this is going, hint, 2014 and Dombass). Zenit stage 2 engine, the RD-120, is licence-build in Ukraine.

The Zenit RD-171 (derived from the RD-170) is a tech wonder developed by Glushko. Four combustion chambers, 800 tons thrust total. Zenit flies in 1983-84 then Energiya (1987) and then Buran (1988) just in time for USSR to collapse and Russia to take over their rocket industry... minus the large Yangel chunk now stuck in indepandant Ukraine.

Whatever, the 90's saw a U.S gold rush on Russian advanced rocket tech.

And there come the Matryoshka dolls rockets.

The RD-171 is cut in half, 2 combustion chambers, 400 tons of thrust.
This is rebranded the RD-180.

Then the RD-180 is cut in half once again: one combustion chamber, 200 tons thrust.
This is called the RD-190 series.

So the RD-170 / RD-180 / RD-190 are very much the M. doll concept applied to rocketry.

Where it goes very strange is the respective fates of these Matryoshka engines.

The RD-171 stick with Zenit, the bastard rocket. by 1994 Russia and Ukraine team with Boeing, and all three creates... Sea Launch, where Zenits are fired from a modified oil rig stuck right under the equator for max launch efficiency. Note: Sea Launch went bankrupt twice, in 2009 and 2013, even before the Euromaidan / Dombass crisis. In 2016 the assets were taken over by a Russian company. Zenit goes home, screw Ukraine.That was Putin message. Same for ILS, by the way.

The RD-180 find its way into the EELV program... it powers the Atlas V.

As for the RD-190 series... they found their way into Orbital Sciences Antares-200 that haul Cygnus cargo ships to ISS. Antares was actually outsourced from Ukraine, who build it using... Zenit tooling.

But that engine is also to power Angara, the brand new Russian rocket to replace Proton, the bastard Zenit, the cranky Soyuz...

In the end

- Zenit & RD-170
- Atlas V & RD-180
- Angara / Antares & RD-190 - oh, and South Korea, too, forgot this one ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naro-1

Are kind of matryoshka dolls rockets with matryoshka dolls engines.

Which mean that these engines are not only matryoshka dolls, they are also deeply interwined between Ukraine, America, and Russia... and the growing crisis between them.

Remarquably, despite things like Dombass or... Robert Mueller report over Trump / Putin "interactions", neither these engines nor the ISS have been impacted. So far, of course. Indigenous production of the RD-180 in the U.S is considered feasible, but future belongs to the brand new Vulcan without a Russian engine.

As for Ukraine, they are currently "purging" their rockets of Russians engines and components. Since they manufactured Zenit stage 2 (the RD-120) they are actually copying that engine to create their own RD-170 / 180 / 190 family of staged combustion engines, the RD-801 / 810 / 815. They will use these engines with Zenit tooling (as for Antares !) to create the Cyclone 4M and Mayak boosters. Further adding Ukrainian matrioshka dolls rockets to the US and Russian ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone-4M

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak_(rocket_family)

In the immortal words of the vulcans "Zenit. Live long, and prosper."
 
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during the Cold War the USA evidently had strategic reserves of titanium. Pretty useful to build Lockheed SR-71 and A12 spyplanes to get a glance at the Soviet Union. Except that Lockheed found the hard way US titanium was junk. Better titanium was needed, purer... and guess which one and only country in the entire world had such titanium ? the Soviet Union, the very target of the said SR-71s... imagine their faces !!

"Hello dear ennemies we need to buy titanium from you. We need it to build spyplanes to spy... you."

Yet hardly an issue for the CIA which churned a network of empty shell andd scam companies which managed to procure titanium from USSR.

One of the Cold War most bitting ironies really. When the Soviet spend 20 years firing 4000 missiles against SR-71s, they were unknowingly trying to shoot down... their very own titanium that was flying over their heads at 80 000 ft and 4000 km per hour.
 
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during the Cold War the USA evidently had strategic reserves of titanium. Pretty useful to build Lockheed SR-71 and A12 spyplanes to get a glance at the Soviet Union. Except that Lockheed found the hard way US titanium was junk. Better titanium was needed, purer... and guess which one and only country in the entire world had such titanium ? the Soviet Union, the very target of the said SR-71s... imagine their faces !!

"Hello dear ennemies we need to buy titanium from you. We need it to build spyplanes to spy... you."

Yet hardly an issue for the CIA which churned a network of empty shell andd scam companies which managed to procure titanium from USSR.

One of the Cold War most bitting ironies really. When the Soviet spend 20 years firing 4000 missiles against SR-71s, they were unknowingly trying to shoot down... their very own titanium that was flying over their heads at 80 000 ft and 4000 km per hour.

This is entirely in line with the Soviet joke:

'Why will the US never go Communist?'

'I don't know. Why?'

'Because then where would we import our wheat from?'.
 
This is entirely in line with the Soviet joke:

'Why will the US never go Communist?'

'I don't know. Why?'

'Because then where would we import our wheat from?'.
By Brezhnev's time most of the Soviet R&D came from stealing Western and specifically US technology. That was one of the bombshells of the Farewell dossier. As a countermeasure, the CIA allowed carefully sabotaged software to fall into the hands of Soviet spies.
 
There's a few weird coincidences between the 1926 World Series and the 2016 NBA Finals.

-Both feature a fledgling mega-dynasty as the losers (Yankees/Warriors)
-Both went to seven games.
-Both had a midwestern team win their first championship (Cardinals/Cavaliers)
-Both had a superstar fall short (Curry missed his last two shots in game seven, Ruth tried and failed to steal second with two outs in the ninth)
-Both stars had their later successes make those failures seem less consequential.
 
Some good ones related to the rocket equation. Mostly random musings and rough maths.

delta-v to orbit = 9.81*specific impulse*ln(rocket mass with the tanks full / rocket mass with empty tanks)

- delta-v is fixed. For Earth orbit, it is 9 km per second, or die.
- 9.81 is fixed by Earth size and mass, we can't do anything about it
- specific impulse: hydrogen 465 seconds is mostly negated by the much lower density, draggier tanks. All the other propellants are much lower in specific impulse but also much denser, exactly zeroing the hydrogen advantage
- mass fraction (empty tanks versus tanks full): there is a logarithm stuck right in front of it.

So in a remarquable perversity denounced first by the great Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, we are screwed all over the place.

It is just insane.

Some more perversity: 9.81 is for Earth, but can be different on other bodies. Basically, the smaller the body, the smaller the number, the easier the rocket equation.
Moon and Mars are pretty low, Mars is 3.73 instead of 9.81 and that result in a huge gain. going into orbit from Mars surface is like a walk in the park, much, much less than 9 km/s. Moon is even easier, but the real pervert is Venus.

Venus gravity is 8.87 and that's just enough a gain to make a chemical SSTO viable with a decent payload, unlike Earth. Going into Venus orbit is 8.3 km/s, a big gain compared to Earth.

Which mean that, had in the early history of the solar system, the Venus and Earth bare rocky bodies had swapped places, we would live on a lower gravity planet, just enough to make our rocketry issue a little easier.

Also, the all time record specific impulse for a rocket engine is held by the RL-10B in vacuum with a huge engine bell: 465 seconds.

Now if you calculate a SSTO with such specific impulse, its top speed is 8.6 km/s. Which mean, it would reach orbit, if barely, on Venus (8.3 !) but NOT on Earth (9.2 !)

In order to reach Earth orbit, thus getting from 8.6 to 9.2, specific impulse should rise from 465 to 485, except that the RL-10B is just like Usain bolt 9.58 record: unbreakable, the edge of the edge.

In the end we are screwed
a) because our planet rocky body is just 10% too big, hence 9.81
b) because a smaller one exists nearby, Venus, 10% smaller and 8.87
c) the max specific impulse of our rocket fall short by 20 seconds, delta-v ends right between low Venus orbit and low Earth orbit
d) liquid hydrogen very high specific impulse is exactly zeroed by its lower density, making its tanks heavier than all other propellants
e) the rocket mass fraction is screwedby a logarithm right in front of it

Because of all this, rockets a) drop empty stages to get around the logarithm but b) a) mean the stage are not recovered - except by Elon Musk, obviously.
 
When the Americans launched the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, the first act was to classify all of the work of the physicists involved in order to prevent any word of the project from leaking to the Germans and to America's Soviet allies; the project became one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war.

The Soviets found out about the American program anyway, informed in part by the very secrecy designed to prevent them finding out. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, such was the need for manpower that many of the Soviet Union's top physicists joined the Red Army, serving the Soviet Union in ways far removed from their leading skills; one of these was Georgy Flërov, one for the early discoverers of spontaneous nuclear fission. Flërov joined the Red Air Force, serving in 1942 as a lieutenant in a reconnaissance squadron based at Voronezh, south of Moscow. In his spare time he would relax by reading international physics journals at the university library; what he noticed, in fact what was glaringly obvious to him, was that the American’s had stopped publishing articles concerning nuclear physics.

Flërov was not unfamiliar with the military potential of nuclear fission; in 1941 he had proposed a gun-assembly nuclear weapon almost identical to the ‘Little Boy’ bomb dropped on Hiroshima in ’45. For him the silence of America’s leading physicists meant that their research was now subject to military censorship, and that could only mean one thing: America was building an atomic bomb!

In 1942 Flërov wrote a letter to Stalin, warning that “a revolution will occur in military hardware” and “it may take place without our participation.” Stalin passed the letter on to Beria, who alerted the NKVD’s network of informers in America to look for whatever they could find out about the new American nuclear weapons program; the Manhattan Project was hardly a couple of months old and the cover was already blown.

(In 2012 Georgy Flërov’s contribution to nuclear physics was recognised with element 114 being named Flerovium in his honour.)
 
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Lady Gaga - how akward that sounds, either in english or French. Gaga actually mean "nut / nutty" "T'est gaga ou quoi ?" = "are you NUT ?"
So Lady Gaga = Lady nutty. But there is worse. IT also sounds like "Les dix cacas" which exactly means (drums rolling) "the ten poo" "the ten dong"
 
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