Preparedness Notes for Thursday — February 18, 2021

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Today is the birthday of astronaut Theodore Cordy “Ted” Freeman (February 18, 1930 – October 31, 1964.) Ted Freeman and his wife Faith were friends of my mother and father.  Both my father and Ted Freeman were stationed at Bryan Air Force base in the early 1950s, and they rented houses three blocks apart, in College Station, Texas. The families often played the card game Bridge together. Faith and my mother were also in a play production together. Oddly, the Freemans named their daughter Faith, and they referred to her as “Faith, Junior.” (They couldn’t call her “Little Faith”, for fear of “Oh Ye of Little Faith” jokes.)  A decade later, while training as an astronaut in the Gemini space program, Ted was killed in a birdstrike flying accident, while flying a T-38 Talon jet trainer. Ted Freeman was the first casualty of NASA’s manned space program. Fittingly, Ted Freeman’s name is inscribed on a memorial plaque that was left on the moon, by Apollo astronauts. – JWR

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Today we present a review article by our Editor At Large, Michael Z. Williamson. Mike is a true Renaissance Man. He is a retired military NCO, award-winning sci-fi novelist and anthologist, blogger, essayist, historical reenactor, bladesmith, gunsmith, and handloader. This article shows his expertise with the latter.


4 Comments

  1. This is off topic, so don’t be upset. But I have one comment you may enjoy or not. So much for the problem of Global Warming, seems like “an inconvenient truth” is not nearly so important right now. Might want to get some fossil fuel plants back on-line.

    1. Research really helps get it right: This is from Dallas…https://www.dallasnews.com/news/weather/2021/02/17/texas-largely-relies-on-natural-gas-for-power-it-wasnt-ready-for-the-extreme-cold/

      “Failures across Texas’ natural gas operations and supply chains due to extreme temperatures are the most significant cause of the power crisis that has left millions of Texans without heat and electricity during the winter storm sweeping the U.S.

      From frozen natural gas wells to frozen wind turbines, all sources of power generation have faced difficulties during the winter storm. But Texans largely rely on natural gas for power and heat generation, especially during peak usage, experts said.”

      Building more fossil fuel facilities is useless when they are not hardened to extreme temperatures.

      Carry on

  3. JWR quoted Terry Pratchett yesterday.

    Here’s another from the same book.

    “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
    ― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

    Carry on

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