Ok, before I tell my rocketry story I have another story to tell briefly, directed at OL JR. My curiousity got the better of me and I googled the device in your signature the "X-87B Cruise Basselope." Wouldn't you know it, MOST of the top results were to forums you post on with that same signature, two were links to pictures that appear to be a different version of your avatar pic.
op:
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hehehe... Yeah I found that awhile back as an avatar choice on some forum or other... can't remember where exactly...
When I was in high school, I worked in the library for two years... got the first run of all the "comedy cartoon" books (Far Side, Calvin/Hobbes, Bloom County, etc) anthology type books that came in... I LOVED the Farside and Bloom County ones... there was a cartoon in one of them, single pane, full page... it was a picture of this pathetic looking pot-bellied sway-backed Bassett hound with antlers, with a rubber band stretched back to his tail, with an atomic bomb sitting on his back, labeled "X-87B Cruise Basselope" (or something to that effect) with a big red "TOP SECRET" "stamped" across the top of the page... the picture was labeled like a military-style cutaway diagram of a weapons system, and it had two sidebars showing the "mission modes" of the Cruise Basselope. The first inset pane was labeled "Launch Phase" and showed an MP standing next to an open dog carrier from which a wet nose was protruding, yelling "SIC!" and pointing to the horizon... the "Cruise Phase" followed, showing the dog bounding along, bouncing along the ground under the radar, heading for target. The "Deployment Phase" showed the dog standing on a hill overlooking the Onion Dome Spires of Moscow, next to a "Moscow" town limit sign, with the rubber band flinging the atom bomb off his back toward the town with a loud "ZING!", and then came the "ENJOY A MILKBONE IN A COMMIE-FREE WORLD PHASE", showing the dog sitting on his haunches in the smoldering rubble, happily munching away...
Sorta summed up a lot of the stupidity I watched with the war scares and arms race of the early 80's when I was in middle school... scared the crap out of me... Remember "The Day After", "Threads", "Special Bulletin", "Countdown to Looking Glass", Tom Brokaw (who was a junior reporter then, WAY before his anchoring stint) doing news specials on nuclear attack, the turmoil over the Pershing II's, and later cruise missiles, in Germany, the neutron bomb debate, the Soviet counterplacement of SS-20's in East Europe, etc... Hard for a kid to understand, but I guess it beat Watergate and ABSCAM and Cambodia, which seemed to be all that was on TV except the Waltons until I was about 6-8 years old... then we got Reagan.... never a dull moment!
Anyway, I used to have a copy of that cartoon in the clear cover of my binder all thru high school... I was an "FFA/rocket/library/drafting nerd" and so my nickname was "OL(d) JR" (after JR Ewing, from the "Dallas" TV show that I watched too much of, so I've kept that ever since... went with "luke strawwalker" because OL JR is too short for most forums to allow you to have as a name... Luke for obvious reasons (Skywalker) and a "straw walker" is a component inside a grain threshing combine which is fitting for a farm boy "Star Wars" nerd... LOL
I added the signature line a few years back after going to the "Power of the Past" Steam Show in Winimac, Indiana... guess you guys up north kinda go stir crazy during the long bouts of cabin fever when everything's covered with snow, because there are some REALLY intricate "gizmos" there made by tinkerers with WAY too much time on their hands... one was a box with a motorized device underneath it, a concoction of gears, cams, levers, springs, and latches... the box mounted over it had a hole on one end, and a slot, with a piece of fake plastic cheese mounted on the other end, with a large flyswatter hovering over it. It was labeled "TOP SECRET!!! Dept. of Homeland Security Prototype-- estimated cost, $52 million each" or something to that effect... when the device was switched on, a little rubber mouse would emerge from the hole, "run" down the slot in the box top, get to the cheese, and just as the flyswatter started to come down to smash him, he'd "run" back down the track and hide in the hole, leaving the flyswatter to vainly smack the spot where he was right in front of the cheese... a whir and click later, and the flyswatter would "reset" itself up above the cheese, and the mouse would again venture out to try to steal the cheese again... It was HILARIOUS to watch... Seemed a typical government 'over-engineered' and certainly OVER EXPENSIVE type of solution to a straightforward problem... LOL
Later! OL JR
PS... I got into scratchbuilding quite a bit too... had a lady at church that used to save all the wrapping paper tubes she could come across... kept me in building supplies for a LONG time...