Here are photos from my visit last week.

Anyone know where to buy these balloons?

Early in World War II, German U-boats were sinking alarming numbers of Allied freighters & oil tankers along the eastern seaboard of the United States, with a peak of around 80 ships being sunk per month. This was clearly a National emergency & we needed a technological miracle. Since noisy patrol aircraft could not “sneak up” on these enemy submarines in order to attack them successfully, a stand-off, glider-type weapon was proposed. Ultimately, the BATair-to-surface missile (ASM-N-2: Special Weapons Ordnance Device - SWOD Mk 9) was the first fully automatic guided-missile to be used operationally by any of the combatants during WWII (first combat drop: April 23, 1945; first combat success: April 28, 1945) and was active in the arsenal of the United States Navy from 1945 through 1953. During the latter parts of WWII, there were many wire-, radio-, and television-guided bombs, either glider-type or self-propelled, that were used by the Germans and Americans (e.g., Henschel Hs-293, GB-4), however, the BAT was the very first, fully-automatic, weapon system, the archetype of what we now term "fire and forget" weaponry. Once launched, theBAT went solo, guided to its target by an early S-band radar unit (see below), developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Family Tree & History of the ASM-N-2 BAT Glide Bomb

The Pentagon is speeding up delivery of a colossal bomb designed to destroy hidden weapons bunkers buried underground and shielded by 10,000 pounds of reinforced concrete.

Call it Plan B for dealing with Iran, which recently revealed a long-suspected nuclear site deep inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom.

The 15-ton behemoth — called the "massive ordnance penetrator," or MOP — will be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal and will carry 5,300 pounds of explosives. The bomb is about 10 times more powerful than the weapon it is designed to replace.

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Here photos from my recent visit.

From Wikipedia

The F-1 is a rocket engine developed by Rocketdyne and used in the Saturn V. Five F-1 engines were used in the S-IC first stage of each Saturn V, which served as the main launch vehicle in the Apollo program.

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I recently had a chance to visit the Kalamazoo Air Zoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan. 

The Zoo is one of the best air museums in the midwest and well worth a visit.  The museum has expanded to include a nice collection of space related items in addition to its great collection of modern jets and World War 2 era aircraft.  Their web site does a poor job of communicating the size of their collection.

Photos from visit can be found here.

A great video explaining the basics of plasma propulsion.

JDAM is a low-cost guidance kit that converts existing unguided free-fall bombs into accurately guided "smart" weapons. The JDAM kit consists of a tail section that contains a Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System and body strakes for additional stability and lift. The incorporation of the Extended Range wing kit extends JDAM's standoff range. The baseline JDAM has been sold to the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, as well as to 22 international customers.