We've posted before about
the space elevator concept — an elevator going from the surface of the Earth into orbit.
It's not possible to build one with current technology. But what about a lunar space elevator? That's an elevator that would go from the surface of the moon into lunar orbit.
Spacecraft systems engineer Charles Radley argues that "A Lunar Space Elevator [LSE] can be built today from existing commercial polymers; manufactured, launched and deployed for less than $2B."
I'm guessing that dollar amount would need to be multiplied by about 100 to be closer to the actual amount.
More info:
"The Lunar Space Elevator, a Near Term Means to Reduce Cost of Lunar Access"
source: wikipedia
Remember my rule for this series? The artwork in question had to be made during Khrushchev's lifetime. Well, I thought 1968 was too late. But no! Nikita lived till 1971.
The artist's Wikipedia page.
Info from wikipedia:
In addition to its official insignia, during B-2 stealth bomber test flights, some members of the 509th Bomb Wing procured an unofficial insignia involving an alien, the legend To Serve Man (referring to a famous Twilight Zone episode), and the inscription Gustatus Similis Pullus (Dog Latin for "Tastes like chicken").
You know, once you state the idea, it just all seems so obvious and practical.
Read the article here.
Asheville Citizen Times - July 16, 1975
According to a sixteenth-century legend, recounted in the 1560 manuscript
Histoires Prodigieuses by Pierre Boaistau, there once was a woman who suffered through a five-year pregnancy.
Here's the story as summarized by Dr. Irvine Loudon in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (May 2003):
The woman in question was Marguerite, the wife of George Walezer, who lived in 16th-century Vienna. In 1545 she became pregnant and felt the normal movements of the baby during pregnancy. When she went into labour with 'furious and sharp pains' she called her mother and some midwives. During the long labour they heard a noise and commotion like a cracking inside the mother and thereafter the fetal movements ceased. They assumed, correctly it seems, that the baby had died. The midwives used all their skills but failed to deliver either the baby or the placenta.
Some days later, feeling her pains return, Marguerite summoned a series of most eminent doctors from far and wide, imploring their help. The doctors merely gave her a series of drugs but with no effect. Marguerite therefore 'resolved to let nature take its course and bore with exceeding pain for the space of four years this dead corpse in her stomach'. In the fifth year she finally persuaded a surgeon to open her up and remove the child which was 'half rotted away'. The operation took place on 12 November 1550. Marguerite soon recovered and was 'so full of life and so healthy that she can still [i.e. in 1559] conceive children'.
"The operation on Marguerite of Vienna"
As unlikely as the story may sound, Dr. Loudon argues that it could be true:
Marguerite’s ordeal may have been due to an abdominal ectopic pregnancy. Most ectopic pregnancies occur when the fertilized ovum becomes implanted in the fallopian tube, and a tubal ectopic pregnancy almost always dies after two or three months of gestation. But just occasionally the fertilized ovum becomes implanted in the wall of the abdominal cavity. Sometimes, it is thought, abdominal ectopic pregnancy starts with implantation into the fimbriated end of the fallopian tube and then migrates to the abdominal cavity and invades the peritoneum secondarily...
It may be that Marguerite’s dead baby was never delivered vaginally because it was never in the uterus. Being shut off, so to speak, from the outside world, a dead baby could have escaped being the source of an infection...
In this case, when a surgeon finally agreed to operate, he did not perform a caesarean section; he simply opened the abdominal wall and promptly saw and removed the remnants of the baby. The placenta would not have been a problem because in abdominal ectopics if the baby dies the placenta soon shrivels and can be left intact. This one had five years to shrivel.
Staten Island Advance - Jun 7, 1975