300+ passenger spaceships may not seem so far-fetched when you consider these mid-sixties proposals from a major aerospace firm:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/rombus.htm

http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/IthacusSSTOCatalogPage.htm

For details, see here:

http://pictures.depop.com/b0/1663161/139539835.jpg

Read it and sigh at what might have been…..

Went there in person along with an old friend. It was a wonderful event — one group of historic aircraft after another, banking around the World War II Memorial and the Washington Monument and then flying low along Independence Avenue past the National Air & Space Museum.

Already there are a number of videos of it posted on You Tube. Here’s one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CYX6B4VipU

Some links of interest:

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

http://www.lusitania.net/

http://fortune.com/lusitania-gregg-bemis-legal-battle/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/remember-the-lusitania/2015/05/01/349d8424-ef87-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9_story.html

One pilot Was Locked Out of Cockpit Before Crash

Multiple news outlets are now reporting that story, e.g.:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/25/pilot-left-cockpit-france-plane-crash-couldnt-get-/

As a kid, I knew a family that had one of these:

http://www.austinamericausa.com/

They called it “The Pumpkin” because of its squat lines and brownish-orange color. It was their second car and they used it only for errands around town. No major problems, but a lot of little ones.

There’s a great article on the Gamma, “The Plane That Had It All,” in the March 1971 issue of American Aircraft Modeler. You can get a scan of it from this fellow:

http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/magazines/vintage-american-aircraft-modeler-list.htm

Justice delayed, but no longer denied.

Several years ago, a new book on the disappearance of the M/V Joyita was published. It cleared the vessel’s first mate and a physician passenger, both the victims of posthumous slanders. The physician was on an errand of mercy (amputation) and the first mate was on his last voyage before retiring. Both men were married and had children.

On a happier note, the Pearl Harbor radar, an SCR-270, survived the war and was used for post-war aurora research in Canada. It’s now in the National Electronics Museum, Linthicum, Maryland, near BWI-Marshall Airport.