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There are panels missing from both wings; I photographed much of Enterprise while in the museum last month. Here's my closeup shot of this:

DSC_1717

DSC_1716

The tires aren't original; one of my photos of the nose gear revealed the stamp "NOT FOR FLIGHT".

DSC_1751

And yes, that is THE Spacelab module back there!

There are panels missing from both wings; I photographed much of Enterprise while in the museum last month. Here's my closeup shot of this:

DSC_1717

DSC_1716

The tires aren't original; one of my photos of the nose gear revealed the stamp "NOT FOR FLIGHT".

DSC_1751

And yes, that is THE Spacelab module back there!

There are panels missing from both wings; I photographed much of Enterprise while in the museum last month. Here's my closeup shot of this:

DSC_1717

DSC_1716

The tires aren't original; one of my photos of the nose gear revealed the stamp "NOT FOR FLIGHT".

DSC_1751

And yes, that is THE Spacelab module back there!

High Dynamic Range is also a useful tool in photography, especially for digital photographers who find that the useful dynamic range of a digital camera is less than that of an equivalent film camera. Multiple-exposure bracketing can be combined with the use of special processing software in order to yield images that would be difficult to obtain with a digital camera, or sometimes even a film camera.

Photoshop CS2 includes this technology out of the box (Photoshop CS2 HDR) -- in the demo page, notice that the sky is properly exposed as well as the vegetation on the hill in the foreground; this would be impossible to capture with many cameras. As the article linked by the original post states,

"HDR, or High Dynamic Range, is ... designed to emulate ... lighting to closely mirror the changes we see in the real world."

And indeed that's what the photographic equivalent does. Unlike a camera, our eyes can properly "expose" the ground as well as they can the sky in the same scene. In fact, this is mentioned on pages 2 and 3 of the linked article in the original post.

More:

HDR - High Dynamic Range Compression - a Photoshop plugin

The Future of Digital Imaging - High Dynamic Range Photography (HDR)

Aizu University's Atrium High Dynamic Range Source Images

High dynamic range imaging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stitched HDRI

If you would like to try this yourself, many digital cameras have a bracketing feature. I'd suggest at least five exposures, separated by one half stop or one full stop. However, it does not work well for moving objects since there will be a short amount of time that elapses between exposures.

Here is my first attempt:

High Dynamic Range Candy Corn

This particular shot was taken with a Canon EOS 1Ds MkII camera and manual bracketing, although I've made other successfull attempts with the bracketing feature of my Nikon D70.

With only a robots.txt entry to stop Google, my site's entry in their index reads:

www.buran.org/
Similar pages

... I assume it's drawing off the domain name itself (the search term was "buran") to put the site in the index. The robots.txt file reads:

# go away
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

I am a space shuttle miniatures collector and occasionally pick up well-made replicas of the Shuttle (mostly orbiters so far) when I see interesting ones that I wouldn't mind showing to visitors. One evening I was shown a photo of the original Sky Lynx in an eBay auction, and I was hooked -- I bid on one that same week and now am the owner of an original, though decal-less, Sky Lynx shuttle orbiter in excellent condition. It now resides next to several other miniature shuttles and is by far the best of the collection (and the largest; I haven't yet assembled the huge 1/72-scale full stack kit I have in the closet.)

While this one is not made of metal like many of the others were, the detail is right on. While the crew access door on the port side is missing, it does have a lot of other details that I'm stunned a Transformer would have considering the age range of the intended audience. It has the radiator panel lines inside the payload bay doors (half-length bay only due to the way it transforms), the various lines on the wings where different groups of tiles meet each other, the gray (on the real thing) carbon-carbon tiles on the wings' leading edges, hints of the actuators for the rudder on the tail, nearly all of the maneuvering jets (there are 44, total, on the real thing) and even the star tracker portion of the navigation system is there! It's even got the two upper windows just forward of the payload bay (used for docking with the ISS and when working with large payloads.)

I was absolutely wowed when I took it out of the shipping box. Here's a few photos for those who are feeling nostalgic:

With main engines temporarily not installed; with HST repair mission patch

"Mother, is that you?" (transformed)

Nose-up reentry attitude (supported by its feet; seems to be flying!)

and finally ...

Half-length payload bay with "satellite" covering tunnel for tail transform mechanism

It's not for sale.

I am a space shuttle miniatures collector and occasionally pick up well-made replicas of the Shuttle (mostly orbiters so far) when I see interesting ones that I wouldn't mind showing to visitors. One evening I was shown a photo of the original Sky Lynx in an eBay auction, and I was hooked -- I bid on one that same week and now am the owner of an original, though decal-less, Sky Lynx shuttle orbiter in excellent condition. It now resides next to several other miniature shuttles and is by far the best of the collection (and the largest; I haven't yet assembled the huge 1/72-scale full stack kit I have in the closet.)

While this one is not made of metal like many of the others were, the detail is right on. While the crew access door on the port side is missing, it does have a lot of other details that I'm stunned a Transformer would have considering the age range of the intended audience. It has the radiator panel lines inside the payload bay doors (half-length bay only due to the way it transforms), the various lines on the wings where different groups of tiles meet each other, the gray (on the real thing) carbon-carbon tiles on the wings' leading edges, hints of the actuators for the rudder on the tail, nearly all of the maneuvering jets (there are 44, total, on the real thing) and even the star tracker portion of the navigation system is there! It's even got the two upper windows just forward of the payload bay (used for docking with the ISS and when working with large payloads.)

I was absolutely wowed when I took it out of the shipping box. Here's a few photos for those who are feeling nostalgic:

With main engines temporarily not installed; with HST repair mission patch

"Mother, is that you?" (transformed)

Nose-up reentry attitude (supported by its feet; seems to be flying!)

and finally ...

Half-length payload bay with "satellite" covering tunnel for tail transform mechanism

It's not for sale.

I am a space shuttle miniatures collector and occasionally pick up well-made replicas of the Shuttle (mostly orbiters so far) when I see interesting ones that I wouldn't mind showing to visitors. One evening I was shown a photo of the original Sky Lynx in an eBay auction, and I was hooked -- I bid on one that same week and now am the owner of an original, though decal-less, Sky Lynx shuttle orbiter in excellent condition. It now resides next to several other miniature shuttles and is by far the best of the collection (and the largest; I haven't yet assembled the huge 1/72-scale full stack kit I have in the closet.)

While this one is not made of metal like many of the others were, the detail is right on. While the crew access door on the port side is missing, it does have a lot of other details that I'm stunned a Transformer would have considering the age range of the intended audience. It has the radiator panel lines inside the payload bay doors (half-length bay only due to the way it transforms), the various lines on the wings where different groups of tiles meet each other, the gray (on the real thing) carbon-carbon tiles on the wings' leading edges, hints of the actuators for the rudder on the tail, nearly all of the maneuvering jets (there are 44, total, on the real thing) and even the star tracker portion of the navigation system is there! It's even got the two upper windows just forward of the payload bay (used for docking with the ISS and when working with large payloads.)

I was absolutely wowed when I took it out of the shipping box. Here's a few photos for those who are feeling nostalgic:

With main engines temporarily not installed; with HST repair mission patch

"Mother, is that you?" (transformed)

Nose-up reentry attitude (supported by its feet; seems to be flying!)

and finally ...

Half-length payload bay with "satellite" covering tunnel for tail transform mechanism

It's not for sale.

I am a space shuttle miniatures collector and occasionally pick up well-made replicas of the Shuttle (mostly orbiters so far) when I see interesting ones that I wouldn't mind showing to visitors. One evening I was shown a photo of the original Sky Lynx in an eBay auction, and I was hooked -- I bid on one that same week and now am the owner of an original, though decal-less, Sky Lynx shuttle orbiter in excellent condition. It now resides next to several other miniature shuttles and is by far the best of the collection (and the largest; I haven't yet assembled the huge 1/72-scale full stack kit I have in the closet.)

While this one is not made of metal like many of the others were, the detail is right on. While the crew access door on the port side is missing, it does have a lot of other details that I'm stunned a Transformer would have considering the age range of the intended audience. It has the radiator panel lines inside the payload bay doors (half-length bay only due to the way it transforms), the various lines on the wings where different groups of tiles meet each other, the gray (on the real thing) carbon-carbon tiles on the wings' leading edges, hints of the actuators for the rudder on the tail, nearly all of the maneuvering jets (there are 44, total, on the real thing) and even the star tracker portion of the navigation system is there! It's even got the two upper windows just forward of the payload bay (used for docking with the ISS and when working with large payloads.)

I was absolutely wowed when I took it out of the shipping box. Here's a few photos for those who are feeling nostalgic:

With main engines temporarily not installed; with HST repair mission patch

"Mother, is that you?" (transformed)

Nose-up reentry attitude (supported by its feet; seems to be flying!)

and finally ...

Half-length payload bay with "satellite" covering tunnel for tail transform mechanism

It's not for sale.

Here is the comparison photo I keep on my web site. Buran looks like the US shuttle because it was based on the US shuttle in order to avoid having to carry out all-new research; the Shuttle was already tested and known to work well by that point.

Also: Photos from Sydney of the aerodynamic Buran 002 test article.

Here is the comparison photo I keep on my web site. Buran looks like the US shuttle because it was based on the US shuttle in order to avoid having to carry out all-new research; the Shuttle was already tested and known to work well by that point.

Also: Photos from Sydney of the aerodynamic Buran 002 test article.

I've got no plans in the immediate future to chip my Golf 2.0, but I did put in GTI headlamps with fog lights (cost me all of $250 buying parts used; I now have much better lighting in bad weather.) When the car's ten years old and the powertrain warranty runs out, I'll swap in a VR6 engine and a Tiptronic tranny. It'll cost $5,000-$7,000 I'm sure, but that's a lot cheaper than a new car.

Yep, just about any VW engine will fit in any VW body. All the mount points are there.

Then there's big brake kits, those Bosch Xenon HID upgrades you mentioned (1,300 or so for a Golf/GTI), adding the MFA computer to a car that didn't come with it (now that's a very cool hack -- someone on the VW site I'm on has done it), etc. etc. ...

I've played with a VAG-COM on my car. Nifty. :)

Are you a Vortexer?

That's Buran, the Soviet space shuttle. This photo is showing the Russian/Soviet equivalent of the U.S. Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. I do believe the An-225 might have been custom-developed for this purpose, an extremely expensive proposition. The United States, on the other hand, transports the shuttle orbiters on a widely-available commercial aircraft -- in fact, the early photographs of the SCA clearly reveal American Airlines markings faintly visible on the skin of the plane! (Both 747s have since been repainted white with a blue stripe.)

They are not stock, though:

Modifications to tail to counter increased wake turbulence from Orbiter

SCA without orbiter, displaying attachment fittings like those on External Tank

SCA carrying orbiter Enterprise about to land

N905NA served with American until 1974. The other, N911NA, is from Japan Air Lines and was acquired by NASA in 1988.

I've got pictures of one of the Buran test articles if you're wondering how this Soviet version of the Space Shuttle looks from up close.

Birds can be acclimated to the presence of people. In falconry, this is called "manning" a bird (nothing to do with spacecraft carrying people). I visited the World Bird Sanctuary here in St. Louis a few weeks ago (pictures are in here) and few of the birds I looked at were afraid of people. There are even a few photos on the net -- I went with friends -- of some of us standing next to some large raptors that I could almost say posed for the camera!

It's similar to the way stray cats that are mistreated will often be afraid of the new owners who take them in but over time lose their fear (one of the cats we had when I was a child was named 'Fraidy Cat' for this reason, which later became 'Fred E. Cat') ...

My Fractal Planet Gallery might interest some people...

(The most recent one uses another plugin, developed by the same people -- to add a nebula background. Yes, I know the planet should drown the stars and nebula out. It looks cool, and I created that pic to be my desktop background image!) :-)

This page has information about the Buran program in depth, including engineering background and a number of illustrations, including a few showing Buran docked to Mir. This, of course, never came to be following the program's cancellation after a single flight in 1988. The U.S. shuttle did visit in the mid- to late 1990s, however, as a prelude to the ISS program.

This may be a photo of the model that is on eBay, but I can't be sure. This might be, too -- in fact, the probability is rather high.

From the site:

"There was severe criticism of the decision to copy the space shuttle configuration. But earlier studies had considered numerous types of aircraft layouts, vertical takeoff designs, and ground- and sea- launched variants. The NPO Energia engineers could not find any configuration that was objectively better. This only validated the tremendous amount of work done in the US in refining the design. There was no point in picking a different inferior solution just because it was original."

The blue on the eGolf is probably either Galactic Blue or Indigo Blue (medium lovely somewhat-deep blue and a deep blue, respectively.) Though there's a chance that it's Jazz Blue, which is an iridescent blue that was only really imported into North America in Canada, though there are a few running around the US.

I'm very impressed with the accuracy, especially for a toy -- before the decals are applied, nearly every tile line, fill/vent port, and contour are scored in. It seems to be based on Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis but not Enterprise or Columbia (tile patterns different on the latter two.)

The original Generation 1 Transformers are my favorites. The modern ones are a pale shadow.