[ExI] zoom memorial

[Keith Henson]

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> I mentioned earlier that Steve Van Sickle had passed on.

snip

> Steve was a very special guy, a rare combination of brains and kindness.  He
was a rare example of absurdly smart but it didn't go to his head.  He
maintained his humility and humanity.

Knowledgeable as well.  In talking with Steve I never found a subject
that he didn't know at least as much about as I did.  On some subjects
he knew much more than I did.  Several years ago, I started writing a
story about a cult that built nukes.  Steve helped with getting the
leadin section accurate.

The Armageddon Archives

Chapter 1 Pipe Dreams

Acrid smoke from the previous shot thinned out as the turret vent
blowers sucked it away.

"Sabot!" the tank commander voice came through the earphones over the
muted sound of the tank's turbine engine.

The gunner moved the sights away from the tank he had just wrecked.
He centered the M1A2's 120 mm M256 smooth bore cannon, on the next
Iraqi tank. Its crew had parked it (according to the rangefinder) 2735
meters distant in a grove of palm trees. The loader slammed a sabot
round into the chamber and locked the breech. The gun fired, rocking
the 68-ton tank back on its treads.

The discarding sabot round left the tank's main gun at 1600 meters per
second, nearly a mile a second. The aluminum and plastic spacers that
kept the 25 mm round centered in the barrel fell off in the first
hundred meters. After that the dense depleted uranium, fin stabilized,
armor piercing round lost little of its velocity.  It arrived at the
Iraqi tank 2 second later with devastating effect.

"Turkey shoot." The tank driver said over the intercom. "You guys
think there's anyone in those tanks?"

"One way to be sure." The commander replied. "Sabot!"

After blasting the turret off the last tank, the Abrams started off
down the road toward Baghdad.  It left behind 30 pounds of depleted
uranium, almost pure U238, which had formed the long, lethal Sabot
rounds. (Post analysis confirmed the driver's suspicions. The crews
for the three T72 tanks were not foolish enough to sit in the parked
tanks.)

snip

> Keith do feel free to jump in here and save me from me.  You might know more Steve's research than I do.

I don't.

> Today our weary world is sorely missing its Steve Van Sickle.

About all we can do is try to avoid what happened to Steve.  If you
are living alone, and are signed up for cryonis, you need to have
someone check on you every day.

Or we need an electronic system such as an Apple watch programmed to
alert someone when your pulse fails.  The hardware looks like it will
do the job, the programming needs to be done.

Keith