Splashdowns are iconic of the Apollo era, synonymous with the triumphant end of a mission. Very early in the space age, these images became linked to the idea of success. I mean, of all the pictures of Al Shepard's Freedom 7 flight to put on the cover of Life Magazine, they picked this one. However much Splashdowns became part of America's identity of its space agency, they weren't NASA's favored way to end a mission. They were complicated, expensive, and dangerous. So much so that between 1961 and 1965, NASA spent $165 million trying to land the second generation Gemini spacecraft on a runway using the paraglider wing called the Regallo wing. Hello everyone, I'm Amy and this is The Vintage Space. If you're new here, welcome. If you've been hanging out for a while, welcome back. Today we're going to be revisiting an old favorite of mine, the Gemini Regallo wing. This is a landing system I came across ages ago and ended up writing about for my master's thesis, and I kind of fell in love with it. So much so that I got this gorgeous Gemini Regallo tattoo a few years ago. I've always loved it for being an outlier, a strange, attempted break in the iconic Splashdowns of the Apollo era that doubles as an excellent example of just how creative things were in the era when no one really knew how best to fly in space. I've written about it before, but looking back, the old blog was way too brief. It's high time we delve into the full story. So let's go. Before we get into the how and why of NASA wanting to land Gemini with a paraglider, we have to look at the state of the art of the Mercury program, and namely, Splashdowns. When you take a step back and think about it, why were these highly skilled pilots turned astronauts, who had no shortage of experimental flight experience under their belts, passively plucked from the ocean like wet rats? It starts with the earliest days of NASA's existence and the initial decision to use capsule-inspired spacecraft. I have a video about the Apollo Command Module that goes into detail about this decision right here, but the short version. In late 1958, when NASA was newly created and the United States was starting to plan its first human spaceflight program, it fell to the Space Task Group within NASA to figure out what that spacecraft was going to look like. There were different options on the table. Some were aircraft-inspired. An orbital variant of the rocket-powered X-15 was technologically within reach, and the one-man shuttle-inspired or shuttle-like dinosaur was also already under development. Other possible vehicles were nuclear warhead-inspired. The warhead-inspired option was most fiercely championed by Max Faget, an engineer who had been working with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' Langley Research Center, and transitioned to NASA when the NACA effectively became the space agency in 1958. He also, it should be noted, was a member of the STG. Faget had been working on a problem pretty unique to nuclear warheads. As they fell to the Earth, friction from the atmosphere generated heat, and that risked being enough to detonate the warhead safely in the air instead of destructively on its target. Faget and his team had been working on different shapes of warheads, trying to see if they could find one that offered natural protection from that friction, and they found their answer in a blunt capsule. The blunt capsule falling to Earth created a cushion of air that, coupled with an ablative heat shield, adequately protected the payload. Replacing the warhead with a human, they'd quickly realized, was a simple way to bring an astronaut back from orbit. So interesting was this prospect that in March of 1958, months after Sputnik launched and months before NASA's creation, the NACA and ARPA, the precursor organization to DARPA, undertook a joint study of whether ballistic capsules could be man-rated, a.k.a. made safe for a human occupant. Their study, which drew in industry contractors, revealed that it was a viable, if crude, way to fast-track a man into space. When presented with this method and the preliminary research, the Space Task Group recognized the value of the ballistic approach, and also recognized it came with a trade-off. Simple ballistic capsules would make Mercury a crash program. It might get an American into orbit fast, but the technology wouldn't be something NASA could build on and expand for years or even generations going forward. It would be a sort of dead-end program. The Space Task Group ultimately picked the blunt capsule for Mercury because speed was the top priority. NASA's ultimate goal was really to get an American in space before the Soviets launched one of their guys. NASA awarded the spacecraft contract to the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in January of 1959, who finalized its design with close help from Max Faget. It emerged as a truncated cone with a rounded blunt bottom. The asteroid inside was positioned on his back relative to that rounded bottom in a contoured couch, a setup that offered natural protection from the G-forces associated with reentry. Once NASA had the shape and design of the Mercury capsule, the next question was how to bring it back home. Of course, the fall through the atmosphere was a given. The whole point of the ballistic capsule was protection during the reentry phase. But the physical touchdown on Earth was still up for discussion. In 1959, the only payloads that had returned from orbit were the Corona Spy Satellites film canisters. This program, which I'm working on a deep dive about, launched satellites to photograph sites of interest in the Soviet Union and satellite countries. But because the technology wasn't able to transmit those images back via telemetry with high quality, the CIA opted to physically recover the film for processing and study. The film canisters were thus jettisoned and left to fall through the atmosphere. Parachutes deployed once the air was thick enough, slowing their fall towards the ocean, at which point an aircraft flew over top of it to snag the chute or its shrouds with a trapeze-like hook. This worked for a film canister, but it wasn't an option for the much heavier and larger Mercury spacecraft. The only applicable technology was the parachute-slowed descents. There were, by and large, three ways NASA could land Mercury. A parachute for a slow fall to a soft touchdown, adding some kind of wing element to make the vehicle glide to a landing, or a sort of hybrid of the two. A maneuverable parachute or parasail to control the landing to a pre-selected point like a runway. Research on that last option was being done at the Langley Air Force Base, led by engineer and avid kite flyer Francis M. Regalo. He'd been working on these designs since the mid-1940s, and his latest was a deployable, flexible, two-lobed, single curvature suspension-load wing that was a sort of hybrid between a parachute and a wing. His challenge was storing it and getting it to deploy cleanly, but Regalo was convinced that if he could solve that problem, his paraglider could eventually replace both parachutes and rigid wings as a landing system. He presented the design to NASA as a potential landing system for Mercury. The Space Task Group ultimately decided that the paraglider didn't fit into its Mercury program objectives. The program was focused on orbiting an astronaut, keeping him alive in space, and recovering both him and the spacecraft safely. Since every part of that mission was unknown, the STG didn't want to add another unproven technology into the mix. Splashdowns were expected to be much simpler and had a lot of benefits, especially in the context of all the unknowns about spaceflight. It was a method that took advantage of the natural cushioning of a water landing. A touchdown on land would likely require a significant, and therefore heavy, shock-absorbing system. The oceans also provided a huge target. The United States doesn't have a big expanse of land that would be a safe place to bring down an uncontrollable spacecraft. The ocean is huge, and the U.S. has a sizable navy that can access it. NASA took for granted that it had the U.S. military at its disposal since the space race was an extension of the Cold War. But it wasn't as simple as having a splashdown point. The reentry and descent was ballistic, so NASA could determine the landing point for a mission based on the spacecraft's pre-planned entry point into the atmosphere. Having ships on hand in that primary recovery zone was thus simple. But anticipating things going wrong meant NASA needed secondary and contingency zones, alternate points in a mission where the spacecraft could reenter the atmosphere and still have recovery forces in the corresponding splashdown areas. A simpler challenge was ensuring the astronaut and spacecraft were buoyant. Landing in water tanks made short work of developing flotation devices. As a final step to make sure the spacecraft would be visible, dye was set up to leak from the capsule to make sure it stood out to aircraft flying overhead. All these measures were in place to make sure the spacecraft would be visible to the recovery crews nearby. The mission would end with the spacecraft hoisted out of the water by a helicopter and deposited onto the deck of a waiting aircraft carrier. In early 1959, NASA chose the simple, parachute-assisted splashdown in the ocean. A skirt was added as an additional shock absorber on impact. But even after committing to splashdowns, director of the space task group Robert Gelruth was sufficiently interested in the potential of the regalo wing that he approved a research program on the paraglider in 1960. It was just something NASA was investigating. It wasn't linked to either the Mercury program or the lunar Apollo program that was in the earliest stages of planning. Nevertheless, it was there, quietly under development. Also in 1960, Robert Gelruth proposed a follow-up program to Mercury. Mercury was only ever intended to be a simple proof of concept program. So even though no missions had yet launched, many were keen to start planning the next phase of America's space exploration. Mercury Mark II was designed as an upgraded Mercury program with the objective of researching and solving the unknowns associated with the future lunar program through a slow, methodical approach. It would reprise the ballistic, truncated cone spacecraft. But this time, it would be large enough for two astronauts on board and have more sophisticated systems and capabilities, like the ability to step outside for a spacewalk and reaction controls to change planes in orbit. Preliminary program goals added long duration flights of up to two weeks and pilot-controlled land landings to the list. But events in the first half of 1961 took a huge toll on NASA's planned approach. On January 20th, John F. Kennedy took office. On April 12th, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth, dealing a huge blow to America's idea of its technological superiority. On April 15th, the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs dealt a second blow to the still new Kennedy administration. When Al Shepard launched on the inaugural Mercury mission on May 5th, it didn't quite level the playing field. His 15-minute suborbital arc was a far cry from a full orbit. America needed a win and Kennedy turned to space. I have a video that details this decision right here, but in short, Vice President Lyndon Johnson met with NASA Brass who promised a moon landing by the end of the decade. They said it could even be done by 1967 if personnel and adequate funding were diverted to the program immediately. LBJ passed the recommendation to JFK, who eventually agreed it was the best option. He committed to the lunar landing goal on May 25th, 1961, before a joint session of Congress. America had nine years to land a man on the moon. The new goal gave NASA direction for the foreseeable future. Apollo had been taking shape behind the scenes almost since NASA's inception, and now it was brought to the fore. And in support of the new emphasis on Apollo, the Mercury Mark II program went through a metamorphosis. Mercury Mark II was already meant to support a future lunar program, but now there was a concrete mission and timeframe. The program became, in essence, a bridge to the moon. The program goals were three-fold aims directly related to Apollo, to achieve long-duration flight, to rendezvous and dock two vehicles in orbit using the vehicle's own propulsion system, and to perfect the method of pinpoint landings. Physically, Mercury Mark II, which was also built by McDonnell, was Mercury's larger cousin with some notable changes. It had onboard power and support for two astronauts for up to two weeks, the projected length of a lunar mission. The hatches were larger, designed to open in-flight for easy egress for a spacewalk. Those hatches also featured larger windows to help astronauts sight rendezvous targets. Later missions were scheduled to have crews rendezvous and dock with the U.S. Air Force's Agena to practice the delicate dance of connecting two vehicles in space, as Apollo crews would do around the moon with the command and lunar modules. This meant the spacecraft would be far more maneuverable than Mercury, giving the astronauts a significant role to play compared to their near-passenger status on Mercury. As for the landing, simple though splashdowns were, there were definitely issues. There was the potential that, after a mission, an astronaut could drown. After splashing down from his Liberty Bell 7 flight in July of 1961, the hatch on Gus Grissom's spacecraft opened prematurely. Water rushed in, leaving Grissom to struggle his way out of the rapidly flooding capsule. Things got worse when the recovery helicopter arrived. It fought to save the spacecraft for minutes, unaware that Grissom was close to drowning in the choppy waves from the rotor wash. The water-logged capsule was so heavy, the helicopter's landing gear was actually pulled into the ocean, dipping dangerously low over Grissom. He was finally pulled out of the water, and his helmet was found floating inches away from a 10-foot shark. After Scott Carpenter's Aurora 7 flight in 1962, he fired his retro rockets late and landed more than 250 miles off-course. He exited the spacecraft and waited for recovery crews for nearly an hour in his emergency lifeboat, and was lucky he didn't need to use the shark repellent he had on board. Another issue was cost, both monetary and in manpower. The recovery contingent on hand, waiting to pull John Glenn out of the ocean after his Friendship 7 flight in 1962, comprised 24 ships spread out between multiple landing zones, as well as a number of U.S. Air Force planes flying in the area to help visually locate the descending spacecraft. There were also specialized crews on hand. Navy SEAL is ready to jump into the water to help stabilize the spacecraft if need be. Not only did the sizeable recovery force have to train for their role in the flight, they deployed before every launch attempt. In Glenn's case, his launch came on the 11th attempt, meaning recovery crews had been in position 10 times before the mission actually flew. Wally Shiraz's Sigma 7 flight in 1962 is the most extreme example. His mission had 27 Navy ships spread out between all three recovery zones. All in all, every mission meant thousands of men spent months practicing the recovery of one man from the ocean, which is especially nuts when you consider the Mercury astronauts were brilliantly accomplished pilots who could probably land anything that was airborne. A self-sufficient landing method would reduce both the cost and complexity of this final mission stage. Splashdowns also had mechanical ramifications owing to the exposure to saltwater. It corroded the metal, putting onboard data at risk of being lost or damaged. The single-use ablative heat shield also did some damage to the spacecraft's exterior, which, combined with the corrosion, meant there was next to no chance to refurbish a spacecraft for a second launch. Though the ballistic capsules weren't meant to be reused, bringing them down in a way that promoted refurbishment would at least be a first step towards reusability in space, which in turn saves cost. Not only were there ample reasons to move away from Splashdowns, the Mercury Mark II had one big design change that opened the potential for a new landing system, its launch escape system. In Mercury, a small rocket-powered launch escape tower sat atop the spacecraft to pull it free of the launch vehicle if something went wrong early in the mission. This new spacecraft eschewed this method in favor of airplane-inspired ejection seats, which the commander engaged with a D-ring under his seat. The ejection seat was lighter than the launch escape tower, and that meant Mercury Mark II had some wiggle room in terms of mass to add a more complicated landing system. Another factor in the push away from Splashdowns was the astronaut's preference of not being plucked out of the ocean like wet rats. Because NASA already had an astronaut corps when bringing this new program to fruition, the men flying it had a chance to have their voices heard during the process, ensuring it was truly a pilot's spacecraft. Gus Grissom ended up working on organizing the spacecraft elements around the pilot, and one of his main concerns was visibility for rendezvous. To test the proposed half-moon-shaped windows, he blacked out the canopy of an aircraft safe for a hole in the same shape and size as McDonnell designers wanted for the Mercury Mark II. After managing to fly with that window shape and size, he okayed it for the spacecraft. The final configuration gave both astronauts a pilot-approved view, and with the spacecraft on its side, they were seated as though in a cockpit, the perfect position to pilot the spacecraft to a runway landing. With a truly pilotable layout in the spacecraft, NASA considered a number of different landing systems. One option was to use a parachute for a slow fall to Earth, decelerating the spacecraft with retro rockets right before touchdown, just like what the Soy used as today. But the system added too much weight. Not to mention, some argued that psychologically, parachutes were usually an emergency safety measure, not something astronauts wanted to rely on as their primary land-landing system. Another option was a parasail, a sort of maneuverable parachute. The astronaut would be able to maneuver just enough to avoid big objects during his final descent, but it was really a slightly controlled fall. NASA would still need to set up various landing zones with support crews to help if, say, the sail dragged the spacecraft along on a windy day, or the hot metal lit a dry area on fire. There was some discussion about modifying the spacecraft to behave like a lifting body, a wingless vehicle that, by virtue of its aerodynamics, lands like an unpowered airplane. But that was such a significant redesign that the idea never got very far. Then there was the regalo wing. By this point, more research had honed the design into a deployable, inflatable delta wing supported by a collapsible structural frame. The wing offered enough maneuverability to negate the need for a large landing area. A runway with regular support crew would be more than enough. It was also a lightweight option that could be easily incorporated into the existing spacecraft design. The only external modification needed would be landing skids. One of the strongest proponents for the regalo wing was Jim Chamberlain, the Canadian-born ex-adro-aero engineer who, in 1961, was head of the Mercury Mark II program. He not only liked the regalo wing technically, he saw it as a potential PR benefit. Because of its similarity to an aircraft, he thought it would be a good way to show tax-paying Americans who were funding the space program, that NASA engineers were doing something better than the Russians. After weighing the options, the paraglider emerged as the frontrunner with splashdowns retained as a backup method. The first step in bringing this new landing system to life was finding someone to build it. NASA awarded three contractors, Goodyear Aircraft Corporation, North American Aviation, and Ryan Aeronautical, $100,000 each and two months to present its bid. North American emerged victorious, getting a green light from NASA to press forward on the paraglider's development in November of 1961, the same month it was awarded the Apollo Command Module contract. With the contract in place, the program goals were updated to include controlled land landings as the prime recovery mode. In January of 1962, the Mercury Mark II program was given a designation change and called the Gemini program, so called because the two astronauts brought to mind the astronomical twins Caster and Pollux in the constellation Gemini. That same month, development on the paraglider began in earnest. The first were drop and deployment tests. A scale boilerplate spacecraft with a scale glider attached was dropped from a helicopter allowing flight crews, engineers, and astronauts alike to study the mated configuration's behavior in flight. Deployment tests followed a similar procedure. A model was dropped from a helicopter allowing engineers and designers to study how it unfurled and learn how best to pack it on an actual mission. Wind tunnel tests at the Ames Research Laboratory revealed the amount of lift produced by the glider, allowing engineers to understand the aerodynamics of the spacecraft-paraglider combination. After three months of preliminary tests, North American was formally awarded the paraglider contract on April 16, 1962. These preliminary drop, deployment, and wind tunnel tests yielded an equal mix of successes and failures. Most significant among the latter was a failure of the paraglider's integrity. It ripped apart in wind tunnel tests, suggesting it might not be strong enough to be flight worthy. But engineers weren't deterred. The failures had all happened under conditions more extreme than any anticipated on an actual mission, so it wasn't worrying enough to cancel the program. Even though unpredictable weather is just a reality of any point on Earth. These early issues yielded a handful of design alterations that cemented its place in the overall program timeframe. In mid-1962, the formal Germany schedule called for the first unmanned mission to be recovered by splashdown in September of 1963 and the second unmanned test flight to end with a paraglider landing a month later. As of May 24, 1962, the paraglider was expected to land every Germany mission except the first one. Once construction began on full-scale paraglider hardware, astronauts got involved. They needed to learn how to fly it. For a bunch of military test pilots used to jets in high-speed, high-performance planes, piloting the paraglider was an entirely different beast. There were no ailerons or rudder pedals to manipulate control surfaces. Flying the Germany paraglider was all about shifting its center of gravity. During descent, once the glider had been deployed and inflated, it was connected to the spacecraft by five cables. So in essence, the spacecraft was suspended below the glider. The astronaut could control the cables from inside the spacecraft, pulling on a cable to tilt the angle of the wing relative to the spacecraft. That change in angle changed the direction of lift produced by the wing, which in turn moved the spacecraft accordingly, continually moving the spacecraft relative to the wing generated momentum that eventually compounded to give the pilot considerable directional control. The challenge of flying this wholly unconventional vehicle caught the attention of X-15 pilot Milt Thompson. Working at the Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California, which is now the Armstrong Flight Research Center, he first learned about the system after attending a briefing from Francis Regallo. It struck a chord with Thompson. In addition to the X-15, he was working on the dinosaur program and was training to fly the first lifting bodies. These wingless vehicles were able to fly by the aerodynamics of their shapes, and since they were blunt, Thompson was keen to see if they couldn't be the right way to land spacecraft from orbit. The paraglider was a far cry from a lifting body, but Thompson saw it as a precursor, a sort of proof of concept for unconventional vehicles that was inexpensive to produce and could yield compelling data in support of future technologies. And he was curious, not to mention excited at the prospect of flying something so new and non-traditional. He asked director of the Flight Research Center, Paul Bickle, if he could build and fly a simple trainer, but his request was denied. Undeterred, Thompson recruited his friend and fellow X-15 pilot Neil Armstrong to build their own test vehicle. Thompson's idea was simple, a sort of kite with a reclining tricycle suspended below it, and since both he and Armstrong were engineering graduates, he figured they could easily make it themselves at home. They started pilfering supplies from Edwards, and eventually, Bickle caught on and relented. He approved a small paraglider program, likely to make sure he didn't lose any of his pilots to a homemade death trap. Seven weeks and $4,280 later, Thompson had a proper program and a vehicle, the Parsev-1, short for paraglider research vehicle. It was exactly the reclining tricycle under a two-lobed sail he'd first dreamed up, so simple that the blueprints had actually been a chalk outline on the floor of the welding shop, but it was given a registration number from the FAA so its airworthiness was certified before it ever left the ground. The fixed wing was the same two-lobed sail as the Gemini regalo wing, but this one, a frame, covered in Irish linen. Control came from an overhead control stick that went in front of the pilot, and it tilted the wing forward and aft or side to side, shifting the center of gravity, just like the Gemini regalo would. Test flights in the Parsev began at the end of January 1962. First were ground tow tests. The Parsev was connected to a tow truck by a cable and towed along the runway until it lifted a few feet off the ground. This gave Thompson a safe chance to get a feel for the controls, and he found it laggy, as though controlled by a wet noodle, but overall okay. He moved on to free flight tests in March, which had the Parsev towed to altitude behind a plane, at which point he could sever the tow line and make the landing from 5 or 600 feet. Thompson described the first free flight as one of the most difficult flights of his career. The weight of the Parsev meant the tow plane took longer to reach altitude, and Thompson was struggling to keep the little vehicle flying level and above the plane to avoid being knocked around by the turbulent air in its wake. The tow line tended to go slack when the plane turned, meaning the Parsev's airspeed varied constantly. Muscling it into control took a lot of strength. Once the tow line was severed, it became a lot easier to fly, and observers watching from the ground said it looked like it was floating smoothly and effortlessly to the runway. Thompson got so caught up in the celebration after his successful landing that he agreed to a second flight right away. Only when he was airborne did he realize he was mentally and physically exhausted. He actually had to use his leg to keep the Parsev steady to save his arm strength for the free flight. With the program seeing early successes, Thompson checked out another pilot, Bruce Peterson, who was also working on lifting bodies so was no stranger to unconventional aircraft. He crashed the Parsev on his first ground tow test, demolishing the vehicle and landing himself in the hospital, though none of his injuries were serious. The fully new Parsev 1A had a few quality of life upgrades, including a more conventional center stick and cables attached to the wing for better maneuverability. All in all, it was much easier to fly than its predecessor. In mid-1962, Thompson became a consultant to NASA on the paraglider program. In the fall, NASA sent astronauts to the Flight Research Center to fly the Parsev. Neil Armstrong had just been selected for the astronaut corps, so Thompson checked him out in the open trainer before his move to Houston since he was likely in line to fly a Gemini mission. Gus Grissom went out to Edwards to fly the Parsev 2, setting an altitude record for the program of 700 feet before making a smooth landing on the runway. Thompson's pet program had proven the paraglider concept, but North American's flight hardware was plagued with problems. There were persistent issues developing the actual wing. In full-scale drop tests, it had a nasty tendency to disintegrate, and attempts to save it with an emergency parachute also failed, destroying test vehicles upon landing. Technical setbacks delayed more tests, raising questions about whether the paraglider would ever be ready in time for Gemini flights. The spacecraft and overall program were moving forward on schedule. This was the one element of the program where NASA was losing confidence. In October of 1962, budget pressures led to the first mention of cutting the paraglider. Increasing issues and waning interests led to a series of revisions from the Gemini program office to the paraglider contract with North American. Jim Chamberlain was determined to salvage the system he loved, but not at the cost of the program's support of Apollo. The revised contract made no reference to man-Gemini flights. The paraglider was effectively downgraded to a research program with only potential inclusion in Gemini. Tests resumed under this new contract in early 1963, but with one major change. Though no one could deny Jim Chamberlain was a brilliant engineer, he wasn't regarded as the most able program manager, and was replaced by Charles Matthews. The paraglider's strongest proponent was no longer in charge. In May of 1963, the decision was made to delay the use of the paraglider until the 10th Gemini mission, but that didn't last. On February 20, 1964, George Miller announced to the Gemini program office that all 12 Gemini flights, two unmanned and 10 manned, would end in Splashdown. As though holding out for miraculous, lassimonic success of the paraglider project, the Gemini program quarterly report ending February 29, 1964, still listed paraglider landings as the mode for the last three missions, but it was a short-lived hope. In April, the paraglider was phased out of the Gemini program altogether. The final swing of the acts came the following month. Representatives from NASA and North American met on May 4, and agreed to continue the test flight portion of the program only. It was dead as far as Gemini was concerned. Charles Matthews officially deleted it on June 12. But it lived on as a research project. In May of 1964, the Office of Advanced Research at the Flight Research Center assumed responsibility for finishing the program. Work continued with the TTV, or test-toe vehicle. The TTV was a full-scale, single-seat Gemini with a pre-inflated wing over top of it. This took inflation and unfurlment out of the equation, allowing engineers and pilots to focus solely on its flight characteristics. Drop tests simulated the final landing after a turn from orbit. The pilot seated inside the spacecraft was lifted to altitude by a helicopter, then dropped, giving him plenty of space to guide it to a runway landing. The first pilot to try his hand in the TTV was Charles Hetzel, who'd flown the Parsev under Milton Thompson's direction to get a handle of this new way of flying. Captive flights in July of 1964, wherein the TTV remained tethered to the helicopter the whole time, went well. But the first free flight became disastrous. As soon as he was dropped from the helicopter, the TTV went into a violent spin. Hetzel managed to eject before the TTV slammed into the desert floor, but he broke ribs in the process. Test pilot Don McCusker took Hetzel's place when the TTV test resumed towards the end of the year. On December 19th, he was towed to altitude in the TTV, the tow line released, and he glided for five minutes before hitting the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base hard. Hard enough that the landing was considered a controlled crash, sending McCusker to the hospital days before Christmas. North American beefed up the vehicle's shock absorbers before tests resumed. McCusker flew the TTV again, as did North American test pilot Jack Swigert. McCusker made eight flights, and Swigert made five, both earning the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' 1965 Octave Channout Award for their contribution to aeronautics. But two pilot successful landings weren't enough to save the paraglider. The Gemini spacecraft's ultimate design included limited lift capability by virtue of its aerodynamics. Its center of gravity was offset such that any roll motion the astronauts made translated into lift, cancelling or reinforcing lift as needed. This gave the crew some control over their landing point, but it wasn't much. About 300 miles downrange and 25 miles side to side of their descent path. But not landing Gemini isn't actually the end of the paraglider's story. North American continued working on the paraglider after 1964, as per the research contract with NASA. And the system had enough proponents that there was some talk of using the paraglider to land Apollo. That idea never really gained traction. The timeline of Apollo was just far too tight. So talk turned instead to using the paraglider as part of the Apollo applications program. The follow-up to Apollo designed to make use of program hardware after the moon landing was achieved. Initial program goals proposed in 1965 included an Earth Orbiting Laboratory and a semi-permanent lunar outpost. These were loftier goals because Apollo applications wasn't expected to have a tight schedule. There was wiggled room to bring in new ideas, including the paraglider. In 1967, NASA issued a contract to North Ventura, the subcontract who had built the sail for North American, to establish the suitability of the para-wing for providing manned spacecraft with a capability for controlled descent in a shallow glide. But the paraglider was canceled from Apollo applications within two years. By 1969, NASA was shifting firmly towards a winged space shuttle concept in pursuit of reusability in space. And the Apollo applications program itself was looking less long-term and more placeholder before that new vehicle flew. Rather than change a system that was working well, NASA decided all missions using Apollo hardware would splash down. The paraglider almost had a life with the U.S. Air Force. The flight research center being at Edwards Air Force Base meant, of course, the military was following the program's development. And it was interested in trying to get it to a flight-worthy state for its own manned space program. The single pilot shuttle-type dinosaur had been canceled on December 10th of 1963 in favor of a military version of Gemini called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. Full video is in the works. This military Gemini was slightly larger and modified to include a laboratory accessible through a hatch in the heat shield. Although announced to the public as the next step in proving man's utility in space, the program was predominantly a reconnaissance platform. The paraglider would make it so this military craft could land at its secure military location at the end of a mission. The Air Force was keen to take advantage of NASA's existing research. But the paraglider's failure with Gemini didn't fill the Air Force with confidence. As technical difficulties led to the glider being phased out of Gemini, the same happened to its inclusion in MOL. The Air Force finally conceded it needed a lot more time and research to turn it into a viable system, and that would increase the cost of the program, which wasn't in great shape anyways. There was only ever one MOL mission, an unmanned test, before the program was canceled. What I always loved about the paraglider is that even though it looks like a weird outlier in the Splashdown era, it made sense. It's reflective of forward thinking about reusability in spaceflight, and reflective of the creative problem solving that was responsible for so many of NASA's early successes. Not to mention, when you look into just how problematic Splashdowns were, you start to understand why this unconventional method was so appealing at the time. But my favorite thing about the regala wing is how great an example it is of how many elements of the space race aren't commonly known. Finding the paraglider when I was working on my master's thesis inspired me to keep digging out these lesser known stories, and so many of them, like this one, are just too good not to share. I hope you guys enjoyed that super deep dive into a wildly obscure technology. There are more deep dives in the works, so definitely subscribe so you don't miss any upcoming videos. If you want to learn more about NASA's backstory, my first book, Breaking the Chains of Gravity, has got you covered. And of course, my new book, Fighting for Space, is out now. It's the dual biography of Jackie Cochran and Jerry Cobb, leading up to the issue of women astronauts in the early 1960s. That's gonna do it for me for today. Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you guys next time. Special shout out to all my Patreons and YouTube members for helping make the vintage space possible.


with the greatest relief pitcher of all time Mariano Rivera who of course was a key part of that 98 championship team Mariano you were part of a lot of great teams but when you think about your 98 team besides all the ability that you guys clearly had what stood out most that made you guys maybe the greatest team of all time well I mean first of all thank you for this time and I think that what made us different than the other teams that we have was that more than team we were family you know we take care of people's kids friends I mean players kids family family like family do you know and I believe that was different that we always were about I mean worry about somebody else than us in the good way and I think the reason the result of that relationship that we have was a tremendous season


Hey guys, Thunder E here and this is the video we're waiting for, the Xbox Series X versus the PlayStation 5. Now I know you're looking for a battle to find out which is the best, but we're going to let you know which is best for you. Now stay till the very end because we have a special giveaway for you guys and don't forget to hit the subscribe button, notification icon and let's jump in. Okay, taking a look at both console, let us start off with design and hardware. Now Microsoft went to their very different approach with something more traditional PC like, while PlayStation with the PS5 worked with something more stylish and different. In terms of artistic views, you can go whichever way you want, but one is definitely larger than the other. The PlayStation 5 is a behemoth of a console, it dwarfs the Xbox Series X even though the Xbox Series X is supposed to be the more powerful console. Now in terms of hardware, we know internally they're all using AMD GPU and CPU, which is great, so giving us a really good performance. They both have Blu-ray drives, of course you can get a digital PlayStation 5 and you can get the Xbox Series S, but we're staying with these two consoles. Now in terms of connectivity and ports, this is where things differ a little bit. Microsoft has a USB port in the front, same for the PlayStation, USB 3.1, while they have two USB ports in the back for Microsoft and an expansion slot for, of course, your storage. While PlayStation has a USB Type-C port in the back, which is nice in front, so you do have that there as well, at least some future proofing. Speaking of future proofing, the PlayStation 5 comes with Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, which means faster downloads, faster connectivity, while the Xbox Series X is Wi-Fi 5, which is really fast, but not as fast, of course, as Wi-Fi 6. Now the other thing both consoles have, of course, is next-gen gaming features. We're talking about HDMI 2.1, which means you get things like variable refresh rates, 4K 120, all those beautiful things that you can clearly see on that LG TV. I want to thank LG just quickly for sending over the 48-inch OLED. It's not a sponsor or anything. I've been using it to game with both consoles and it's been a great experience. But here's where things differ with both consoles. So Microsoft provides you a HDMI 2.1 cable, which allows you to take a full advantage of that LG OLED TV to go through all the future sets like VRR, 4K 120, again the high resolution, while Sony does not provide you with HDMI 2.1 cables. They provide you with these cables, which are HDMI 2.0, which means those features I mentioned you cannot achieve. To say it again, Sony does not provide you those cables, which to me is mind-blowing, absolutely mind-blowing. Anyway, let's look at the controllers. Both of them have next-gen controllers, one's more next-gen than the other. And I have to say, while I do like the X-Box controllers, one of my favorite fit controllers, Sony has done something completely different with the PlayStation 5 controller, making it so much more usable. It feels really premium, the detailed control, the haptic feedback, the touchpad, just the ergonomics of it, make it really unique. And I think this is something that they've done only a good job. Wow, Microsoft said, look, the Series X controller from the X-Box 1X controller would make some slight improvements to it, stop broken, let's just enhance it. Sony went and improved the controller. I have to say this is probably one of the best next-gen controllers out there. Okay, so the big thing you guys concern about, of course, is games. Now this next-gen console, we promised 4K 120, we promised 8K, all these different things. What about the games and how well do they play? Now it's a very tricky situation because this is one of the few launches where they have very few big next-gen titles. Microsoft has very few, leading more in third-party, while Sony has a couple for you to go with. So let's start off with Sony with the two games that they at least are highlighted. One of them is Spider-Man, Miles Morales, which looks absolutely fantastic. It's a great looking game, highlights the functionality of the PlayStation 5, looks really, really good, and plays well. It's a short game, but again it's worth picking up for the PlayStation 5. Now when we move over to the next game, which is Demon's Soul, which of course is really an older game. It looks nice, it plays well, to me it's a bit of a dull game. It's something I'll say you might want to take a look at or, you know, look at some reviews, but it does still highlight some of those next-gen features, but Spider-Man is the key game to get. Now you can play some of the older games, in my case, like God of War, which look good, looks slightly more enhanced, but of course takes advantage of how well it plays on the PlayStation 5. Now on the Xbox side of things, it's a bit different. Microsoft is leading more in third-party games and also leading heavily on Xbox Game Pass. So one of the big games I've been playing is Assassin's Creed Valhalla. It's a good looking third-party game, plays well on the console, but what Microsoft really wants you to do is take advantage of Xbox Game Pass. And for me, this is where Microsoft has a different path from what Sony wants you to go with first-gen titles. Microsoft says, look, we've got a library of games at your fingertips. So one of the great things is when I started, I was able to go back and play some Titanfall 2, which is really good, and also I was able to access games from EA Play, which is part of Xbox Game Pass, which means Jedi Fallen of Order, which I haven't played. I can play immediately. I can also play FIFA as well, and Madden, if you're a big Madden fan. So games that a lot of people like to play, I think, might be more situated, especially in the group setting, with your friends on the Xbox Series X. You've got a huge library of games there. Of course, games like Watch Dogs, Yakuza, they're a great library of third-party games, and also games you can play on Xbox Game Pass that takes a full advantage of the system. Now let's move over to listening as features. Now this is where they differ quite extensively. So with the PlayStation 5, the PlayStation Hub has a couple of features that are really unique. One of them is, of course, recording and sharing. It's a very simple feature to hit that share button, take a screen capture, hit the record button, and save it and share it directly to YouTube right there from your PlayStation. You can also edit on your console, smooth and easy. While you can do that on the Xbox, Sony just has that more fine-tuned all the way through. Now when we look at what we have with the Xbox Series X, a completely different set of features. One of the best features is the Instant On. I love that feature. The fact that you can actually turn off your Xbox completely, hit the power button, and it turns on like that, nothing bleeds. It means you can jump right into your game. Another feature, of course, is the Quick Resume. Quick Resume is great because you can jump from game to game.  You can literally hit the Xbox button, select Forza Horizon, and in a matter of seconds, you're playing Forza Horizon 4. That's how good it is. And you can go between, I think, four or five games that allows you to jump back and forth. Great feature, very nice. And again, something that sets those consoles apart. Now, another unique feature, of course, is expandable storage. Both of them have expandable storage in two different ways. So with the PlayStation 5, you have to open up your console and put in an M.2, which Sony hasn't allowed yet. They said they will give you your list of M.2s, PCIe Gen 4 to use, once that becomes available, you can buy something off the market and then just pump it to your PlayStation. While the Xbox Series X is a bit different, it's got a custom M.2 slot at the back, which you can use a custom Seagate Drive, which is rather expensive right now for one terabyte. So Microsoft is taking this UI approach a little different. I explain what they have, what's now a top-down scrolling feature, where the games you're playing at the top, as well as also your games library, then you can move into Game Pass and then the store, and you can also find your apps quite easily inaccessible. Expanded from what it was, there's also some submenu functions using the Xbox button to get home, and also go into share features. Sony has a different approach. Sony's new UI system has a hub approach, where you have a games hub and a mini hub, and the games hub has everything new in your games. Your games are the top of the screen, you can scroll through those games and it gives you more details as you scroll down within each of those games. Things you've reported, captures, what friends are doing, that kind of stuff. You can move over to the media hub, which has all your media features like your Netflix, your Hulu, your HBO Max, all those different things packed in there. So it's a very different approach. I kind of like both at the same time, so for me, it's split right there. So looking at both consoles, I have to say that there are two very different approaches to the same thing. Microsoft wants to give you a more honestly, Netflix approach to gaming, which I kind of like, allowing me to explore and see more content, but also giving me a very powerful console that can do more. Now, we don't have a lot of first-party titles yet, but I can't wait to see what Halo Master Chief does, and also all the new studios that Microsoft has acquired. And with Game Pass, it gives you a lot of games to jump in and play off the bat. And I think that is very key for them in that approach. While the PlayStation 5 is relying, of course, on first-party titles, and that name recognition that Sony has with the PS5, you're looking at games like Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Future God of War 5, things like that to excite gamers to say, hey, look, this is what the PlayStation does. I think as a gamer, you have to look at each one and see whether it fit you. For me, though, in terms of disappointment, I have to say that on the Microsoft side, I wish there was one first-party game that I really could use and showcase, not some other ones that I enhance. On the PlayStation side, I wish they actually copied Microsoft and gave us an Xbox Game Pass, which would be great, or at least a PlayStation Game Pass, if you will.  Now, before we wrap up this video, I am giving away a console. And we are giving away an Xbox Series S with my buddy Danny Wingit, but not just an Xbox Series S. This is a bundle package. Thanks to our friends from Microsoft, from Seagate, as well as SteelSeries. Now, what you get to win here is an Xbox Series S with one year of Xbox Game Pass. You get to win one terabyte storage from Seagate to expandable, so you expanded the storage on the Xbox Series S. And you also get to win a Steel Series Arctex 7X headset for your Xbox Series S. So all you have to do is follow me on Instagram, leave a comment below, and you are entered to win. Now, guys, let me know what you think about the Xbox Series X or the PlayStation 5. Which of these two consoles fit you best? Now, don't forget to subscribe, hit the notification bell, and always enjoy your entertainment.


What's up everybody? JC and Rajaspy's casebricks.com One eminent spot filler being given away here in this 1920 chronicles basketball hangar ran on team number 42 As you can see 43 is already on the website and we're more than halfway there at 15 left But this is break number 42 Alright guys first we do the break a randomizer customer names and teams distribute the hits out then at the end of the break We'll take all 30 customer names that bought in and only one will win at the eminent spot It'll go to number one the top name on the randomizer And we're gonna do number 43 and number 44 and then we're sold out of eminence. We can break that tonight So good luck. Let's do the break first. Let's roll it. We got ourselves a six and a four ten times. Good luck one two three four five six seven eight nine and ten Gretchen down a Kobe ten times one two three four five six seven eight nine ten Grizzlies down to the magic. All right So Gretchen with the Grizzlies Kobe with the pelicans Gretchen with the wars Josh with the wizards Gretchen there with the nets And actually sorry, this is a quick package. I'm not gonna go through But some of the bigger teams are right at the top So no trades guys quick pack filler I'll give you guys like 10 15 seconds to see what your names or teams you guys got really quick though. Cool. Yo. Hi second and boy Peshaw Lebron James Jackson. Hey that a monster don't yesterday Let me taunt it. I got a T Zion Kendrick Nunn Lebron James kpj back Steph Curry another Zion there Tyler hero Rui and we got master little go to the top the pj washington jr. Derek over Lebron green Kendrick Nunn green go to the top to the boy a RJ Barrett Davis Goga and All right guys Now the switch scenes Hi, here's a dice roller. Here's the customer names. I'm a customer number one gets it Let's roll and it is a four and a two for lucky number six. Good luck six One two three four five and six Boom six times six Gretchen man if we gave away four spots Gretchen you would have got the top four so they go Gretchen Four and a two six times congratulations You are the winner here for this eminent spot remember the next one is already on the website down to six left So we'll run that back right now after the revolution break and now we need to do a sell at number 44 So appreciate you guys Jaspies case breaks.com


So, this is probably more focusing on user space than the previous talks. So yeah, I'm going to talk about mounting file system images in username spaces or basically actually any unprivileged user space basically. So the underlying problem that we try to address with this is that everybody wants to be able to mount disk images that contain arbitrary file systems in user space within mount namespaces without privileges and that's a complex topic to address. The major problem of course is that kernel file system people generally do not want to give these guarantees that a rogue file system image couldn't exploit the kernel. So the big problem is that we have to establish some trust into the file system image before we actually can do this and then somehow pass control to this so that they can actually attach it to their own file system tree inside of their namespaces. So what I'm going to talk about is basically some components we want to add to systemd, so with the ultimate goal that this is just available everywhere, at least everywhere where systemd runs, so that unprivileged user space, like unprivileged user code like for example container managers that do not run as rude or any other kind of user tool can just make use of this and mount the file systems into their containers without requiring suede, without requiring any persistent user ID assignments or anything like this. Yeah, specifically it's about code running in a user's name space can ask the host OS to mount a block file system of a regular file. This is the, I mean, yeah, this will require that basically every container can get access to some, in some limited form to some IPC interfaces that is available from the host. This is different than how containers previously work since generally they only talked the kernel API and maybe in some limited fashion was the immediate container manager. In this proposal we would suggest that they also get access to in a limited form to some IPC to the host OS. Yeah, briefly management use cases are container managers that also build tools that want to build images for containers, desktop application run times that also want to be able to run apps of disk images and basically any other tool that wants to deal with disk images, for example just to enumerate that, the contents of it. Yeah, the complexities are primarily establishing the trust in the integrity of the disk images so that they can't exploit the kernel. The focus is both in immutable images where we have certain things like the emberity that makes things easy but also writable images in some form. It's like the focus is also minimizing reaching over into calling namespaces basically. We would rather avoid that we have to from the host enter the namespace, do some work there and things like that and thankfully we can. And yeah, we want to allow a certain level of recursion, right, like so that you can have nested containers and still works in a reasonable way without any special cases or anything. So yeah, the general concept of what we have in mind, this was supposed to show up one by one but this is a PDF now so you now get the wall of text here and wall at once but the general idea is that you have an unproledged client process P which could be container manager or something like this that allocates a username space U without any mappings. And it talks to some IPC service that runs on the host provided by system B, passes that FD to the username space to it that service and assigns a transient UID range. That's one of the key ideas here basically that we do not do persistent UID range assignment anymore but transient ones. So that basically as long as that username space exists it has that UID range assigned once the username space goes away the UID range can be recycled for something else. This is systematically different how username space is currently used because there's always static allocation. Users get some stuff in Etsy sub UIDs or something assigned and this stays for them forever which doesn't really scale and generally a bad idea I think. So once they have now the username space with their transient user IDs this username space also comes with an implicit security policy applied so that anything that runs inside of that username space can only create files or do chmod and a couple of other things on a allow listed set of mounts and initially that list is empty but they basically cannot create anything anywhere. Then it talks to another service which actually is capable of mounting images. So it passes in a file descriptor to the image file it wants to mount plus a file descriptor to the username space that serves and mounts something and returns a file system that is a file descriptor to an FS mount that basically has the UID mapping already established that maps it back to the username space's mapping. So the net effect is basically yeah this is an automatically allow listed in the in the security policy that I mentioned so yeah so that basically can say I have my image here I want to be able to mount it then I get the new style file descriptor back and then they eventually just attach that to some location in the file system and everything is in order it always matches the transient user ID range that they got assigned and everybody's happy. Yeah and that's kind of all there is to the concept. Looks like a lot of steps but actually for client application it's really easy. Just do one IPC call to get the username space set up and do another IPC call to allow this certain mounts. This is basically the same thing that I just said yeah from the client view it's just allocates the username space, asks the service for the mapping then ask the other service for the mount and attach it wherever you want. By the way I put this in the strict order that you join the username space here at the end but that's not a requirement they can join in the middle of two. To be more specific I just called these two service X and Y but actually it's implemented in SystemD on SystemD user dbd and SystemD mount fsd. The reason I put this X and Y in there is because the concept of course are entirely generic. If people do not subscribe to SystemD, a view of the world they can of course always implement this on their own very easily. What's particularly interesting is like the security policies that I mentioned is implemented with BPFLSM because we basically need to be able to say somehow that yeah everything that runs inside of that username space has to go through that allow list of mounts. BPFLSM actually makes that possible with one limitation which I'll talk about later. The disk images that SystemD mount fsd implements actually follow this ddi spec which so they can actually because we need to have the dm variety in them and the file system so the way this works is that we basically say yeah give us a GPT disk image like a partition table have two petitions in it the variety partition and the actual file system plus actually a third one which contains the the the signature for the root level hash and then we'll go to the kernel give the kernel the root level hash was its signature the kernel verifies that against the kernel keyring we get the dm variety device set up we can mount it we apply the UID map and give it back to the client so by implementing this ddi spec it's kind of easy because then people don't have to give us a lot of different resources we just have one regular file which includes everything yeah the big problem is of course establishing trust I already mentioned that dm variety is big part of our solution there so yeah if you have a ddi image that contains file system and dm variety and the signature then we can just pass all of that together to the kernel kernel makes its decision and sets the things up for us in other like this is probably the primary way to establish trust but we can also add other stuff if kernel policy allows that like trust by location so then you have it just a trusted directory and if some image was replaced there it's implicitly trusted so yeah this is when some downloader can establish trust verify everything and then just put it there and then it's trusted it's of course a weaker model then the third one is writeable images dm variety is not going to work for that of course so the idea is that I mean the bottom part doesn't exist the rest actually does exist already in this implemented and we'll probably show up in the next system do you think but the idea with writeable images is basically would be that we use dm integrity so then we have a yeah we use it we would use it with an hmac hash function where the key for the hmac is actually maintained by the system and it's inaccessible to anyone else this basically allows us so that our little service can do mkfs with a sidecar file with the integrity data that nobody else can fake because they don't have this secret key that we feed into the hmac then users base can basically have its file system image and the sidecar image which contains the integrity data and they can anytime they want come back to us give us both things and we can mount it again for them but if they get rid of the sidecar then the image is basically yeah we can't mount this for them anymore this they're like the purpose of this right ability is basically that a container manager example that wants to build images can just go to us and say hey I want a disk image please set up an xd4 image or whatever else of this size and then they can just do this and as long as they keep the sidecar around they can mount it or an unmounted and mount it again as long as they want that question so let me just repeat this because the mic disappeared but anyway so the question was regarding where the assigned fs-varity files could be used as well I mean right now the only the the up up to policies are implemented but of course it's user space we can at whatever makes sense and if it's dm-varity or fs-varity it doesn't really matter as long as there's some way how like ultimately my goal is always to let the kernel aside for like that matches against the key ring instead of us doing trust enforcement user space that's always worse but yeah send us a patch it sounds pretty uncontroversial from outside yeah so one thing that I think you could do is if you had an image file and one of the things that your system d mount fs-demon could do is copy that file into a block device so that the unprivileged namespace doesn't have access to the block device and then run fsck on it so that you know the file system is consistent because a lot of the security concerns were about a maliciously you know modified file system that would trigger a kernel bug and so if it passes fsck and then you mount it no su to id no dev blah blah blah you might be able to give the container a writable image without having to use dm integrity right just a thought interest we actually do call fsck on it in the writable case already so this basically is already given but it was noosed it was noosed to me that this is a philosophy that file system engineers subscribe to this that an FS check can establish trust I mean that's a shaking the head yeah it's not a universally yes so it's going to depend on the file system and for xd4 for xd4 you would say FS check is enough to establish trust yes I I am I am reasonably confident that it is not possible to maliciously corrupt a file system such that you could cause a buffer overrun or some other kind of privilege escalation attack in the kernel yeah what about algorithmical problems right like that they modify the data structures enough so that they are still valid but runtime performance is just terrible so I don't know this might be yeah I mean you could you can yeah you might be able to get something like you could heavily fragment the file system such that access to that file system would be slow right but that's not a privilege escalation attack so this sort of depends on what your threat model is and so yeah obviously you know this is a policy configuration question but if you have a sufficiently paranoid fsck then yes you can make that now you could imagine someone being so paranoid they don't even want to allow that right but I'd actually be pretty confident about that very good to hear but sounds like like something we actually should implement them though with an allow list of file systems I guess overly pessimistic right like I I think that you know do I trust that our fsck is going to give you like a valid file system yes of course I do that but like I also understand that I am not perfect and that there's likely to be something that's is messed up in the kernel that the FS check doesn't necessarily capture or vice versa right so like I mean I think it's a good solution right but like when you're talking about like you know high-secure environment like I wouldn't use it as the source of truth right I'm sure it's not a high priority for you but have you thought about network file systems here but allowing the user allowing unprivileged users to allow to mount a network file system I think that in particular we just added TLS support to but that sounds much less risky doesn't it like it basically I mean one thing that we certainly want to add is that one thing we certainly want to to enable is that you can pass into the service a file descriptor system arbitrary directory and we will then generate a bind mount apply you ID mapping to it and give it to you right in that case that is relatively riskless because I mean it's already mounted right so isn't this network file system thing something like that like that do any of the network file systems you implement you ID mapping right now not sure how well NFS you ID mapping yes but that's a totally separate concept the one that you are interested in no but I have I had posted patches for CEPFS and it worked fine there it was just that the server implements restrictions based on the callers fs you ID and so there would need to be a few more modifications or more I know the operations would need to be made aware of these ID mappings but the patch set works and someone constantly keeps pinging me about it because they keep running it in production so that you mean a malicious server is just as bad as any malicious disk image so we do want to probably have some restrictions there but in particular we just added support TLS to the NFS server and when the client doesn't have it yet but but that might be one way you could do this you could just say that we're only going to allow you to mount you know things that are have a certificate in the sign by and then there are auto mounts yeah I mean cross domain links and all sorts things you can find on network file systems I mean you could do the same kind of thing with you know SMB you know in the Windows example supports quick but you know you if you have an encrypted connection maybe you allow it but but but I think the UID mapping thing is super important because there's two parts to this I don't know of any same way maybe you do of of how to do UID mapping centrally I mean RFC 2307 doesn't have a concept of containers that's different that's a different problem yeah that's a separate question but but anyway back to the question of mounting of ID mapping the Hyper-V guys years ago added ID mapping inside for containers for I mean for the Hyper-V to the SMB protocol and if it's something that would help you I mean there is there's a container ID mapping inside the protocol we just never cared because nobody ever asked for it so I mean basically this demon is entirely generic right like and it will have one mass at way past in the regular file and then we'll do our thing but I like this is I have no illusions is gonna grow and add a couple features sooner or later so if the mount like mounting network file system is the thing that people want to be absolutely at this as long as there's some kind of sensible security story in place anyway let's let me finish with my slides here I don't know how much time actually have I probably ran over already long time I don't know okay so the unsolved problem one is that is that the security policy is implemented with LSM right now and that doesn't allow restricting ACL manipulation so basically that means I mean we really don't want that if I allocated a username space that I can use that with a transient mapping that I can go through that to write my user IDs to some other file system and we can block that all out except for in ACLs maybe it's not a big problem but it is a problem so the way this currently works and to stop me as soon as I tell you give stuff away is it allow lists based on amount IDs and so there are path folks already and most of the VFS for better or for worse and the only ones that don't have a take a path even though that's not necessarily a problem it's just the VFS underscore set underscore ACL method that I added and once you have you have that that shouldn't be a problem as well yeah but yeah from a security perspective I think this is the only vulnerability but it's not a major one I would say because it doesn't it doesn't it's not about owning resources it's simply by like they're gonna be a little bit to lose if people can do this so I'm not too concerned but yeah this stuff works and I can demo it unless there's anything else we want to discuss first so the demo basically consists of me running here the user dbd like the thing that allocates the user namespaces the user namespace ranges on one window so it's not particularly interesting you just see that it registers all the BPF LSM stuff and then in the other one when we start the mount FSD which is responsible for actually mounting something what's interesting to know is that the the user dbd is gonna run inside of every container because it needs to be able to hand out use ID ranges that are available in this specific container the Mount FSD is running on the host because it's the one that actually does the stuff that's the reason why there are two demons instead of one yeah so we have this running now and then we use the third window and so this is a tool system D dissect is a tool that it's just part of the system the tools that it all it does is look it inside of a disk image and give you like a manifest what's in there and this one yeah runs without privileges it's not and if I run this it just works and it shows you all the rides use ID so if you like this is actually use 80 zero it's not some kind of nobody 655 whatever use ID so this just works and in the background what you can see if you look at this is that there are two IPC requests made one to get the assignment here so here you see that it gets yeah well it's just scrolled away but anyway so you see the two IPC requests and on the other one you get another one and that's really it and it's extremely simple and yeah it's a little bit of a showcase how all the recent kernel auditions actually can can be extremely powerful because it uses the new mount API and uses that across namespaces right like we allocate the mounts and the host file system namespace set it up entirely then then we only attach it to the destination namespace in the last step it also use BPF LSM which is like the new hot shit and does a couple of other things so it's yeah ultimately I'm kind of happy because it's tiny it's socket activated so it doesn't even run all the time and the way how delegation works into containers is basically yeah for the amount of SD thing it's just one socket and you're supposed to bind mounted into the container and that's like to one specific location slash run and that's basically all that's necessary to to allow this stuff and there's nothing further configuration wise or anything will automatically determine everything from the username space that you pass then so yeah it's it's really simple because it's just one IPC call you do anyway an advantage is for example I think I mentioned this before the superblock isn't owned by well yeah the superblock namespace isn't owned by the username space you're mounting that file system in which means all of the destructive I octals that you have on a butterfus file system or on an XFS file system aren't available so you can get you know you give it an X of XFS mount or a butterfus mount but they can just fuck up the file system by using some sort of wheel I octal I don't know the frack or whatever but they own the mount which means they can unmount it because the ownership of the mount is separate from ownership of the superblock which I think is a nice side effect because another thing to the another consequence of making a file system mountable inside a user and asses users basically saying you own the superblock and you get to do all things with the superblock that you want which is usually also an additional attack factor so so this is something I thought of after you'd moved on from the slides so I guess I have a question first in any of these scenarios when you're mounting on behalf of an unprivileged context does the unprivileged user have the ability to modify the underlying raw file system image so it gets the ability to change whatever it wants because the files are ultimately owned by that unprivileged user right but because we the security poly is supposed to be that we enforce the invariate yeah it will result in EIO and hopefully the kernel file systems can deal with that part but if the user can modify it after the file systems mounted and you write on the verification then you have another attack vector for the unprivileged user sure but I mean this is what the invariate is supposed to deal with right okay I'm super familiar or FS variety or DM integrity with an HMAC or yeah I mean and then in the case what what Ted said about the FS check stuff right like he mentioned this already that we wouldn't make a copy first we would have to have make a copy first because otherwise the six attack is of course there okay sorry can I log if you've got a file that from an unprivileged user that they want you to mount can you just lock that file against changes the mandatory locking I saw that was kind of uncool these days but anyway yes FS variety DM variety whatever like solve the issue properly go back to network file systems one aspect is the network name space that's used is there would it be trivial to pass like the network name space FD as part of the create mount for network file system well I mean I guess that's up for them network file systems if they can even make use of this I don't know NFS but I'm you probably would have to have an extra mount option where you tell NFS oh by the way dude in this mountain space network names but this is probably something you should discuss with an NFS people because I have no clue about that recall correctly we just inherit whatever network name space you're in when you call them when you do the mount so I so I guess as long as system these which is network namespaces you could but the new mount API you can just add a thing to say here's an FD for the network names place you want it to be in if I remember correctly it captures it when you create the super block yes we can add an option to allow that to be overridden yeah and anyway the goal is I already mentioned this it's just gonna be in system B so that people don't have to argue about this and it's gonna be enabled by default that's also the goal so that yeah it's just then if people don't want to use its own fault anyway that's all I have


Today we check out my adventures at Collecticon Charlotte. What's up guys, we're back with another epic video and I've logged my entire trip to Collecticon in Charlotte. It was pretty awesome and you guys are about to check it out but first I do have a giveaway for you guys. I'll be giving away this display of ghosts from the past too. All you have to do is like this video, be subscribed, turn on notifications, let me know your favorite moment from the vlog and what you want to see from future vlogs because I've been enjoying doing them and if you guys enjoy them I want to know as well. What's up guys, we're headed to Collecticon in Charlotte, Chelsea's coming. So if you guys will be there, well you'll see this after that but hopefully you'll be in the video. So this is going to be fun and we're going to start our trip right now. We finally made it, eight hours later. And two naps. For one of us. We got to get a view of the crush card. By the way I bought this for $38.50. $38.50 final offer. So I acquired a prize card. Let's go. I'm taking these as well. This is like an extra 50 cents right? Yeah. Okay cool. Whatever plastic rate is. Honestly you guys are just picking these up as well. Yeah good point. It's like two giant boxes.  Time to open some packs baby. Let's do it then. Let's go. It's that queen. This is one of the best tins ever. Check out that IOC. And then we've got one of the most probably not known tins. It does have a Zane Truesdale first edition pack. Two sneak previews. Two? Okay yeah. So pretty hard to find. I tried to find this when I opened every pack. Couldn't find it for the pack. I'm not going to lie guys. I think I got the better deal here. Yeah read them in weep. I think like one of these has a good card in it. One of these six packs. I can't remember what you said it was. You bought a dark arm level seven or level ten I think. They reprinted like 12 times recently. That's the problem. All right. All right. DM card coming out already. Dark catapulter. Very nice. So either way or... You should sage reprint. Percentage X. Okay. Okay we'll take those. All right. Let's see. Can we come around here? You got bird face. We get the Rite of Spirit. Oh my god. Metamorphosis. Yeah absolutely awesome. It's a $15 card. This is like one of the medalist Yu-Yu cards I've ever seen. His face is literally melting. He's a servant of catabolism. Very awesome. Dark snake syndrome. That's a... That's how Ruxen's feeling right now because our packs are way better than this. We're gonna keep moving. Yeah that's him crawling and trying to get the packs over here you know. Non-aggression area. All right. I'm sorry I said those things. All of these things are getting very aggressive. This is one of my all-time favorite cards as a kid. There you go. There you go. Yeah this is the one in my book. You can see your Ruxen's face right now. All-time favorite cards. He's got a petite moth. It's way worse. All right guys. It's the end of the first day. Not technically the first day but we got here today. Tomorrow it actually starts. So in the morning should be pretty awesome. We're gonna be doing tons of sales hopefully. You know we're gonna be checking a lot of cool cards. Stuff like that. So I'll keep you guys updated tomorrow. All right we're going to the first day. It's very early eastern. So it's even an hour earlier for us. So we're about to head out. We got Chelsea recording. So it should be a pretty fun day. We got some stuff to sell. So let's see how it goes. You have to sell. Look out all my cards I have for sale. Wow. We got the history archive baby. Oh yeah. All right. Too expensive online. Get it for a good deal here. And open it with your boy. Let's do it. All right. Let's go. You want to go first or me? All right. All right. We'll let him save it the best for last. Woo baby. All right. There we go. Pull some hero cards. Pull some hero cards. All right. Maybe the new start-ups. All right. Let's go. Oh, that guy. See it. Oh, that's from the Brains anime. I don't remember the name. Oh, Trickstar. Trickstar like the age. Okay. Oh, okay. Oh, man. My friend's going to want me for this. He plays Ignister. That's a great start. Oh, man. Prismatic, right? Yeah. The rarities are so nice. Oh, that's a sharpie. I'm going to O2K so many people with this. Let's go. Thanks, man. This is the R.M. animation. I'm a lot smaller YouTuber, but like, I don't know, man.  You'll be like acting like something bad happened. It's like actually something really good. Like, I don't know. You're just a really awesome YouTuber, man. Thanks. Just keep it up. And yeah, thanks, bro. Appreciate it. Thank you. Hey, man.  It was good. Good games, man. He's showing up to hot my dreams. This is messed up. Come on, man. Come on. He wants me to grade an ultimate rare forbidden chalice for some reason. Not great. You can't grade this anymore because I'm about the right arm. Okay. I'm about to sign it, so. He's going to destroy it. Here we go. This is the moment. I feel like I should sign it down here because not get on here. Yeah, yeah. Just sign it straight across. That's it. Let's really get it good. We've officially ruined this card. Oh, yeah. What are we doing? We're pulling a pot of greed. Let's go. One, two, three, four. These are E-impacts. All right. We got mammoth graveyard. You guys see this freaking hour now. Fire grass. I can hear my phone ringing. Dark world thorns. Red medicine. Wild germs. I don't know if that's a short print in E-N or not, but it normally is. Looks like anger treatment. Bariaru. Suckibus night. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I think we got one more. Here we go. Tyhone and... Ooh, that's my dragon. It's a fusion. Oh, that's it. There's like 10 of them. We got 150. 150. 140. Take it or leave it. You taking the hit or am I taking the hit? You're taking the hit. Yeah. How about 95 and 45? It's a done deal. It's a done deal. This has not been rehearsed. Good. We sold four, five cards. Sold more than we spent, so that's always good. That's good. Oh, it's bright out here. Do you want me to rub me behind on a plate card? Oh, yeah. That's how it goes. While we wake up in the morning. All right. Headed back here tomorrow for day two. But it was fun. It feels so weird to see you guys like in person. I feel like... Yeah. It feels like... How's it going on here? We should just all group chat and talk. What's up, everyone? We are pulling a secret. A secret rare judgment of a new bus. We're going to pull a center judge band. Common. Unlimited. Oh, that'd be so cool if those are BCCGG group. They're all... They're all... Miss Braille first in the ship packs. Dark Witch. These are SRI. Sonic Bird. Bird. And then Momomonga. I think that's gonna be it. Yeah. Swin long runs. Oh, Roxxon 34. Mega Drain. Okay, who did this? Who's giving us the bad luck? I mean, it's me. Well, I mean, I did just show up. It's definitely not me. It's 100% me. No, it's me. Do you buy this up again? No. You gotta rub up. Momomonga. Roxxon34.com. I'll see you up front. Played in regular format. I acquired some pretty cool stuff like a whole new deck. And yeah, tomorrow should be cool as well. But I'm gonna close out on day one. Pretty awesome opens the packs. We need some better luck tomorrow, though. Not a lot of great pulls today. Maybe tomorrow. A2 Squall. Maybe somebody bought it. No, no, it was like... No, no, impossible. That couldn't have possibly happened. It was tucked away. No, but I haven't seen the booth. Maybe somebody bought the booth. Who's there? Oh, oh, hold on. Whoa, this is it. I think we found it. Oh, look at these star lights. Shining Flirt. Wingman 1200. Ulti Stratos. This is the booth. Very nice back for an LP. Yeah, where's the front? Not the American front. Oh, I want this thing. That's beautiful. That's a pretty card, yeah. I'll take that. Yeah, I was gonna say, if you don't... Yeah, I'll take that. This card's super nice. Very, very nice. The only thing I can see on this, and it might even be factory, is... Yeah, I see it, but I don't... You're talking about the whitening right there? Yeah, this little whitening. Oh, that's not bad. That's what I mean. It's not good for grating, but it's not bad. The other thing is, it's clearly very OC. Right. Yeah, but I would not grade this, but I also just want it. Unless you're trying to buy something, I don't want to buy everything. Very, very nice. But yeah, one of us is gonna get this. I don't know who it's gonna be, but... That's a pretty card. You buying this? How's the bag? Very, very small. Is that a stamping? Very small amount. You see the stamping on there on the left side? If you don't buy this, then I'm buying all three of these. We're making it all for at least. Okay. All right. Calm down. I think I'm gonna be getting this one. I'm gonna be getting this one. Yeah, you gotta get that. That's a good card. I'm gonna be getting this one. I pulled one myself, but it's like... I love minty ghost hairs. I see the boiling on it. It's like, all right. Those have always just been too expensive for me. Yeah. Like... They just keep going up, too. They're literally always... I have the perfect angle right now. This looks so good.  The foil on that is beautiful. Wow. Very nice foiling. It has that. It's the corners, man. They come out of the pack like that. They come out of the pack like that. Yeah. I grade it a 10, though, with that. Really? Yeah. Two corners messed up, so they completely missed it. Sometimes they consider these, like, printing areas type of thing, right? And if it's small enough... I mean, it is, because that set, it always is like that, you know? That card is nice. How about you get that one? I might have to. I don't know. I don't know. All right, bro. How are you feeling here? I'm pretty jacked up, man. I'm pretty jacked up. That's like the most near-minty lightplay I've ever seen. That's what I'm saying. Like, that's why I want to buy more stuff from these guys. Okay, who is this? Okay. These guys? Very nice cards. Very nice cards. All right. We just picked up three epic cards. Two ultimates. One ghost. Pretty nice. Just kidding. This is nice. We're about to record a video on Yu-Gi-Mos channel or open some pretty nice stuff, so make sure to check out his channel if you want to see the whole video with this epic setup. Yeah, I know. Pretty insane. Ooh. That actually is insane. All right. You're doing the video opening another pack. Double pack opening. Double video pack opening. This is insane. I'm going to be opening the Cosmo Blitz. Okay. Okay. You're going to be very good at using it. Bite at the small bit for the face cam, but it's okay. No. Okay, baby. The face cam will get the results. Exactly. We'll get the reaction. That's all that matters. All right. I'm going to pop it in. Dragon's great. This is the first pack here. This is a very confusing opening. Hard to clear water. Oh, no. Let's drop the card. Oliver's forced to tell him. It was nice hanging out with the legend. He finally showed up a day late, but it was great. It was an awesome time. And I think that we got some cool videos for you guys. About time to head out to Charlotte. It's been a fun time. See you next time. How was it? It was great. It was great. But now it's time to drive home for seven hours. So that's not going to be great. Well, it might be great. We'll see.