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WEEK 43 2004
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Saturday 23
October
2004
Saturday - keeping busy.
One thing I passed over, in my comments on airships the other day, was
a related class of tethered lighter-than-air craft, often known as
aerostats. This is essentially a balloon on the end of a long cable,
tethered (usually) to a fixed ground station with the personnel,
computers, power and so on often located at the ground level. They are
rather effective - the U.S. used them successfully for some time in
securing the southern borders against aircraft trying to run drugs. A
FAS link is here,
though the FAS is not entirely as dependable a source as one might
wish. Many of the problems described seem to have been political, and
many of the others due to a bad choice in contractors, plus a lack of
simple experience with such craft.
Yahoo! results for Aerostat
and for Aerostat
+ DEA
My own relationship with these vehicles is negligible - when Dryden was
conducting the Eclipse
program some years ago one of the engineers came to me about an
dynamic analysis of the cable they were thinking of using, which was a
piece of aerostat tether. It was actually quite a complicated thing
internally, a load bearing sheath within which were the data and power
cables. It had to be both flexible and strong, and as light as
possible. It turned out, however, that there were already some fairly
sophisticated s/w out there for the analysis, and my services weren't
really needed.
Pilots weren't too enthused about this project, and had I been given the nicknames
mentioned here, I probably wouldn't be excited either.
In somewhat less amusing news
than Thursday's, the Guardian has now (jokingly?) called
for the assassination of our president. Talk about stepping over
the line...
Friday 22 October
2004
Friday - busy day,
working on the paper and some other boring engineering related stuff.
In the evening I stopped by a friends house, and was dragooned into
reading a couple of chapter's of Huckleberry Finn for story time. The
chapters were near the end of the book, and Huck and Tom Sawyer are
conspiring to free Jim. Tom has read a few too many stories, and is
determined to make the escape a memorable one. Which means making Jim,
who starts off fairly comfortable, absolutely miserable first, by
loading up his cabin with snakes, spiders, and whatnot. The boys fail
(painfully) in their attempt to gather hornets, but do succeed in
collecting snakes-
(from Project Gutenberg)
And so we went for the snakes,
and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house-snakes, and put them in a
bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and a
rattling good honest day's work: and hungry?--oh, no, I reckon not! And
there warn't a blessed snake up there when we went back--we didn't half
tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. But it didn't
matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. So we
judged we could get some of them again. No, there warn't no real
scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You'd see
them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they
generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of
the time where you didn't want them. Well, they was handsome and
striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them; but that never
made no difference to Aunt Sally; she despised snakes, be the breed what
they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and
every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference
what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I
never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You
couldn't get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs. And if
she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a
howl that you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man
so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes
created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the
house for as much as a week Aunt Sally warn't over it yet; she warn't
near over it; when she was setting thinking about something you could
touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right
out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women was
just so. He said they was made that way for some reason or other.
By this time I was laughing so hard someone else had to read the next
paragraph. It's funny, I've probably read that book a half dozen times
and I always forget this part. The next paragraph talks about the Jim's
prison cabin when Tom and Huck have finished ordering things appropriately:
We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she
allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever
loaded up the place again with them. I didn't mind the lickings, because
they didn't amount to nothing; but I minded the trouble we had to lay in
another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you
never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's was when they'd all swarm out
for music and go for him. Jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders
didn't like Jim; and so they'd lay for him, and make it mighty warm for
him. And he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone
there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body
couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said,
because THEY never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when
the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in
the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his
way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt
a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over.
He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner
again, not for a salary.
Thursday 21
October 2004
Thursday
- busy today, getting ready for a conference with my other authors on
our paper in Reno this year. Also cleaning up a bit - probably about
100 books brought upstairs and stashed out of sight, freeing up
valuable real estate on chairs, couches, side tables and floors.
Entertaining election news: some lefty rag, the Guardian, in
England, decided to encourage it's readers to send mail to registered
voters in Clark County, Ohio, and let the Americans know what the Brits
thought of our presidential race: Operation
Clark County. Who would think this to be a good idea? The feelings
of voters in Clark County, Ohio, USA, in letters back, about being sent
patronizing electoral advice by foreigners
were about what
you'd expect.
Okay, that link was jusy an American columnist having fun. The actual responses were somewhat more
vulgar...
Anyway, it gets better.
The Guardian had promised to keep the identity of the vast horde
British senders undisclosed, to protect their privacy.
Australian Tim Blair, who claims
that the Guardian stole his idea, was happy to help even the
playing field by publishing
the email addresses for the Guardians staff, and thus starting Operation Guardian in return. Heh.
Apparently the hypocrites
editorial staff at the
Guardian felt
that unfair, having confused
"anonymous hectoring" with "debate".
Sadly, there aren't even any "Page 3 Girls" at the Guardian to redeem
it. Worthless. Now the Sun, on
the other hand-
Wednesday
20 October 2004
Wednesday - rain, off and on, all day.
Nice. A half moon tonight, in broken clouds.
"The moon was a ghostly galleon,
tossed upon cloudly seas."
Well, the Red Sox have done it - they're going to the world series. Of
course "the curse" may still be in operation, meaner than ever, waiting until the
last game to take the
championship away...
Some cynical types see it all as rigged. Why else do all the
championships go to seven games, with this dramatic come-from-behind in the case of
Boston.
I dunno. I saw those players exploding
out of the dugout after the win, and they sure didn't look bribed.
Last night there was an interesting (to me) happening at the game. The
announcers mentioned that the blimp covering game six of the ALCS had
to leave as it was running low on fuel. This underlines how small
current blimps are. The airship Graf Zeppelin was used to cross entire oceans, and to travel around the
world. It had phenomenal endurance, as did most of the Zeppelins.
In other airship news, some are being used in Iraq now. I've thought
for a while that it makes a wonderful surveillance platform, ideal for
keeping an eye on roads, pipelines, and cities (small towns, really, by
American standards) for long
periods of time. With modern optics, heat sensors, radar, GPS and all
the rest they would be a force to reckon with, and a wonderful backup
for the GI or Marine on the ground.
The U.S. Navy has had an on/off relationship with them for years. In
the 20's and 30's of the last century the navy flirted with Zeppelin
style airships, most of the efforts ending in disaster, the USS
Shenandoah debacle over land and the loss of both the USS
Akron and USS
Macon at sea being the most famous. The slow speeds, the
vulnerability to weather and to enemy action were huge negatives. But
in truth, the art of heavier-than-air aircraft design, their safe
operation, maintenance and crew training was in it's infancy as well -
most aircraft of that time would not meet todays FAR standards. (
Reading stories of operations in airships of those days is enough to
make your hair stand on end. )
The Blimp style came into it's
own during WWII, and there was a boast that no
convoy under the protection of an airship escort ever lost a ship.
There is still interest in the idea of military airships, but never
enough to 'get them off the ground'. Today the obstacle is mostly the
lack of all-weather capability, I would guess. The idea of vulnerable,
but useful, platforms that never go into harms way is widespread now -
the aircraft carrier packing it's massive offensive punch leaves
defense to it's battle group elements; the modern AWAC's plane
has no defenses of it's own at all (though escorts are probably on
patrol nearby), and so on.
'Price/Performance' is the key to weapon systems, and airships probably
fail that test, by orthodox
military standards of the past. But we are seeing unorthodox wars now - and IED by the
side of the road killing a single GI or a half dozen Iraqi policeman
can easily make the evening news and be used for political purposes.
'Performance' covers a lot of ground, and the value of terrorist
attacks for supporting their morale, and the detriment to our own here
at home can hardly be overestimated.
Wouldn't it be great for a hummer convoy commander to have the ability
to ask for - and receive - a fast forward clip of all activity along
his path for the last 24 hours? Optical in the daytime, thermal at
night, plus a radar scan that can penetrate bushes and a meter or so of
dirt, looking for a bomb? But systems and operations like this take
time to develop and practice, it's hard to say if anything can be done
along these lines now that will help in Iraq. The Mark I eyeball could
still make a difference I think.
Tuesday 19 October
2004
Tuesday - how about those Sox? Who woulda thunk it? It's sad
when they have to line baseball stands with cops in riot gear.
That's just wrong. On the other hand, these are New Yorkers after all. Good
call though, by the refs.
It's raining like crazy here, and has been for several hours. There are
people worried about mudslides in the hills and mountains where the
fires this summer burned off all the undergrowth this summer.
And the last few years have seen a lot of house building in canyon
flood plains - it always amazes me that people build there. Why do they
think it is so flat and covered with river rock?
I guess there is a video of John Edwards putting on makeup for a tv
show making the rounds. Stupid. What's the big deal? Michael Moore had
shots of Republicans doing the same in his "documentary" and it struck
me as a stupid attack then. If you don't prepare for the camera then
you generally look bad. If actors, reporters and news anchors do it,
why not politicians? I don't think this sort of thing impresses anyone
intelligent, of any political stripe. This is the 21st century, people are a rather
media savvy bunch.
Boy, the above sounds cranky, but I'm actually in a pretty good mood.
Which is odd, considering that dinner was a Turkey Broccoli Hot
Pocket - and it tasted just as foul
as it sounds.
I was thinking about the X-prize, and Rutan, and future X-prizes. And
it occurs to me - one of the most important things is that you can now buy a safe rocket engine off the
shelf. Engine design is a messy complicated process and
generally occurs separately from aircraft design.
Case in point: experimental aviation. Rutan got his start designing
odd, memorable experimental aircraft. Mostly these were canard type
aircraft, with the "tail" in front. But he didn't design the engine! He
used off the shelf Lycomings, Continentals, whatever suited and would
fit. Eventually he got out of that business and into other design
efforts. But the EA community has continued to grow and today
there are hundreds, if not thousands, of aircraft designs out there.
And almost all of them use off the shelf engines. The Van's RV series
for example, are the most popular and successful aircraft being built
today, and the new RV-10 uses a O-540 Lycoming.
There are aircraft that don't use off-the-shelf, and some efforts to
design new engines or to use automotive engines in a regime they really
aren't suited for, and mostly these efforts have failed. Engine design
is hard, and expensive.
So, if you've a yen to build suborbital space planes or hypersonic
waveriders, maybe your time is near. Get a spec sheet with thrust,
weight, form factor, burn time and specific impulse - and spend your
time working on your airframe design! Nitrous and rubber isn't the most
efficient solution, but it beats trying to design your own. Or trying
to buy cryogenics from one of the big cost-is-no-object companys that
has managed to survive the end of the cold war.
Sheesh. Nearly midnight and it's pouring
out there.
Monday
18 October 2004
Monday - still working on testcases.
Things are not going as well as I would hope. Which is why they pay me
the big bucks, to fix this stuff. Hah.
Watched the Red Sox pull out another win in the 14th inning - sheesh. So they stay
alive to head into another ALCS game. I actually went to a Dodger's
game that went into extra innings many years ago. The group I was with
decided to leave about the seventeenth,
it being midweek and work waiting for us the next day...
Sunday 17 October
2004
Sunday - working away on some
testcases, writing some code. Also caught a bit of the football games.
Too bad about the Charger's, they really came close. We didn't get the
49er's here, but we did get the Oakland Raider's - the losers.
