Confidential to the SAF: Fire Your Ad Agency!!

Let me start here:  I really respect the Second Amendment Foundation.  I know I've donated to them in the past.

Since the crap of the last months, the abandonment of Florida gun owners by the GOP establishment (the Truly Stupid Party) and the rest, I've been thinking about new groups to support.  On the face of it, the SAF has a good pedigree.  The SAF, after all, is the organization that took McDonald v. City of Chicago to the Supreme Court and won (pdf warning).  All together, the SAF has been involved in more important progress and legal victories for the pre-freedom side than any other group I know of.  More here.  It's important to know, the SAF isn't perfect either. 

The thing that bothers me is that every time I'm ready to push the button or write the check, I get some horrible click-bait style, snail mail solicitation from them.

They write like they're trying to attract the absolute lowest IQ voters.  Today I get one that is made up to look like it's some sort of jury-duty related thing.  Seriously.  In big bold letters it says, "Official Jury Ballot Enclosed"; then it's emblazoned with something similar to crap you get on the junkiest of junk mail; it reads like a warning to the postal service.  Rather than describe it, let me show it to you.

Does anybody associate anything but low-budget, bulk-rate junk mail with that?

The inside is just as bad, with single sheet made up to look like a legal draft except for the large bold font at the top declaring it a "Juror Ballot".   It's a "survey" set up to get you mad at the Brady Bunch, Bloomberg, Schumer, Feinstein, Pelosi, and the usual cast of villains so that you'll send in a check.

Again: does anybody take this kind of stuff seriously? 

I can't tell you how many times I put aside an envelope with some low-brow marketing scam in it from the SAF and thought that maybe I'd be less annoyed with them later, but never got past it.  After all, when we respond to this crap, we're rewarding them for it.

Yo, Counselor Gottlieb: talk to us like we didn't just crawl out from under a rock.  Your ads come across as thinking less of gun owners than Bloomberg, Brady, or any of those parties that you list think of us. 

Maybe it's worse than I thought.  According to the Wikipedia, Allan Gottlieb might be the owner of the company that's doing this atrocious advertising.

Gottlieb owns Merril Mail Marketing, Inc., a for-profit corporation, that is his direct response mail fund-raising business.

Gosh, if he owns a "direct response mail fund-raising business" I'll bet chances are pretty good that's the business that's the ad agency I'm asking him to fire.  Yeah, I know enough about business that it's easy to think a guy who owns all the businesses he does isn't familiar with this level of detail of the various operations.  

Remind Me Not to Go to Kansas City

Busy day, so a saved funny.

Just one letter away from being a typical tourism board sign.

Bernie Sanders' War on Reality

That's not really the title PJ Media used; they said Bernie Sanders Declares War on Disney Over the Minimum Wage, I'm just going with the shorter, more pithy version.

On Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) declared war on Mickey Mouse. The self-declared socialist launched an assault on Disney for not paying its workers enough, just as minimum wage increases have hurt local economies and Sanders' own liberal state of Vermont has worse inequality problems than Disney.

"We need to shame Disney," Sanders declared at a rally in Anaheim, Calif. "I want to hear the moral defense of a company that makes $9 billion in profits, $400 million for their CEOs and have a 30-year worker going hungry."

You can tell this is either preparation for a 2020 primary run or simply dementia because Sanders is also lying about Disney's union contracts. Disney has already promised to increase wages for Disneyland workers to $15 per hour in under two years - by 2020.  Amid ongoing union negotiations, Disney offered an immediate pay increase to entry-level employees to $13.25 per hour, up from $11 currently.

Over five years ago, I wrote that I'm so tired of this issue that it's hard to even write about it, and I'd already written several pages on it by then, the third year of this blog.  In essence, those of us who oppose federal wage control like minimum wage laws always predict that it's not actually going to help people.  The laws are passed, the predicted bad things happen, and the answer is always to raise the minimum wage higher. 

I'm tired of arguing over this issue because, to be honest, I'm always right and I always lose.  I'm right because I say it will cost the jobs of the people it's trying to protect and it will lead to inflation.  Those things then happen.  And I always lose because not enough politicians have the guts to stand against a minimum wage increase. 

Which is why I say it's declaring war on reality.  Sanders argument, and the argument of all income redistributors, is that the company is making a profit so therefore they should be paying their workers more.  Disney, though, is a publicly traded company (DIS) and they are legally obligated to work for the financial interests of their investors.  The balance of how much the company should pay in dividends or other things counted as returns on investment (like stock splits) vs. the financial needs of the company is not a trivially easy question.  Companies have to balance their expenses vs. their income and a host of other things.  The idea that there should be no profit is pure idiocy.  Why would anyone go into business if there's nothing in it for them?

If history teaches us anything, it's that the free market is better at solving problems like wage levels than big governments.  We can cite examples all day, but here's a few.  There are places all around the country where higher minimum wages have been mandated.  The amount of troubles they've had are directly related to how much increase was mandated.  Seattle workers found they had less pay when the hourly wage went up.  Some lost their jobs as the companies went out of business.  There's a similar case study between Wisconsin and Minnesota that shows where the minimum wage was mandated higher, job growth lagged behind.  The kicker is that Minnesota's minimum wage law wasn't as bad as Seattle's, yet it still happened.  How long before all minimum wage jobs become robots and self-service kiosks?  

The new face of McDonald's  (Getty Images)

The guys at Values & Capitalism mentioned an aspect I'd not thought of.  Big companies, like Disney, are better able to handle these laws than smaller companies.  In their example, minimum wage was increased from $9 to $15/hour, the equivalent of a $12,500 per year tax.  The small restaurant, the small business can't ignore that. 

Some advocates of the $15 minimum wage wish to “stick it to the man,” hitting the billionaire CEOs. This small business CEO, however, claims that “last year, my employees made more than I, the owner, did. I am still trying to pay off the line of credit that got me through the recession.”

Could big businesses be part of the minimum wage talk?  We've seen many times that big businesses are in favor of "lawfare" and using the law to keep small companies from becoming a threat to them.  It's not out of the question. 

This week, we read that medicare is going bankrupt sooner than expected; Bernie and the Evil party are still saying Medicare for all.  People who can't understand what you just read rally for it, just as they rally and strike to hurt themselves by raising the minimum wage.  We try to tell them it's not going to work out the way they think, like we'd tell a 6 year old they really shouldn't stick their finger in that candle flame, and they respond by calling us "Hatey McHater". 

Finally Done With The Replacement

The replacement for the cylinder I ruined about two weeks ago is complete and ready to put aside for later (except for a little cleanup).  This is it immediately after the last cut completed; not cleaned up at all. 

The fins and slots in the end are matched to those on the diameter of the cylinder: 3/32 (.094") wide with 3/32 spaces.  Just as the slots on the diameter were cut to 3/32 wide with a cutoff blade in that width, for these I had to buy a slitting saw blade that width.  I had some trouble with the first slot and didn't realize what was wrong for an embarrassingly long while, (the spindle's R8 taper was loose) so the first one has varying widths - which you can see if you look at the right end of the cut (the bottom).  It's a little stepped.   

After the first one, I decided it would be smart to write a little G-Code to eliminate the possibility of entering the wrong commands.   I lowered the slitting saw the expected amount, just barely cut into the end about .003 or .004, then used calipers to verify the fin being started was the right thickness.  If it was off slightly (the second one was off because it referenced the first slot), I corrected it, then ran the code to cut the slot.  Each slot took almost exactly 6:00 minutes.  

Somewhat cleaner at this point, just not deburred, yet. 

There are some marks from being in the vise that I need to either address or live with, and it has a bit of oil residue on it.  A little cleanup is needed. 

The next part is probably going to be the flywheel.  At 3-1/2" diameter, it will be the largest thing I've ever put on a lathe.  I not only had to buy a larger chuck for my big lathe, I'll have to use the "outside jaws" on it.  Aside from size, though, it will be just like the one I drilled on the rotary table for my first engine. 

Miss America Contestants to Drop Their Swimsuits

There it is: the headline I've been waiting to write for days.  Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here through the weekend.  Remember to try the veal parmigiana, and for God's sake, tip your waitress.

The real story is that the Miss America competition is being reformed in this "PoundMeToo" age and they're going to drop the swimsuit competition.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. –  The Miss America Organization is dropping the swimsuit competition from its nationally televised broadcast, saying it will no longer judge contestants on their appearance.

The competition began nearly 100 years ago in Atlantic City, New Jersey as a bathing beauty contest designed to keep tourists coming to the seaside resort in the weekend after Labor Day.
...
Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America who is head of the organization's board of trustees, made the announcement Tuesday on "Good Morning America."
...
"We're not going to judge you on your appearance because we are interested in what makes you you," she said.

Can they survive? Mrs. Graybeard summed it up about as well as can be when she said, "men watch the pageant for swimsuits; women watch it for the gowns, fashions and the other stuff. Each one has something to watch if the other turns it on first. What happens to that audience?"  Which is too bad, because Miss America is also dropping the evening gown competition. 

For her part, Gretchen Carlson doesn't think it will make any difference.  She said, "the swimsuit portion is not the highest rated section of the broadcast. Viewers seem to be more interested in the talent competition," adding

“We are no longer a pageant, we are a competition,” she said. “We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance.”

 Perhaps not surprisingly, the actual contestants - present and past winners - aren't uniformly considering it a good change.   Lea Schiazza, a former Miss Pennsylvania, asks if her winning a swimsuit competition trophy is now something that makes her "not good enough" now.

People have been arguing for years over the validity of a competition that awards scholarships for T-and-A. Feminists say there is no place for it in today’s society. People who have never been in a pageant say that the women are being exploited by walking down a runway in a swimsuit and high heels. And women who are supposed to be supportive of other women’s choices, find it all degrading and humiliating.

I say, walk a mile in my high heels and bikinis. I’d like to say two other words to them, but I don’t like confrontation or getting beat up.

Similarly, 2013 Miss Georgia, Carly Mathis, took to Instagram to voice her displeasure, saying “But if I’m going to make my mark on history at least I did it looking like this.”  Contrast them with Heather Kendrick, who held the title of Miss Michigan 2017, and praised the shift

With the move, Kendrick said, “we are taking the focus off of physical appearance and on to what’s in our brains and what’s in our hearts, and that’s really what Miss America is and stands for.”

To be honest, it has been so long since I've watched a pageant on TV that I didn't really know they were still broadcast.  My prediction is that they may have a ratings bounce this year as people tune in to see just what the new competition looks like, but I suspect they'll loose whatever audience they have now.  Will they generate a new audience for the new product they're selling?  We'll see. 

Miss America 1939.  Patricia Donnelly.

My Sigh of Relief Was Probably Audible in Georgia

When I got the fins cut off.

There are two operations left before I take this off the table and start on the next part.  First is to cut an opening in that side (that's facing up), centered 1/2" in from the left end, 1/4" wide and 3/4" long.  At the shallowest (in the center), it's about .060 deep; at the ends of the cut the metal is .230 thick.  Still, it shouldn't be terribly hard.  Maybe drill three 1/4" holes and mill out the web that's left between the drill holes.  The second operation is to cut heat sink fins in that pristine left end of the cylinder.  This will be done with a 3/32" thick slitting saw purchased for this reason.  Those follow the same pattern as the fins on the rest of the cylinder, fin and space are both 3/32 wide with 3/16 from the edge of one fin to the next.  The fins are also 3/16 deep, while the others were 1/4" deep.  3/16, or 0.188" steps will be getting a lot of use.

Neither of those operations seems particularly scary, but while I've used a thin slitting saw blade on my light duty Sherline mill dozens of times, I've never used one on the big machine and never to do something like this.  Take It Easy will be the mode of the day, and not an Eagles song. 

Your WTAF? Story of the Day

Where "A" stands for actual.

Thanks to a link at WUWT, we find a Daily Mail story that a man who claims to be a time traveler from the year 6491 and who is trapped here in 2018 passed a lie detector test about his story.

A time traveller who believes he is from the year 6491 but got stuck in 2018 when his time machine broke down, has allegedly passed a lie detector test.

James Oliver's story was doubted but paranormal experts say they were blown away when they put it to the test, because the results showed he was telling the truth.

Mr Oliver claims he lives more than centuries in the future but was sent back in time.

Paranormal YouTube site ApexTV carried out an experiment, which had bizarre results.

Mr Oliver passed every question.

Why is he trapped here?  Simple!  His time machine is broken.  Unlike the plot of Back the Future in which Marty McFly gets stuck in the past because he needs "1.21 Gigawatts" for the Delorean to take him through time.  Other than that, the plot is kinda similar.  Then why, oh why is this "strange visitor from another planet time" here?  Why to tell us about the global warming and one world government, of course!

According to Mr Oliver global warming is going to get worse and our planet is going to get hotter. He also says there is a United Nations style system of planetary leaders to ensure peace.

The piece is so absurd it's funny.  To their credit, the Mail doesn't give much credibility to the story, and reports the absurdities with a straight face.  You get such gems as:

'Where I'm from, the years are longer.
...
'But we have gifted mathematicians who work to calculate our years from those from other civilisations.'

Oh...Kay... But I think that's simple multiplication, not advanced math.  Maybe in 6491 the ability to use a four function calculator requires "gifted mathematicians".

Although the man has a Birmingham accent, with a US twang, he claims he is from outer space.
...
Describing life lightyears from now, he says more species and planets are discovered – and that there are fights coming between humans and aliens.

Of course, "light years from now" is incorrect.  Light years are a measure of distance, not time, so it either means years from now light years from here.   

The important part, and I'll bet a lot of you have said this already: a "lie detector" does nothing of the sort.  It detects stress and discomfort of the participant.  If he showed no such reaction, it didn't "prove he told the truth", it means either (1) he honestly believes what he's saying and feels no stress, or (2) he has experience with, and possibly training for, taking polygraph tests.  There are places where one can get trained to pass polygraph tests.   Decorum says I should leave it there.

Anybody else notice the year 6491 is 1946 spelled backwards?  Just a coincidence, I'm sure.  Both the ApexTV guy and James Oliver look too young to know anything about 1946. 

From the Daily Mail, but the photo is clearly labeled copyright YouTube/ApexTV.  The 17 minute video is here. 

For Radio Amateurs Who Drop By

Of course I talk about ham radio, but not much and not often.  The index at the bottom of the right column shows 53 posts before this one with the label "radio". 

Ham radio has been described as "a thousand hobbies with one name" and that's pretty much right on.  There are probably a thousand things to emphasize depending on your interest, from the emergency/SHTF/Tactical radio that is blogged about the most in the places I see, to building your own gear, to uncountable number of technical aspects of the hobby, to experimenting with different modes like Slow Scan TV, fast scan TV, to, well, far too many to mention. 

I've always been oriented to the techy side (surprise?), building gear, writing software, semi-automating my station and so on, with an emphasis on testing the limits of the station.  It's pretty common for someone seeing a ham's station for the first time to say, "how far can you talk with that?".  I've always been interested in testing just how far I can, and always pushing those limits. 

Probably the thing I find the most interesting in radio is propagation - how the signal gets from one station to the other - and especially the ionospheric propagation.  This can turn into multiple pages itself, but the ionosphere is a layer of the atmosphere where the molecules present in the lower atmosphere are ionized by incoming solar radiation, and the air is so rarefied that it takes long times for ions to bump into something that makes them neutral again.  ("Do you think you're ionized?" "Yes, I'm positive") .  The ionosphere, in turn, is characterized as having several layers, with each layer's name changing with height.  The lowest, densest layer is called the D layer, and as we look farther vertically, they go through the E and F layers.  During periods of high ionization the F layer can further stratify into F1 and higher F2 layers.  The ionosphere expands and contracts, getting taller or shorter with incoming solar energy.

In general, the higher layers are active when the sun is overhead, but even then are dependent on the solar energy output which varies day by day, with the solar cycle, with (possible) grand cycles of solar activities and so on.  Generally, the type of propagation that gets hams excited is from the F2 layer, for a simple reason: it's the highest layer, so signals "reflect" from farther up and can go farther around the world. 

There are other types of propagation but tonight I want to talk about one that has been doing phenomenally well lately, called Sporadic E.  Sporadic E has been known for a long time, but "sporadic" in the name is an indication of the toughness of predicting when it will occur.  We know that it's caused by fleeting clouds of sufficient density in the E layer, and that it tends to occur more at certain times of years than others (now in the northern hemisphere).  We know that it tends to form later in the day and linger into the evening; that is, you'd be more likely to find it at 3PM local than 3AM local.  Finally, we tend to observe it on higher frequency bands, especially 28 MHz and up; in the US, 28, and 50 MHz, although it happens on occasion on the 144 MHz band.  Hams have long said that sporadic E clouds form above the tops of thunderstorms - long before mechanisms that could extend the charge into the ionosphere, such as red sprites or dark lightning were discovered. 

The last week or so has brought levels of sporadic E propagation that I've never seen before.  There are websites where hams report other stations they've heard or contacted ("worked"); the one I've been using for years is DXMaps.  This is a screen capture from a few minutes ago; around 7:30 PM EDT, 2330 UTC in the UK and earlier in the morning as one goes farther east into Europe. 

The density of reported paths is so high it's hard to make sense of it, but I call your attention to the long arcs from US into Europe.  In some of those countries it's past midnight, yet they continue to hear and work each other across the continent and across into the US. 

I don't have any real numbers on how this compares to other times in the past, but I've heard and worked more Europeans in the last five days than at any time before. 

What's going on?  We're supposed to be in a solar minimum that's going to impair propagation and make things worse.  A closer look at the DXMaps website shows a list view of reported contacts.  About 2/3 of them are using a rather new digital mode called FT8.  All of my recent contacts with Europe have been using that.  FT8, part of package of advanced digital modes from Princeton University physicist Joe Taylor, burst on the scene last year, and has become the "new hotness" of ham radio modes.  All of the modes in Joe Taylor's software package are run by connecting the radio's audio input and output to your computer, letting the sound card digitize the audio and pipe the samples to the software for processing.  FT8's strength is that it embeds robust error correction and signal processing to allow copying weak signals easy.  Considering it's an offshoot of another program of Joe's designed to help operate moonbounce, usually very weak signals, that makes sense.  Moonbounce or EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) is reflecting VHF/UHF or microwave signals off the moon to allow any two spots on Earth to communicate (if they can both see the moon). 

Clublog, an online service to help hams get confirmations from those stations they've contacted, charts the growth of FT8 vs the most popular modes in log submissions during 2017.  The kicker is that FT8 was barely introduced until about midway through the year.  I had my first few contacts with FT8 last July, when it was still beta software. 
 

The last digital mode to take ham radio by storm was another "sound card mode", PSK31.  By contrast, PSK31 is a conversational mode (hams call that "rag chewing") with freeform contacts.  Type as much as you want and the other guy will receive - or not.  FT8 is much more structured so more of a contest/fast contact mode.  Each side transmits for 15 seconds alternating with the other station.  When things are working well, a contact can be completed in one minute.  If the messages aren't decoded properly, that can stretch out, but no transmission is longer than that 15 seconds (a small number of characters). 

I know some number of hams drop by and read this.  If you're interested in 6m Sporadic E, get that radio on.  If you haven't worked FT8, it's a bit complex to get started with, but if you can run PSK31 you have all the hardware you need.  Sound card to radio. 

DOE to Fund $72 Million Bird Incinerator

That was a deliberately inflammatory title - and deliberately chosen pun to go with it.

The actual story is that the DOE has agreed to $72 million dollar funding of another concentrated solar power system like the famous Ivanpah facility in the California desert.  Ivanpah is famous for incinerating birds that come to feed on the insects being incinerated by the solar concentrater.

The goal of the project is to increase the temperature of the working fluid up to 700 C (1292 F).  Ivanpah and some other facilities run at temperatures from 300 to 550 C.  Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems are more efficient the higher the temperature difference they work with.   Increasing the temperature to 700°C promises greater efficiency.  They're calculating they could reach 50% efficiency. 

Light beams can be concentrated by refraction through a lens (a magnifying glass), or through curved mirrors, to produce extremely high temperatures. Commercial scale CSP facilities like the recently completed Noor I power plant in the Sahara Desert in Morocco use 500,000 crescent-shaped mirrors that track the sun across the sky. Noor I can produce up to 160 megawatts while operating at almost 400°C. Similarly, Ivanpah, the world’s largest CSP facility—located near the California and Nevada border—has 300,000 mirrors that concentrate the sun’s energy onto three 459-foot-high towers. Power production from the 3,500-acre Ivanpah site is rated at 377 megawatts with operating temperatures as high as 565°C.

The reason they're funding this as research is that the current technologies, which use molten nitrate salts to transfer the heat, won't work at the higher temperatures.  The setup is a competition between three contenders that will be tested by different teams:

• Brayton Energy, Hampton, New Hampshire: $7.6 million — gas phase system
• Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico: $9.5 million — falling particle system
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, Colorado: $7 million — liquid (molten salt) system

Over a two-year period, each team will develop and test materials, concepts, and critical components using its assigned thermal transport technology. Each will also create detailed plans to build an integrated CSP facility. At the end of the two-years, one of the technologies will be chosen to move ahead with the construction of a $25 million pilot facility over a period of three years.

I find it curious that nobody is talking about using molten sodium (metal), which has been researched extensively by the nuclear power industry (remember KRUSTY the NASA nuclear power project? It used molten sodium).  Sodium melts at conveniently low temperature, 97.72 C (207.9F) and doesn't boil until 882.85 C (1621F). 

The big picture is that the DOE is trying to drive more energy production to solar, and if they achieve 50% they'll be doing better than practical photovoltaics (PV; solar cells) do.

The CSP project announced is part of a bigger effort on the part of DOE to drive the cost of solar energy down. For example, the target for the cost of PV is $0.03 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) by 2030. The CSP target is $0.05/kWh by 2030. But the PV costs do not include storage, where the storage and ability to generate electricity when the sun isn’t shining is built into the thermal CSP system. Shultz notes that if a plant has 12 or more hours of thermal energy storage capacity, then it can operate on the order of 70% of the time. But a PV without storage can only operate 20-25% of the time. “What we see, if we hit these targets, is that CSP seems to have a lot of value,” said Shultz.

The Ivanapah CSP facility. 

We can argue this isn't a valid function of the federal government, but that's like arguing that minimum wage laws harm workers and raising the minimum wage will cause inflation.  In both cases we'd be right and nothing would change.

Ready for Round 2

Setup the rev 2 cylinder in the vise with a few mods from last time. 

First, on a recommendation from Irish, I milled a short, wide "trough" along the length of the soft jaws.  A little experimentation with 3D CAD showed me that a wide, shallow cut was a good approach.  The cut is centered around 1" above the floor of the vise, and if everything works as intended, gives me three lines of contact instead of just one.  The cut width was set by moving the cylinder into the jaw until it started to get too close to the counterbored screw holes (dashed lines, lower right) and then measuring how long the line segment is.  Then I redid the drawing using a standard sized end mill and remeasured the depth.

This is a single pass, just about 1/32" deep with a 1/2" diameter end mill; an easy cut.  Here's a view from the end without the pedestal where it's easiest to see, showing how the cylinder gets contacted in three places and not just one in the center.  (Yes the camera's rotated; I'm not trying to look like an annoying commercial, it's hard to get the camera where it can see this).  The vise jaw is the wall with horizontal lines that look like stacked bricks, made by the end mill that cut back the jaw, while the big round thing is part of the end of the cylinder.

After I added some thin cardboard for extra contact roughness, I put it in the vise, ensured it was level to a dial indicator, and tightened it up. 

I'll probably try to cut it in the next day or so.  Once I'm sure I've done everything reasonable to not barf it up again.

Genuinely New Ideas in Rocketry Are Rare

Vanishingly rare.  I don't know if this is the first time it has ever been discussed, but according to the phys.org website, a collaboration between two universities is researching a booster that literally consumes itself on the ascent to orbit. 

In a paper published in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, engineers from the University of Glasgow and Oles Honchar Dnipro National University in Ukraine discuss how they have built, fired, and for the first time throttled up and down an 'autophage' engine which could change how small satellites are sent into space.

'Autophage' translates as 'self-eating', and the concept is that instead of fuel tanks and the superstructure that the booster provides, a vehicle powered by an autophage engine would consume its own structure during ascent.

A typical booster, like the Falcon 9 boosters that SpaceX recovers and reuses, contains liquid fuel and oxidizer tanks along with plumbing to connect those tanks to the booster's nine engines   Big boosters tend to be liquid fueled, with notable exceptions for the large solid rocket boosters used in the Space Shuttle program, and large vehicles like the Delta IV Heavy.  Typically, the booster's weight is several times the weight that can be delivered to orbit.  For every pound of weight added to payload, the vehicle has to carry more fuel, and the fuel to lift that fuel. If the booster's weight was usable fuel that would be an incredible advance. 

The autophage engine concept allows weight from the plumbing tanks and other essentials to go into larger cargo capacity.  If the same technology were to be in upper stages, less debris would survive to make it into space.  No boosters (or less junk) to recover or dump in the ocean; and less debris from upper stages.  More efficient from all perspectives.

The autophage engine consumes a propellant rod which has solid fuel on the outside and oxidiser on the inside. The solid fuel is a strong plastic, such as polyethylene, so the rod is effectively a pipe full of powdered oxidiser. By driving the rod into a hot engine, the fuel and oxidiser can be vaporised into gases that flow into the combustion chamber. This produces thrust, as well as the heat required to vaporise the next section of propellant.

Simply by varying the speed at which the rod is driven into the engine, the researchers have shown that the engine can be throttled – a rare capability in a solid motor. Currently, the team have sustained rocket operations for 60 seconds at a time in their lab tests.

I'm having a difficult time visualizing how this could work.  The vehicle has a "combustion chamber", or chambers, so some structure needs to last the entire time it's burning to hold the combustion chamber and engine nozzle(s) in place.  If some control or telemetry to the ground is involved, that will have to be in the booster just as it is now, and will get thrown away, too.  If the autophage motor is just burning along the length of the body, it's not that different from any solid rocket motor; those tend to burn from the center outward along the entire length of the body.  Having the ability to throttle the engine up and back is unusual.  Solid motors are typically said to burn until they burn out.

The researchers describe it in starkly different terms than I do and don't address my thoughts at all.  Dr. Patrick Harkness, senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow's School of Engineering, puts it this way:

"The propellant rod itself would make up the body of the rocket, and as the vehicle climbed the engine would work its way up, consuming the body from base to tip.

"That would mean that the rocket structure would actually be consumed as fuel, so we wouldn't face the same problems of excessive structural mass. We could size the launch vehicles to match our small satellites, and offer more rapid and more targeted access to space."

A small autophage motor at the University of Glascow.  University of Glascow photograph.

Ignore That Financial Mess in Europe, Roseanne Tweeted Something!

Is it 2006 all over again?  Is the economy truly better or are we just seeing the effects of a few local, isolated actions.

Maybe you didn't see the story that Italy is slipping into a financial crisis, but you might have seen the US stock market dropped about 400 points on the Dow.  Italy is why the Dow dropped.  Tokyo's NIKKEI and Australia's ASX200 were also hit by Italy's troubles yesterday.

At root is the same problem, the same rot affecting every country from US to China; Germany to Greece.

Italy risks careening into a new financial crisis after the Bank of Italy said the country’s leaders could not “disregard” financial constraints and its commitments to Brussels.
...
Escalating worries that Italians may be poised to take a tougher stand against the euro prompted a round of accusations and finger-pointing among EU officials, including a rare admonishment by Donald Tusk, the European council president, who said EU institutions needed to show “respect to voters” in Italy.

In October of '16, I posted an introduction to some of the players in the mess today, as well as a "keep your eyes out" for things going on Italy.  It centers on the 5S Movement, which began as joke and turned into a populist, "Brexit-like" party movement.  iExit?  The latest issues appear to stem from a need to form a "coalition government" between differing parties and their inability to do so. 

The crisis was set off late last week when the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Lega, which had been attempting to form a government, insisted that the president, Sergio Mattarella, approve their choice for finance minister, Paolo Savona, a fierce critic of the euro. Mattarella vetoed the nomination and the incoming populist government collapsed before it had taken power.

The president appointed a new prime minister, Carlo Cottarelli, a former director at the International Monetary Fund, who was expected to present a list of ministers to Mattarella on Tuesday. The president’s spokesman said after a meeting that the two officials would meet again on Wednesday morning.

Add in that the European Central Bank is struggling to keep control in the country, and you get quite a mess.  Ignazio Visco, chairman of the Bank of Italy, said the country was at risk of losing the “asset of trust” with investors.  On Tuesday the Italian bond spread, a leading indicator of investor concern, rose to its highest level in four years.

Italy is the third largest economy in the European Union, behind Germany and France (and I'm leaving out the UK due to the ongoing Brexit).  If Italy were to collapse or go into a deep economic crash, it threatens the entire EU.  Italy has one of the largest national debts in the world and an unemployment rate over 11%. It's economy is now worse off than it was before 2007. The Italians tried, like everyone else, to borrow and spend their way out of the financial crisis, but they never recovered.

The fundamental problem, as I must have said at least five hundred times in the 2800+ posts of this blog, is that the world is awash in debt.  The total debt in the world now is $164 trillion.  Annual world GDP is in the vicinity of $70 trillion so this is well over two years worth of "all the money in the world" to pay off that debt.  That figure ($164 trillion) is not counting the unfunded liabilities in the world's economies, which currently add about $115 trillion in the US alone, as can be found on the Debt Clock.  Unfunded liabilities shouldn't be counted as debt; we haven't spent that money yet. They're more like a promise to spend in the future, however if we can't meet our liabilities now and can't live with a balanced budget it's reasonable to question where that money will come from. 

In the wake of the "great recession" of 2008, the world's central banks went on a stimulus binge like the world has never seen.  Not just the trillions of dollars created out of thin air here in Quantitative Easings; think of China's bridges to nowhere and ghost cities.  If anything, China has worse economic problems than we do.  All the central banks: the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Central Bank of China: all of them have created money from nothing. 

The US economy has shown some positive reactions to Trump's tax cuts and the news has been mostly good.  The labor participation rate hasn't improved to any noticeable extent since the middle of Obama's second term, though, still on par with the rate in 1978, and I honestly don't know what's up with that since we keep hearing about record low unemployment and other good news.  I note that some aspects of the Dodd-Frank banking regulation bill have been cancelled.  I personally never heard anything good about Dodd-Frank from any financial writer who seems to know the industry, so I view that as good. 

The world, I believe is in a precarious position economically.  Am I just a "too small thinker" to live with a world that measures debt in the hundreds of trillions pf dollars?  Could be.  On the other hand, I don't believe we're immune to any form of economic problems, and I still believe what can't go on forever won't go on forever, because I still believe that infinity is a very handy concept in math and science, but a rotten way to run an economy.

As for when this may happen, I've given up on guessing.  I've posted so many "real soon now" warnings in the life of the blog that I think decorum tells me I should say no one can predict it.

Italian actor and comedian Beppe Grillo; originator of V-Day and the M5S party.  Getty Images.

Rev 2 is Mostly Ready

Revision 2 of the cylinder for my Duclos flame eater engine, to replace the one I destroyed Friday, will most likely be ready to put back on the mill tomorrow.  I expected to get this one in a small fraction of the time spent on the first, since most of the time spent on the first one came from trying to figure out how to do certain things with tools I have (instead of immediately buying more new tools) and it did.  I spent about a week of "4 hour days" working on the first one, and about three of them on the second. 

It's not quite done.  The narrow diameter on the right needs to be reduced a little to press fit the pedestal onto this, and it needs to be cut off the extra rough stock that you can see in the lathe chuck on the left (wrapped in thin cardboard).  The same tool that made the fins on the cylinder will be used for that.  Most likely.

The truly detail-obsessed^* among you will notice this one is different from the other, which is to say I also learned from my mistakes.  If you count, you'll see this one has nine fins; the other had seven and a smidgen of an eighth.  The print I'm building-to shows the slots and fins both being 3/32 wide (.0938").  On the first one, I just advanced the cutting tool by twice that and expected it to turn out.  I ended up with tolerance buildup - most of the fins and spaces ended up 7/64 wide.  This time, I had the idea to use the blue layout fluid (you can see a little remnant of it in the pic) and layout where edges should be.  Then I marked the edge of a space (between fins) by cutting a couple of thousandths deep; it allowed me to measure how wide the fin would end up and I could move the edge to make sure the fin was really .094 wide.

There are other small differences that I won't get into.  Think of it as a challenge.

I expect to spend more time agonizing over the setup with a dial indicator, verifying that it's the same height everywhere, and maybe putting a foot long pipe on the vise handle to clamp it tighter.  Basically, all the little tricks I've come across will get used, unless they contradict each other or something else.

( ^* "detail-obsessed" sounds better than "anal-retentive" doesn't it?)

Memorial Day 2018

I know that for a lot of the country, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer and there will be cookouts and parties at the lake or beach or park.  Allow me join the chorus of folks saying that while you're enjoying your day, be it beach, barbecue, pool or whatever, take a moment to remember and thank those who have given their all in service to us.  Some don't get the chance to have that cookout, or be with their loved ones. 

There's a couple of pictures that I regularly run for Memorial Day, and this year I'm going to go with the image from 2011 that touches me by having an element of the unexpected. The images of women who have lost their husbands are gut-wrenching, but a dog isn't generally expected to have feelings this deep.  I went looking for the a photo credit and I found one this time.

In a final act of loyalty, Hawkeye, the dog of slain Navy SEAL U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jon T. Tumilson walked up to his fallen master’s casket during the funeral in Rockford, Iowa, and then laid mournfully down beside the body for the rest of the proceedings  [Note: Petty Officer Tumilson was one of the 30 killed in Afghanistan in the shoot down of Extortion 17 which the families blamed squarely on the Obama administration - SiG]

Far too large a portion of the ruling class could use Hawkeye's loyalty.  There are signs that's improving, no matter if it's temporary or not.  The others could ponder showing less humanity than a dog.  


No barbecues for us.  We're still under the clouds associated with that Tropical Storm over in the Gulf. 

And ... It's Ruined

The cylinder of my flame eater engine, that is.

The last thing I mentioned in that post was planning to make a set of thinner, taller jaws for the vise because the existing set was grabbing it below the centerline by a little over a quarter inch.  That creates a force to push it vertically out of the vise - or cuts a notch into the fins.  The SHCS that came in the vise were too tall to use on anything much thinner than the factory jaws, so I found some low profile button cap screws to order.  I figured I could thin the jaws by about an eighth inch on both sides, giving me a quarter inch more opening.  Oh, yeah, I ended up leaving the soft jaws 1-1/2" tall. I might lower that a little.   While waiting for the screws to arrive, I made the jaws out of some quarter inch thick plate I had.  They fit perfectly.

So now it was time for a test fit.

Seemed like it was all good. The gap between the bottom of the cylinder and the vise jaw figured to be 1" and I had a left over block of 1" bar stock.  (Look on the left between the closest jaw and the cylinder).  It felt very secure. It took me a while to figure out how deep to cut the fins and the 1-1/2" diameter part of the cylinder over on the right end because it's never really specified on the print. The print does show that the flat should be 1" wide, so a little geometry (and an online calculator) showed me I ought to cut it  0.190 - about 3/16" deep.  (Seriously - how deep do you cut that?  I think this is similar to what's called Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing, or GD&T. )

A friend convinced me to put an extra clamp across the top - I guess he was afraid of aluminum jaws replacing 3/8" steel - so I added that. I cut the flat over the base of the cylinder in a few cuts, .025 deep at at time (3/8 end mill) and it went very well. Which led me to decide to take off the 3/32 wide fins in a couple of passes. First pass at 0.100 depth followed by a second pass at 0.190. When I was done cutting off all the fins I thought I'd move the end mill toward the base as a spring cut (a second cut with the same settings; it removes some metal that gets compressed by the cutting forces in the original cut and "springs back" to a higher level), just to level out any cutting marks. Instead it dug in and ripped the cylinder open. Look at the shelf on the end where I stopped the cut. That's a deep cut at the far end. 

You can see how bad it is. The Z axis on the mill never went below -0.190", so as I moved right to left along the cylinder cutting the fins off, the cylinder must have pivoted and lifted the left end. I sure couldn't see it happen. You can measure the diameter to the flat by putting the calipers on the fin and the flat at both ends. The end closest to the camera is 1/16" smaller than the end by the pedestal. The flat spot on the right end of cylinder after the fins was supposed to measure 1.000 and measures exactly that. Like I say, the entire piece was cut with the EM never going deeper than -.190".

In the aftermath of trying to figure out what went wrong, I focused on the idea that the cutter was getting lower as I made the cuts, which were right to left in the pictures here.  To cut off the fins (3/32 or .094 wide) I raised the Z-axis of the mill from -.190 to -.100, moved to the next fin, made a cut, lowered the cutter back to -.190 and took another pass.  As a diagnostic, I set an indicator on the spindle, raised and lowered the cutter back and forth between -0.100 and -0.200 about 40 times.  The indicator never showed a change in position, which means the cutter wasn't getting lower every time I raised and lowered the mill's headstock. 

My guess is that the cylinder pivoted because even with the taller jaws and the 1" bar stock spacer, the contact area holding it is still pretty small.  Theoretically, the contact is only a line with one point on each fin; practically, the metal will spread out a little, but it's still a tiny contact area.  Since the cut is deeper on the left, that means it was rising into the cutter, pivoting around the right end.  There wasn't enough holding force to keep the cylinder from rotating. Maybe I should have made really light cuts? Maybe something between the jaws and the cylinder to keep it from sliding, like very light sandpaper or cardboard?

This was Friday and I've begun work on the replacement cylinder.  I don't see any way I could fix this one.  Maybe with welding equipment and an expert's touch, neither of which I have, but I do have more pieces of 2-3/8" diameter bar stock cutoffs that I can make into the new cylinder. 

I'll be the first to admit that my main problem in doing machine shop work is that I Know Nothing.  Well, not quite nothing, but I'm totally self-taught and when you're self-taught there are always holes in your knowledge.  If anyone sees this and has ideas on how not to make this screwup again, let me know! 

A Visitor to the Backyard

We had a visitor to the yard that we've never seen before. 

That thing it's standing beside is the outdoor half of a mini-split air conditioner in the workshop.  Mrs. Graybeard was out looking at setting up to do some cleaning and noticed him.  There was another on a neighbor's wooden fence not 6' from us. 

Neither of us knows a hoot about owls, but this appears to be an Eastern Screech Owl.  Everything about habits and habitat seems to match up.  This is a corner of the lot where three neighbor's trees overlapping turn it into a fairly dense wooded spot.  The fact that they're supposed to be nocturnal and daytime sleepers explains the tired-looking eyes. 

Sometimes the Jokes Just Write Themselves

Machine Design's daily email brings news that Dyson, the company famous for its vacuum cleaners, is going after the electric vehicle market.  They're doing it by way a new technology, which they may be the first to bring to market: solid electrolyte batteries.

This past February, James Dyson made the decision to build more than just high-precision vacuums and fans and instead focus on electric vehicles (EVs). Dyson plans to construct three EVs by 2020, the Financial Times reported, [paywall] with an estimated $2.8 billion project. Much like Elon Musk, Dyson looks to shake up the EV market by using solid-state batteries instead of the lithium-ion versions.

According to the Financial Times, the trio of cars would be non-sports car high-end models which would scale in production aimed toward the mass market. The vehicles will be constructed out of light materials just like the BMW i3 EV carbon fiber body. The key is the solid-state battery which, theoretically speaking, will be able to hold more of a charge compared to lithium-ion batteries.

Solid electrolytes?  The electrolyte in a battery has one main function: to conduct the electron flow from one plate to the other.  In a lead-acid car starting battery, for example, the electrolyte is a conductive solution of sulfuric acid in water.  In "dry cells", the electrolyte is in the form of a paste.  Liquids or pastes work better than any solid currently known.

Although they never directly say what the cathode and anode (negative and positive plates) are in the battery, they claim a solid electrolyte battery will be smaller and higher energy density than existing batteries, as well as being safer and longer lasting.

It might be the reason they don't describe details of the battery is because they don't exist, yet.  At least not outside the lab, in industrial quantities. 

Currently, finding the right material for solid-state batteries is key. According to Axios, Samsung and Dyson have collectively invested $65 million in Massachusetts-based Ionic Materials. The firm claim to be making progress into the technology. Its new material, a liquid crystal polymer, may be able to solve many of the current issues of mass production.

Ionic Materials claims that lithium ions move as fast or even faster through their polymer than they would through a conventional liquid electrolyte system. This helps demonstrate the stability of the company’s polymer material. Second, the polymer works at five volts and can be made simply and cheaply. Third, while most materials in solid-state research operate at about 60°C (140°F), the firm’s material works at room temperature.

Axios points out that the right material to use for a solid electrolyte battery is lithium metal.  Pure lithium metal is highly energetic, and would add something like 30% more capacity to today's state-of-the-art electric car batteries.  Lithium just also has the unpleasant characteristic of exploding or catching fire if it comes in contact with moisture.   Ionic Materials claims they've developed a liquid crystal polymer that conducts electrons as well as a liquid but doesn't make the lithium do nasty things.    
 
The article opens by suggesting Dyson looks to shake up the electric vehicle industry by using solid-state batteries in its 2020 car lineup. Since the batteries don't exist and we're half past 2018, I'll say no, they won't.  2021?  Maybe.

Dyson's EV, the car from the company that makes things that suck.  The Vroom-ba? 

Dolph Lundgren is More Qualified to be "The Science Guy" Than Bill Nye

Ran across this the other day.

They're all entertainers, it's just that Dolph Lundgren is more qualified to be "The Science Guy" than Bill Nye is.  And punk rock singer/rhythm guitarist Dexter Holland is a good contender, too.

Who'd you rather have: the MIT Fulbright Scholar, the Doctoral student in Viral Oncology and Proteomics, or "Bill Nye - the arrest everyone who disagrees with me guy"?   

Turning the Hardest Known Abrasive Into a Dry Lubricant

Diamond.  The world's hardest commonly available mineral (yes there are harder oddities that have never been synthesized in industrial quantities, as diamond has) and a favorite abrasive for as long as they've been known.  Diamond coated tools are widely used in industry, and I personally think the whole "granite kitchen counter" movement couldn't have happened without widely available diamond tools.

So when I think about diamond, I think about uses as an abrasive; perhaps a coating on a machine tool.  I'd never think of it as lubricant, but according to Machine Design some researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have found just that.  When they mixed molybdenum disulfide, commonly used as a lubricant in high temperature applications, with tiny diamond particles they call nanodiamonds, the diamonds turned into a form of carbon that creates a nearly frictionless lubricant that essentially doesn't wear out. 

The most commonly used solid lubricants on the market today take the form of graphite paste. They are used as lubricants to grease doorknobs and bike chains, among other things.

In 2015, one of the researchers, Anirudha Sumant, made a breakthrough in solid-lubrication technology by demonstrating superlubricity (near-zero friction) at engineering scale for the first time by using graphene combined with nanodiamonds. This approach was revolutionary, and since then his group has continued to further develop the technology.

Graphene, of course, is one of today's "wonder materials" that's being researched for just about everything.   Its structure is essentially the same as graphite's, in that it's two dimensional hexagons of carbon atoms in sheets looking much like atomic-scale chicken wire.  Unlike graphite, it forms large, continuous sheets a single carbon atom in thickness but of macroscopic sizes. 

Most recently, Sumant replaced graphene in the process with molybdenum disulfide to see how other materials would behave. He was expecting the process to resemble the one observed with graphene-nanodiamond lubricant. However, the team was surprised when they couldn’t see nanodiamonds in the material. Instead, they found balls of onion-like carbon.

The molybdenum disulfide was breaking up into molybdenum and sulfur and reacting with the nanodiamonds to convert them into onion-like carbon. Onion-like carbon consists of several layers of spherical graphitic shells that can be used as a dry lubricant. And the process of combining molybdenum disulfide and nanodiamonds automatically creates this form of carbon without any additional chemical application. The lubricant is also self-generating and readjusts itself continuously, so it lasts longer.

These carbon balls sustain high contact pressure and, due to their unique nanostructure, glide easily, creating superlubricity. The team concluded that the sulfur diffusion increased the strain in the nanodiamonds, subsequently breaking them and converting them into onion-like carbon.

The term "onion-like carbon" is one I've never heard; I imagine something like shells of something like graphite arranged similar to the layers of an onion.  They estimate the friction of this combination to be 1/10 of fluropolymers (I assume they mean Teflon and similar), which means moving parts will perhaps last 10 times longer before wearing out.   They also point out that there won’t be any hazardous liquid residue or the need to use and dispose of rags as part of the clean-up process (no word on its toxicity to parrots).  Machine Design speculates it could also be used to make parts that can’t be made today, especially with metal stamping.

While molybdenum disulfide is a bit more expensive than graphene, less is needed in this process.

“The amount is so small — a few drops for kilometers of sliding — that cost is not an issue,” Sumant said.

I suppose it's the counterintuitive result that adding a fine abrasive to an ingredient used in grease creates a better lubricant rather than grinding paste that appeals to me about this story.  Argonne National Laboratory already has three patents on the superlubricity technology, with a patent pending on this breakthrough, and will soon be licensing the technology. 

The formation of the "onion-like carbon"; the left picture shows the nanodiamonds (brown) lying on the molybdenum disfulide sheet, then being wrapped up in the MoS2, and eventually turning into the "OLC" on the right.  Full story in their paper in Nature. 

Publix Ruins Graduate's Proudest Moment

One of the proudest moments in young adult's life is when they graduate high school.  Especially if they're an honors graduate.  Doubly especially if they graduate with highest honors. 

Such was the case for Jacob Kosinski of Charleston, South Carolina.  Of course, you'll know that you've made that grade before the graduation, and his family, some from out of town, came to his graduation and party.

His whole family, many from out of town, saw the Charleston, South Carolina, student graduate from his Christian-based homeschool program with a 4.89 grade point average and the coveted honor of summa cum laude.

His mom ordered a special graduation cake from her nearest Publix, which lets customers build their own cakes complete with a customized inscription, which they enter into a little message box.

Carefully, she typed in the message she wanted on the cake: "Congrats Jacob! Summa Cum Laude class of 2018."

The Publix software was unhappy with the word - cum. In Latin, cum is the preposition "with," as in summa cum laude "with the highest distinction." To the little box on the Publix website, however, the word meant something else and its sophisticated algorithm, alert for naughty words, returned a little message that said "profane/special characters not allowed." It substituted three hyphens for "cum."

It was the algorithms, of course.  Jacob's mother, Cara, said she filled out the request online, including a form that had a section for "special instructions" for the bakery.  She explained that Summa Cum Laude was a Latin term for high academic honor and was not profane, so she was concerned something like this might happen.  She even included a link to a website explaining the meaning of Summa Cum Laude and said she didn’t think much about it afterward.  Until the cake was opened at Jacob's graduation party. 

Jacob's mother was shocked and disappointed, saying, "I can’t believe I’m the first one to ever write "Summa Cum Laude" on a cake."  Maybe not, but maybe yours was the first order this crew ever got that said it.  

Publix offered to re-do the cake, but it was too late for that, so they gave her a $70 refund for the cake and a store gift card.  Jacob, for his part, is getting ready for college in the fall.