19 August, 2009
17 August, 2009
Lakes of fire
Having an oxidizer and a fuel that is some large portion water has its advantages. First, the water/fuel portion can be used in standard internal combustion (cf. aquamist) and second, steam is actually a pretty good propellant under very high pressures. This mandates a clever nozzle (clever is easy to get ahold of these days; a lot of the work's already been done), and a fuselage that can withstand the pressures and temperature of, essentially, a steam turbine (which as I understand can be fucking enormous). There's also a kind of tricky benefit about a quotient of water in your fuel: if you have steam in your exhaust, it tends to aggregate the particulate that comes out of the nozzle. Especially with the solid polymer ("black plastic tube") rockets, there's a lot of outright filth that just comes flying out of them. Instead of riding an inky column to 15,000' and perpetrating a sonic boom, why not have, as my wife does, a pink and black rocket that has a white fuel plume? In this case, the steam acts rather like a particulate trap (and flapper valves among other things) in a modern turbo-supercharged diesel where the huge black clouds of "smoke" are actually particulate.
But there's always a catch. The problem is getting the water to catch fire. Everyone knows Bacardi 151 burns, but the magic number is 500°F. So 76% ethanol isn't going to cut it. A slurry of water, pyrodex, and methanol or ethanol would probably burn when coaxed properly (I have grave concerns about a thumped landing with a hybrid liquid vehicle, and I want to make sure that if it lands ten feet from a kid, her biggest fear is going to be fiberglass pieces, not potassium perchlorate or any of the nitrates. I want it safe). I can also foresee a second sort of "oxidizing primer," a liquid as well, which serves to both ignite the fuel, and push the primary oxidizer out through the nozzle; this has been documented in Patent 5582001. Credit goes to Bradford, Kniffen, and Mckinney, way back in 1996 or so:
I use the image here for illustration of the system. Note between the pressuring gas (smaller sphere), and the oxidizer (in this case, their preferred oxidizers were LOX – what else? – and H2O2 – again, what else?) there's a tiny sphere with "igniting fluid." They used powdered metals, like magnesium and aluminum in their fuel (the "crosshatched" section of the combustor here), which is I guess less "cheating" than using pyrodex. Unfortunately, it "eroded" their nozzles, and wasn't much of a success. But I'll guarantee you that the pyrodex is going to go off right each and every single time.
It looks like their "ignitor fluid" draws on a patent by Altman David and Barnet R. Adelman, in 1966, #3,234,729. It looks like the "third fluid" guys preferred benzene, but they just sort of throw out "metal alkoxide," and more or less leave it at that. Great way to do it, but it's pretty unfriendly stuff (you could get your fuel started with flourine too, but would you want to?).
What I find curious about this whole business is that this is a very poor deep-space propulsion system. In 1966, they surely should have known there were (and still are) problems with stopping and starting solid fuel rockets (which most hybrids are), and that they weighed a whole lot, and just taking LOX and LH2 was the way to go (and indeed, "the way they went.") So it's a neat motor for generating a lot of thrust, safely. Even tremendous amounts of thrust and commercially-respectable lift (Scaled and SpaceDev being prime examples) is attainable with these engines. But their utility is limited by their weight, and thus at best can serve as "strapped-on" rockets or single-use-recovery-optional "tubes" of monstrous dimensions for getting things into orbit.
Also worth noting is that the team at Scaled weren't stupid. They didn't dump the spacecraft at 50,000' because it was cool, they did it because that first 50,000' is really, really hard to push through. Watch a shuttle launch. You'll see this:
Getting through that air, even with those monstrous SRBs and the engines on the Orbiter, you are pushing through all that air and humidity and ickiness that you don't have in space. So, perhaps if we're ever able to mine large amounts of (or manufacture large amounts of) material like this in orbit, or in the deeper system, it will be a practical "getting around" engine. But for now, it's low-lift, very high noise (especially, for some reason, the alcohol ones; this part I don't understand) rocket that could probably get your droid to the moon, but the hybrid rocket will never be the safe lift vehicle that can carry people, single-stage-to-orbit unless somebody does something stupendous.
And I'm not saying I'm going to do anything stupendous or anything like that, but I just might do something, you know, stupendous.
But there's always a catch. The problem is getting the water to catch fire. Everyone knows Bacardi 151 burns, but the magic number is 500°F. So 76% ethanol isn't going to cut it. A slurry of water, pyrodex, and methanol or ethanol would probably burn when coaxed properly (I have grave concerns about a thumped landing with a hybrid liquid vehicle, and I want to make sure that if it lands ten feet from a kid, her biggest fear is going to be fiberglass pieces, not potassium perchlorate or any of the nitrates. I want it safe). I can also foresee a second sort of "oxidizing primer," a liquid as well, which serves to both ignite the fuel, and push the primary oxidizer out through the nozzle; this has been documented in Patent 5582001. Credit goes to Bradford, Kniffen, and Mckinney, way back in 1996 or so:
It looks like their "ignitor fluid" draws on a patent by Altman David and Barnet R. Adelman, in 1966, #3,234,729. It looks like the "third fluid" guys preferred benzene, but they just sort of throw out "metal alkoxide," and more or less leave it at that. Great way to do it, but it's pretty unfriendly stuff (you could get your fuel started with flourine too, but would you want to?).
What I find curious about this whole business is that this is a very poor deep-space propulsion system. In 1966, they surely should have known there were (and still are) problems with stopping and starting solid fuel rockets (which most hybrids are), and that they weighed a whole lot, and just taking LOX and LH2 was the way to go (and indeed, "the way they went.") So it's a neat motor for generating a lot of thrust, safely. Even tremendous amounts of thrust and commercially-respectable lift (Scaled and SpaceDev being prime examples) is attainable with these engines. But their utility is limited by their weight, and thus at best can serve as "strapped-on" rockets or single-use-recovery-optional "tubes" of monstrous dimensions for getting things into orbit.
Also worth noting is that the team at Scaled weren't stupid. They didn't dump the spacecraft at 50,000' because it was cool, they did it because that first 50,000' is really, really hard to push through. Watch a shuttle launch. You'll see this:
Getting through that air, even with those monstrous SRBs and the engines on the Orbiter, you are pushing through all that air and humidity and ickiness that you don't have in space. So, perhaps if we're ever able to mine large amounts of (or manufacture large amounts of) material like this in orbit, or in the deeper system, it will be a practical "getting around" engine. But for now, it's low-lift, very high noise (especially, for some reason, the alcohol ones; this part I don't understand) rocket that could probably get your droid to the moon, but the hybrid rocket will never be the safe lift vehicle that can carry people, single-stage-to-orbit unless somebody does something stupendous.
And I'm not saying I'm going to do anything stupendous or anything like that, but I just might do something, you know, stupendous.
What a way to waste a day
My desktop is spewing into syslog all this python garbage because I bumped the version of the system python, thinking 2.5.0 and 2.5.2 couldn't be that different. Well, different enough that Apple's use of twisted.web2 is now broken, and I've been at the fix for four hours INSTEAD OF FUCKING WORKING. Thanks, guys.
I think it may be time for an additional weblog
short: do I split this into weblogs? this is becoming cumbersome to manage, information-wise.
White Label Aerospace of Australia recently told me I am not allowed to participate in their Google Moon Prize because my knowledge, even if it's UNCLAS and I do it on my own time, still crosses ITAR rules, making me, effectively, an arms dealer for "the enemy." Australia, in this case.
On the one hand, they have a point. If I can build a rocket to get to the moon (land a rover there is such a different story; I could thwack that planetoid pretty good), that means I can develop a rocket that can hit anywhere on Earth, ♁. With the relatively cheap means of propulsion out there, and the entirely COTS nature of the products, I can't really blame BATFE for being worried. Most of the rockets capable of hitting the moon can be put together for less than ten or twenty thousand dollars, and much cheaper if you're willing to cut corners on safety. These are the people that wear bomb vests, right? If I were foolish enough to use an oxidizer like LN2O and kerosene or LNG, a rocket weighing a few hundred pounds could easily (read that again, for emphasis) get above 50,000 feet.
On the other things are two factors which make regulation of (repeat after me: model rockets) silly (or even their rudimentary guidance systems... seriously, have you read the ardupilot code?) are that first, all this is available both COTS and in "plan form" on the web the way us old farts used to distribute plans for making beige, red, and blue boxes. So if you live in Tehran and you want to make a new rocket to hit Esfahan, just cause you're a crazy Ayatollah or some shit like that, you can do it in your damn living room with model glue, epoxy, some interwebs, and Fedex (you better tip that poor bastard for bringing you a delivery in your we-shoot-students state, dick).
The other factor is control surfaces really suck hard at rocket-sized speeds. This means that if you want to actually have a powered descent phase, rather than a "drop and pray" phase (which is a whole hell of a lot easier to intercept), you have to have access to software that, AFAIK, is pretty much only of interest to a very small group of people, and you're probably not one of them.
Supersonic airflow is a real bitch. But I think I've got it figured out now. All you need (Dear Mossad: I am not Gerald Bull. You know he is dead. But the cat, as far as knowledge goes, is out of the damn bag. My wife would miss me if I had a couple .22's put into my medulla oblongata, okay, so just chill the fuck out) is to make sure your payload, whether it's something to put into orbit (at a lot less than $10,000/lb) or a NBCR-WMD type device, and you don't really care about orbit, that it doesn't care about sustaining anywhere from a low five-to-ten g's to as many as 588 g I've seen on cots products. If I can have those constraints (and the US Military gave Dr. Bull that level of freedom), then I can launch rockets into space I would say almost trivially. Certainly trivial when concerned for the amount of money they spent on designing base-bleed projectiles, sabots for the martlets, to say nothing of the rocket-assisted shells or cannon themselves. Or, let's be frank, getting shot in the back of the fucking head. That is to say, if the Mossad or anyone else is getting their panties in a twist about this, it's because they don't understand the situation.
And here's what has skidmarks in everyone's drawers: the rocket itself is smaller than any of the Patriot or HAWK batteries we use for taking out incoming rockets. Hamas has seen "great success" with their primitive-as-nails Katyushas... Imagine if some of those (democratically elected, religiously fanatical, genocidal, misogynistic-yet-breeding-like-fucking-rabbits) neckbeards started reading books instead of burning them.
Speaking of burning.. I mean, reading books, I came across this neat chart today. Basically, it lists a number of propellants I hadn't heard of before. Notably,
- Aluminum hydride
- Toluidine
- 2-Amino-cyclohexanol
Toluidine, is especially cool. It's mostly stable stuff, and will readily (though not entirely) mix with slightly acidic water. Bad news is, it's carcinogenic. I might not mind that so much if I could sing like Freddie Mercury; I just ain't hip to dying, and there would be lots of fright and not so much standing up to it.
That last one's a doozie. While it would seem to be a fuel, I can't see anyone using it for anything other than genome and proteome research. This makes it readily available, but why bother? Seems to me like door number one is the winner. I can either use it as a liquid or mold it into a solid using a plasticizer, add oxygen, heat, and get paid in thrust. Sounds like a good deal to me.
But I am really starting to think another blog, something along the lines of "First one off ♁ Wins!" is appropriate for the stuff I'm cataloguing in this rathole of my head. But if even a few of those ideas pan out, at the very least, DARPA is interested, and maybe somebody like Scaled would let me come work for them (c'mon guys, where's my rejection letter? I'd fall on my sword to work you guys. Just look at what you did for Vanilla Aircraft. They are right down the street from me, doing the same kind of work I'm doing — only they have the cash and the facility to build a full-scale, carbon-bodied, ultra-long flight-time airframe.)
I'd say I'd come work for Scaled for free, but I can't imagine the wire would be happy with that. Some of the DARPA grants are astoundingly challenging; others are not so much. I need to pick and choose carefully, and work with a very small team of very smart people. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you're one of those people. If you're interested in the aerospacey stuff, drop me a line. Even if you teach biology. :)
Uncompensated, perhaps foolish plug: Look. At. This. Fucking. Rocket. I mean, its less than a hundred fifty bucks. With a J530 (that's the biggest it's going to take, folks…), you may not exceed M >= 1, but that fucker is going to maybe 8,000 feet. And while it sounds like a kind of spendy habit, trust me, it's a lot cheaper than autocrossing, motorcycle racing, lan-parties and other gaming, and you might learn somoething to get hired in the mean time. And look at her. She's a beauty. A hair over 5' long… give her a nice base primer, then something pretty (like that neat 3M job they did but I'm a sucker for Honda's Sonic Blue and Chrysler's Viper Red), then a coat or two of clear, and you have a rocket that will be every bit as gorgeous as it means fucking business.
14 August, 2009
I cannot believe
That I just said, "well, yeah, it's really a shame that I need a desk because I need so much [screen] real estate for quality editing [of fiction and non] to say nothing of airframe design... otherwise, a laptop would really be ideal for most of what I do." I need an eight-to-sixteen processor machine with a video card (or cards) capable of rendering textures responsively, along with all the shapes and particle tracking, a minimum of sixteen gigs of ram, and if somebody would give me a copy of ArcGIS or the ANSYS/CFX and ANSYS/FLUENT bundle, ANSYS/CFD*, I'd want a Tesla to go with that. I would also love a copy of Centaur.
I edit text very well with two screens (20-24" seems best for now) because I need two capabilities: a "working draft" and a "revisions page", as well as a "what I'm writing now" and "research". Both require a LOT more real estate that even a 17" powerbook (or a 19"behemothAlienware) offer me. I need a desk. And the recent back injury makes desks really hard for me. It's going to be a bitch to find a chair that lets me be productive, as I tend to work (when I'm really in the zone) twelve to sixteen hours at a stretch, and that's just really hard.
As far as airframes, it's very helpful to have the airframe on one side, and views of it from other angles, or views of the cockpit, or views of the aircraft flying (as in, I'm flying it) with a chase-plane view external to it. Doing stuff with planes, rockets, things that fly, and so on, is really, really hard to do with a laptop unless you're just doing a simple takeoff-landing pattern-land type thing with Saiteks or whatever.
I've digressed. I apologize. Since CACIfucked me right over laid me off, I've had a lot of time to think, and I've learned so much that I just found myself shocked that in addition to the usual text stuff,
* recommended reading
I edit text very well with two screens (20-24" seems best for now) because I need two capabilities: a "working draft" and a "revisions page", as well as a "what I'm writing now" and "research". Both require a LOT more real estate that even a 17" powerbook (or a 19"
As far as airframes, it's very helpful to have the airframe on one side, and views of it from other angles, or views of the cockpit, or views of the aircraft flying (as in, I'm flying it) with a chase-plane view external to it. Doing stuff with planes, rockets, things that fly, and so on, is really, really hard to do with a laptop unless you're just doing a simple takeoff-landing pattern-land type thing with Saiteks or whatever.
I've digressed. I apologize. Since CACI
* recommended reading
11 August, 2009
droves
This time it hit a lot closer to home. This time, I found out before the fact. This time, a man admire and owe a good piece of my career to places his wife's fate in God's hands, and, something is urging me to be strong and be there for him and his daughter (to say nothing of his wife). But what are any of us but grains of sand on a beach? How am I, the one who has relied on him for guidance, to "be there"?
I know of no texts in which somebody has had their guts ripped out and written about the feeling, other than Jurassic Park's brief description of disembowelment, yet we as a species often say we feel a though our guts are being ripped out; as though a fish, being gutted and filleted.
And this man calmly introduces me to an expert in hybrid rocketry as we discuss this. What sort of man must he be that he can do this at work, while I am going through a box of Kleenex, knowing the feeling will – must – pass. All I can hope is to one day be something like the man he is. I have growth or character* as yet unachieved, as grow into adulthood. I thought it was something like, you hit thirty, you buy your first new car, you make your first six-figure job, and bang, you're an adult.
* What a petulant, childish ass that post makes me seem.
I know of no texts in which somebody has had their guts ripped out and written about the feeling, other than Jurassic Park's brief description of disembowelment, yet we as a species often say we feel a though our guts are being ripped out; as though a fish, being gutted and filleted.
And this man calmly introduces me to an expert in hybrid rocketry as we discuss this. What sort of man must he be that he can do this at work, while I am going through a box of Kleenex, knowing the feeling will – must – pass. All I can hope is to one day be something like the man he is. I have growth or character* as yet unachieved, as grow into adulthood. I thought it was something like, you hit thirty, you buy your first new car, you make your first six-figure job, and bang, you're an adult.
* What a petulant, childish ass that post makes me seem.
Congratulations, you're now in arms proliferation.
According to the fine folks at armscontrol.org, a hybrid rocket motor consisting of a polymer and nitrous oxide is a "class II" weapon of proliferation:
Which means if you're flying hybrid rockets, which a lot of people do (note that last link is to an academic project; there are recreational users too).
I'm not ready to talk about the engine I want to build yet (primarily because it's hard to find parts and a GR-7 is just Too Damn Big. I am wondering if I can find a ducted-fan type engine with two or three axial stages with electrical start and a standard e.g., fogger with appropriate jetting for fuel & oxidizer.
The problem is it's easier to just run a cone and be a rocket than it is to be a high-bypass turbofan running on rocket fuel. The heat is pretty intense when you bring your own oxidizer on board, and even the copper and steel units I've seen wouldn't stand up to even a minor hybrid mixture (and, damn if it isn't hard finding an inert fuel; I'm looking at acrylics, but all the ones that are liquid at normal temperatures are deadly, all the usual suspects like kerosene or even diesel (which is usually pretty tame) is still not something I want pressurized in an autonomous rocket).
The terrorists have won, and they are us.
Propulsion components and equipment usable in the systems in Item 1, as follows, as well as the specially designed "production facilities" and "production equipment" therefor, and flow-forming machines specified in Note (1): (a) Lightweight turbojet and turbofan engines (including turbocompound engines) that are small and fuel efficient; (b) Ramjet/scramjet/pulse jet/combined cycle engines, including devices to regulate combustion, and specially designed components therefor; (c) Rocket motor cases, "interior lining", "insulation" and nozzles therefor; (d) Staging mechanisms, separation mechanisms, and interstages therefor; (e) Liquid and slurry propellant (including oxidizers) control systems, and specially designed components therefor, designed or modified to operate in vibration environments of more than 10 g RMS between 20 Hz and 2,000 Hz. (f) Hybrid rocket motors and specially designed component therefor.
...
(3) In Item 3(c), "interior lining" suited for the bond interface between the solid propellant and the case or insulating liner is usually a liquid polymer based dispersion of refractory or insulating materials. e.g., carbon filled HTPB or other polymer with added curing agents to be sprayed or screeded over a case interior.
(4) In Item 3(c), "insulation" intended to be applied to the components of a rocket motor, i.e., the case, nozzle inlets, case closures, includes cured or semi-cured compounded rubber sheet stock containing an insulating or refractory material. It may also be incorporated as stress relief boots or flaps.
Which means if you're flying hybrid rockets, which a lot of people do (note that last link is to an academic project; there are recreational users too).
I'm not ready to talk about the engine I want to build yet (primarily because it's hard to find parts and a GR-7 is just Too Damn Big. I am wondering if I can find a ducted-fan type engine with two or three axial stages with electrical start and a standard e.g., fogger with appropriate jetting for fuel & oxidizer.
The problem is it's easier to just run a cone and be a rocket than it is to be a high-bypass turbofan running on rocket fuel. The heat is pretty intense when you bring your own oxidizer on board, and even the copper and steel units I've seen wouldn't stand up to even a minor hybrid mixture (and, damn if it isn't hard finding an inert fuel; I'm looking at acrylics, but all the ones that are liquid at normal temperatures are deadly, all the usual suspects like kerosene or even diesel (which is usually pretty tame) is still not something I want pressurized in an autonomous rocket).
The terrorists have won, and they are us.
10 August, 2009
What happened to Lutz Moeller?
He was making some incredible advances with the .338 Lapua Magnum round — enough that I considered building a Rem 700-based, surgeon-actioned, Lilja-barreled LM-105 (Lutz's round) gun. But his site is gone. All mentions of him are in caches, revision histories in wikipedia, and the wayback machine. What in the hell happened that a man and all his science (5 shots, 5 hits, 1 mile?? This is important stuff!) disappeared in less than a year? Off the web, where everything seeps into everything else (like here...)?
Anyone? Those are his shells, there on the right. I based my 20mm shell design on his concepts. Thankfully I've got all his math.
The collector's stable
Short: where before, I posted a bunch of really similar looking bikes, today, I'm going to post some bikes with character. This should be fun, even if you don't like motorcycles, particularly.
I find that more and more, when I look at bikes I like the bikes from 1975 to 1995 more. Their styling was more individual. They all had more character. They were different from one-another. As I said previously it seems like at some point in the arms race that is superbikes, everything started looking the same. The Honda Fireblade and the Yamaha R1, about as different a pair of bikes from the 2009 lineup of superbikes, look almost identical in profile.
So I find myself wishing for something with more character. I started looking at the Dnepr:
An interesting fact about the Dnepr is it was the motorcycle with sidecar ridden by Zach Braff and Natalie Portman in Garden State. You can sort of make out here that it has a seat between the fuel take and the rear fender, as well as mounted atop the rear fender (which strikes me as amazingly precarious, but I suppose if you've got 82mm and 105mm mortars falling on you, a motorbike off is the last thing you have to worry about). Here, as well, is the Ural:
They're kind of older, Soviet-bloc type bikes, with or without sidecars, some with 2WD. It may look newer, but this is because they're [currently] being made to appeal to a newer market. They are still available with the sidecar, of course, but this one has the soft leather bags and glossy black (cf. olive drab) paint. The dead giveaway is those low, low pipes; you could never lean that bike over, and even the cruisers today are proud of how far they can lean. It would seem everyone is Vále.
Before we get to the Japanese and other metric bikes, let's first have a look at two other bikes I've got serious gonad itch for (trust me ladies, it's the gonad itch that comes from bikes, not from skanky chicks on Slaussen ave). The first is the Enfield. Who wouldn't? Charlie Boorman sure as shit wouldn't pass one up; in fact he bought one in India and had it shipped the fuck back home!
Here's the Enfield Bullet 500, still being made in India:
From a site I didn't know existed until I started writing about these bikes, India on 2 Wheels. India's a perfect example of a country that needs motorcycles (BMW claims only 2% of the worlds roads are paved; my guess is a vast majority of the worlds roads are in the subasian continent, thus making two wheels in India rather a necessity). But a truly fabulous site for the enthusiast. And it's got fuel injection? Good grief!! What's not to love?
And then, the Norton. A bike, folks, called the Commando.
Just look at those pipes. They look so delicate and yet we know that under that pretty yellow body work and blacked-out frame lurks a carbureted 750cc motor, and it's a damn Norton. Norton didn't build pansy bikes for driving to the supermarket. They built flat-track racers, land-speed racers... they just didn't fuck around. Here, though, is the recurring theme: Scooter Bob's has them, and is selling them. These bikes, like all the bikes in this post, are disappearing faster than I can rescue them, faster than anyone except Jay Leno can rescue them. What do we do in a world where a man named Scooter Bob holds the last few remaining Nortons?
Moving on to the Japanese bikes, we have the Honda CBX, which I have an especially soft spot in my heart for:
An inline six in a bike. Who couldn't resist? Brakes seem a little under-developed, but, eh, it's an old bike. For giggles, we have this quote, along with some amazing photos:
Another Japanese bike I've been lusting after is the Kawi GPZ:
You might not recognize this (eek, especially in yellow, but it's kinda grown on me), but I'll bet you think there's something familiar about it. That's the bike Tom Cruise rode in Top Gun, years and years ago. A lot of people credit it with the introduction of the one-litre, water-cooled, inline-four superbike that dominates the class today, but there's a dedicated group of people who think the Honda CBX, with its 1054cc motor (albeit an inline six, and air-cooled), really got there first. The GPZ is kind of an ugly duckling by today's standards, but nobody would say it was slow, nor would anyone say the CBX is slow – yet both are remarkable in their own ways.
The "other" metric bikes are the BMW's. I think my favorites may be the old "flying-brick" BMW's I love so much, like the BMW K100:
Not only does it live up to its name, "flying brick" (just look at it! it's like somebody forgot motorcycles had to have engines in them or something; it might be less... "unique" if it were symmetrical, and on the other side, we had another head, like we do today, but trust me, it's a lot more unique over there), but look at that thing. Look at its pipes. It's been used. Somebody loves that bike. And because BMW owners, snots that they are, don't really like the bikes (very much like Porsche owners don't like the 928, 944, 968, 914, Caynne, Panamerica, and others I surely am forgetting), their numbers are becoming vanishingly small.
An interesting fact about the flying bricks is they apparently take to turbocharging like ducks to water:
(emphasis mine) If anything, you must watch the video (and this one too) on the site. All are SFW, of course, but there's motorcycle noise. Now, I suppose if one is filling their stable with classic bikes, perhaps a turbocharged variety of K100/K1000/K1100 or even a K1200 (which isn't even that old, ffs!), it's not such a "classic" anymore. But I would argue that the way RB Racing does their LSR work, such as these headers, etc., which are works of art all by themselves, and as such would in no way detract from what is otherwise a beautiful, classic, collectible motorbike:
Two newer Japanese members of my imaginary flock (at least for the current mentioning; consider I spend many, many hours a week reading bike rags and manuals, reading reviews and the history where I can) are a pair of Hondas. In no particular order, the absolutely ferocious RC51:
With the RC51, you have a one-litre twin, one pipe per cylinder, naturally, and two radiators, again, one per cylinder. I can imagine that thing is hot as hell in traffic, and doesn't make life easy on the rider. But its job was to conquer, rape, and pillage, and that it did, with sheer brutal abandon. Quoth:
The last contemporary Honda I'd keep in the stable is the CBR1100XX – the Blackbird. Nobody needs to guess where they got the name for this bike... (hint: it's fast)
This bike was so threatening to Suzuki and Kawasaki that they went batshit insane and decided they needed to make 1200 (ZX-12), 1300 (Hayabusa), and 1400 (ZX-14) cc motors to smash anything on the street. Corners, well, I understand the Hayabusa and the ZX-14/Concours can actually corner, but I think I'd mostly leave that engine on tap for streetlight-to-streetlight and those long, lonely drives through Kern County, California. The blackbird was a beast, is a beast, and again, can be picked up for five or six grand, and won't be around, or won't be cheap in just a few short years.
As far as newer bikes, a friend of mine showed me the newish Guzzi Breva 1100:
which, while it seems to be hiding a cat in those V-Rod-esque cans (and this is easily-enough fixed), is still a right vicious v-twin litrebike. A real brawler. Windscreen? What's that? Sure, it's not a 75 - 95 model, but it looks differentthan all the other bikes on the road. It's a twin, sure, but it's a laterally-mounted twin, sticking out from either side of your crotch. I'm not sure how much more attention you can draw to your genitals with a machine in public. And my god, it oozes secks. People will do double-takes when they see it that they don't do for the run-of-the-mill 1098S. And that says something. This, of course, speaks nothing for the reply when asked, "so what do you ride?", "Oh, a 'Guzzi."
What's a guy to do? I would love nothing more than to give a loving home to all these motorbikes, quirks and chokes and weird clutches and everything else that comes with them. But what would I commute in? You really can't commute in the Ural or the Dnepr. It's hazardous. They only do about 75mph. The RC51 and Blackbird are pretty well guaranteed to get me killed. The Kawi GPZ is probably the same story, and a 300hp turbo brick is, again, the same story. The Guzzi? Well, the bike would either kill me because she's a brute, or I'd rub up against a parking garage wall in this horrid town and do a bajillion dollars in damage to her, or she would kill me in a fit of indignant rage because I hadn't properly petted her and whispered loving things to her before mounting for a ride.
I'd really love to be able to have these bikes to take them out for relaxed rides to Manassas/Bull Run or Big Sky Meadows out by Shenandoah and just cruise on them; enjoy bikes for what they were made for. I'd get a commuter, a nice and cheapy one like a Hyosung:
which really, really ain't a bad bike. I liked them at the DC motorbikes show last year, and the year before, but I just couldn't get past the "I'm looking at a Korean motorcycle?" But surely within ten years, we'll be seeing Indian and Chinese (or, god help us, even French) motorbikes in the USDM. For $5400, I pick up a brand new Hyo, with a warranty, and start pinching pennies or (hint hint, wifey) selling the STI to buy some bikes with character that we can keep around before all the good examples are destroyed.
Bikes. They really are like guns. You can't have just one. There's a different bike for every job, whether it's breaking the sound barrier, pootling around some small New Jersey town with Natalie Portman hugging your johnson, or just looking awesome... there's a bike for the job.
I find that more and more, when I look at bikes I like the bikes from 1975 to 1995 more. Their styling was more individual. They all had more character. They were different from one-another. As I said previously it seems like at some point in the arms race that is superbikes, everything started looking the same. The Honda Fireblade and the Yamaha R1, about as different a pair of bikes from the 2009 lineup of superbikes, look almost identical in profile.
So I find myself wishing for something with more character. I started looking at the Dnepr:
Before we get to the Japanese and other metric bikes, let's first have a look at two other bikes I've got serious gonad itch for (trust me ladies, it's the gonad itch that comes from bikes, not from skanky chicks on Slaussen ave). The first is the Enfield. Who wouldn't? Charlie Boorman sure as shit wouldn't pass one up; in fact he bought one in India and had it shipped the fuck back home!
Here's the Enfield Bullet 500, still being made in India:
From a site I didn't know existed until I started writing about these bikes, India on 2 Wheels. India's a perfect example of a country that needs motorcycles (BMW claims only 2% of the worlds roads are paved; my guess is a vast majority of the worlds roads are in the subasian continent, thus making two wheels in India rather a necessity). But a truly fabulous site for the enthusiast. And it's got fuel injection? Good grief!! What's not to love?
And then, the Norton. A bike, folks, called the Commando.
Just look at those pipes. They look so delicate and yet we know that under that pretty yellow body work and blacked-out frame lurks a carbureted 750cc motor, and it's a damn Norton. Norton didn't build pansy bikes for driving to the supermarket. They built flat-track racers, land-speed racers... they just didn't fuck around. Here, though, is the recurring theme: Scooter Bob's has them, and is selling them. These bikes, like all the bikes in this post, are disappearing faster than I can rescue them, faster than anyone except Jay Leno can rescue them. What do we do in a world where a man named Scooter Bob holds the last few remaining Nortons?
Moving on to the Japanese bikes, we have the Honda CBX, which I have an especially soft spot in my heart for:
"If you don't know what a Phantom jet fighter sounds like, buy a Honda CBX and have a fiddle with the exhaust system". Even as standard the six cylinder engine sounds amazing, but the story goes that during development a prototype was produced with silencers that made a noise uncannily like a jet (if a bit quieter). This was toned down for the production version because they thought riders might get too excited and tend to go a bit fast. Surely not!If that link should somehow become a 404, I've saved a PDF of it. Please realize credit is the author's, not mine.
[ ... ]
Rumours had been circulating for some time, but the 1978 arrival of the CBX1000 stunned everyone. Created by a team headed by Soichiro Irimajiri, the very same man responsible for the 1960s racers, here was an all-new machine. With over 100bhp produced from 1047cc shared between half a dozen pots, here was the fastest, most glamorous bike ever. Even so, unfortunately for Honda, Benelli had launched their Sei some three years earlier - and it was especially ironic that the Italian engine was virtually a copy of the CB500 four with a couple of extra cylinders tacked on!
[ note for later contrast with GPZ ]
Another Japanese bike I've been lusting after is the Kawi GPZ:
You might not recognize this (eek, especially in yellow, but it's kinda grown on me), but I'll bet you think there's something familiar about it. That's the bike Tom Cruise rode in Top Gun, years and years ago. A lot of people credit it with the introduction of the one-litre, water-cooled, inline-four superbike that dominates the class today, but there's a dedicated group of people who think the Honda CBX, with its 1054cc motor (albeit an inline six, and air-cooled), really got there first. The GPZ is kind of an ugly duckling by today's standards, but nobody would say it was slow, nor would anyone say the CBX is slow – yet both are remarkable in their own ways.
The "other" metric bikes are the BMW's. I think my favorites may be the old "flying-brick" BMW's I love so much, like the BMW K100:
Not only does it live up to its name, "flying brick" (just look at it! it's like somebody forgot motorcycles had to have engines in them or something; it might be less... "unique" if it were symmetrical, and on the other side, we had another head, like we do today, but trust me, it's a lot more unique over there), but look at that thing. Look at its pipes. It's been used. Somebody loves that bike. And because BMW owners, snots that they are, don't really like the bikes (very much like Porsche owners don't like the 928, 944, 968, 914, Caynne, Panamerica, and others I surely am forgetting), their numbers are becoming vanishingly small.
An interesting fact about the flying bricks is they apparently take to turbocharging like ducks to water:
RB Racing designed and produced Turbochargers for BMW motorcycles for over 15 years encompassing kits for both air cooled twins as well as inline 3's and 4's (R100/K75/K100/K1000/K1100) as well as the newer R1100RS models. The bikes were used for daily commuting, racing, dyno contests, and for all we know coffee tables. We know of K100 bikes that went over 80,000 miles with turbochargers tucked under their chins.
[... and elsewhere on the site]
In our testing with the K12 series we have found the higher output engines which put out 100 to 130 crank horsepower need to have water injection for higher boost pressures. Testing with a high load Grinnall car, using water injection (Aquamist), 16 to 18 psi was safely run with high octane gasoline. This is similar to our experiences with the GSXR 1100 Suzukis that we ran at Bonneville and El Mirage in the period 1988 to 1995. All records set by these bikes as well as the K100 Race bikes (312hp 980cc) employed water injection.
(emphasis mine) If anything, you must watch the video (and this one too) on the site. All are SFW, of course, but there's motorcycle noise. Now, I suppose if one is filling their stable with classic bikes, perhaps a turbocharged variety of K100/K1000/K1100 or even a K1200 (which isn't even that old, ffs!), it's not such a "classic" anymore. But I would argue that the way RB Racing does their LSR work, such as these headers, etc., which are works of art all by themselves, and as such would in no way detract from what is otherwise a beautiful, classic, collectible motorbike:
Two newer Japanese members of my imaginary flock (at least for the current mentioning; consider I spend many, many hours a week reading bike rags and manuals, reading reviews and the history where I can) are a pair of Hondas. In no particular order, the absolutely ferocious RC51:
Has there ever been a more impressive debut in motorcycling's history? In its very first year, the 999cc V-twin RVT1000R literally dominated superbike racing around the globe.The link to the article the quote is sourced from is another one of those things you have to look at if you're at work, or at home, or have a few minutes to drool over some phenomenal bikes (unless your name is Colin and you live on the east coast, in which case, dreaming is not allowed), and the beautiful paint on them. I think I still prefer the Red/Silver/Black version, but the Black-on-Black-on-you-guessed-it works real well, and hot damn that blue one is pretty. Essentially, it's a piece of race history you can pick up today for less than ten grand, but won't be able to in, say, ten years.
Colin Edwards, of course, took the World Superbike crown from Ducati in a very convincing manner. Closer to home, returning hero Steve Crevier walked away with the Canadian Superbike championship. Even in the United States where Honda's lead rider, Miguel Duhamel was injured, the RVT still rallied to a close second position finish with brash young Nicky Hayden at the helm. And wins at the prestigious LeMans 24 hour and Suzuka 8 hour endurance races prove that the RC51 has all of Honda's legendary durability.
Whether it's the hugely powerful, but immensely controllable, V-twin's torque or the rock-steady handling provided by the twin-spar, aluminum frame that is responsible for Honda's dominance, the result is the same. The RC51 decimates the competition. And you can own a part of history because the RC51, the latest in our series of exotic racing four-strokes that started with the RC30, breaks new ground by being the first of Honda's sophisticated roadracers made readily available to aficionados.
The 2001 Honda RVT1000R. More bike than the competition can handle.
The last contemporary Honda I'd keep in the stable is the CBR1100XX – the Blackbird. Nobody needs to guess where they got the name for this bike... (hint: it's fast)
This bike was so threatening to Suzuki and Kawasaki that they went batshit insane and decided they needed to make 1200 (ZX-12), 1300 (Hayabusa), and 1400 (ZX-14) cc motors to smash anything on the street. Corners, well, I understand the Hayabusa and the ZX-14/Concours can actually corner, but I think I'd mostly leave that engine on tap for streetlight-to-streetlight and those long, lonely drives through Kern County, California. The blackbird was a beast, is a beast, and again, can be picked up for five or six grand, and won't be around, or won't be cheap in just a few short years.
As far as newer bikes, a friend of mine showed me the newish Guzzi Breva 1100:
which, while it seems to be hiding a cat in those V-Rod-esque cans (and this is easily-enough fixed), is still a right vicious v-twin litrebike. A real brawler. Windscreen? What's that? Sure, it's not a 75 - 95 model, but it looks differentthan all the other bikes on the road. It's a twin, sure, but it's a laterally-mounted twin, sticking out from either side of your crotch. I'm not sure how much more attention you can draw to your genitals with a machine in public. And my god, it oozes secks. People will do double-takes when they see it that they don't do for the run-of-the-mill 1098S. And that says something. This, of course, speaks nothing for the reply when asked, "so what do you ride?", "Oh, a 'Guzzi."
What's a guy to do? I would love nothing more than to give a loving home to all these motorbikes, quirks and chokes and weird clutches and everything else that comes with them. But what would I commute in? You really can't commute in the Ural or the Dnepr. It's hazardous. They only do about 75mph. The RC51 and Blackbird are pretty well guaranteed to get me killed. The Kawi GPZ is probably the same story, and a 300hp turbo brick is, again, the same story. The Guzzi? Well, the bike would either kill me because she's a brute, or I'd rub up against a parking garage wall in this horrid town and do a bajillion dollars in damage to her, or she would kill me in a fit of indignant rage because I hadn't properly petted her and whispered loving things to her before mounting for a ride.
I'd really love to be able to have these bikes to take them out for relaxed rides to Manassas/Bull Run or Big Sky Meadows out by Shenandoah and just cruise on them; enjoy bikes for what they were made for. I'd get a commuter, a nice and cheapy one like a Hyosung:
which really, really ain't a bad bike. I liked them at the DC motorbikes show last year, and the year before, but I just couldn't get past the "I'm looking at a Korean motorcycle?" But surely within ten years, we'll be seeing Indian and Chinese (or, god help us, even French) motorbikes in the USDM. For $5400, I pick up a brand new Hyo, with a warranty, and start pinching pennies or (hint hint, wifey) selling the STI to buy some bikes with character that we can keep around before all the good examples are destroyed.
Bikes. They really are like guns. You can't have just one. There's a different bike for every job, whether it's breaking the sound barrier, pootling around some small New Jersey town with Natalie Portman hugging your johnson, or just looking awesome... there's a bike for the job.
02 August, 2009
Supersonic airflows revisited
Today I built an airframe capable of supersonic flight in x-plane, powered by a model representative of what a hybrid rocket would be. There were a lot of complications. The standard "tomahawk" configuration (of which I've actually found a not-to-scale and not-even-accurate, but nonetheless useful model of) fares very, very poorly.
I am beginning to understand Burt Rutan's approach. Basically, he lights the rocket and stands it on a 90° AoA (α), but it's not clear that SSO is actually hitting supersonic as it climbs out of the atmosphere. On the way back in, it is. That much is clear. However, it comes back down producing so much drag that it slows immediately to subsonic flight, the feather is "defeathered," and the plane resumes flight as any glider would. As the NASA orbiters have, in fact, for decades.
Airframe after airframe, I would get to the point with rocket motors (supersonic flight is a lot easier with turbofans, incidentally, because the progression is a lot slower and you can always just ease off. Rockets are not good with throttle.) where the craft went supersonic and all of a sudden my control surfaces were worthless. I had violent side-to-side shaking, up-and-down shaking, it seemed like it wanted to stall – and bear in mind this is a still accelerating rocket – and the only way I found to manage supersonic flight with control surfaces was to have at least two sets of horizontal surfaces (wings) as well as a set of rear stabilizers. I also borrowed the Su-37 concept of the ventral (cf. dorsal) vertical control surfaces, and threw a pair of them down there like the Russians have. When I let X-Plane do a lot of the automatic handling of the frantic roll and pitch (basically, I guess flaps and aielerons don't do so good at supersonic speeds, or don't work how I'd expect them to), and I developed a really light touch for pitch and rudder, the plane actually sorted itself out, and I survived a flight. But this is with front canards that almost counteract the main wing bodies, pitching the nose down because the rear, for some reason, wants to go down (I guess when you stomp on the gas maybe this is weight transfer or something similar?), while the flaps extend, and the lower (ventral) "vertical" control surfaces act as both elevons (which is weird, given their configuration and speed brakes.
And, in the end, you wind up with something that looks, not real surprisingly, a lot like something Burt Rutan would build. Lotsa wing. It would never really work in practice with a hybrid motor, of course. They're pretty all-or-nothing, so you can't say "Let's take off from DCA at 8% throttle, work our way up to 35,000 feet and then pour on the throttle until we're wide open at 55,000 feet." Having all that wing (those front canards have a wingspan of eight feet; the wings twenty-four) under full thrust down here where the atmosphere is treacherous would have ripped it to shreds.
As a matter of fact, I thought that's what X-Plane was trying to tell me when I finally got up to full throttle and the "transsonic" indicator started bleeping at me, crap, I've torn the bloody wings off the aircraft.
What really bugs me is that while I, today, sort of kind of learned how to handle supersonic control surfaces, I know I don't know it anywhere near enough to start teaching the Arduino about it, and that means that I can't put it in a rocket.
I'm thinking that the best design for a supersonic rocket (at this point it's looking like a nine-motor, three-stage, clustered E job in either CF or "blue tube" chassis) is to have very, very sensitive, and very clean canards up front – almost imperceptibly tiny ones even – and then very small slats on the ass end of the thing. Or just giving up alltogether until somebody like, say, an employer can buy software that will show me what supersonic airflows look like and I can just teach the software.
Until then, I'm terrorizing the district in phantasmagorical throttled hybrid rocket-powered many-winged Scaledesque craft. I had hoped to be further. I am beginning to wonder how hard it is to actually build a liquid fuel rocket, due to the vastly increased specific impulse and thus longer flight (and the ability to, you know, throttle).
I am beginning to understand Burt Rutan's approach. Basically, he lights the rocket and stands it on a 90° AoA (α), but it's not clear that SSO is actually hitting supersonic as it climbs out of the atmosphere. On the way back in, it is. That much is clear. However, it comes back down producing so much drag that it slows immediately to subsonic flight, the feather is "defeathered," and the plane resumes flight as any glider would. As the NASA orbiters have, in fact, for decades.
Airframe after airframe, I would get to the point with rocket motors (supersonic flight is a lot easier with turbofans, incidentally, because the progression is a lot slower and you can always just ease off. Rockets are not good with throttle.) where the craft went supersonic and all of a sudden my control surfaces were worthless. I had violent side-to-side shaking, up-and-down shaking, it seemed like it wanted to stall – and bear in mind this is a still accelerating rocket – and the only way I found to manage supersonic flight with control surfaces was to have at least two sets of horizontal surfaces (wings) as well as a set of rear stabilizers. I also borrowed the Su-37 concept of the ventral (cf. dorsal) vertical control surfaces, and threw a pair of them down there like the Russians have. When I let X-Plane do a lot of the automatic handling of the frantic roll and pitch (basically, I guess flaps and aielerons don't do so good at supersonic speeds, or don't work how I'd expect them to), and I developed a really light touch for pitch and rudder, the plane actually sorted itself out, and I survived a flight. But this is with front canards that almost counteract the main wing bodies, pitching the nose down because the rear, for some reason, wants to go down (I guess when you stomp on the gas maybe this is weight transfer or something similar?), while the flaps extend, and the lower (ventral) "vertical" control surfaces act as both elevons (which is weird, given their configuration and speed brakes.
And, in the end, you wind up with something that looks, not real surprisingly, a lot like something Burt Rutan would build. Lotsa wing. It would never really work in practice with a hybrid motor, of course. They're pretty all-or-nothing, so you can't say "Let's take off from DCA at 8% throttle, work our way up to 35,000 feet and then pour on the throttle until we're wide open at 55,000 feet." Having all that wing (those front canards have a wingspan of eight feet; the wings twenty-four) under full thrust down here where the atmosphere is treacherous would have ripped it to shreds.
As a matter of fact, I thought that's what X-Plane was trying to tell me when I finally got up to full throttle and the "transsonic" indicator started bleeping at me, crap, I've torn the bloody wings off the aircraft.
What really bugs me is that while I, today, sort of kind of learned how to handle supersonic control surfaces, I know I don't know it anywhere near enough to start teaching the Arduino about it, and that means that I can't put it in a rocket.
I'm thinking that the best design for a supersonic rocket (at this point it's looking like a nine-motor, three-stage, clustered E job in either CF or "blue tube" chassis) is to have very, very sensitive, and very clean canards up front – almost imperceptibly tiny ones even – and then very small slats on the ass end of the thing. Or just giving up alltogether until somebody like, say, an employer can buy software that will show me what supersonic airflows look like and I can just teach the software.
Until then, I'm terrorizing the district in phantasmagorical throttled hybrid rocket-powered many-winged Scaledesque craft. I had hoped to be further. I am beginning to wonder how hard it is to actually build a liquid fuel rocket, due to the vastly increased specific impulse and thus longer flight (and the ability to, you know, throttle).
What bugs you say?
Maybe these:
And maybe I'm made of stern enough stuff to fix it. It's gonna require a flag day if we start keeping state (and I have no interest in dcc). But yeah, day #1, that little bit found me.
Internet Relay Chat Protocol for client and server.
Future Plans
============
The way the IRCClient class works here encourages people to implement IRC clients by subclassing the ephemeral protocol class, and it tends to end up with way more state than it should for an object which will be destroyed as soon as the TCP transport drops. Someone oughta do something about that, ya know?
The DCC support needs to have more hooks for the client for it to be able to ask the user things like \"Do you want to accept this session?\" and \"Transfer #2 is 67% done.\" and otherwise manage the DCC sessions.
Test coverage needs to be better.
@author: Kevin Turner
And maybe I'm made of stern enough stuff to fix it. It's gonna require a flag day if we start keeping state (and I have no interest in dcc). But yeah, day #1, that little bit found me.
Python & Twisted Words
I wrote something like three hundred lines of python yesterday. I sat in my chair for, no shit, fifteen hours, not stopping to eat. I. Wrote. Code. I wrote some of the most beautiful code I've ever written, and I'm not even done polishing the bannisters. And let me remind you that my exposure to python had been, up to that point attending a lecture or two online and fixing some slacker's code.
Not only did I come up from zero to writing a state machine in Python, but I found bugs in the Words api that are documented in the source, on my first fucking day of using it. Basically, the Words api is great, but it requires the user to keep a lot of state, and that's very un-DRY.
I also, for the first time in my life, wrote code with the primary goal of it being beautiful. It is functional. It does everything I need it to, for its infant form, but it will not sacrifice form for function. The code incorporates its documentation and shows you why it does something as it does it.
Those people that say that documentation is hard? That manpages are too much effort? That syntax checking and unit tests are a waste of time on a small project? They are cowards. They are people with poor taste and an absolute lack of aesthetic. Life is too short to write code you wouldn't want to dream about.
You slimy, skeezy bastards know who you are, and you know you write shitty code. Keep doing it, and you'll destroy python just like all your perl contemporaries destroyed perl5. Keep it up. I hope you choke. Fucking nepotist heathens.
Not only did I come up from zero to writing a state machine in Python, but I found bugs in the Words api that are documented in the source, on my first fucking day of using it. Basically, the Words api is great, but it requires the user to keep a lot of state, and that's very un-DRY.
I also, for the first time in my life, wrote code with the primary goal of it being beautiful. It is functional. It does everything I need it to, for its infant form, but it will not sacrifice form for function. The code incorporates its documentation and shows you why it does something as it does it.
Those people that say that documentation is hard? That manpages are too much effort? That syntax checking and unit tests are a waste of time on a small project? They are cowards. They are people with poor taste and an absolute lack of aesthetic. Life is too short to write code you wouldn't want to dream about.
You slimy, skeezy bastards know who you are, and you know you write shitty code. Keep doing it, and you'll destroy python just like all your perl contemporaries destroyed perl5. Keep it up. I hope you choke. Fucking nepotist heathens.
01 August, 2009
Sometimes people get really full of themselves.
It's happened to me, I will admit it, and it still does. But I started following Tim O'Reilly on twitter, thinking, gosh, he's an insightful guy, he was part of the nascent community before the bubble, he published books I cherish. And somehow, I came across this really rather disgusting "bozo-factor" description of his regarding FOO Camp, which started here, but has been more succinctly summarized elsewhere, with this quote:
But following the guy on twitter, I have to say I have no real idea why people respect him other than he is the name behind the book. As an author, perhaps that's not something I should say. But why is he spewing forth garbage like this?
I mean, have a political affiliation, man, sure. But I don't think even he believes that people are following him for his political commentary.
Perhaps the point of twitter is that it's the pocket lint of what's in everyone's head. If that's the case, there's an awful fucking lot of lint in that man's head, and I just don't actually see anything interesting or useful about O'Reilly from him, whereas I do see a lot of useful stuff coming out of other publishing-type people, like Andy Lester.
Jimmy Wales and I talked about this a while ago, and he and I came to a sort of agreement in email that once you've been put on a pedestal (to paraphrase Randal Shwartz), it's easy to expect a lot more from a man than who he is. In the case of Jimmy, I expected him to try to distance himself from the sycophants and the politics of the Wikipedia and the Foundation, Wikia, funding, and the travel debacle, and he essentially told me that he wasn't actively trying to be a part of it, but after a certain point of "fame", you're neck deep in it. The difference is, after talking to Jimmy for what must have been a month or two, I have a lot of respect for the man, and I believe him.
Tim... I'm pretty sure Tim is stirring the pot for the sake of it, and using his name and company the same way those other name-and-company people (eh, I could say George Soros, but we know that's a different kind of league; even a Ballmer or Gates here is out of Tim's league) do. He's just a pariah. It makes me ill. Why do I feel guilty about un-following him, though? Am I less of a geek for thinking he's a prick? He seems to have done so much for the community.
The issue was that Tim O'Reilly exposed his algorithm for selecting foo campers. The last part, called the bozo filter excludes people without telling them because they are annoying or possibly because another person complained about them in the past. It seems to have hit a nerve with a group of younger hackers, because they feel a sense of unfairness about it, as though it might get directed at them at some point. The other issue was the perceived threat to exclude anyone from future foo's for talking about the lack of invites. It just made a number of people feel badly.Somebody commented that FOO Camp was something put on by O'Reilly to thank its authors and employees, and indeed it contains elements of that. But it also contains a splash of TED to it. As in, these are the people to watch, these are the people getting book deals, and this is the in crowd.
The whole foo / bar rivalry is unfortunate and should fade away. Hopefully, next year's bar and foo will focus just on the opportunity to get together and have fun, hanging out with smart people and learning stuff, and for bar campers, hacking up some really great stuff.
But following the guy on twitter, I have to say I have no real idea why people respect him other than he is the name behind the book. As an author, perhaps that's not something I should say. But why is he spewing forth garbage like this?
I mean, have a political affiliation, man, sure. But I don't think even he believes that people are following him for his political commentary.
Perhaps the point of twitter is that it's the pocket lint of what's in everyone's head. If that's the case, there's an awful fucking lot of lint in that man's head, and I just don't actually see anything interesting or useful about O'Reilly from him, whereas I do see a lot of useful stuff coming out of other publishing-type people, like Andy Lester.
Jimmy Wales and I talked about this a while ago, and he and I came to a sort of agreement in email that once you've been put on a pedestal (to paraphrase Randal Shwartz), it's easy to expect a lot more from a man than who he is. In the case of Jimmy, I expected him to try to distance himself from the sycophants and the politics of the Wikipedia and the Foundation, Wikia, funding, and the travel debacle, and he essentially told me that he wasn't actively trying to be a part of it, but after a certain point of "fame", you're neck deep in it. The difference is, after talking to Jimmy for what must have been a month or two, I have a lot of respect for the man, and I believe him.
Tim... I'm pretty sure Tim is stirring the pot for the sake of it, and using his name and company the same way those other name-and-company people (eh, I could say George Soros, but we know that's a different kind of league; even a Ballmer or Gates here is out of Tim's league) do. He's just a pariah. It makes me ill. Why do I feel guilty about un-following him, though? Am I less of a geek for thinking he's a prick? He seems to have done so much for the community.
31 July, 2009
You know Apple,
30 July, 2009
Supersonic airflows
The notion of building a guided rocket has me concerned that flight software designed for low-alpha, sub-sonic flight does not know how to operate control surfaces at supersonic speeds. I am not even sure where to look for the answers to the questions I have not yet formed.
Mainly, I realize if I react as though I am traveling 70mph and I am in fact traveling 770mph, I am in deep shit. I have a feeling that the equations don't scale linearly. That is, I don't just react one-eleventh as much. And of course, I understand that air is a different beast at supersonic speeds.
If only I could do all my testing above 50,000', I wouldn't have to worry about getting the fuel to that height to begin with (in the case of a hybrid rocket), and I wouldn't have to worry about smacking a rocket into someone's house. Oh, yes, I did do that once.
Books, papers, software recommendations?
Mainly, I realize if I react as though I am traveling 70mph and I am in fact traveling 770mph, I am in deep shit. I have a feeling that the equations don't scale linearly. That is, I don't just react one-eleventh as much. And of course, I understand that air is a different beast at supersonic speeds.
If only I could do all my testing above 50,000', I wouldn't have to worry about getting the fuel to that height to begin with (in the case of a hybrid rocket), and I wouldn't have to worry about smacking a rocket into someone's house. Oh, yes, I did do that once.
Books, papers, software recommendations?
29 July, 2009
Other modes of controlled "flight"
- A wheeled vehicle. As Emily says, "the horizon is just really close." Yeah. That's the problem. The good news is, I can take the Subaru or a bike out and get GPS waypoints at the Summit Shenandoah track, feed them to the vehicle, and have it drive the track.
- The bad news is I need to port OpenCV to the Arduino (which speaks C, mostly) or figure out how to get Kalman filtering working in a useful way (nod to @littlebirdceo). But target tracking doesn't help us too much. A vision solution is important unless we want to get squished. I'd rather thump a landing than hit a wall at full throttle in a wheeled vehicle.
- A model rocket. Wifey is building her first model rocket, which I haven't done since I was a kid. I notice Apogee Rockets makes and sells kits that will take a G80 motor. I also notice they do sell supersonic and clustered rockets. I'm specifically interested in a clustered four-way D21 rocket. However, they also have a couple of interesting multi-stage solutions, which they don't go into a lot of detail other than to say their software, RockSim (which I won't link to because it's buggy as shit, not Free-as-in-speech, and can mostly be replicated by X-Plane) can handle multi-stage rockets.
- Interesting is that Apogee also sells electronics. Now, nothing they've got (even their really advanced toys) is even close to the Arduino in terms of power, even the baby Arduinos. What makes this interesting is the possibility of a "lift stage" rocket (like a clustered C or D rocket) with an "altitude" rocket (an Apogee F10) or a "high-velocity stage" (such as a pair of KBA G135's).
- What's really got me thinking crazy is that with a two-stage rocket you don't need too much in the way of flight controls. But if you're nuts enough, a third stage rocket, with a long burn, like, say, an Aerotech G12 or Apogee F10 [above] or even, maybe, an Aerotech L339, it would be good to have flight control surfaces on the vehicle. Would it be out of hte question to attempt, at, say, ten thousand feet, to tip over, deploy JSOW-style wings, and try to fly a rocket in lateral flight? That might mean certain disaster. Your lifting body would have to be very clever, and, really, what's the point of tooling around in level flight for ten seconds at 10,000 feet? But, it would be flying, autonomously and supersonically, at high altitudes, using control surfaces. Even if only for ten seconds. The good news is that because it's so high, even if it fucks up, it's nowhere near close enough to anyone to do any harm.
- I have also considered liquid-fueled (like kerosene and n2o) and hybrid (like n2o and paraffin) rockets, but the means of controlling their thrust is elusive. That, to me, along with the pulsejet, has the best potential for very-high-power UAV development. Good way to get killed, of course.
Image: A launch at Wallops labeled by them as TacSat, but the article description says it's an MDA bird on top of a four-stage Minotaur. To me, it looks like a Delta. But, whatever. MDA is pretty quiet about these things, and sometimes NASA gets their facts wrong. Sometimes, even on purpose.
27 July, 2009
Harlan Ellison
Have managed to avoid reading much of anything he's written until now. Just finished the graphic novel, Vic and Blood, as he claims that's the way he wanted it. I was at first confused by the scene after the "cumup", and then I just became very saddened that he wrote the book the way he did. Or novella. Or short stories. Or whatever. But after all the self-righteous "it's not misogynist" and "it's not misanthropist" or "I didn't intend it to be that way," it was. Maybe he didn't intend it to be that way because he didn't understand what those terms meant.
In the end, the reader is left brutalized. For 1969, the same year Easy Rider made a stir and LSD was really starting to gain ground, the story is unimaginably harsh. That he wrote it for his dog is, to me, rather horrifying.
I simply don't know what to make of the author who is purported to be such a prolific and intelligent author. And that's not because I'm a complete luddite who doesn't understand literature. I think I just don't like the man. For comparison, I didn't like Haldeman's Forever War; but I understood where he was coming from, I read the book, and got what he was saying. But I didn't think, man, this Haldeman guy is a dick. With Ellison, I'm frankly not sure what to think, but it's not real positive at the moment. I've got time to reflect, and I think next on my list are Richard K Morgan's fantasy book and a very, very old DAW pressing of a CJ Cherryh book (used book stores make my heart so happy).
In the end, the reader is left brutalized. For 1969, the same year Easy Rider made a stir and LSD was really starting to gain ground, the story is unimaginably harsh. That he wrote it for his dog is, to me, rather horrifying.
I simply don't know what to make of the author who is purported to be such a prolific and intelligent author. And that's not because I'm a complete luddite who doesn't understand literature. I think I just don't like the man. For comparison, I didn't like Haldeman's Forever War; but I understood where he was coming from, I read the book, and got what he was saying. But I didn't think, man, this Haldeman guy is a dick. With Ellison, I'm frankly not sure what to think, but it's not real positive at the moment. I've got time to reflect, and I think next on my list are Richard K Morgan's fantasy book and a very, very old DAW pressing of a CJ Cherryh book (used book stores make my heart so happy).