Snow Leopard is fast. I had no idea. I was originally going to hold out, but I liked some of the visual sugar they'd layered onto it, so I just sort of decided to upgrade and wow, it is fucking fast. It ported all my stuff over from time machine so my home directory was intact – including my subversion repositories – and it even left my applications alone. Which, incidentally, is how I was able to make my initial sketches of the (wait for it) STUPENDOUS AVRIETTE TURBOMACHINE.
I have finally gotten on the good side of the Wacom Bamboo, and now I am seriously drooling over the Intuous 4 and the Cintiq 21. When I get my venture capital squared away, the first thing I'm going to do is build a design workstation so I can finally build the motor. I have a supplier and builder for the airframe, but the turbine part is a little harder to source.
11 September, 2009
10 September, 2009
The world makes Alex angry.
I am busting my ass to come up with proper illustrations, do research for prior art, to make sure that I'm not stepping on anyone's toes. Then there's this chick. Let me show you, for purposes of illustration, what Irene H. Patukonis, of Boston (where else?) would like to patent:
Note that this is in fact figure 5, and that there are eleven figures included in the patent form. The invention is listed as "The ornamental design for a combined toy stuffed with Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur and egg container as shown." I really wish I could say this was, you know, some 1950's toy that somebody made up and thought it was really innovative at the time, but it was filed in 1994, and Irene actually hired a patent lawyer, who, instead of throwing her out on the street, actually took on the case, and made sure that whole dinosaur-egg-omelet thing was given a patent. That lawyer, in case you're wondering, is a Mr. John P. McGonagle (which, incidentally, is a name from a particular area of Ireland, so you may actually be kin to this guy if you're Irish or have the same last name — the horror). The patent examiner was a Melvin B. Feifer who was obviously either so enamored with the cuddly T-Rex drawings or just hadn't had his morning coffee.
So why am I busting my ass to make sure that my patents are as solid as they can be; that my patents reflect the diligence and hard work I put into everything I do when clearly a cute drawing a turbojet and line or two that says "refer to cuddly turbojet figure 5 and 7 for front elevational view thereof as well as a top plan view thereof"? Why do I bother? I know what I want to patent, and I know it's never been done before because nobody's ever been blessed with my particular strain of stupidity (again, quoting Rutan, research is what happens when 50% of everyone says it'll never work and the other 50% scratch their chins and say Iiiiiiiii dunnno about that.... Maaaaybe.).
Maybe I should just make some chicken scratching on the Wacom, submit that with the patent, and hope I get, uh.... Mr. Feifer as my patent "Primary Examiner."
Seriously, though. A patent for an extinct lizard that can come out of a fake eggshell. Good grief. Somebody should put me in charge of weeding out the retarded patents so we'd have a more streamlined process of getting patents through.
Fucking dinosaur toys. Unbelievable.
So why am I busting my ass to make sure that my patents are as solid as they can be; that my patents reflect the diligence and hard work I put into everything I do when clearly a cute drawing a turbojet and line or two that says "refer to cuddly turbojet figure 5 and 7 for front elevational view thereof as well as a top plan view thereof"? Why do I bother? I know what I want to patent, and I know it's never been done before because nobody's ever been blessed with my particular strain of stupidity (again, quoting Rutan, research is what happens when 50% of everyone says it'll never work and the other 50% scratch their chins and say Iiiiiiiii dunnno about that.... Maaaaybe.).
Maybe I should just make some chicken scratching on the Wacom, submit that with the patent, and hope I get, uh.... Mr. Feifer as my patent "Primary Examiner."
Seriously, though. A patent for an extinct lizard that can come out of a fake eggshell. Good grief. Somebody should put me in charge of weeding out the retarded patents so we'd have a more streamlined process of getting patents through.
Fucking dinosaur toys. Unbelievable.
(Living with) broken vertebrae
subtext: the things I do for science. sheesh.
I am hereby uploading pictures of my spine which were taken from an MRI at Virginia Hospital Center (and, no, I don't care to do it again). I'll add commentary where I feel it's helpful. But mostly, this is for those of you who will never lead such an active life that you'd break a vertebrae.
So, first up, what does our spine look like?
(note: all pictures are fairly large and click-through-able). This is a spine, apparently supporting me, but of course I was on the bed in the big old donut of death that is the MRI machine. You can't really make it out in these photos, but a trained eye can spot the transition from the T-spine to the L-spine, and might even notice that the L-spine is looking a little worse for wear.
Here, though, we start to see that the vertebrae don't really look evenly spaced, nor do they really look symmetrical, which they kind of should (not perfectly symmetrical of course, but anyone who's seen a side of beef can tell you that doesn't look right. Note the strange, irregular gaps between the vertebrae.
Now this one is special. First, the three vertebrae you see at the top are the three that are fractured. Notice how they have that "W" shape to them? Do you see that two of them are smashed so close together it's almost as though the disc (the space between the vertebrae) has nowhere to go? Well, the good news is, nerves live in there, and they tell you "hey, brain, quit fucking up the spine, or I'm gonna send you the most agonizing pain you can imagine!" Really, they do. It hurts a lot. What's also interesting is the lowest vertebrae (looks almost like a sideways "7", with the curve facing down) was injured in a car accident in 1997, caused me enormous pain (still does cause me pain), and it took twelve years and innumerable doctors (hey state farm: GFY, ok?) before my orthopedic surgeon actually notice that it had been broken, scarred over, and sort-of healed. This was vindicating for me, but of course I'd rather have been treated by better doctors back then.
If you look at the top four vertebrae in this photo, you'll see that the bottom three of those (that is the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th from the top) are quite broken and misshapen. There's all kinds of ickiness there, and it won't ever really heal. I've probably got osteoarthritis to live through in my older years, unless we come up with a way to grow bone grafts or those steel-lattice spinal implants become a) more affordable and b) commonplace.
I wanted to share this, though, as when I say "my back hurts" it could mean anything from "I have a tummy ache" to "my spinal column has been severed." Thankfully, we're somewhere in between. I have three fractured vertebrae, and I have one that healed very poorly and causes pain because it's little spurs on it – as a matter of fact, it reminds me of Alastair Reynolds' melding plague.
Alas, I digress. You've been filled in. That's the back injury that I've been talking about. The same one that's kept me out of the job market (although I've done a phenomenal amount of research for an aeronautics company I want to seed).
It's also the injury that CACI fired me for. I think this bears mentioning not because I'm whining – I'm fairly comfortable with a moderate level of pain (and I started physical therapy today!!) – but because I feel the need to warn people that all the talk CACI gives new hires about it being a family oriented company and their #1 concern is their employees (haven't you heard this speech a bazillion times? "We are here because you [the audience, the non-executive-pay people] are so bright and make this company such a great place to work." I'll channel Ballmer for a second to add to the interlude: "I. Love. This. Company.") CACI had a flex schedule for everyone. Nobody showed up at meetings, they called in from coffee shops. We began referring to Peregrine Espresso as the "peregrine annex" because so many people were in fact not in the office. But, I broke my back, and they began the machinery to fire me. If I'd been hit by a bus or something, this never would have happened (the firing; not the injury). So if you take anything from this other than "your spine is more fragile than you think", turn down every offer CACI throws at you. I have met person after person who has said that their benefits were terrible, their timekeeping apparatus (if you could call it that) was abysmal... The place is just run as if by amateurs. Admin assistants or something. You won't like working there, it's back-biting customer-dick-sucking company, and you just don't want to be there. Take it from the guy who got fired for breaking his back.
I am hereby uploading pictures of my spine which were taken from an MRI at Virginia Hospital Center (and, no, I don't care to do it again). I'll add commentary where I feel it's helpful. But mostly, this is for those of you who will never lead such an active life that you'd break a vertebrae.
So, first up, what does our spine look like?
I wanted to share this, though, as when I say "my back hurts" it could mean anything from "I have a tummy ache" to "my spinal column has been severed." Thankfully, we're somewhere in between. I have three fractured vertebrae, and I have one that healed very poorly and causes pain because it's little spurs on it – as a matter of fact, it reminds me of Alastair Reynolds' melding plague.
Alas, I digress. You've been filled in. That's the back injury that I've been talking about. The same one that's kept me out of the job market (although I've done a phenomenal amount of research for an aeronautics company I want to seed).
It's also the injury that CACI fired me for. I think this bears mentioning not because I'm whining – I'm fairly comfortable with a moderate level of pain (and I started physical therapy today!!) – but because I feel the need to warn people that all the talk CACI gives new hires about it being a family oriented company and their #1 concern is their employees (haven't you heard this speech a bazillion times? "We are here because you [the audience, the non-executive-pay people] are so bright and make this company such a great place to work." I'll channel Ballmer for a second to add to the interlude: "I. Love. This. Company.") CACI had a flex schedule for everyone. Nobody showed up at meetings, they called in from coffee shops. We began referring to Peregrine Espresso as the "peregrine annex" because so many people were in fact not in the office. But, I broke my back, and they began the machinery to fire me. If I'd been hit by a bus or something, this never would have happened (the firing; not the injury). So if you take anything from this other than "your spine is more fragile than you think", turn down every offer CACI throws at you. I have met person after person who has said that their benefits were terrible, their timekeeping apparatus (if you could call it that) was abysmal... The place is just run as if by amateurs. Admin assistants or something. You won't like working there, it's back-biting customer-dick-sucking company, and you just don't want to be there. Take it from the guy who got fired for breaking his back.
08 September, 2009
If there's one conference this year to attend
It's the singularity summit. I write about the singularity, and I read about it in books from the likes of Charlie Stross. Did you read Accelerando or Stephen Baxter's Ring and pause to think about the implications? How about Tipler's Anthropic Cosmological Principle or Physics of Immortality? Even, if I may, Shane Williams and Sean Dix own, somewhat less "ambitious" Orphans trilogy? What could be more interesting than a Summit whose sole purpose is to discuss the prolonging human life, to escape this moribund and earth-bound existence for something truly remarkable.
Provided I can physically make it, I'll be doing my damnedest to attend. So we're looking for friends to maybe put us up in New York and taking the Acela up. I can think of a few of you who could help us out there.
Wifey will probably be coming along to push me about a wheelchair as I'm still not able to walk or sit quietly in a conference chair for the entire time (which isn't especially different, on reflection, from my time at SC05 or any of the other conferences I attended in 05/06, and I was nominally uninjured back then).
The conference is important because Humanity needs to be driving towards the singularity. I understand that people are scared; it's only natural to think of post-humans as terrifying. However, it is inevitable. We are going to get there. Let's make sure we get there in a way that's safe. Let's nurture computer intelligence that doesn't immediately become SkyNet or Agent Smith. Instead, let's focus on a more Tiplerian brain-computer-interface and the simulation argument.
Death, folks, is so outdated.
01 September, 2009
Fuels, briefly
I should look into plasticizing agents and epoxies. I can probably make a cast of any arbitrary shape I like and fill it with a liquid that subsequently solidifies, and use that as a core for the solid element of a hybrid rocket. Immediately coming to mind is a combination of coal and aluminum (maybe with magnesium?) in epoxy. The form would have more than enough energy to be useful when burned with an oxidizer. I am concerned though, as I've been reading about hybrid rockets being amenable to throttling. I can't think of an especially good way to stop-restart an already-running hybrid when the fuel itself is as cantankerous as aluminum and magnesium. Coal, sure.
Maybe it would be effective to have exactly the opposite of the previously mentioned "igniting fluid": carry a small supply of halon that can be flushed into the monster to turn it off, and use varying oxidant supply for throttle control. You'd probably also have to be careful with nozzle design if you want throttle control that's better than "on" and "off". I'm not sure how some of these really ugly fuels (benzene...) were "turned off" and restarted, as they apparently are capable of doing. We have enough trouble putting those sorts of fires out without the presence of an oxidizer.
Oh, wow; actually I think I have the idea for how to do it. Not ready to share it here yet, but I think all the pieces work.
Maybe it would be effective to have exactly the opposite of the previously mentioned "igniting fluid": carry a small supply of halon that can be flushed into the monster to turn it off, and use varying oxidant supply for throttle control. You'd probably also have to be careful with nozzle design if you want throttle control that's better than "on" and "off". I'm not sure how some of these really ugly fuels (benzene...) were "turned off" and restarted, as they apparently are capable of doing. We have enough trouble putting those sorts of fires out without the presence of an oxidizer.
Oh, wow; actually I think I have the idea for how to do it. Not ready to share it here yet, but I think all the pieces work.
Irony
short: fentanyl or orthopedic devices as analgesic; discuss.
My surgeon told me today he wants me off of the fentanyl and that I need to wean off the back brace. Okay, I guess. When I think about it, though, I'm kind of startled that, given the choice — between fentanyl and the back brace — I'll pick the brace every single time. I suppose I was expecting that I'd want to make sure my supply of fentanyl was uninterrupted, since I use it to stop pain. But, that's also what I use the back brace for.
The difference between the two is important. The brace, while it doesn't give me any euphoria (it's hardly true that the fentanyl gives me any euphoria anymore, either), I am 100% sure it will work, every time I use it. There's no tolerance, no fussing with the pharmacist or scheduling a visit to the doctor's office. It prevents me from reinjuring myself, and it helps me walk around, drive, even sit in a chair, as though I had not sustained any injury. Granted, I think that's what the fentanyl is supposed to be doing, nominally, too, but I guess I've read enough about opiates or drugs in general that I expected that on some level, my body would demand the drugs more than relief from pain.
It's both pleasing and a little unnerving. Pleasing because that tells me I'm not kidding myself about why I'm using the drugs; I have felt, every time I've been given a strong narcotic for pain, that it was expressly for pain, and not to feed some addiction. The fact that I get injured a lot gives me just enough self-doubt to think, am I really that prone to injury? Is it possible that I am getting this injured, this often, on purpose, to sustain a drug habit?
Normally, I would have scoffed and said there was no chance, and even acted offended at the suggestion. But, when one looks at the track record, it would be easy to make a case for it. And so, the nagging bit of doubt. I hadn't considered the brace's place in this equation. The problem with the brace is not addiction or withdrawal, or cost or licensing or anything as sordid as any of that. The problem is that, while keeping my body fairly safe by supporting my spine, it provides support that I'd normally be providing with the muscles in my back and on my sides (the obliques). By using the brace all the time, I ensure that those muscles will atrophy as they're not needed, and any time I am not using the brace, I'll be in pain because those muscles aren't up to the task.
And now the unnerving: the brace is so effective at preventing pain and injury, it makes me actually stop and think, can I just wear the brace forever? I mean, I have kept all the other orthopedic devices from previous injuries and accidents: knee and wrist braces, et cetera. But, isn't that what I had expected to feel for the fentanyl? That since it is so effective at blocking pain, that I'd actually consider using it in perpetuity?
Well, actually, no, I would not consider using fentanyl in perpetuity. Because, frankly, it's shitty as a pain reliever compared to the brace. It has additional side effects like fucking with my sleep schedule and the suspicious look from pharmacist and nurse alike (clearly, this guy has been using the patch too long, we have to get him off of it); features I really don't like. The brace, by contrast does not. I have also developed tolerance to the fentanyl so that, not only am I still taking the drug, I am taking the drug and pain is breaking through it ("breakthrough pain"), making me want more of the drug, and that makes me uncomfortable. There's a checks-and-balances thing going on whereby I am thinking to myself, I don't like that feeling, and I recognize it as dependence. I guess.
So, between the two, I'd prefer to use the brace, to not be given fentanyl again, and to have the sure-shot prevention of pain and injury that is the brace. But, I can't have that either, and the only way I'm going to get from here to some pain-and-injury-free future is hard work at physical therapy, and not allowing accidents like that (or at least, doing my best not to cause them) to happen again in the future. But, for the meantime, I'm cutting back on the fentanyl, back from a hundred mikes down to seventy-five, and I have to cut back on my use of the brace, too. I wish I had known the brace would be this much of a problem down the road; I'd have stopped using it earlier. Having the brace to sustain me while I tapered off fentanyl, or the fentanyl while I tapered off the brace would have made my life a lot easier. Now, I have to taper off both, and that more or less guarantees I will be spending some of the next month in (perhaps substantial) pain.
Drat.
My surgeon told me today he wants me off of the fentanyl and that I need to wean off the back brace. Okay, I guess. When I think about it, though, I'm kind of startled that, given the choice — between fentanyl and the back brace — I'll pick the brace every single time. I suppose I was expecting that I'd want to make sure my supply of fentanyl was uninterrupted, since I use it to stop pain. But, that's also what I use the back brace for.
The difference between the two is important. The brace, while it doesn't give me any euphoria (it's hardly true that the fentanyl gives me any euphoria anymore, either), I am 100% sure it will work, every time I use it. There's no tolerance, no fussing with the pharmacist or scheduling a visit to the doctor's office. It prevents me from reinjuring myself, and it helps me walk around, drive, even sit in a chair, as though I had not sustained any injury. Granted, I think that's what the fentanyl is supposed to be doing, nominally, too, but I guess I've read enough about opiates or drugs in general that I expected that on some level, my body would demand the drugs more than relief from pain.
It's both pleasing and a little unnerving. Pleasing because that tells me I'm not kidding myself about why I'm using the drugs; I have felt, every time I've been given a strong narcotic for pain, that it was expressly for pain, and not to feed some addiction. The fact that I get injured a lot gives me just enough self-doubt to think, am I really that prone to injury? Is it possible that I am getting this injured, this often, on purpose, to sustain a drug habit?
Normally, I would have scoffed and said there was no chance, and even acted offended at the suggestion. But, when one looks at the track record, it would be easy to make a case for it. And so, the nagging bit of doubt. I hadn't considered the brace's place in this equation. The problem with the brace is not addiction or withdrawal, or cost or licensing or anything as sordid as any of that. The problem is that, while keeping my body fairly safe by supporting my spine, it provides support that I'd normally be providing with the muscles in my back and on my sides (the obliques). By using the brace all the time, I ensure that those muscles will atrophy as they're not needed, and any time I am not using the brace, I'll be in pain because those muscles aren't up to the task.
And now the unnerving: the brace is so effective at preventing pain and injury, it makes me actually stop and think, can I just wear the brace forever? I mean, I have kept all the other orthopedic devices from previous injuries and accidents: knee and wrist braces, et cetera. But, isn't that what I had expected to feel for the fentanyl? That since it is so effective at blocking pain, that I'd actually consider using it in perpetuity?
Well, actually, no, I would not consider using fentanyl in perpetuity. Because, frankly, it's shitty as a pain reliever compared to the brace. It has additional side effects like fucking with my sleep schedule and the suspicious look from pharmacist and nurse alike (clearly, this guy has been using the patch too long, we have to get him off of it); features I really don't like. The brace, by contrast does not. I have also developed tolerance to the fentanyl so that, not only am I still taking the drug, I am taking the drug and pain is breaking through it ("breakthrough pain"), making me want more of the drug, and that makes me uncomfortable. There's a checks-and-balances thing going on whereby I am thinking to myself, I don't like that feeling, and I recognize it as dependence. I guess.
So, between the two, I'd prefer to use the brace, to not be given fentanyl again, and to have the sure-shot prevention of pain and injury that is the brace. But, I can't have that either, and the only way I'm going to get from here to some pain-and-injury-free future is hard work at physical therapy, and not allowing accidents like that (or at least, doing my best not to cause them) to happen again in the future. But, for the meantime, I'm cutting back on the fentanyl, back from a hundred mikes down to seventy-five, and I have to cut back on my use of the brace, too. I wish I had known the brace would be this much of a problem down the road; I'd have stopped using it earlier. Having the brace to sustain me while I tapered off fentanyl, or the fentanyl while I tapered off the brace would have made my life a lot easier. Now, I have to taper off both, and that more or less guarantees I will be spending some of the next month in (perhaps substantial) pain.
Drat.
26 August, 2009
Minor disappointments
short: I have been doing a lot of thinking about fuels, oxidizers, bypass ratios, bleed valves, and making use of enormous wings to get enormous lift. You may find yourself yawning already.
I stated previously I wanted an aircraft that was safe, should it thump a landing. As it's unmanned and small (when compared to even fairly small commercial passenger jets), this means the fuel has to be safe. I don't really like the idea of carrying JP-8 or JP-7 around with me, as I have seen JP-8 aircraft "thump" and explode into a large fireball. While I never saw pictures or evidence of JP-7 aircraft losses, at least a couple are mentioned, and they don't look real safe, either.
Interestingly, liquid hydrogen is a great fuel and could quite easily be purged deliberately from the vehicle, and it would certainly escape quite quickly from the vehicle, should it break apart. Extensive testing by P&W engineers found that it was hard to get LH2 to actually ignite, because it is so light and tends to disperse so quickly. If you consider the size of the aircraft, let us say a wingspan of 16', it almost sounds like the best route to work with (and in fact, the J58 and the "304" Suntan engine are — necessarily — very similar in operation) because you can't really keep too much in the wings, and the fuselage contains a lot of "open space" to keep it light. Even then, however, I'm not sure how much LH2 you'd be able to store and whether that would get you to San Francisco from San Diego (this is a common unit of measurement for Californians — how long does my commuter flight take? how much will it cost?).
While the primary problem with LH2 as a fuel is distribution (NASA has documented this extensively), but other obstacles, such as range and fuel containment in the vehicle, also crop up. (I am aware of the Rex engines; I intend to discuss them in a bit after I've digested exactly what they can do; so far it seems like the Rex 2 and Rex 3 were designed to be hammer-of-god fast, without much regard for fuel consumption)
Unfortunately, while methanol burns at 740° F or so (and is thus suitable for a liquid fuel), one of the other functions of fuel in many jet engines is lubrication. This is similar in concept to the 2-stroke piston engine. You guessed it, methanol is not going to cut it as a lubricant (come to think of it, I don't recall the specifics of the 304 Suntan engine's guts so I'm not sure what they used in their engine).
It seems that it may just be best plan to burn diesel, but keep my eyes out for other possibilities. In theory, anything that burns diesel well should be able to burn any of the alcohols. Lubrication has been partially solved by the use of ball bearings (even in axial-flow turbines!); in fact one such configuration actually uses gold-plated (treated?) bearings, which use the gold itself as a lubricant once the engine reaches sufficient temperature. Sure, it sounds great, but it's a lot of money, and while there are a few patents on these sorts of things, you have to try it in your own lab to determine whether it's right for your engine. This means you need to have lots of venture capital, or Uncle Sam must like you a lot. And those liquid-metal, ball-bearing turbojets? The really clever solution? Well, it's great if you never have to use it again, and all the engines with this sort of setup are part of a cruise missile of one sort or another.
On that last notion, it is kind of depressing to note that DARPA presently has very little interest in high-altitude, high-efficiency, or even long loiter engines. This says, to me, that they've pretty much got what they want in that regard. If that's the case, the principle of what to do with an air-breather that will fly above 100,000' comes down to two fields, neither of which will make anyone rich.
First, there are the sail planes (sometimes called power gliders). These are enormous wingspan glider-form aircraft, which people have affixed an e.g., TJ-100 to the fuselage. An example of this would be the air show crowd-pleasing Super Salto glider. The second, likely more far-fetched than a 100,000' "high altitude sailplane community," would be to get someone like Cirrus on board. Their Vision aircraft would benefit enormously from a higher-efficiency, smaller form factor engine. I could see an aircraft like the Vision equipped with two such engines attached at the fuselage much like the T-37 Tweet. I would imagine you could extend the range of the aircraft, give it a higher service ceiling, or even dramatically increase the power available to the pilot (without having to use an afterburner, but still very much at the expense of fuel consumption).
Would Cirrus be interested in building a twin-engine Mach 1.5-ish plane for commercial customers? My guess is probably not.
I stated previously I wanted an aircraft that was safe, should it thump a landing. As it's unmanned and small (when compared to even fairly small commercial passenger jets), this means the fuel has to be safe. I don't really like the idea of carrying JP-8 or JP-7 around with me, as I have seen JP-8 aircraft "thump" and explode into a large fireball. While I never saw pictures or evidence of JP-7 aircraft losses, at least a couple are mentioned, and they don't look real safe, either.
Interestingly, liquid hydrogen is a great fuel and could quite easily be purged deliberately from the vehicle, and it would certainly escape quite quickly from the vehicle, should it break apart. Extensive testing by P&W engineers found that it was hard to get LH2 to actually ignite, because it is so light and tends to disperse so quickly. If you consider the size of the aircraft, let us say a wingspan of 16', it almost sounds like the best route to work with (and in fact, the J58 and the "304" Suntan engine are — necessarily — very similar in operation) because you can't really keep too much in the wings, and the fuselage contains a lot of "open space" to keep it light. Even then, however, I'm not sure how much LH2 you'd be able to store and whether that would get you to San Francisco from San Diego (this is a common unit of measurement for Californians — how long does my commuter flight take? how much will it cost?).
While the primary problem with LH2 as a fuel is distribution (NASA has documented this extensively), but other obstacles, such as range and fuel containment in the vehicle, also crop up. (I am aware of the Rex engines; I intend to discuss them in a bit after I've digested exactly what they can do; so far it seems like the Rex 2 and Rex 3 were designed to be hammer-of-god fast, without much regard for fuel consumption)
Unfortunately, while methanol burns at 740° F or so (and is thus suitable for a liquid fuel), one of the other functions of fuel in many jet engines is lubrication. This is similar in concept to the 2-stroke piston engine. You guessed it, methanol is not going to cut it as a lubricant (come to think of it, I don't recall the specifics of the 304 Suntan engine's guts so I'm not sure what they used in their engine).
It seems that it may just be best plan to burn diesel, but keep my eyes out for other possibilities. In theory, anything that burns diesel well should be able to burn any of the alcohols. Lubrication has been partially solved by the use of ball bearings (even in axial-flow turbines!); in fact one such configuration actually uses gold-plated (treated?) bearings, which use the gold itself as a lubricant once the engine reaches sufficient temperature. Sure, it sounds great, but it's a lot of money, and while there are a few patents on these sorts of things, you have to try it in your own lab to determine whether it's right for your engine. This means you need to have lots of venture capital, or Uncle Sam must like you a lot. And those liquid-metal, ball-bearing turbojets? The really clever solution? Well, it's great if you never have to use it again, and all the engines with this sort of setup are part of a cruise missile of one sort or another.
On that last notion, it is kind of depressing to note that DARPA presently has very little interest in high-altitude, high-efficiency, or even long loiter engines. This says, to me, that they've pretty much got what they want in that regard. If that's the case, the principle of what to do with an air-breather that will fly above 100,000' comes down to two fields, neither of which will make anyone rich.
First, there are the sail planes (sometimes called power gliders). These are enormous wingspan glider-form aircraft, which people have affixed an e.g., TJ-100 to the fuselage. An example of this would be the air show crowd-pleasing Super Salto glider. The second, likely more far-fetched than a 100,000' "high altitude sailplane community," would be to get someone like Cirrus on board. Their Vision aircraft would benefit enormously from a higher-efficiency, smaller form factor engine. I could see an aircraft like the Vision equipped with two such engines attached at the fuselage much like the T-37 Tweet. I would imagine you could extend the range of the aircraft, give it a higher service ceiling, or even dramatically increase the power available to the pilot (without having to use an afterburner, but still very much at the expense of fuel consumption).
Would Cirrus be interested in building a twin-engine Mach 1.5-ish plane for commercial customers? My guess is probably not.
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.