Space Day 2008

Here in the desert rough town where I have retired in the NW USA, "space projects" means "UFOs and other nonsense" and nothing else can penetrate their awareness.

So it is a slightly more solitary effort I do here.

Since it is closely connected to energy supply potentials, my interest has lately focused on ground-based renewable energy sources.

But not entirely. Part of the effort in communicating such things is to be able to convey mathematical expressions in writing on the net. Turns out it takes $90 to get software to write equations even in mere word processors, although the early software "Equation Editor" that came with computers long ago, with stern admonitions re its use (buy $90 software so you will be free to write math equations, really cuts down who will use math to approach energy solutions on the net) but I have discovered a free software that is rather off the edge but may be able to do the equations (and use screen grab to be able to show others) and also, with some learning of an unusual system, it will also solve the math too. So I have been struggling to learn to use the software, while slowly figuring out how to input the re-calculations I did in less than an hour a couple of days ago but is handwritten; using a calculator and the "Physics 101" software at times to speed things up. But now to put into computer-displayable form.

My handwritten calculations done a couple of days ago, using "Physics 101" to re-do calculations some of which I had done back circa 1970 when all I had was a slide rule and not even a 4-function calculator. The fun thing about it is I get the same answers when using the software.

For now, although I still need to figure out how to display the calculations, for my isolated lonely Space Day 2008 celebration contribution, that re-calculations of earth escape velocity energy given to a one-kilogram mass, does indeed take 6.247e7 Joules per kilogram, which is 17.4 KW-hour per kilogram.

At an example cost for electric power of 10 cents per Kilowatt-hour, that is $1.74 of electrical energy cost, which is given to 1 Kg mass in the process of moving it from the equator to an infinite distance if only considering Earth's gravitational well.

Now if one calculates the same way for the escape velocity energy given to 1 Kg, but starting at GEO, is 9.418e6 Joules or 2.6 KWh.

Subtracting the energy needed to escape from GEO altitude, from the escape energy from earth surface, gives the energy needed to reach GEO altitude from ground. That difference is 14.8 KWh. But that is straight up, and to stay there it needs to be given a horizontal push to reach orbital velocity in GEO, another 1.3 KWh for a total of 16.1 KWh to go from the ground on the equator up into GEO orbit and stay there.

Since 1 Kg = 2.2 pounds mass, that is 7.3 KWh per pound mass put into GEO from the ground. At the example cost of electrical energy of 10 cents per KWh, that means 73 cents of energy is given to a pound of mass by moving it from ground up into GEO orbit.

Lots could be built in GEO if transportation up to there were anything like that price.

Of course, I have been finding possible ways to do that, fun fun. Even beyond the anchored earth tether "Space Elevator" concepts. Can be done. But not with my resources. Yet to a lonely old man in the desert, it is a nice vision for mankind, on this anniversary of man's first steps on the lunar surface.

Doing the math

An initial goal of verifying calculations that were mentioned in Al Gore's recent speech:

"Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.

And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand."

Calculating the disk area of the Earth, as seen by incoming solar energy: Area circle is pi r squared so frontal area of the Earth in sunshine is pi times 6.38e8 meters = 8.159e20 m squared.

"Through one square meter of space facing the Sun pass 1390 W of sunlight
"http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/75SummerStudy/Chapt.2.html

"this is nearly twice the maximum of 747 W striking a square meter normal to the Sun at the Earth's surface"

Thus solar energy striking the disk of the earth at any given moment is 1390 w/msq times earth disk area of 8.159e20 m squared = 11341e20 or 1.13e24 watts. In 40 minutes that would be 2/3 that in watt-hours, or 7.56e23 Wh. If a terawatt is 1e12 W, that is 7.56e11 terawatts of solar energy hitting the disk of the earth every 40 minutes.

That is not all energy usable to power our civilization's needs, of course; it is just for comparison purposes, to bracket in the potentials.

So how much energy does civilization currently use in a full year? That part of this effort needs to be done later, the evening's wine has relaxed and dinner needs to be prepared.

I will conclude, for the moment, with another quote from the abovementioned reference, "If the Sun's energy is converted with 10 percent efficiency to electrical power which is sold at a rate of $.012/kW-hr, a square kilometer of space would return more than $14,000,000 each year."

A pound of cure

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is an old adage, but the pound of cure is where the business money is.

More business! More business! (= less prevention.) A fine game for people to play. Yet, guess who foots the bill ... and look who pockets the money. And ... look! who suffers.

Maybe a bit better game is due to be designed.

Response: Evaluating parameters of terrorism

Well, I have put a lot of work into a reply in email, from a group inviting me to submit my idea for dealing with terrorism to the next President. I wrote and tweeked and added to my reply all day, making it as concise as possible. while covering the basic points.

But when logging onto post my idea, it said it was limited to a maximum of 500 characters. My concise writing contained 7,963 characters ... way WAY too many to fit the post space, as shown below:

"As one of the functions of the government is to provide for the common defense, leadership wisdom in the direction of such activity is very advisable specially in view of having such a formidable armed force capability at hand. Knowledge of all the essential factors on all the levels is surely required to perform this function. Surely it is wise that even when "the fat is in the fire" that one acts in such a way as to improve the situation, not grossly risk making it worse as a result of one's reflexive responses. The following are key factors which seem apparent to me right now.

Probably most people here in the US have a stylized picture of what a terrorist is, such as maybe a black bearded man with soulless eyes and a belt full of explosives heading for a crowd or driving a plane into a building.

However, surely if effective defense measures are to be applied, the subject needs to be accurately evaluated instead of reacting to stylized impressions like those. Much less entertaining than would be through simply reacting to valence, our inner fearful stuff; but potentially being far more efficient in sustaining a productive peaceful sustainable world.

Making an effort to evaluate the phenomenon, I would start at the definition of terror: that is, being very frightened. Thus a terrorist is someone who does something to severely frighten people. Now, fright has to do with one's imagined effects of something; it helps make the decision of fight or flight, deep survival fallbacks.

Lots of people deliberately strive to create fear in other people, such as the common schoolyard bully. Even before that, the pattern might be seen in the pre-schooler "bad boy" who misbehaves because getting punished is better than getting ignored. Street gangs led by a bully magnify the fearful impact on those in the way of the bully. A "terrorist" strives to cause fear in others so as to herd them into some different direction than they were headed.

Where the dividing lines are, between definitions of "insurgents", "guerillas", and "terrorists," are not clear to me, are they the same? And speaking of terror, one can be terrified by the sight of a spider, so does that make the busy spider a terrorist as it wanders past in search of a tiny bug for a meal? So probably "terrorism" as explored here, requires intent to cause fear in others so as to modify their behavior in some way.

The term "terrorist" seemed to arise in conjunction with small groups of militia gunning down a bunch of unaware civilians, so as to scare their people away from somewhere. It also applied to similar warriors who were "suicide bombers" thus also automatically eliminating themselves from capture and interrogation after ruining the lives of a bunch of unsuspecting people. For what purpose? Too much trouble and too painful to do just because they are bored with things. They might be "getting even" with something representing that which was bringing terrible stress to the terrorist's lives and loved ones. That is, revengefully deliberately doing damage to cause terror in a particular segment of people, in response to being terrified and/or furious at somebody. But more likely it is done to change the behavior of others through fear, like in "get out of our territory."

So, to deal with terrorism, it seems likely that various parameters need to be evaluated, including "purpose of doing the specific terrorist act" (not just to blow a bunch of people up, but instead to get a larger group of people to be frightened away from somewhere or from doing something in particular.) Identifying the attributes of the parameter thus in this case would involve identifying what is the intended place, activity or resource to be frightened away from.

From such data sets then seeking what other options the "terrorists" would have had to achieve their goals, and evaluating why the other options were not followed instead of doing terrorism, would be useful in future modifications to situations to enable would-be terrorists to utilize less harmful ways of filling their needs. The needs would thus need to b identified.

And another principle is to utilize the parameters and analysis to valuate the ranges of behavior regardless from where they originate and are carried out. This means that if and when done in one's own turf but people belonging there, it needs to be included in the overall picture. Leaving well-meaning "righteous" internal saboteurs out of the picture will result in skewed analysis and thus dysfunctional efforts to stop terrorism, perhaps even make it worse if attacking an external site in response, thus inadvertently becoming terrorists of a sort ourselves.

Some of the most careful evaluation and data gathering needs to be done to detect cases where the first party masquerades as a third party when assaulting a second party, intending to have the second and third parties assault each other in response, leaving the instigating first party with little resulting damage while bringing on easy large scale damage to the second and third parties, while themselves sustaining no further damage as a result of the action.

On the other hand, specific groups which seem to be sponsoring the "terrorism" abuses, are most likely a diverse group. Relatively few members will likely be the instigators and perpetrators of the abuse of terrorism. Some members are likely to be quite the opposite, even extremely valuable benefactors in some way to humanity, at least potentially. So if a handful of a specific group conducts terrorism, that does not mean all the others are doing it too or could even stop it from happening, and might not even know it is going on.

Of course, if there is a group formed for the express purpose of conducting some form of terrorism against specific targets, that is different. Even then, to deal with it surely it is prudent to determine what is the cause, be it political power struggle, business territory rivalry, showing off for the girls, or even parasites eating away at the brain, it is probably far more efficient overall to deal with the cause than to directly lock horns with it to deal with the terrorism with essentially similar kinds of damaging activity.

And to maintain respect of the greater world, if one chooses to deal with it with weaponry, using comparable weaponry and on a similar scale is what is instinctive with "fairness" in contests. If one is so weak as to have to fight fire with fire, then that needs to be done on a similar scale; dropping a bomb on an ant that got into one's picnic sandwich is generally considered inappropriate. One gets away with doing such things only if one also has the biggest fists, the most nukes, the nastiest rhetoric, then that will prevent challenges; but it is also remembered as a lack of appropriate justice and an inappropriate use of strength, suggesting lack of wisdom in use of strength; a high price of loss of esteem results.

Another parameter needs to be in this evaluation system, that of degree of "monsterizing" of the adversary. Monsterizing the opponent involves controlling the imagination of the active operators, such as are done to soldiers in the process of converting them from peaceful necessarily non-violent town folks into people who intend to kill and destroy; they are not imagining themselves dealing with other townfolk-like humans, they are wreaking havoc on monsters that are trying to wreak havoc on you and yours.

Surely we humans are smart enough to stay alert and deal with life in far better ways than that. To do so, it is essential that we not ourselves be tripped and fall into the "fight-or-flight" attention-grabbing fear/anger mode, where the brain downshifts into a brutal mode in which messes will be made.

Someone makes a mess, is that a righteous excuse to make a mess too? There really are better and much more fun ways to live life. Seeking those ways would be a mark of a good leader, I would think."

My next squeezing it was to 3,100 characters:

"Surely if effective defense measures are to be applied, the subject needs to be accurately evaluated instead of reacting to stylized impressions. Much less entertaining, but potentially being far more efficient in sustaining a productive peaceful sustainable world.

Making an effort to evaluate the phenomenon, I would start at the definition of terror: that is, being very frightened. Thus a terrorist is someone who does something to severely frighten people. Now, fright has to do with one's imagined effects of something; it helps make the decision of fight or flight, deep survival fallbacks.

Lots of people deliberately strive to create fear in other people, such as the common schoolyard bully. Even before that, the pattern might be seen in the pre-schooler "bad boy" who misbehaves because getting punished is better than getting ignored. A "terrorist" strives to cause fear in others so as to herd them into some different direction than they were headed.

To deal with terrorism, it seems likely that various parameters need to be evaluated, including "purpose of doing the specific terrorist act" (not just to blow a bunch of people up, but instead to get a larger group of people to be frightened away from somewhere or from doing something in particular. Identifying the attributes of the parameter thus in this case would involve identifying what is the intended place, activity or resource to be frightened away from.

From such data sets then seeking what other options the "terrorists" would have had to achieve their goals, and evaluating why the other options were not followed instead of doing terrorism, would be useful in future modifications to situations to enable would-be terrorists to utilize less harmful ways of filling their needs. The needs would thus need to be identified.

And another principle is to utilize the parameters and analysis to valuate the ranges of behavior regardless from where they originate and are carried out. This means that if and when done in one's own turf but people belonging there, it needs to be included in the overall picture. Leaving well-meaning "righteous" internal saboteurs out of the picture will result in skewed analysis and thus dysfunctional efforts to stop terrorism, perhaps even make it worse if attacking an external site in response, thus inadvertently becoming terrorists of a sort ourselves.

Some of the most careful evaluation and data gathering needs to be done to detect cases where the first party masquerades as a third party when assaulting a second party, intending to have the second and third parties assault each other in response, leaving the instigating first party with little resulting damage while bringing on easy large scale damage to the second and third parties.

Another parameter needs to be in this evaluation system, that of degree of "monsterizing" of the adversary. Monsterizing the opponent involves controlling the imagination of the active operators.

Someone makes a mess, is that righteous excuse to make mess too? There really are better and much more fun ways to live life. Seeking those ways would be a mark of a good leader, I would think."

My 500 words acceptable to the post space, finally were:

"Some of the most careful evaluation and data gathering needs to be done to detect cases where the first party masquerades as a third party when assaulting a second party, intending to have the second and third parties assault each other in response, leaving the instigating first party with little resulting damage while bringing on easy large scale damage to the second and third parties.

Another parameter needs to be in this evaluation system, that of degree of "monsterizing" of the adversary."

So I wonder now, if the next President has only 500 characters of thinking space in which to think about dealing with "terrorism", what can be the results?

Snarfing around on the problem

The insight has occurred to me, that my belief and efforts to get people to do things by providing them with new ways to accomplish great things for themselves as humanity, might actually be continually infuriating the hierarchical top folks who, although they know that such visionary ideas cannot be done by one person alone but must be done by huge numbers of coordinated people, and thus will starve and die out without support, simply by making sure it is ignored; the mere thought that anything could be done by an individual without the direction and permission of the top dogs of the hierarchy might seem to the top dogs as being a challenge to their supreme authority.

Uh oh.

And the hierarchical process works, especially in corporations, by treating any creative idea that is spontaneously created by an underling (which is of course thereby done by an inferior) must be approved and handed up to the next rung of the management, and then handed on up if approved there, of course getting rewritten to match the level of authority, and is well known among employees at the bottom of the org chart that any idea they had and submitted that way, will either just vanish in the hands of their boss, or if it ever reaches the top it will not have their name on it but would be some upper management's name as the author by then ... (inferiors cannot have better ideas than their superiors else they might take over the job of the superior and that is to be ever defended against, is probably the force in action there.) This is an old fixed pattern in corporate life.

It is not just instinctual "reign of the bullies stomping on underlings" but also fits the suit-and-tie level pattern that a corporation is formed to make money off a specific product idea, and the massive management and employee and plant facility is all carefully assembled lock-step to make that product happen so as to bring the paychecks and investor's profits. A new idea, even of a way to make the product far more efficiently instead of just making a better kind of product, would require a shakeup of the fine-tuned organizational structure, making management life much more difficult and risk of making mistakes and losing org chart position thereby: not desirable. Management is there to control things; so it seems likely they will simply act resourcefully to ditch any new ideas that come along by ditching their originator, whether in the corporate structure or not, so long as they don't get caught doing too harmful things traceable back to them. And Management is very very resourceful, by definition.

I remember this stuff now from my electronics technician career working at many corporations big and small, something dimly realized and ever seen happening (an Asperger's kind of problem), but it making no rational sense to me then, that of abandoning better ways of doing things and better things to do, how unwise, it seemed to me.

Now finally I think I see what is going on; it does not change even if one is not a low level corporate employee, such as the retired person I am now. It is all about the lines of communication, censorship, and intents, all in control by folks who are not directly responsible for the well-being of life quality itself. Winners revel in overabundant goodies; losers wallow and wilt in deprivation; end of subject, to them, as if it were the operating principle of the universe. So long as they are smart enough, they will continue to revel in overabundant goodies, goal maintained achieved, simply by cunningly making others losers.

My struggle to gain acceptance and action on my ideas, does not even end there. There is always the risk of focussing on one idea so as to apply it to physical stuff to mold shape to do the desired function ... work work ... but then somebody else comes along with a better idea, upstaging mine, so one's idea crashes and burns lacking resources to be completed. So the shoe fits on the other foot too.

Meantime while all that circus is going on, consuming irreplaceable resources of all kinds, the ideas which could lead the way out of the mess humanity has gotten itself into, such as dwindling energy resources, increasingly cluttered toxic land and sea, and could be done now or earlier to be already solving those massively severe problems to humanity, are not getting done in time, maybe never will if it becomes too late and things crash too messily, such as somewhere fatally breaking in the ecosystem's balance; Mother Nature is not infinitely strong to ever clean up our messes. Is there anything I could be doing different to provide a way out of the mire? Well, it is said that correctly defining a problem is part of the solution. I hope there is more than just that.

Pity that Management's great resourcefulness cannot be turned to achieve the much better things. ...As I think more about this, I also recall from my career days, a coworker telling me that the only way to get one's great idea accepted, was to convince their boss that it was the boss's idea.

Well, after watching the news in recent years, maybe the French will get it done.

More thoughts on rigid airships & buoyancy

Adding some postscripts to my yesterday morning's blog post re rigid airships, First, my scifi short story "Masters of the Trading Game"
http://www.escalatorhi.com/techscifi/mastersofthetradinggame.html also describes use of a jumpsuit which has the ability to quickly inflate using hydrogen to enable the wearer to overall become neutral density in air, plus or minus some, depending on purposes at the time (such as initially for escaping from a suddenly falling small plane; and later to enable bounding across the desert in near-neutral density buoyancy pressure inflation of the jumpsuit, in that story.) Second, A new idea of mine this morning, of making rigid airships or other ultra-lightweight structures of something like the "solid smoke" ultra-insulating material either by using hydrogen as its enclosed gas, maybe even foamed into a partial vacuum so as to use the cell walls to provide some compression strength to the below STP pressure of hydrogen gas inside each cell; or to use new ultra-insulating lightweight materials on the exterior of rigid airships while using hot air inside instead of helium or hydrogen, the incombustible super insulating material, also very lightweight used to surround the hot air in the rigid airship, would not need much routinely electrically-added heat to maintain residual heat-pressure losses, and possibly a surplus pressure of the hot air could provide rigidity and strength to the rigid airship. And a final quite different item yet in reference to the Hindenburgh dirigible disaster at Lakehurst NJ, that the wrong lessons were learned by the tragedy, more correct ones would be that the Hindenburgh had been painted by a nitrate-containing paint, extremely flammable, and its hazard had been reported in an internal corporate memo but its implications did not get adequately realized by the company no doubt due to the characteristic of large corporate intercommunication comprehension inertia, especially significant here considering that the Hindenburgh originally was designed to use the non-combustible gas helium but later had to switch to hydrogen due to an embargo in the gas sale. Oh, and another idea, what would happen in a mixture of the two gases, helium plus hydrogen, what partial pressure would be of sufficiently low combustion hazard risk, and would it have lower density at standard temperature and pressure as compared to the more expensive pure helium, for use in rigid airships, maybe even in the standard toy party balloons.

Efficient fast rigid airshipping ideas

Looking at an article in the NYT this morning, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/business/worldbusiness/05dirigible.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1215270217-kK5cYYAELURprOcmA7IXZw
reminds me of a former girlfriend's dream (1985-ish) of resuming use of rigid airships, her one technological thought, as far as I knew. It also reminds me of one of the ideas I wrote about in my "Its Down to Earth" novel (2007),
http://www.escalatorhi.com/techscifi/it's%20down%20to%20earth.html where neutral-buoyancy rigid airships could be built in the shape of high speed jet aircraft and travel at those high speeds but not needing to use energy to provide lift. (It also used tracking beam energy from SPS, in the story, instead of carrying fuel to power its flight). And in reading the NYT article, I suddenly had the idea of a form of tethered rigid dirigible type airship, except towed along between a pair of cables alongside, which span between towers much as do current-day high tension power lines; the dirigible would be tethered to the cables, defining its positioning as it floated along, thus enabling it to operate in much more severe weather that can free-flying dirigibles; and if the cables themselves move to provide the tow of the dirigible, it would not even need to carry engines nor fuel except perhaps for emergency detachment and descent safely. Could be a highly efficient added transportation mode especially across rough terrain or above already highly populated areas with little disruption of the terrain below except for pylon footings.

The Art of Intimidation

The "Art of Intimidation" is one of the ancient principles among aggressive living things, and humans are no exception. Birds and beasts will use the implied threat of overwhelming assault as represented by being physically larger and/or making aggressive gestures, so as to take over better territory with its contained resources; and by implication of controlling greater resources, becomes more valuable appearing as a potential mate, resources being needed for raising of young. Being especially successful reproductively, the trait of intimidation is amplified down through generations.

There are limits to the level of intimidation, however. In a group setting it's effort uses up resources and can damage otherwise useful members, so it is more efficient in group settings to establish a hierarchy of intimidation instead of having continual internal battles to establish who gets the larger share of the cookie crumbles. A street bully who is establishing a gang, only needs to have a few fist-fights and knock-down drag-outs with one or two people, while others look on; hulk and flair and viciousness provide show amplifying resulting intimidation to onlookers. He does not need to have a nasty fight with each person in his gang being assembled and maintained; if so, through the occasional dings from those in the mutual assault, he would accumulate damage and eventually become too injured bit by bit to rule anything. So what actually is ruling the group is the threat of assault by the gang ruler, not actually that of being assaulted itself. Thus, the "art of intimidation" is what actually provides the ruling process.

Yet, all is not survival of the nastiest to breed.

Considering nurturing groups, like the individual family and groupings up to the nation and even the world of people, survival is often a matter of pulling together, not assaulting one another. In this setting, internal users of "the art of intimidation" are counter-productive to the survival and well being of the mutually nurturing group. Instead of influencing events through a hierarchy of intimidation, it becomes a hierarchy of ability to nurture, of thriving as a whole and individually provisioned in reasonable proportion to how much one helps the thriving.

Groups of people, from street gangs to corporations, seem to me to be composed of a mixture of these two hierarchical modes, the hierarchy of intimidation and the hierarchy of ability to nurture.

The ratio of the amount of the two, tells a lot about the nature of each group, what kinds of things to generally expect from them.

A grouping which has shown high thriving success through the nurturing of well-being of all of them, can also support a side warrior group that is there as an intimidation repelling external invasions by groupings who are in more of the intimidation hierarchy mode, perhaps even still hunter-gatherers. However, the thriving mutual nurturing group is still at risk of being taken over from the inside, using processes that seem to be normal balancing processes, but when it becomes apparent that the grouping is now ruled by intimidation's fearful atmosphere and guides their interactions, then it is quite difficult to return back to the hierarchy of nurturing well being that had brought on their thriving abundant success previously.

Rulership through intimidation is too easy and too plushly rewarded to completely let go of voluntarily, because any person, with a specific amount of effort, can destroy ten times as much stuff as he can build back up with the same amount of effort, thus tends to follow the easy path with greatest reward. Intimidation's threat of destruction is therefore much easier to do than fulfill the promise of reward of pulling together to achieve mutual benefits. Some folks will tend to take that easier path; so beware, watch for that indicator, the usage of the "art of intimidation." Both the individual and the grouping needs to beware the users of the art of intimidation, be watchful so as to maintain the hierarchy of nurturing mutual well being that brings on their thriving abundant success through their own creative labors, instead of through raiding the resources of others.