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Apr 262017
 

On one hand, you might think that I’d approve of the recent “March for Science” because if you’ve read this blog for more than a few minutes you’ll realize I’m a fan of the scientific method. Secondly, I recognize that the world seems to be increasingly full of derp and bringing the value of science to the forefront seems like a damned good idea.

But…. nope. Couldn’t have cared less about the “March for Science.” Largely because it didn’t seem to be a “march for science,” but rather a “march for some science and for certain politics.” Now, granted, the right wing, which I suppose most people would  at least nominally lump me in with, seems to be on a particularly anti-science course. The tardtacular creationists seem to be creatures almost wholly of the right, and they’re sheer wrongness is as obvious as a suicide bomb. The current administration  (which is somehow assumed to be right wing, against all evidence) seems to have a hardon for slashing science funding. But the left has their anti-nuclear idiots and the anti-GMO scumbags… and even their pro-science advocates often seem to be more religious zealots than adherents to a methodology that starts off with “well, maybe I’m wrong here; check my math.”

Even Slate sometimes gets it:

The Problem With the March for Science

… most “pro-science” demonstrators have no idea what they were demonstrating about. Being “pro-science” has become a bizarre cultural phenomenon in which liberals (and other members of the cultural elite) engage in public displays of self-reckoned intelligence as a kind of performance art, while demonstrating zero evidence to justify it.

The sad fact is, most people don’t have clue one what science *is.* Most people seem to think that “science” is “technology.” But it ain’t. Science is a method. A method that, at it’s core, is simply a rational way to separate fact from bullcrap… even if the bullcrap is what the scientist doing the work desperately wants to believe to be true.

Science isn’t proclamation from on high; science is often hard damn work, with a whole lot of number crunching and statistics. But the really, really grating thing is this: science need not be that hard to explain and understand. Oh, sure, the more advanced corners of it will always be well beyond the vast majority of people… start going on about *anything* that involves tensor math and my eyes instantly glaze over and I start pondering something simple and sexy like “gee, wouldn’t it be fun to build a small ejector ramjet in my back yard, one hardly needs *any* complex math for rocketry.” But the basics of science are – or at least should be – taught to every school child. It’s really not that hard… see an issue, come up with a hypothesis, run some tests and try to prove yourself wrong. As tests produce data that conflicts with your hypothesis, either change the hypothesis to match, or ditch it entirely. Imagine if every adult got enough of a refresher course so that this sank in. People wouldn’t be able to create new antibiotics or search for gravity waves, but they might be able to do some basic science about “what’s the most cost effective way to do my laundry” or “what’s the fastest route to work” or some such. If people would apply the scientific method to everyday issues, they could not only improve their lives, they’d also come to appreciate science… at the same time they lose the cargo cult religion aspect of science worship.

It occurs to me that “science” has something in common with “firearms” here. Science and firearms are both used by some people, not used by most people; science and firearms are things that are held to be virtually magical by some people, and treated with respect by others. And in both cases, it’s the people who use and understand them that treat them with respect; it’s the people who don’t use and understand them that convert them into fetishes. It’s Hollywood and the gun grabbers who venerate firearms as magical killing machines, capable of doing things they cannot, and attributing to them motivations that firearms do not have.

 Posted by at 5:42 pm
Apr 262017
 

Had a thought for a sci-fi scene: a spaceship has taken a shellacking and needs internal bracing in a hurry. Our Hero leaps to the rescue with a can of Titanium Spray Foam: operates like a can of modern day foam insulation in a can, but the end result is foamed titanium rather than foamed hydrocarbon polymer. Something like this would be pretty obviously handy; with it you could turn a tent into a bomb shelter or, if you are kinda upset with someone, a dandy way to glue your hostage to a chair or bind their hands with something much more sturdy than handcuffs. But there’s a problem: how could this possibly work?

One obvious approach: your can sprays actual liquid hot molten titanium, foamed via the introduction of a high temperature inert gas such as argon. If the temperature is very precisely controlled and the foam comes out *just* above the melting point, as the argon outgasses the bulk temperature should drop just below “freezing” and the foam should solidify. The problems here are pretty obvious, not least of which is laying down foam that’s white hot.

Second obvious approach: it’s not actually titanium but some handwavy futuristic and extremely strong polymer, perhaps infused with carbon fibers or bits of graphene or some such. This is likely workable, but it has a host of potential problems. It might be dissolved with simple chemicals like alcohol, acetone or even water. It might have poor temperature issues… it melts at 100 celcius and bursts into flames at 140 degrees. And, again, it’s not actually titanium.

The goal would be a roughly room-temperature process that lays down titanium foam. Now, if there was some chemical that dissolved titanium like acetone dissolves polystyrene, and when the chemical evaporates  the titanium – like the polystyrene – returns to its solid state, then the process would seem simple. A two-part sprayer, one that has solvent-dissolved titanium in some sort of liquid polymer in one can, and another can with the curative for the polymer. Mix the two together, spray out as a foam; the polymers mix and form the bubbly matrix, viscous enough to hold the liquid titanium in place. The polymer foam sets, the titanium spreads into a thin film covering all the polymer bubbles; the solvent evaporates and leaves the titanium foam behind. Ta-da.

Sounds great, but again there are problems. First up: is there even in a theory an acetone/styrene equivalent solvent for titanium? Sure, there are acids that will dissolve metals, but when the acid evaporates what’s left behind is a sludge of goop that reduces to metal powder, not a solid mass of structural metal.

Secondly: let’s say you’ve got a titanium solvent. What are the chances that it would be a good idea to breathe that stuff in while it evaporates from your work area? If it melts titanium, chances are real good that it’ll glue all the rest of your spaceships metallic moving surfaces together. And, I dunno, reduce your DNA into a pile of constituent atoms.

So… any ideas?

 Posted by at 10:12 am
Apr 252017
 

Took these shots in early March while leaving a grocery store parking lot in Tremonton. I’ve heard multiple times that it’s illegal to run these little things up and down the streets, but maybe they mean the smaller ATVs. But in either case they’re all used with considerable regularity for gettin’-around purposes out here in the sticks.

 Posted by at 12:52 pm
Apr 242017
 

Wherein Salon decries Bernie Sanders for not being “progressive’ enough:

Bye bye, Bernie: He’s not fit to captain the Democratic ship if he can’t stop chasing the great white male

Snerk:

Being pro-choice is not an optional part of being a progressive. Full stop. There is no justice for women, there is no economic justice for women, without the right to control their reproductive lives. The right to have an abortion is not a “social issue.” It is an issue of fundamental rights; it is a matter of economic rights.

Because, obviously, if a woman doesn’t have the right to abort her baby, she has no reproductive rights. Because obviously she cant go on the pill or get Norplant or an IUD or have her cis-male partnertron wear a condom or, y’know, not have sex. Impossible. Can’t happen.

 Posted by at 6:03 pm
Apr 242017
 

Boy, the SJW’s get in a snit over “manspreading,” when a guy just happens to sit on, say, a subway with his legs a little bit apart (note for those unaware of male anatomy: sitting like this isn’t so much a “choice” as it is “that’s how dudes are built.”). The problem with this “manspreading” apparently is that it takes up extra space, space that an SJW could use to park her therapy teacup chy-hooah-hooah or a bunch of protest signs or bags of terribly important merchandise.

And so, behold these glorious ads from the early 1970s, where Lee attempted to sell pants that few men today would be caught dead in, never mind alive. Seems odd to have so many different ads with different models and different clothes, all in the exact same pose. Still, I’d pay real money to see male models *today* dress up in these fashion disasters, find some SJWs and intentionally pose like this across from them. Heck, maybe it’d be better not to have male models, per se… a bunch of schlubby dudes might be even better.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 11:56 am
Apr 232017
 

Some more of what you don’t want to see your rocket doing.

Soviet N-1:

Titan IV:

Delta II:

Soyuz:

Ariane V:

Years ago I worked for a self-important egotistical jackass who thought that the way to create progress in the field of aerospace engineering was to hide from failures, to disappear all evidence of such, to pretend they didn’t happen. When you have ten-pound chunks of twisted aluminum zipping past your head at a reasonable fraction of the speed of sound, it makes you sit up and take notice, and it makes you want to make that not happen again. And the *best* way to prevent future disasters is to learn from past disasters. And you don’t learn from them by trying to pretend they didn’t happen.

With rockets, failures are often quite spectacular. And few things make PR people more unhappy than spectacular failures. But PR people do not fix problems with the design or manufacture of rockets; that’s for the scientists, engineers and technicians. And they need to see the fails, and be reminded of the fails. And in areas of engineering that are leading edge… they kinda need to *revel* in the fails. Failure is where you learn.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 10:13 am
Apr 222017
 

If there was ever a demonstration of the combination of “technical genius” with “wartime desperation,” it was the Bachem Natter from late in World War II. This German design was a point defense interceptor, from a time when B-17’s, B-24’s and Lancasters freely roamed the sky, laying waste to the German infrastructure. The Natter was a rocket-powered, vertical takeoff, partially reusable manned surface-to-air missile. It was to be armed with a multitude of unguided explosive-tipped rockets in the nose, probably to be launched as a single salvo. Reportedly, someone had the bright idea that the pilot would then aim his plane at another bomber for a ramming attack, bailing out at the last second. But since bailing out meant separating the nose from just forward of the cockpit aft bulkhead, the likelihood is vanishingly low that either the pilot would survive or that the Natter would continue forward in a predictable path. The more reasonable approach would still be for the pilot to bail out, but for both the pilot and the aircraft to pop chute and land safe enough to be recovered and reused.

The Natter was launched unmanned a few times and manned once, killing the pilot. It was *kind* of a neat idea, but the execution was not so good. The Germans would have been better advised to have worked on unmanned surface to air missiles than the Natter. But for all the claims of vaunted German efficiency, the Nazi regime was astonishingly inefficient, with many redundant and non-communicative programs.

Just as well, in retrospect.

There are many photos and illustrations of the Natter out there, but I figured these diagrams might be of interest.

 Posted by at 11:49 am
Apr 202017
 

Now this right here is funny.

We’ve all encountered this type of smug progressive, either online, in other forms of media or, if we lived sinfully in a previous life and are now being forced to pay off karma at a vastly accelerated rate, in real life. And while the real ones are nothing if not monumentally frustrating – they are either wholly deluded, or they’re lying to you – they are readily mockable.

 Posted by at 11:28 pm