Homeopathy, for those who don’t know, is a form of magical thinking that masquerades as medicine. The idea, if you can call it that, is this: water magically absorbs the healing properties of drugs that have been added to it and, importantly, *remembers* those powers no matter how dilute the solution. And, apparently, the diluted water is *better* than the medicine itself.

Rarely described by homeopathic apologists is why a bucket of water remembers aspirin, but not that sewage treatment plant that it passed through.

But hey, if you believe that diluting medicine so far that it is statistically likely that not a single molecule of the stuff remains in a gallon of water, then you’ll love…

Homeopathic Battleship

The normal game of Battleship is played on a board whose initial ratio of ship to water is 17:100. But here they’ve diluted the warships by jacking up the size of the board, using the homeopathic measurement of 6C (a dilution of 10 to the power of -12). In order to do this, there are columns A through J, and rows 1 through 100000000000. Have fun!

In 1972 the Holland America cruise ship S.S. Statendam set sail for a spot off the coast of Florida where the passengers got to watch the launch of Apollo 17. Also held on board was the 4th Conference on Planetology and Space Mission Planning. This conference, as described at http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=6879 , was a complete disaster. It was a sad, sad tale of lost opportunities and odd choices. It has also largely faded from memory.

I have a photocopy of the brochure selling the cruise and conference, and have scanned it in as a PDF. The quality is not spectacular, but it’s nevertheless an interesting bit of aerospace history. I’ve posted the PDF for $5 APR Patreon patrons over HYAR.

So if Scotland decides to split from the UK, one of the issues will be that the British navy’s Trident missile subs are based in Scotland. There are apparently currently no good Trident bases in England or Wales. So where would the subs go? It looks like the US is a distinct possibility:

EXCLUSIVE: Send British nukes to US if Scotland votes Yes say military chiefs

If you were looking for an uplifting story about a US Naval vessel with commanders who upheld the finest martial traditions with honor and dignity…. This Ain’t it.

Navy: Deployed CO Retreated to Cabin for Weeks

In short: Gregory W. Gombert, Captain of the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, has been relieved of command. Why? Because from January to March, he “retreated to his cabin” for an unspecified medical reason… a medical condition described as not needing any such retreat from duties.

Oh, but it gets better. The Cowpens’ Master Chief Petty Officer Gabriel J. Keeton has also been canned, apparently due to “poor ship conditions.”

Oh, but it gets better. Captain Gombert is also in trouble because during his time hiding from his duties he was also having an “unduly familiar” relationship with the ships acting executive officer, the entertainingly named Lt. Cmdr. Destiny Savage.

When I read this, the name “Cowpens” struck a familiar note. It’s not, after all, a terribly common name. So I looked it up on Wikipedia. Where I remembered it from: in December 2013, the Cowpens was shadowing Chinese naval exercises when a Chinese ship parked itself in front of the Cowpens, almost causing an incident worthy of the idjits in Sea Shepherd. But the history of the Cowpens turns out to have further interestingness:

In January 2010, the then-Captain Holly Graf was removed from command. Why? “Captain Holly Graf was the closest thing the U.S. Navy had to a female Captain Bligh.”

Oh, but it gets better. Captain Graf was replaced with Captain Robert Marin. But in February 2012, Captian Marin was booted. Why? Because he was having an affair. Entertainingly, he was boinking the wife of *another* US Navy ships Captain.

Seems the Cowpens has had one hell of a run of bad luck in the leadership department.

Anybody remember the “Sea Shepherds” got themselves a snazzy new carbon fiber speedboat a few years back, named it the “Ady Gil” after the chump who donated the thing, and then promptly got it run over and sunk by Japanese whalers? Well, guess who’s a little cheesed off by the whole thing…

More Trouble for Sea Shepherd Society

Ady Gil, owner of the eponymous ship Ady Gil, Vince Dundee, and Faast Leasing California, of which Dundee is a managing member, filed a civil RICO complaint against Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Watson on Wednesday, in Superior Court.

The claim: the ship, while damaged when it turned into the path of a vastly more massive (and thus less maneuverable) whaling vessel, was readily salvageable. But it was stripped of equipment and not only allowed to sink, but in fact scuttled. This loss was then used as a fundraising centerpoint.

Found on ebay a while back, an artists concept (almost certainly an AP artist, using imagination more than primary documentation) showing an odd little submarine carrying four Polaris missiles while would launch through the sail. Such concepts *were* studied early on in the process, but I think this one is pure artistic license.

In 1963, the supercarrier USS Forrestal hosted a KC-130F. The cargo plane made numerous touch-and-goes, full-stop landings and unassisted takeoffs, proving that it could be used for carrier on-board delivery of supplies and personnel and such. Sadly, this concept never saw service. While it did work, the deck had to be kept pretty clear.

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Tonight TNT premiered their new feel-good series of the summer, “The Last Ship.” The idea of the show: “Babylon 5: Crusade” set on the open seas rather than deep space. A genetically tinkered plague has swept the planet, infecting at least 80% of humanity with a 100% fatal disease, and one US Navy ship seems to have missed it all by being way up in the arctic when it all went down. During the course of the first episode, the ship is on its way to a refueling station on the coast of France when a Mysterious Foe launches a nuclear missile in their general direction. The missile misses the ship, passing – from the looks of a computer map – some fifty to a hundred miles to the side of the ship and detonating well beyond it (I think it also took out the refueling station). That was rather odd. But what rustled my jimmies was as soon as the nuke went off, the electromagnetic pulse wiped out all the electrical systems on the ship. There are at least three things wrong with that.

1) A naval vessel is almost by definition a floating metal box. This means that it pretty much is a large Faraday cage. An electromagnetic pulse should have little impact on a naval vessel.

2) The military has been spooked by EMP for *decades.* I’m pretty sure that military ships would thus use hardened systems, so that even if the ship doesn’t make a good Faraday cage, the systems should be able to shrug off an EMP.

3) The nuke went off in the lower atmosphere. Thus… NO Meaningful EMP. A truly damaging electromagnetic pulse is created not just by a nuke going off, but a nuke going off IN SPACE. The short form: the high energy gamma rays from the bomb strike the rarified air in the upper atmosphere and rip the electrons off in what’s known as the Compton Effect. The electrons then blast downwards and create powerful electrical currents. The downward trajectory is shaped by Earths magnetic field, so it’s not a simple circular area under the bomb.

For bombs set off in the lower atmosphere, there is again an EMP as the gamma rays interact with the air. But here the effect is right next to the bomb, since the air is right next to the bomb, and within the nuclear fireball. The fireball itself effectively absorbs much of the EMP. If the bomb goes off near long conductors such as train tracks or power lines, the effect can be to set up a kilo-amp electrical pulse which will race down the conductor for many, many miles wreaking havoc as it goes… but other than that, unless you are close enough to the bomb to actually be damaged by the bomb, EMP is not a meaningful concern.

In short: what “The Last Ship” should have shown was a bright flash off on the horizon and the crew going about their duties largely unaffected by electrical weirdness. I imagine the radar and communications guys would have seen some strange things, but other than that, the ship should have shrugged it off.

And to add “buh?” to “WTF,” after the French refueling place was taken off the menu, the US Navy ship sidled up next to an Italian cruise ship and siphoned off their fuel. It was ok, because everyone on the ship was dead of the plague… but since we just saw a US Navy warship get electrically trashed by an EMP, why did the cruise ship still have all its lights on?

And as an aside: if the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans, PETA, French or whoever set off a nuke over the US and create a damaging EMP, chances are good that if your electronic hardware isn’t plugged into the wall, it’ll be fine. The electrical current that goes zipping by sets up powerful induction along long conductors (again, train tracks, power lines, phone lines and the like) which can trash things connected to them. Expect to lose transformers and anything plugged in that doesn’t have a military-grade surge protector. But independent non-plugged-in electronics, from cameras to phones to laptops and automobiles and such are too small for the field to create much of a charge. Jetliners – which are designed to and regularly do survive lightning strikes – should be just fine, though the airports themselves might short out. Satellites should largely be fine, unless they are close to the bomb when it goes off or share it’s orbital altitude or lower. Anything beyond the Van Allen belts will probably be quite unaffected.

A good washing, some Bondo,a new coat of paint, and this $24 *million* dollar yacht will be right as rain again.

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Impressive aerial platform…

The San Diego Air and Space Museum has posted a great many images to Flickr, including a fair amount of concept art. One piece (you can see the best-rez version HERE) depicts a Ryan Aeronautical concept for an air boat equipped with a Flex-Wing. Date would probably have been around 1962, plus or minus a few years. The exact role here is a bit obscure… why would the Army have boats like this? Perhaps a troops transport of some type, though a helicopter would probably be a better choice.