American Exceptionalism

 awesomeness, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, humor, politics, youtube  9 Responses »
Mar 042014
 

Apparently there’s this self-congratulatory Hollywood get-together called the “Oscars” where people you’ve never heard of vote on movies you haven’t seen. During the televised portions of this event, commercials are run… because if there’s anything Hollywood is short on, it’s apparently money.

The internet being what it is, there’s always someone out there looking for something to be offended about. One such wilting violet wrote about one of the commercials here:

American Car Ads Are an Embarrassment

The author there had a problem with one of the commercials aired during the Oscars, an ad for Cadillac that had the temerity to actually be *positive* about America, Americans and American culture. I know, right? How shocking! You’re trying to sell stuff to Americans, and you do so by telling Americans that, hey, we’re actually pretty good people with much to be proud of, and you do it with a sense of humor. How offensive! How elitist! How sexist/racist/ableist! I’m sure there’s fat-shaming in there too! So… Mr. Easily Offended wrote his little screed and filled it with expletives, just to show how good and proper and cultured he is, compared to those dumb Americans who are proud of America.

Take a look at the commercial and feel free to rant in the comments about jsut how terrible it was.

[youtube qGJSI48gkFc]

 Posted by at 12:50 pm

Castle Bravo

 awesomeness, history, nukes, photography, science, youtube  9 Responses »
Mar 032014
 

It’s rare that you design something that works not only better than you expected, but several times better that physics 9as you understood it) said it should work. One of those lucky times was the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb. It was Americas first “dry” H-bomb, set off March 1, 1954. Prior to this, the “hydrogen” in an H-Bomb was cryogenic liquid deuterium; this was not practical for deliverable bombs. But with the introduction of lithium deuterium, a room temperature solid, H-bombs became practical weapons.

The Castle Bravo device, set off on Bikini Atoll, was expected to have a yield of 5 megatons. While certainly a respectable yield, it turned out to actually have a yield of 15 megatons. This was not due to a design flaw, per se, but due to a misunderstanding of physics. The lithium in the lithium deuteride was 40% Li-6 and 60% Li-7, The Li-7 was thought to be inert, from a nuclear point of view. But… this was wrong.

When nuked by fissioning plutonium in the core, the Li-6 isotope was expected to absorb a neutron and spit out an alpha particle and a tritium atom. The tritium would then do a little nuclear dance with the nearby deuterium and undergo fusion, boosting the yield. The Li-7 was expected to more or less just sit there. But as it turns out, Li-7 decided to join in. When it absorbed an energetic neutron, it, too spat out an alpha particle and tritium… and a neutron. This not only fed more tritium into the reaction, but also more neutrons. The end result was three times the yield that had been expected. Woo!

[youtube fd1IFjBNNVo]

[youtube T2I66dHbSRA]

 Posted by at 10:02 pm

Luca Parmitano: NASA Incident Report

 AARRRGH, blather, Gah., Hmm..., news, science, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  8 Responses »
Mar 032014
 

You know what sounds like a bad way to die? Drowning. What sounds even worse? Drowning in your own space suit, while on a spacewalk. That’s what almost happened to Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano on July 16, 2013, when 1 to 1.5 liters of water made its way into his helmet. By the time he made it into the airlock he was blind and couldn’t breathe through his nose, as the blob of water had covered them.

doh

While a report has been released on the incident, investigation is apparently still ongoing:

In summary, the causes for this mishap evolved from (1) inorganic materials causing blockage of the drum holes in the EMU water separator resulting in water spilling into the vent loop; (2) the NASA team’s lack of knowledge regarding this particular failure mode; and (3) misdiagnosis of this suit failure when it initially occurred on EVA 22.

The source of the inorganic materials blocking the water separator drum holes had not been experienced during an EVA before and is still undergoing a concurrent investigation. The results of this investigationwill ultimately lead to resolution of this issue; however, since the concurrent investigation into the source of the debris is expected to continue for many months, the MIB does not yet have the required data to determine the root causes of the contamination source, which must ultimately be determined to prevent future mishaps.

Here’s a PDF of the report, with it’s snappy and catchy title:

International Space Station (ISS) EVA Suit
Water Intrusion
High Visibility Close Call

Note that this report is seriously redacted, with a *lot* of pages, illustrations and text, simply blacked out. I don’t suppose that the obscured portions might be recoverable as has happened with previous half-assed-redacted documents, since they have *got* to have learned their lesson about such things by now… but it’d still be interesting to see what NASA wants the public to not see. My guess would be stuff that would point towards legal liability. But also obscured are things like suit schematics; what could be the problem there? It’s not like the Russians or the Chinese don’t know how to make their own space suits.

 Posted by at 11:46 am

Landing Legs for SpaceX

 awesomeness, projects, rockets, spacecraft  15 Responses »
Mar 032014
 

The news is a bit old, but what the heck:

SpaceX Adds Landing Legs to Falcon 9 Rocket for Next Launch, Elon Musk Says

The legs will be in place for the next Falcon 9 launch, but the rocket is planned to splash down in the ocean. SpaceX is doign a step-by-step development of a reusable Falcon 9 first stage, which is a prudent approach. It’s unclear if the Falcon 9 will try to “land” in the ocean, or just splash down. “Landing” it at sea would be a good way to put the system through its paces with less risk to on-shore facilities and people and critters and such.

spacex-falcon-9-landing-legs

falcon9-render

 Posted by at 11:19 am

“Private” manned Mars mission

 Hmm..., Meh., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Mar 032014
 

Private Mars Flyby Mission in 2021 Needs NASA’s Help, Experts Tell Congress

The “Inspiration Mars Foundation,” founded by Dennis Tito (often claimed to be the first space tourist, but I believe Sultan bin Salman al Saud had him beat by a number of years), wants to send a private manned spacecraft on a flyby of Mars in 2021. But there’s a problem…

The private organization hopes the space agency will provide one of its giant Space Launch System rockets as well as an Orion deep-space capsule

Errrmmmm…

 Posted by at 11:09 am

Chemically-fueled Attack Cats

 cats, Hmm..., news  1 Response »
Mar 032014
 

Man needs hospital treatment after cat attacks him because of aftershave

It seems that, in preparation for the inevitable Russian invasion of London, the British have developed a cat that will attack mercilessly when it detects the odor of “Hugo Boss Bottled Night” aftershave.
The cat in question apparently has some serious aversion to a number of chemical odors, apparently arising from being born with a damaged immune system. Now, they just need to dial in the specific chemical triggers. If I was Putin, I’d give serious thought to avoiding the more powerful stinkpretties for a while…
 Posted by at 10:32 am

Anyone know of a “gravity simulation” program?

 blather, Hmm..., science, science fiction  10 Responses »
Mar 032014
 

I’m looking for some sort of program that will tell me what the acceleration due to gravity would be due to a non-spherical object of defined shape and density. Let’s say I have designed in a CAD program… oh, let’s say a teacup, but the size of a world with the density of tungsten. And I want to know what the force of gravity would be at point  X,Y, Z.

I’d think this should be available, but I couldn’t find what I’m looking for. It should be fairly straightforward…  design something in CAD, and the program chops up the item into a large number of individual chunks, runs the numbers on gravity due to each, then does the vectors sums. This could be done by hand, of course, but it’d be mind-crushingly slow and dull.

Anyone know of such a thing? It would be handy for sci-fi authors who want to know what it would be like for their characters to walk along, say, the tentacle of the Jovian-mass Space Kracken, or some such.

 Posted by at 1:56 am
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