Many people look at an empty jar that once held jelly or spaghetti sauce as trash. Others wash the jar out, and re-use it. I've done this myself. Old jars are great for holding spare change, loose screws, and the like. But here's one use I never would have considered:
They suggest wearing goggles. Oh yeah, this project just screams "Safety First!"
Or better yet: don't try this at home. I'm pretty sure this is the sort of thing that voids your homeowner's insurance policy, anyway.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Friday, June 04, 2010
Video Del Fuego, Part XXVIII
"It's almost a certainty that a man-rated Dragon will taste hard vacuum long before any version of Orion does, and by a margin of not less than eighteen months." -- 7/1/2009
Aaaaand ... stop the clock. My man Elon delivered the goods. Earlier today, the first Falcon 9 booster put a Dragon test capsule into orbit.
I was crossing my fingers up to second stage engine ignition, because if anything's going to go wrong, it'll probably go wrong before then. Everything looked good, though.
One thing to point out: after staging, you'll see the second stage engine's nozzle glowing red. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since this engine is radiatively cooled. Other engines, such as the Space Shuttle's, pass cold fuel and/or oxidizer through pipes in the nozzle for cooling, but this adds weight and complexity to the engine, making it more expensive. Radiative cooling is substantially cheaper, especially for an engine you only plan to use once. You'll also see a smaller engine in the foreground, which can slew back and forth for attitude control.
Another amusing thing about the news coverage: Fox News, of all people, are complaining about a private firm not being as forthcoming with PR info as an agency of the Federal government. Ah, the irony...
Bonus: Here is a link to SpaceX's own highlights video. You get a much better view of staging here than in the live feed.
Aaaaand ... stop the clock. My man Elon delivered the goods. Earlier today, the first Falcon 9 booster put a Dragon test capsule into orbit.
I was crossing my fingers up to second stage engine ignition, because if anything's going to go wrong, it'll probably go wrong before then. Everything looked good, though.
One thing to point out: after staging, you'll see the second stage engine's nozzle glowing red. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since this engine is radiatively cooled. Other engines, such as the Space Shuttle's, pass cold fuel and/or oxidizer through pipes in the nozzle for cooling, but this adds weight and complexity to the engine, making it more expensive. Radiative cooling is substantially cheaper, especially for an engine you only plan to use once. You'll also see a smaller engine in the foreground, which can slew back and forth for attitude control.
Another amusing thing about the news coverage: Fox News, of all people, are complaining about a private firm not being as forthcoming with PR info as an agency of the Federal government. Ah, the irony...
Bonus: Here is a link to SpaceX's own highlights video. You get a much better view of staging here than in the live feed.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Space Travel for Dummies, Part 6: Design Case Study
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
One of our satellites is missing. Sort of. Life might actually be easier if it had gone missing, but it's more like it's suddenly decided that it's done with its current job and wants a new career. Maybe it wants to be a sculptor. Or a dentist. Or just about anything except what it was built to do, which is sit in geosynchronous orbit and relay TV signals. I can't really blame it. If I had to hand off Survivor reruns for a living, I'd go nuts, too.
Galaxy 15 was, for five years, a perfectly unremarkable satellite. A standard product, almost identical to its siblings, it had functioned perfectly for nearly five years before wandering off to stretch its legs. No one really knows why, since it's no longer on speaking terms with ground control. But it's rapidly becoming a menace to navigation. At or around the end of May it's going to come close by the AMC-11 satellite, which is going to have to do some fancy dancing to avoid signal interference. Where Galaxy 15 goes from here is anyone's guess.
What we really need is a garbage truck. Unfortunately, no one seems to have built one yet. Which gives me an idea...
Over the next couple of weeks, we're going to go through a very basic, somewhat simplified vehicle design procedure. I honestly have no idea exactly what we'll end up with. But I expect to end up with something sufficiently detailed that I can "build" and fly it in Orbiter.
The first step is figuring out what kind of performance you'll need. This part isn't terribly difficult, as mathematics goes. Basically, you can figure out how much of a velocity change you need for each maneuver, and then add them all together to get a total performance budget.
To summarize: there are three equations we'll need, and one rule of thumb. Two of them involve the specific mechanical energy (SME) of the spacecraft. The SME is the sum of the spacecraft's kinetic and potential energy, divided by the mass.
(1) (SME) = (V)^2/2 - (MU)/(R)
V is the velocity, R is the distance from the spacecraft to the center of the Earth, and MU is the product of the Earth's mass and the universal gravitational constant. We can express the SME another way as well.
(2) (SME) = - (MU)/(2*A)
The variable A is the semi-major axis of the orbit. It is half of the sum of radius at perigee and the radius at apogee, and for a circular orbit it's equal to the constant radius of that circular orbit. Combining (1) and (2) above gives us three pieces of information: V1, the circular velocity of the parking orbit; V2, the required velocity of the low side of the transfer orbit; V3, the velocity at the high side of the transfer orbit; and V4, the velocity of the higher circular orbit.
It isn't necessarily obvious from (1) and (2) above, but one interesting thing about orbital mechanics is that even though higher-altitude orbits have more energy, the actual orbital velocities are smaller. Remember this, we'll use it later.
The third equation is the Law of Cosines:
(3) (Vc)^2 = (Va)^2 + (Vb)^2 - 2*Va*Vb*cos(G)
Here, Va and Vb are the velocities before and after a plane-change maneuver, G is the angle, and Vc is the required velocity change to go from Va from Vb. Note that if you're going from one circular orbit to another, Va = Vb. Plane-change maneuvers are incredibly expensive in terms of fuel. They are often unavoidable, though.
The rule of thumb I mentioned is that, to a good first approximation, launching into low Earth orbit requires as much fuel as accelerating 10,000 meters per second. Orbital speed is actually about 7,700 m/s, but you burn about 2,300 m/s worth of fuel overcoming gravity and atmospheric drag.
That said, the details of those computations make for tedious reading, so I'll simply present the results.
First, the ground rules. One: the vehicle will launch from, and recover to, Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Two: the vehicle will have a return payload of 8 tons, big enough to handle any current or projected communications satellite. Three: provision will be made for a crew of two, a commander and a pilot.
My first sequence of maneuvers went something like this:
(1) Launch into Low Earth Orbit (LEO): 10,000 m/s
(2) Plane Change into Equatorial Orbit: 3,804 m/s
[Loiter: up to 24 hours]
(3) Boost to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO): 2,426 m/s
[Time of flight: 5h 16m 30s]
(4) Circularize at Geosynchronous Earth Orbit: 1,465 m/s
[Time on station: up to 13h 27m]
(5) Brake into GTO: 1,465 m/s
[Time of flight: 5h 16m 30s]
(6) Brake into LEO: 2,426 m/s
(7) Plane Change to KSC: 3,804 m/s
[Loiter: up to 24 hours]
(8) De-Orbit: 65 m/s
Total: 26,727 m/s (includes 5% reserve)
Now, the first thing we see here is that the plane change maneuvers eat up a huge part of our velocity budget. This is because the magnitude of a plane change maneuver scales directly with the velocity. They drink gas like nobody's business, which is why you avoid them whenever possible. However ... why am I doing it in a low orbit, when I could be doing it higher up, where the speed is lower? Partly because this first method was the obvious way ... and partly because I'm not sure I trust my ability to actually fly a fancier maneuver. Still, here's how the pros do it:
(1) Launch into LEO: 10,000 m/s
[Loiter: up to 24 hours]
(2) Boost to GTO: 2,426 m/s
[Time of flight: 5h 16m 30s]
(3) Plane Change and Circularize: 2,106 m/s
[Time on station: up to 13h 27m]
(4) Plane Change and Brake to GTO: 2,106 m/s
[Time of flight: 5h 16m 30s]
(5) Brake into LEO: 2,426 m/s
[Loiter: up to 24 hours]
(6) De-Orbit: 65 m/s
Total: 20,086 m/s (includes 5% reserve)
By combining the plane change and circularization at the top of your GTO ellipse, you save a whole 6 kilometers per second. That's huge. That's a tremendous amount of fuel you don't have to plan on hauling along with you. And when most of your weight is fuel, that adds up in a hurry.
Some of the times above are somewhat arbitrary. You're going to spend some time in low earth orbit waiting for the right launch window, and you're going to spend some time on your way back waiting to line up for re-entry. And you may or may not want a rest period in between your outward and inward GTO orbits. So, I'm planning on a nominal mission duration of three days. The absolute minimum would probably be 12 hours, but everything would have to line up perfectly. I'm going to budget a reserve here too, and allow for an extended duration of up to 7 days.
Here's the first fork in the decision tree: do we have a crew on board, or not?
There are good arguments both ways. On the one hand, hauling a crew along means you also have to haul along the stuff to keep them alive for the duration: food, water, oxygen. I was about to mention thermal control as well, but you'd have to do that for your electronics even in an unmanned craft. But an unmanned craft would be much, much lighter for the same mission specs.
But, since the point of this exercise is to design a simulator joyride anyway ... I've opted to include pilots. At least, for now. When we pick this up again next time, we'll see why orbit-capable rockets tend to be pretty big.
One of our satellites is missing. Sort of. Life might actually be easier if it had gone missing, but it's more like it's suddenly decided that it's done with its current job and wants a new career. Maybe it wants to be a sculptor. Or a dentist. Or just about anything except what it was built to do, which is sit in geosynchronous orbit and relay TV signals. I can't really blame it. If I had to hand off Survivor reruns for a living, I'd go nuts, too.
Galaxy 15 was, for five years, a perfectly unremarkable satellite. A standard product, almost identical to its siblings, it had functioned perfectly for nearly five years before wandering off to stretch its legs. No one really knows why, since it's no longer on speaking terms with ground control. But it's rapidly becoming a menace to navigation. At or around the end of May it's going to come close by the AMC-11 satellite, which is going to have to do some fancy dancing to avoid signal interference. Where Galaxy 15 goes from here is anyone's guess.
What we really need is a garbage truck. Unfortunately, no one seems to have built one yet. Which gives me an idea...
Over the next couple of weeks, we're going to go through a very basic, somewhat simplified vehicle design procedure. I honestly have no idea exactly what we'll end up with. But I expect to end up with something sufficiently detailed that I can "build" and fly it in Orbiter.
The first step is figuring out what kind of performance you'll need. This part isn't terribly difficult, as mathematics goes. Basically, you can figure out how much of a velocity change you need for each maneuver, and then add them all together to get a total performance budget.
To summarize: there are three equations we'll need, and one rule of thumb. Two of them involve the specific mechanical energy (SME) of the spacecraft. The SME is the sum of the spacecraft's kinetic and potential energy, divided by the mass.
(1) (SME) = (V)^2/2 - (MU)/(R)
V is the velocity, R is the distance from the spacecraft to the center of the Earth, and MU is the product of the Earth's mass and the universal gravitational constant. We can express the SME another way as well.
(2) (SME) = - (MU)/(2*A)
The variable A is the semi-major axis of the orbit. It is half of the sum of radius at perigee and the radius at apogee, and for a circular orbit it's equal to the constant radius of that circular orbit. Combining (1) and (2) above gives us three pieces of information: V1, the circular velocity of the parking orbit; V2, the required velocity of the low side of the transfer orbit; V3, the velocity at the high side of the transfer orbit; and V4, the velocity of the higher circular orbit.
It isn't necessarily obvious from (1) and (2) above, but one interesting thing about orbital mechanics is that even though higher-altitude orbits have more energy, the actual orbital velocities are smaller. Remember this, we'll use it later.
The third equation is the Law of Cosines:
(3) (Vc)^2 = (Va)^2 + (Vb)^2 - 2*Va*Vb*cos(G)
Here, Va and Vb are the velocities before and after a plane-change maneuver, G is the angle, and Vc is the required velocity change to go from Va from Vb. Note that if you're going from one circular orbit to another, Va = Vb. Plane-change maneuvers are incredibly expensive in terms of fuel. They are often unavoidable, though.
The rule of thumb I mentioned is that, to a good first approximation, launching into low Earth orbit requires as much fuel as accelerating 10,000 meters per second. Orbital speed is actually about 7,700 m/s, but you burn about 2,300 m/s worth of fuel overcoming gravity and atmospheric drag.
That said, the details of those computations make for tedious reading, so I'll simply present the results.
First, the ground rules. One: the vehicle will launch from, and recover to, Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Two: the vehicle will have a return payload of 8 tons, big enough to handle any current or projected communications satellite. Three: provision will be made for a crew of two, a commander and a pilot.
My first sequence of maneuvers went something like this:
(1) Launch into Low Earth Orbit (LEO): 10,000 m/s
(2) Plane Change into Equatorial Orbit: 3,804 m/s
[Loiter: up to 24 hours]
(3) Boost to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO): 2,426 m/s
[Time of flight: 5h 16m 30s]
(4) Circularize at Geosynchronous Earth Orbit: 1,465 m/s
[Time on station: up to 13h 27m]
(5) Brake into GTO: 1,465 m/s
[Time of flight: 5h 16m 30s]
(6) Brake into LEO: 2,426 m/s
(7) Plane Change to KSC: 3,804 m/s
[Loiter: up to 24 hours]
(8) De-Orbit: 65 m/s
Total: 26,727 m/s (includes 5% reserve)
Now, the first thing we see here is that the plane change maneuvers eat up a huge part of our velocity budget. This is because the magnitude of a plane change maneuver scales directly with the velocity. They drink gas like nobody's business, which is why you avoid them whenever possible. However ... why am I doing it in a low orbit, when I could be doing it higher up, where the speed is lower? Partly because this first method was the obvious way ... and partly because I'm not sure I trust my ability to actually fly a fancier maneuver. Still, here's how the pros do it:
(1) Launch into LEO: 10,000 m/s
[Loiter: up to 24 hours]
(2) Boost to GTO: 2,426 m/s
[Time of flight: 5h 16m 30s]
(3) Plane Change and Circularize: 2,106 m/s
[Time on station: up to 13h 27m]
(4) Plane Change and Brake to GTO: 2,106 m/s
[Time of flight: 5h 16m 30s]
(5) Brake into LEO: 2,426 m/s
[Loiter: up to 24 hours]
(6) De-Orbit: 65 m/s
Total: 20,086 m/s (includes 5% reserve)
By combining the plane change and circularization at the top of your GTO ellipse, you save a whole 6 kilometers per second. That's huge. That's a tremendous amount of fuel you don't have to plan on hauling along with you. And when most of your weight is fuel, that adds up in a hurry.
Some of the times above are somewhat arbitrary. You're going to spend some time in low earth orbit waiting for the right launch window, and you're going to spend some time on your way back waiting to line up for re-entry. And you may or may not want a rest period in between your outward and inward GTO orbits. So, I'm planning on a nominal mission duration of three days. The absolute minimum would probably be 12 hours, but everything would have to line up perfectly. I'm going to budget a reserve here too, and allow for an extended duration of up to 7 days.
Here's the first fork in the decision tree: do we have a crew on board, or not?
There are good arguments both ways. On the one hand, hauling a crew along means you also have to haul along the stuff to keep them alive for the duration: food, water, oxygen. I was about to mention thermal control as well, but you'd have to do that for your electronics even in an unmanned craft. But an unmanned craft would be much, much lighter for the same mission specs.
But, since the point of this exercise is to design a simulator joyride anyway ... I've opted to include pilots. At least, for now. When we pick this up again next time, we'll see why orbit-capable rockets tend to be pretty big.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Sesquicentennial, Part II: RNC 1860
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
American politics in the 1850s were very chaotic. The Whig Party had enjoyed some modest success as a bulwark against the Democratic Party, electing two Presidents, but began to unravel in 1852. The Compromise of 1850 was the proximate cause. The Kansas-Nebraska Act sealed it. Whigs could not settle amongst themselves the question of whether or not to allow slavery in the new territories, and the question tore the party apart. Pro-slavery Whigs found a natural home among the Democrats, while anti-slavery Whigs had nowhere to go. Yet.
Another of the era's many splinter parties was the Free Soil Party, whose name tells you all you need to know: they were dead-set against the expansion of slavery. In 1854, ex-Whigs met with Free Soilers and anti-slavery activists in Jackson, Michigan to discuss how they might be able to work together. They had few differences, easily reconciled, and the Republican Party was born. Only two years later, John Fremont stood for the Presidency as the first Republican candidate for that office. Fremont only won New England and the northernmost states, but he polled 33% of the popular vote, an extraordinarily strong showing for what was to all intents and purposes a new party.
The Republicans convened for their second convention in May of 1860 in Chicago, having been handed what looked like a golden opportunity. The fratricidal disaster that was the Democratic convention of the previous month was all over the papers. To put it bluntly, they smelled chum in the water. With a divided opponent, they need not poll a majority nationally, a mere plurality would do, provided that they got their Electoral Votes in all the right places. To seal the deal, all they needed to do was select the right candidate.
Three men were favorites going into the convention: William H. Seward of New York, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and Edward Bates of Missouri. But a funny thing happened on the way to the nominating floor. For one, Seward, Chase, and Bates had each alienated important factions within the Republican party base. For another, this being Chicago, the convention was taking place on the home turf of an opponent that none of the three took seriously. Seward was ahead after the first ballot, but holding on at a strong #2 was one Abraham Lincoln. Two ballots later, Lincoln was the nominee. There was a vicious rumor to the effect that Lincoln's campaign had packed the venue with supporters using counterfeit tickets. I do not know if this rumor has any truth to it or not ... but, if true, it highlights something of Lincoln's character that we would see later on: he would do what was necessary, ruthlessly, and without compunction.
The party platform was almost a foregone conclusion: the party stood four-square against any expansion of slavery into the territories. They also supported a tariff in protection of domestic industry, and a homestead law to grant free land out West to settlers. None of these provisions were greeted with much joy down South. In the event, the Lincoln-Hamlin ticket wouldn't appear on the ballot in any Southern state.
The stage was set now for what would be at least a three-way race in November: Lincoln representing the Republicans, Douglas representing the Northern Democrats, and Breckenridge representing the Southern Democrats. What remained to be seen was if the loser would abide by the decision of the electorate...
American politics in the 1850s were very chaotic. The Whig Party had enjoyed some modest success as a bulwark against the Democratic Party, electing two Presidents, but began to unravel in 1852. The Compromise of 1850 was the proximate cause. The Kansas-Nebraska Act sealed it. Whigs could not settle amongst themselves the question of whether or not to allow slavery in the new territories, and the question tore the party apart. Pro-slavery Whigs found a natural home among the Democrats, while anti-slavery Whigs had nowhere to go. Yet.
Another of the era's many splinter parties was the Free Soil Party, whose name tells you all you need to know: they were dead-set against the expansion of slavery. In 1854, ex-Whigs met with Free Soilers and anti-slavery activists in Jackson, Michigan to discuss how they might be able to work together. They had few differences, easily reconciled, and the Republican Party was born. Only two years later, John Fremont stood for the Presidency as the first Republican candidate for that office. Fremont only won New England and the northernmost states, but he polled 33% of the popular vote, an extraordinarily strong showing for what was to all intents and purposes a new party.
The Republicans convened for their second convention in May of 1860 in Chicago, having been handed what looked like a golden opportunity. The fratricidal disaster that was the Democratic convention of the previous month was all over the papers. To put it bluntly, they smelled chum in the water. With a divided opponent, they need not poll a majority nationally, a mere plurality would do, provided that they got their Electoral Votes in all the right places. To seal the deal, all they needed to do was select the right candidate.
Three men were favorites going into the convention: William H. Seward of New York, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and Edward Bates of Missouri. But a funny thing happened on the way to the nominating floor. For one, Seward, Chase, and Bates had each alienated important factions within the Republican party base. For another, this being Chicago, the convention was taking place on the home turf of an opponent that none of the three took seriously. Seward was ahead after the first ballot, but holding on at a strong #2 was one Abraham Lincoln. Two ballots later, Lincoln was the nominee. There was a vicious rumor to the effect that Lincoln's campaign had packed the venue with supporters using counterfeit tickets. I do not know if this rumor has any truth to it or not ... but, if true, it highlights something of Lincoln's character that we would see later on: he would do what was necessary, ruthlessly, and without compunction.
The party platform was almost a foregone conclusion: the party stood four-square against any expansion of slavery into the territories. They also supported a tariff in protection of domestic industry, and a homestead law to grant free land out West to settlers. None of these provisions were greeted with much joy down South. In the event, the Lincoln-Hamlin ticket wouldn't appear on the ballot in any Southern state.
The stage was set now for what would be at least a three-way race in November: Lincoln representing the Republicans, Douglas representing the Northern Democrats, and Breckenridge representing the Southern Democrats. What remained to be seen was if the loser would abide by the decision of the electorate...
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Stupid Nuke Tricks, Continued
This is a continuation of a list I made a few months ago. I got to thinking about it the other day, and realized that I'd left some interesting projects out. And, in the interests of full disclosure, there is ... well, a bit of a confession to make.
Operation Plowshare: Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, never intended his invention to be used for warfare. In a weird reversal, the Atomic Energy Commission got the idea of trying to find peaceful uses for atomic explosions. Of what possible use could atomic explosions be in the non-city-destroying sector of the economy, you ask? Well, they use dynamite in mining, don't they? You can move a whole lot of earth with a bucket o' sunshine. The first few tests were mainly along the lines of proving how big a hole you could dig. The Sedan shot in 1962 dug a hole 300 feet deep and 1,200 feet wide. This was the second test of the series. The moratorium on above-ground explosions put paid to some of the more ambitious plans, such as using nukes to dig out a harbor, but even up to the end of the program in 1974 there were plans to use atomic explosions to stimulate natural gas recovery. The gas companies didn't like the plan much. They had two main objections. First, even over 25 years of gas recovery they might only recoup less than half of the cost; and second, customers would probably take umbrage at the delivery of slightly radioactive product. After 1974, the AEC gave it up as a bad idea.
Program #7: Given that the Soviets never really had to sell their government programs to their legislators or to the public, they kind of mailed it in when it came to project names. This program was also referred to as "Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy", but the program could just as easily have been called "Anything the Americans Can Do, We Can Do Bigger." And yes, it was bigger ... and even more useless, if such a thing were even possible. They tried to create an artificial lake. And they did ... but the artificial lake was radioactive, having been dug out by a nuclear explosion. They tried to open up a new diamond mine. And they did ... which produced radioactive diamonds. They conducted 115 detonations over the 24 years between 1965 and 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev asked, "Why in the world are we still doing this?" No one had a really good answer to this question. For that matter, no one could remember why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to begin with. So, they just kind of gave up.
Spot the Asteroid: Earth-crossing asteroids are a serious threat. We're doing a better job these days of finding them before closest approach, but back in the day, we only found out about them when one of three things happened: (1) it had already zipped by and was going away, (2) it clipped Earth's atmosphere and someone saw the streak as it passed, or (3) WHAM! No one wanted to open Door #3. So, the question was, how do we find them? Well, Sir Arthur Clarke had an idea once. He claimed that an atomic explosion in outer space would allow us to detect every Earth-crossing asteroid in the inner Solar System by using the bomb like the biggest flash bulb in the known Universe. On the one hand, I have a lot of respect for Sir Arthur's capability. But on the other, I'm not really sure how this would have worked in practice. No one else was, either, which is probably why it was never tried.
Deflect the Asteroid: Spotting the asteroid is one thing, doing something about it is another thing entirely. For most of history, men threw their hands up in the air and appealed to the good Lord's mercy, because really, what else can you do? Starting in 1967, people started figuring out what their choices were. There was a brief scare earlier that year about the impending close approach of the asteroid Icarus. MIT Professor Paul Sandorff took that as inspiration, and directed his senior-level system engineering class that spring to find a way to push Icarus out of the way should it come too close. The result of that class project was published as Project Icarus, the only senior thesis ever to become a major motion picture. Basically, they would hijack the Apollo program to use their Saturn V boosters to deliver a series of nuclear warheads to explode near Icarus, pushing its trajectory away from Earth. That was the last word in asteroid defense for quite some time, until Johndale C. Solem of the Los Alamos National Laboratory started crunching the numbers to figure out exactly what a nuclear explosion would do to an asteroid. His report found its way into some conference proceedings, and that was that.
This is more or less where I came in.
Shoemaker-Levy 9 scared the Hell out of me. I really started worrying about what we could do in the event that we were treated to a duck's-eye view of a shotgun blast. I was a doctoral candidate in Aerospace Engineering at the time, and my research advisor gave me considerable latitude when it came to side projects, so I decided that I'd find out. A brief search led me to Dr. Solem's paper, and I was off to the races. So, here's the situation: we spot an asteroid in-bound with only weeks to a couple of months of lead time. What sort of last-ditch defense could we pull off? Well, just about the only thing we can do is pelt it with ICBMs and hope it goes away. Putting together some information on the ranges of our ICBM force, and some knowledge about ballistic trajectories, and Dr. Solem's formulas, I was able to calculate that you wouldn't be able to shift the trajectory enough to make it worthwhile. You can move the impact point by a crater's diameter, and that's about it. But, you can pulverize it. If you can bust it up into pieces 35 meters or smaller, the fragments will burn up in the atmosphere on the way in... And a time-on-target salvo of four Peacekeeper ICBMs can blast a half-mile-wide asteroid into pea gravel. I presented the paper at the 1997 AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics conference. The reception was, as they say, mixed. A small group of Air Force officers in the front row was very interested ... and if there's a top-secret point-defense office in the Pentagon these days, odds are that's probably my fault. Everyone else basically said I was mad. Mad! And I can't really argue with them. I never thought it was a particularly good idea, just possibly the least bad one. It's a plan born of desperation, not of foresight. But if you spot a mountain falling on you with only eight weeks' notice, your options start at horrible and gurgle noisily down the toilet from there.
Still. It's gratifying to know that I earned my "Mad Scientist" title fair and square.
Operation Plowshare: Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, never intended his invention to be used for warfare. In a weird reversal, the Atomic Energy Commission got the idea of trying to find peaceful uses for atomic explosions. Of what possible use could atomic explosions be in the non-city-destroying sector of the economy, you ask? Well, they use dynamite in mining, don't they? You can move a whole lot of earth with a bucket o' sunshine. The first few tests were mainly along the lines of proving how big a hole you could dig. The Sedan shot in 1962 dug a hole 300 feet deep and 1,200 feet wide. This was the second test of the series. The moratorium on above-ground explosions put paid to some of the more ambitious plans, such as using nukes to dig out a harbor, but even up to the end of the program in 1974 there were plans to use atomic explosions to stimulate natural gas recovery. The gas companies didn't like the plan much. They had two main objections. First, even over 25 years of gas recovery they might only recoup less than half of the cost; and second, customers would probably take umbrage at the delivery of slightly radioactive product. After 1974, the AEC gave it up as a bad idea.
Program #7: Given that the Soviets never really had to sell their government programs to their legislators or to the public, they kind of mailed it in when it came to project names. This program was also referred to as "Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy", but the program could just as easily have been called "Anything the Americans Can Do, We Can Do Bigger." And yes, it was bigger ... and even more useless, if such a thing were even possible. They tried to create an artificial lake. And they did ... but the artificial lake was radioactive, having been dug out by a nuclear explosion. They tried to open up a new diamond mine. And they did ... which produced radioactive diamonds. They conducted 115 detonations over the 24 years between 1965 and 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev asked, "Why in the world are we still doing this?" No one had a really good answer to this question. For that matter, no one could remember why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to begin with. So, they just kind of gave up.
Spot the Asteroid: Earth-crossing asteroids are a serious threat. We're doing a better job these days of finding them before closest approach, but back in the day, we only found out about them when one of three things happened: (1) it had already zipped by and was going away, (2) it clipped Earth's atmosphere and someone saw the streak as it passed, or (3) WHAM! No one wanted to open Door #3. So, the question was, how do we find them? Well, Sir Arthur Clarke had an idea once. He claimed that an atomic explosion in outer space would allow us to detect every Earth-crossing asteroid in the inner Solar System by using the bomb like the biggest flash bulb in the known Universe. On the one hand, I have a lot of respect for Sir Arthur's capability. But on the other, I'm not really sure how this would have worked in practice. No one else was, either, which is probably why it was never tried.
Deflect the Asteroid: Spotting the asteroid is one thing, doing something about it is another thing entirely. For most of history, men threw their hands up in the air and appealed to the good Lord's mercy, because really, what else can you do? Starting in 1967, people started figuring out what their choices were. There was a brief scare earlier that year about the impending close approach of the asteroid Icarus. MIT Professor Paul Sandorff took that as inspiration, and directed his senior-level system engineering class that spring to find a way to push Icarus out of the way should it come too close. The result of that class project was published as Project Icarus, the only senior thesis ever to become a major motion picture. Basically, they would hijack the Apollo program to use their Saturn V boosters to deliver a series of nuclear warheads to explode near Icarus, pushing its trajectory away from Earth. That was the last word in asteroid defense for quite some time, until Johndale C. Solem of the Los Alamos National Laboratory started crunching the numbers to figure out exactly what a nuclear explosion would do to an asteroid. His report found its way into some conference proceedings, and that was that.
This is more or less where I came in.
Shoemaker-Levy 9 scared the Hell out of me. I really started worrying about what we could do in the event that we were treated to a duck's-eye view of a shotgun blast. I was a doctoral candidate in Aerospace Engineering at the time, and my research advisor gave me considerable latitude when it came to side projects, so I decided that I'd find out. A brief search led me to Dr. Solem's paper, and I was off to the races. So, here's the situation: we spot an asteroid in-bound with only weeks to a couple of months of lead time. What sort of last-ditch defense could we pull off? Well, just about the only thing we can do is pelt it with ICBMs and hope it goes away. Putting together some information on the ranges of our ICBM force, and some knowledge about ballistic trajectories, and Dr. Solem's formulas, I was able to calculate that you wouldn't be able to shift the trajectory enough to make it worthwhile. You can move the impact point by a crater's diameter, and that's about it. But, you can pulverize it. If you can bust it up into pieces 35 meters or smaller, the fragments will burn up in the atmosphere on the way in... And a time-on-target salvo of four Peacekeeper ICBMs can blast a half-mile-wide asteroid into pea gravel. I presented the paper at the 1997 AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics conference. The reception was, as they say, mixed. A small group of Air Force officers in the front row was very interested ... and if there's a top-secret point-defense office in the Pentagon these days, odds are that's probably my fault. Everyone else basically said I was mad. Mad! And I can't really argue with them. I never thought it was a particularly good idea, just possibly the least bad one. It's a plan born of desperation, not of foresight. But if you spot a mountain falling on you with only eight weeks' notice, your options start at horrible and gurgle noisily down the toilet from there.
Still. It's gratifying to know that I earned my "Mad Scientist" title fair and square.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Sesquicentennial, Part I: DNC 1860
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
[Ed. Note: This is the beginning of a five-year project, examining the Civil War 150 years after the fact, in real time. It's been said before -- and I believe it to be true -- that the Civil War was fundamental in shaping the character of our nation. You cannot understand what America is today without understanding the nature of that conflict. And since none of us are as smart as all of us, I'd appreciate all the help I can get from other bloggers out there. Let me know what you've written, and I'll publish links.]
First, let's get something out of the way before we start: the Civil War was about slavery. Any other bone of contention between North and South could have been resolved through negotiation. Slavery was at the core of the Southern economy, though, and it was something for which the leadership of the South was willing, even eager, to fight. This will become crystal-clear over the next year, as we examine the events in the run-up to Fort Sumter.
A century and a half ago this week in Charleston, South Carolina, the Democratic National Convention came to order at Institute Hall. You have to understand that conventions worked differently, back in the day. These days, we know who the party's nominee will be before the opening gavel, since the primaries have settled the issue months ahead of time. There will be some negotiating on the fine points of the platform, but the broad outlines of that will have also been settled. Not so in 1860. Both nominee and platform were totally up for grabs. And that was a problem, since there were serious divisions between the Northern and Southern wings of the party.
The Dred Scott case, decided by the Supreme Court in 1857, was extremely unpopular in the North even among Democrats. Stephen A. Douglas, the front-runner going into the convention, had only narrowly beaten off a challenger in the 1858 Illinois Senate race by repudiating the Dred Scott decision. This was a very unpopular stance with the Southern delegates, particularly those among them known as the "Fire-Eaters", who wanted an explicitly pro-slavery platform.
Negotiations on the platform lasted for about a week. Douglas' argument, that a pro-slavery platform would cost them votes in the North, carried considerable weight. The minority report on the platform, the Northern position, was adopted on April 30 by a vote of 165 to 138. Fifty Southern delegates then promptly walked out of the convention. They went down the street to Military Hall, convened themselves as the "real" convention, and basically waited for the rest of the convention to cave to their demands. They didn't. With the platform settled to the majority's satisfaction, the convention proceeded to nominations.
The dueling conventions, therefore, produced two Democratic candidates for President that year: Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois representing the Northern wing of the party, with Herschel V. Johnson of New York as his running mate; and John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky representing the Southern wing, with Daniel S. Dickenson of New York as his running mate.
You don't need to be a professional political consultant to guess that a split convention wasn't going to end well for the Democratic Party that November. Everyone in both of the Charleston conventions had to have known that. By and large, these weren't stupid men. On the other hand, though, their opponents had also recently undergone a split themselves; the Republicans were still a very new party, and there were still a few Whigs running around here and there. A split party couldn't contest a three-way race, but they might have a fighting chance in a four-way race.
Still, one thing is undeniably clear. The Southern delegates were perfectly willing to throw their party's chances on the fire for the sake of their "peculiar institution." They were utterly inflexible, unwilling to move, steadfast in their refusal of compromise. Other issues may well have provided fuel for the conflagration to follow, but the Southern intransigence on slavery provided both the spark and the dry tinder.
[Ed. Note: This is the beginning of a five-year project, examining the Civil War 150 years after the fact, in real time. It's been said before -- and I believe it to be true -- that the Civil War was fundamental in shaping the character of our nation. You cannot understand what America is today without understanding the nature of that conflict. And since none of us are as smart as all of us, I'd appreciate all the help I can get from other bloggers out there. Let me know what you've written, and I'll publish links.]
First, let's get something out of the way before we start: the Civil War was about slavery. Any other bone of contention between North and South could have been resolved through negotiation. Slavery was at the core of the Southern economy, though, and it was something for which the leadership of the South was willing, even eager, to fight. This will become crystal-clear over the next year, as we examine the events in the run-up to Fort Sumter.
A century and a half ago this week in Charleston, South Carolina, the Democratic National Convention came to order at Institute Hall. You have to understand that conventions worked differently, back in the day. These days, we know who the party's nominee will be before the opening gavel, since the primaries have settled the issue months ahead of time. There will be some negotiating on the fine points of the platform, but the broad outlines of that will have also been settled. Not so in 1860. Both nominee and platform were totally up for grabs. And that was a problem, since there were serious divisions between the Northern and Southern wings of the party.
The Dred Scott case, decided by the Supreme Court in 1857, was extremely unpopular in the North even among Democrats. Stephen A. Douglas, the front-runner going into the convention, had only narrowly beaten off a challenger in the 1858 Illinois Senate race by repudiating the Dred Scott decision. This was a very unpopular stance with the Southern delegates, particularly those among them known as the "Fire-Eaters", who wanted an explicitly pro-slavery platform.
Negotiations on the platform lasted for about a week. Douglas' argument, that a pro-slavery platform would cost them votes in the North, carried considerable weight. The minority report on the platform, the Northern position, was adopted on April 30 by a vote of 165 to 138. Fifty Southern delegates then promptly walked out of the convention. They went down the street to Military Hall, convened themselves as the "real" convention, and basically waited for the rest of the convention to cave to their demands. They didn't. With the platform settled to the majority's satisfaction, the convention proceeded to nominations.
The dueling conventions, therefore, produced two Democratic candidates for President that year: Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois representing the Northern wing of the party, with Herschel V. Johnson of New York as his running mate; and John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky representing the Southern wing, with Daniel S. Dickenson of New York as his running mate.
You don't need to be a professional political consultant to guess that a split convention wasn't going to end well for the Democratic Party that November. Everyone in both of the Charleston conventions had to have known that. By and large, these weren't stupid men. On the other hand, though, their opponents had also recently undergone a split themselves; the Republicans were still a very new party, and there were still a few Whigs running around here and there. A split party couldn't contest a three-way race, but they might have a fighting chance in a four-way race.
Still, one thing is undeniably clear. The Southern delegates were perfectly willing to throw their party's chances on the fire for the sake of their "peculiar institution." They were utterly inflexible, unwilling to move, steadfast in their refusal of compromise. Other issues may well have provided fuel for the conflagration to follow, but the Southern intransigence on slavery provided both the spark and the dry tinder.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Video Del Fuego, Part XXVII
I've been getting my amateur spaceman groove on with Orbiter. While I was looking for new and nifty things to try, I came across a really interesting video:
The Apollo Applications Program started out as a fairly ambitious effort to find interesting uses for the expensive hardware NASA was developing for the Moon landings. In the end, the only parts of AAP to come to fruition were Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. In one of its original iterations, Skylab was to use what had been called the Wet Workshop concept. That is, the spent S-IVB stage itself would become the interior of the space station. The empty fuel tank would be pressurized, and then filled with equipment for an extended stay ... pretty much anywhere. Plans had been drawn up for a variety of options, from Earth-orbit stations, to Lunar orbit, to flyby missions to Mars or Venus. None of them came to life, though. Mounting costs led to the cancellation of the later Apollo lunar landings, which freed up a couple of Saturn V vehicles. This meant that a two-stage Saturn V could launch a fully-prepped S-IVB dry workshop all in one go, crew-ready. Arguably, Skylab was more effective as a dry workshop than as a wet workshop.
Still, this would have been one freaky mission to have been on. President Nixon would have seen them off ... and President Ford would have welcomed them back on their return.
"President who? Ah, Houston, did something important happen while we were away?"
It's just as well that we didn't. Glorious as it might have been, it carried a steep opportunity cost in terms of other things that couldn't have been done. Between them, Pioneer Venus and Magellan cost maybe a quarter what this would have, and returned far more data.
Still, it's fun to imagine.
[Addendum: This video was put together by the same person who did the Voyage video featured earlier. He's got a pretty great sense for timing and music. I simply must get a copy of that Beethoven piece.]
The Apollo Applications Program started out as a fairly ambitious effort to find interesting uses for the expensive hardware NASA was developing for the Moon landings. In the end, the only parts of AAP to come to fruition were Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. In one of its original iterations, Skylab was to use what had been called the Wet Workshop concept. That is, the spent S-IVB stage itself would become the interior of the space station. The empty fuel tank would be pressurized, and then filled with equipment for an extended stay ... pretty much anywhere. Plans had been drawn up for a variety of options, from Earth-orbit stations, to Lunar orbit, to flyby missions to Mars or Venus. None of them came to life, though. Mounting costs led to the cancellation of the later Apollo lunar landings, which freed up a couple of Saturn V vehicles. This meant that a two-stage Saturn V could launch a fully-prepped S-IVB dry workshop all in one go, crew-ready. Arguably, Skylab was more effective as a dry workshop than as a wet workshop.
Still, this would have been one freaky mission to have been on. President Nixon would have seen them off ... and President Ford would have welcomed them back on their return.
"President who? Ah, Houston, did something important happen while we were away?"
It's just as well that we didn't. Glorious as it might have been, it carried a steep opportunity cost in terms of other things that couldn't have been done. Between them, Pioneer Venus and Magellan cost maybe a quarter what this would have, and returned far more data.
Still, it's fun to imagine.
[Addendum: This video was put together by the same person who did the Voyage video featured earlier. He's got a pretty great sense for timing and music. I simply must get a copy of that Beethoven piece.]
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Spring is Sprung
Springtime is once again upon us, at least for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. I've been spending more time enjoying the splendid weather than doing deep thinking. But I do have an assortment of thoughts about what's going on hereabouts:
1) I don't get baseball. I don't dislike baseball, I just don't really get it. In a strange way, baseball is a lot like space flight, in that participant spend most of their time standing around waiting for something interesting to happen. There are bits and pieces of the game I find entertaining. Such as, for example, the time Nolan Ryan had this fool twenty years his junior in a headlock, administering an impromptu lecture with his pointer knuckles on the virtues of respect for one's elders. Along with Zinedine Zidane's last play, surely this was one of sport's finest moments. But such things are few and far between. And it's entirely possible that I'd find baseball more interesting if my home team were anyone but the Texas Rangers.
2) I don't get basketball, either. If baseball is too slow, basketball is too fast. By the time I figure out what's happened, play has long since moved on. I've no doubt that I could figure it out if I really wanted to ... but I have no real desire to do so. I spend enough time on the couch as it is.
3) Andy Reid WILL rue the day. Granted, Philadelphia was in a rut, and had to do something. Making the move to your QB of the future makes good sense in that regard. But trading McNabb to a division rival? Someone you know you'll play at least twice every year? Sure, on one hand you could argue that the Philly defense knows all about McNabb, and you could say that this means they're not afraid of him. But, the flip side of that same coin is that McNabb knows the Philly defense inside and out. He's going to be powerfully motivated this year to fold their defensive playbook 'till it's all corners, and stick it somewhere it's gonna hurt. And he just might be able to do it, too. One thing I do know: the Philiadelphia-Washington games for the next couple of years are going to be good, old-fashioned grudge-ball. McNabb's return to Philadelphia, in particular, will be fine sport.
4) J. K. Rowling will be writing a new book. Exactly what it's going to be, no one knows. That said, I've daydreamed about what a sequel series could look like. We do know that Harry and Ron went to work for the Ministry as investigators of a sort. But you have to wonder: who would they be investiating that they'd be all that worried about? They'd already put paid to the biggest Big Bad that they're ever likely to find. So it'd be a more light-hearted series, with a couple of wise-cracking agents foiling the schemes of the bad guys. Now, where have I seen something like that before?
"The Man From U.N.C.L.E." plus wizards could be really fun.
5) Polywell marches on. I've talked about the Polywell project before. Last year, we covered the latest Navy research contract. We know nothing definite yet, but the indications seem to be that interesting things are afoot. They have not released any results, but they are seeking funds for development of a full-scale 100MW reactor. One of two things is true here: either they're running a scam, or they've got solid enough results from their Navy work that they want to begin work on a commercially-available version. I'm inclined to think it's the latter. And while I'm not sure that I want to donate, if they offer stock I'm damn sure buying. This could be the real thing, folks. And if it is, hold on to your hats, because the whole world's going to change. We'll know more in about a year or so -- the thing to watch for are the follow-on contract awards -- but at this point I'm guardedly optimistic.
6) START me up? I happened to be in a position to catch the signing of the new START treaty between the United States and Russia on live TV. The interesting thing is how little both parties actually give up. Nuclear weapons are acknowledged by most professionals as having little to no military utility. This wasn't true when they were introduced in 1945. Back then, atomic weapons were strategic bombing writ large; if I showed you a random decimated cityscape photo from WWII, unless there was a distinguishing landmark present or you were a dedicated scholar, you probably couldn't tell me if you were looking at a photo of Hiroshima, Tokyo, Hamburg, Dresden, or Berlin. The only difference is that in the first of those cases, the devastation was wrought with one bomb in one sortie. Now, however, if we want to shut down a city, we can identify a dozen or so weak points -- single points of failure in the infrastructure -- and destroy them simultaneously without touching anything else. What need, then, for nukes? They chew up tremendous resources without contributing anything really useful. Except, that is, for deterrence. Their only use is to stay the hands of those similarly armed. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to be rid of them entirely. That bell probably can't be un-rung. But, we can reduce our stockpile to the minimum required to present a credible threat. This treaty goes a good way towards that goal, provided that the Senate will ratify it.
And that's about it for now. Spring calls!
1) I don't get baseball. I don't dislike baseball, I just don't really get it. In a strange way, baseball is a lot like space flight, in that participant spend most of their time standing around waiting for something interesting to happen. There are bits and pieces of the game I find entertaining. Such as, for example, the time Nolan Ryan had this fool twenty years his junior in a headlock, administering an impromptu lecture with his pointer knuckles on the virtues of respect for one's elders. Along with Zinedine Zidane's last play, surely this was one of sport's finest moments. But such things are few and far between. And it's entirely possible that I'd find baseball more interesting if my home team were anyone but the Texas Rangers.
2) I don't get basketball, either. If baseball is too slow, basketball is too fast. By the time I figure out what's happened, play has long since moved on. I've no doubt that I could figure it out if I really wanted to ... but I have no real desire to do so. I spend enough time on the couch as it is.
3) Andy Reid WILL rue the day. Granted, Philadelphia was in a rut, and had to do something. Making the move to your QB of the future makes good sense in that regard. But trading McNabb to a division rival? Someone you know you'll play at least twice every year? Sure, on one hand you could argue that the Philly defense knows all about McNabb, and you could say that this means they're not afraid of him. But, the flip side of that same coin is that McNabb knows the Philly defense inside and out. He's going to be powerfully motivated this year to fold their defensive playbook 'till it's all corners, and stick it somewhere it's gonna hurt. And he just might be able to do it, too. One thing I do know: the Philiadelphia-Washington games for the next couple of years are going to be good, old-fashioned grudge-ball. McNabb's return to Philadelphia, in particular, will be fine sport.
4) J. K. Rowling will be writing a new book. Exactly what it's going to be, no one knows. That said, I've daydreamed about what a sequel series could look like. We do know that Harry and Ron went to work for the Ministry as investigators of a sort. But you have to wonder: who would they be investiating that they'd be all that worried about? They'd already put paid to the biggest Big Bad that they're ever likely to find. So it'd be a more light-hearted series, with a couple of wise-cracking agents foiling the schemes of the bad guys. Now, where have I seen something like that before?
"The Man From U.N.C.L.E." plus wizards could be really fun.
5) Polywell marches on. I've talked about the Polywell project before. Last year, we covered the latest Navy research contract. We know nothing definite yet, but the indications seem to be that interesting things are afoot. They have not released any results, but they are seeking funds for development of a full-scale 100MW reactor. One of two things is true here: either they're running a scam, or they've got solid enough results from their Navy work that they want to begin work on a commercially-available version. I'm inclined to think it's the latter. And while I'm not sure that I want to donate, if they offer stock I'm damn sure buying. This could be the real thing, folks. And if it is, hold on to your hats, because the whole world's going to change. We'll know more in about a year or so -- the thing to watch for are the follow-on contract awards -- but at this point I'm guardedly optimistic.
6) START me up? I happened to be in a position to catch the signing of the new START treaty between the United States and Russia on live TV. The interesting thing is how little both parties actually give up. Nuclear weapons are acknowledged by most professionals as having little to no military utility. This wasn't true when they were introduced in 1945. Back then, atomic weapons were strategic bombing writ large; if I showed you a random decimated cityscape photo from WWII, unless there was a distinguishing landmark present or you were a dedicated scholar, you probably couldn't tell me if you were looking at a photo of Hiroshima, Tokyo, Hamburg, Dresden, or Berlin. The only difference is that in the first of those cases, the devastation was wrought with one bomb in one sortie. Now, however, if we want to shut down a city, we can identify a dozen or so weak points -- single points of failure in the infrastructure -- and destroy them simultaneously without touching anything else. What need, then, for nukes? They chew up tremendous resources without contributing anything really useful. Except, that is, for deterrence. Their only use is to stay the hands of those similarly armed. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to be rid of them entirely. That bell probably can't be un-rung. But, we can reduce our stockpile to the minimum required to present a credible threat. This treaty goes a good way towards that goal, provided that the Senate will ratify it.
And that's about it for now. Spring calls!
Friday, April 02, 2010
We Have Met The Enemy ...
When it comes to your health, and the care thereof, your worst enemy isn't any political figure. It's not either of the major national parties. It isn't anyone -- or any agency -- within the Federal Government. Nevertheless, it's someone you're fairly familiar with. Allow me to share a story by way of illustration:
A longtime friend of mine has a hangnail. No, that's not quite accurate; he has THE hangnail. He's had it for a long, long time. It's old enough to vote, buy its own liquor, and qualify for discounted auto insurance. Most of the time, he ignores it. The rest of the time, he attempts to treat it himself with a terrifying array of hand and power tools. I don't think he's tried a soldering iron or belt sander yet, but really, it's only a matter of time. He's tried just about everything ... except, that is, the services of a qualified podiatric surgeon, which would pretty much fix the problem for good. But that's far too easy.
His problem isn't that he doesn't have insurance. His problem is that he just doesn't like doctors.
So: my worst enemy? Like just about everyone else, it's the fool that stares back at me out of the mirror when I'm shaving. He'll be the death of me if I give him half a chance. And at the end of the day, my health is my responsibility and no one else's. I enjoy the benefits if I take care of business, and I suffer the consequences if I don't.
I've been doing a much better job of that lately. I've learned a few things since I first got serious about this last summer, and this is as good a time as any to share them with you. It's possible that you've heard it before. Actually, in summary, you have heard it all before: diet, and exercise. But the summary omits a few important details ... such as a form of exercise that's vitally important if you're truly interested in re-making yourself.
But first things first: it must start with nutrition. Steve over at Nerd Fitness likes to say, "You can't outrun your fork." He's absolutely right. This can be really hard at first, but it's really important. Like trying to run your car on scented lamp oil, you won't get far without the right fuel. For some, this was an easy step. For me, it meant changing my whole relationship with food. This has been an ongoing effort for over ten years on my part, and I've managed to stop over-eating, and basically eat the "right" thing more often than not these days. However, this by itself is not enough.
The next layer is, of course, cardio exercise. What kind isn't quite as important as intensity and consistency. It has to be vigorous, and it has to be at least three times a week. It almost goes without saying that you really need to pick something you enjoy doing for its own sake, or at a bare minimum something you can tolerate. I hate running. But for some weird reason, my brain doesn't really interpret elliptical machines as running, even though it's basically the same motion. And I love cycling and swimming. So, ten minutes of each, three times a week, and there we are.
But, as I said earlier, the summary -- diet and exercise -- omits an important detail. There's a leg missing from the tripod: strength training. I didn't get serious about this until nine months ago. Until I saw what it did in conjunction with the other two, I never realized how important it really was.
Mehdi makes a pitch for the benefits of strength training both here and at his own site. At the risk of repetition, I'll put in my own two cents. Simply put, muscle tissue is denser than fat. If you build muscle, even if you don't lose an ounce, you'll look trimmer. But you will lose weight, because muscle tissue burns fat constantly, even at rest. But that's only the beginning. I find that I have more energy. I find that I don't get sick as often, and recover faster when I do. I sleep better. And I have the confidence that comes from knowing that I have never been stronger, not even when I was half my age.
I've found the StrongLifts program very useful. It has several key advantages. First, it's free. All you have to do is go to the website, write down the routine and/or download the free e-book, and it's yours. Second, compound exercises are a great time-saver. Bodybuilders spend hours at the gym, working one or two muscles at a time. But with compound exercises, spend 30 minutes a day three times a week, and that's all you need. And third, you can start small and build up. It's great for beginners. You feel a little bit silly the first few weeks, lifting nothing but the bar and a few tiny weights. But soon, you work up to some respectable amounts. Within six months, I was squatting my own bodyweight. I'm aiming for twice that, and will probably be able to within the year.
And while it's easier with a gym, you don't need much equipment to do good strength training. You don't actually need anything: Pavel Tsatsouline's book Naked Warrior shows you a solid strength routine that requires no equipment at all. And here's a kettlebell routine that requires only bare-bones equipment.
Life's hard. It's even harder when you're weaker than you need to be. Do yourself a favor, and look into strength training. It may be the best choice you ever made.
A longtime friend of mine has a hangnail. No, that's not quite accurate; he has THE hangnail. He's had it for a long, long time. It's old enough to vote, buy its own liquor, and qualify for discounted auto insurance. Most of the time, he ignores it. The rest of the time, he attempts to treat it himself with a terrifying array of hand and power tools. I don't think he's tried a soldering iron or belt sander yet, but really, it's only a matter of time. He's tried just about everything ... except, that is, the services of a qualified podiatric surgeon, which would pretty much fix the problem for good. But that's far too easy.
His problem isn't that he doesn't have insurance. His problem is that he just doesn't like doctors.
So: my worst enemy? Like just about everyone else, it's the fool that stares back at me out of the mirror when I'm shaving. He'll be the death of me if I give him half a chance. And at the end of the day, my health is my responsibility and no one else's. I enjoy the benefits if I take care of business, and I suffer the consequences if I don't.
I've been doing a much better job of that lately. I've learned a few things since I first got serious about this last summer, and this is as good a time as any to share them with you. It's possible that you've heard it before. Actually, in summary, you have heard it all before: diet, and exercise. But the summary omits a few important details ... such as a form of exercise that's vitally important if you're truly interested in re-making yourself.
But first things first: it must start with nutrition. Steve over at Nerd Fitness likes to say, "You can't outrun your fork." He's absolutely right. This can be really hard at first, but it's really important. Like trying to run your car on scented lamp oil, you won't get far without the right fuel. For some, this was an easy step. For me, it meant changing my whole relationship with food. This has been an ongoing effort for over ten years on my part, and I've managed to stop over-eating, and basically eat the "right" thing more often than not these days. However, this by itself is not enough.
The next layer is, of course, cardio exercise. What kind isn't quite as important as intensity and consistency. It has to be vigorous, and it has to be at least three times a week. It almost goes without saying that you really need to pick something you enjoy doing for its own sake, or at a bare minimum something you can tolerate. I hate running. But for some weird reason, my brain doesn't really interpret elliptical machines as running, even though it's basically the same motion. And I love cycling and swimming. So, ten minutes of each, three times a week, and there we are.
But, as I said earlier, the summary -- diet and exercise -- omits an important detail. There's a leg missing from the tripod: strength training. I didn't get serious about this until nine months ago. Until I saw what it did in conjunction with the other two, I never realized how important it really was.
Mehdi makes a pitch for the benefits of strength training both here and at his own site. At the risk of repetition, I'll put in my own two cents. Simply put, muscle tissue is denser than fat. If you build muscle, even if you don't lose an ounce, you'll look trimmer. But you will lose weight, because muscle tissue burns fat constantly, even at rest. But that's only the beginning. I find that I have more energy. I find that I don't get sick as often, and recover faster when I do. I sleep better. And I have the confidence that comes from knowing that I have never been stronger, not even when I was half my age.
I've found the StrongLifts program very useful. It has several key advantages. First, it's free. All you have to do is go to the website, write down the routine and/or download the free e-book, and it's yours. Second, compound exercises are a great time-saver. Bodybuilders spend hours at the gym, working one or two muscles at a time. But with compound exercises, spend 30 minutes a day three times a week, and that's all you need. And third, you can start small and build up. It's great for beginners. You feel a little bit silly the first few weeks, lifting nothing but the bar and a few tiny weights. But soon, you work up to some respectable amounts. Within six months, I was squatting my own bodyweight. I'm aiming for twice that, and will probably be able to within the year.
And while it's easier with a gym, you don't need much equipment to do good strength training. You don't actually need anything: Pavel Tsatsouline's book Naked Warrior shows you a solid strength routine that requires no equipment at all. And here's a kettlebell routine that requires only bare-bones equipment.
Life's hard. It's even harder when you're weaker than you need to be. Do yourself a favor, and look into strength training. It may be the best choice you ever made.
Video Del Fuego, Part XXVI
Presented for your viewing pleasure, ten of the best high-speed passes ever, each of which proves that "Maverick" from Top Gun was, in fact, a sissy.
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