--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
"Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult." -- Carl von Clausewitz
"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near." -- Sun Tzu
History tells us that the famous generals Lee and Grant first clashed in the Battle of the Wilderness, in May of 1864, but this is not entirely accurate. Lee's and Grant's decisions first began to contend with one another's in the spring of 1863, as they were each drawing up their plans of campaign for the coming season. It's not known whether either man read Clausewitz's masterwork Vom Kriege, but they were certainly becoming familiar with one of its most famous dictums. Everything they needed to do was simple, but even the simplest thing was fraught with difficulty.
Grant wanted Vicksburg. But every effort he had made to date ended in the same result: failure. He had tried twice to build canals that would get his forces in position to encircle Vicksburg, and had tried three times to use his naval superiority to bypass Vicksburg and encircle it that way. His last option was risky: march down the west bank of the Mississippi, and then cross the river below Vicksburg. Naturally, if the Confederates got wind that this was his plan, they would be able to cover the landings fairly easily. Although Grant had never read (or indeed even heard of) Sun Tzu, he nevertheless had an instinctive grasp of the obvious: he would have to deceive the Confederates of his specific intent. He would send out not one but two diversionary operations. General Sherman would command an attack on Snyder's Bluff, while Colonel Grierson would lead a sweeping cavalry raid through the entirety of central Mississippi. This, plus the thrashing around Grant had been doing for the last several months, ought to confuse the defenders of Vicksburg enough to keep them from hindering his real plan.
Oddly enough, Lieutenant General John Pemberton also wanted Vicksburg, because that was where his army was headquartered. Pemberton and Grant knew each other from their days in the Army during the Mexican War. Unusually for a Confederate officer, Pemberton was a Northerner by birth. Long years of service in the Southern states, along with having married a Virginian, shifted his sympathies such that when the break came, he went with his wife's people. In October of 1862, he was promoted to Lieutenant General and assigned the defense of Vicksburg, with orders to hold it at all costs. He didn't have nearly enough men for the task. He had 50,000 men within the works at Vicksburg, against about 100,000 men under General Grant. The only thing in his favor so far was that Grant's men were not yet at Vicksburg. This gave a small breathing space, within which he could bolster Vicksburg's defenses, provided that President Davis could conjure up the men to send him.
Sadly, conjuring would be what it would take, because there were no natural means by which President Davis could get so many soldiers.
General Joseph Johnston was in Jackson, Mississippi, and close enough to act in support, but held few men under his command. In principle, once the spring's actions in the East had been sorted out, some of Lee's troops from the Army of Northern Virginia could be detailed west to support Pemberton. But it would be up to six weeks before that decision could be taken. It would be foolish to denude Lee of men, until they knew what General Joseph Hooker would do with the Army of the Potomac.
And in any event, it might already be too late for Lee to march to Vicksburg in support.
Lee was about a thousand miles from Vicksburg. There's no practical way for an army the size of Lee's to cover that amount of ground in anything under two months. And that's by using the most direct route possible, assuming no interference by Union forces. It's safe to say that there'd be at least some effort to interfere. In any case, there are some significant dates to note: March 9, and April 24. March 9 is the last date that Lee could leave his camp and arrive at Vicksburg by May 15, and April 24 is the last day he could leave and arrive by June 30. We won't say what those last two dates signify, not quite yet. But the meaning is fairly clear, isn't it? Everyone knew that a noose was drawing around Vicksburg, the only questions were where and when.
Which brings us back to their basic problem: they still weren't entirely sure what Grant was up to. They knew he was headed to Vicksburg. But that was all they knew.
This, of course, was exactly what Grant wanted.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Saturday, April 06, 2013
Twit of the Year?
I've resisted it for some time now, but I've taken the plunge and started a Twitter account. The feed is off to the side on the right.
So far, I've found out that it's a real challenge to express a coherent thought in under 144 characters.
Anyway, if there are other feeds you think I ought to be following, let me know at @McGahaTim.
Friday, March 29, 2013
The Continuing Adventures of Li'l Kim
Things are definitely heating up on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has recently declared the 1953 armistice invalid, not that they ever paid much attention to its provisions anyway. And now, in response to a joint training exercise held by the U.S. and South Korea, they've released their master plan for bringing the United States to its knees. Their target list: Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Hawaii, and Austin.
... say what? Austin?
Mind you, the odds of a North Korean missile reaching Austin, Texas are the same as the number of Rs in "Fat Chance", but still. The targeting order raises several very important questions. Who drew up this target list? What was he smoking? And did he bring enough to share?
While it's almost definitely true that Mr. Kim is nuttier than a short ton of Almond Joy, we do have to remember Tip O'Neill's famous dictum that all politics is local before we can make heads or tails of what the Crazy Hermit Kingdom is up to. It's important to keep in mind that Mr. Kim is still very new in the saddle, and doesn't yet have a really secure power base, if he's truly in charge to begin with. We don't actually know if he's wielding actual executive authority, or if he's some general's convenient figurehead. And this may be an effort to manufacture an external enemy to rally the people around his (mis)rule. While all this is true -- and this article is well worth a read for more insights -- it's also important to think over this rather startling target list.
I can kind of understand hitting Washington, although that won't actually degrade our command and control ability all that much. I'm not denigrating the usefulness of our political class (much), it's just that all the important command and control functions have fully-functional duplicates stood up somewhere else, just in case of such an emergency. And it kind of makes sense that Hawaii, as Pacific fleet HQ, is on the list. But Austin? I mean, it's the capital of Texas and all, but there's nothing in Austin that will paralyze the nation if we lost it. It doesn't even make bad sense. Granted, Austin was on the Soviet strike list, back in the day; but the Soviets were throwing 10,000 warheads in our general direction. With that many buckets of sunshine coming our way, Austin was bound to catch one. This list bespeaks a military command structure with no tangible basis in reality.
The truly scary thing here is that we're dealing with an entire government that matches the clinical definition for paranoid schizophrenia. And how in the world do you negotiate with someone like that?
We could negotiate with the Soviets, because at the end of the day, we both lived in the same objectively recognizable Universe. The same holds with the Chinese today. And with the Cubans, although they're not exactly high up on our priority list just right now. But, North Korea?
When we ask for talks with Mr. Kim, we may as well ask for the King of the Potato People to mediate.
The best thing we can hope for at this point is that Mr. Kim can consolidate his hold on power without provoking open war. But there's damned little margin for error. If the reins slip from Mr. Kim's pudgy fingers...
There's no way that ends well.
... say what? Austin?
Mind you, the odds of a North Korean missile reaching Austin, Texas are the same as the number of Rs in "Fat Chance", but still. The targeting order raises several very important questions. Who drew up this target list? What was he smoking? And did he bring enough to share?
While it's almost definitely true that Mr. Kim is nuttier than a short ton of Almond Joy, we do have to remember Tip O'Neill's famous dictum that all politics is local before we can make heads or tails of what the Crazy Hermit Kingdom is up to. It's important to keep in mind that Mr. Kim is still very new in the saddle, and doesn't yet have a really secure power base, if he's truly in charge to begin with. We don't actually know if he's wielding actual executive authority, or if he's some general's convenient figurehead. And this may be an effort to manufacture an external enemy to rally the people around his (mis)rule. While all this is true -- and this article is well worth a read for more insights -- it's also important to think over this rather startling target list.
I can kind of understand hitting Washington, although that won't actually degrade our command and control ability all that much. I'm not denigrating the usefulness of our political class (much), it's just that all the important command and control functions have fully-functional duplicates stood up somewhere else, just in case of such an emergency. And it kind of makes sense that Hawaii, as Pacific fleet HQ, is on the list. But Austin? I mean, it's the capital of Texas and all, but there's nothing in Austin that will paralyze the nation if we lost it. It doesn't even make bad sense. Granted, Austin was on the Soviet strike list, back in the day; but the Soviets were throwing 10,000 warheads in our general direction. With that many buckets of sunshine coming our way, Austin was bound to catch one. This list bespeaks a military command structure with no tangible basis in reality.
The truly scary thing here is that we're dealing with an entire government that matches the clinical definition for paranoid schizophrenia. And how in the world do you negotiate with someone like that?
We could negotiate with the Soviets, because at the end of the day, we both lived in the same objectively recognizable Universe. The same holds with the Chinese today. And with the Cubans, although they're not exactly high up on our priority list just right now. But, North Korea?
When we ask for talks with Mr. Kim, we may as well ask for the King of the Potato People to mediate.
The best thing we can hope for at this point is that Mr. Kim can consolidate his hold on power without provoking open war. But there's damned little margin for error. If the reins slip from Mr. Kim's pudgy fingers...
There's no way that ends well.
Friday, March 22, 2013
How Old Is It?
Space ... it's big. Really big. And it's getting bigger all the time.
Case in point: recently, the American Geophysical Union reported that the Voyager 1 spacecraft had left the Solar System, based upon a press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Except, that's not quite what the JPL press release said. What JPL said was that Voyager had entered a new region of space, but hasn't quite left the Sun's influence yet. They're still waiting for the final sign, the direction of the magnetic field lines, to tell them that Voyager has crossed over into genuine interstellar space.
It won't be the first time we thought a spacecraft has left the Solar System. Back in 1983, Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Neptune, at that time the most distant planet from the Sun. Back then, the common thought was that that was the border. But the more we learn, the farther back the border is pushed.
(Incidentally, Neptune is once again the most distant planet from the Sun, now that Pluto has been demoted to a dwarf planet. But that's neither here nor there ... except that asking whether or not Pluto should be a planet is still a good question for starting a bench-clearing brawl at an astronomical conference.)
Likewise, the Universe itself gets bigger and older every time we look at it.
NASA and the European Space Agency have released the latest results from the Planck Space Telescope, launched in May 2009. Its mission was to expand on the work already done by the earlier COBE and WMAP probes. Basically, what they're trying to do is to capture the Universe's very first light, or what's left of it. As the current theory holds, 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe cooled down enough to become transparent. That's as far back as we can see with any of our telescopes. COBE made the very first map of the microwave background radiation. It broadly confirmed the theory, but turned up some interesting results. To wit, the background radiation is lumpy, non-uniform. The patterns, if there were any, might yield some interesting clues as to the nature of the early Universe. So the WMAP mission was launched as a follow-up, with more sensitive instruments. WMAP was stunningly successful, and its map of the background radiation provided proof for the Lambda-CDM model of the early Universe. We still don't know what that "cold, dark matter" is, but the data provided by WMAP matches very closely with what's predicted by the theory. The Planck spacecraft was launched in 2009 to provide a more detailed data set, which was expected to refine our knowledge still further.
So far, Planck is delivering the goods.
The new map of the microwave background radiation is the most detailed yet, able to display structure and features no one imagined could be seen. For one, the data refines our estimate for the age of the Universe. The new estimate is about 100 million years older than we thought it was, or about 13.8 billion years old. Also, the Universe is not expanding quite as fast as we thought it was. There's less dark energy and more dark matter than we'd previously measured. (Not that we know what the Hell either one of those are, mind you.) But that's not even the most baffling bit.
This is.
Against all expectations, the Universe looks fundamentally different in one direction than it does in another. There's an enormous cold spot. If it's a genuine structure, and not an artifact of measurement, it's the biggest thing ever seen by humans. Some irregularities were visible on the WMAP data, causing Roger Penrose to hypothesize that those irregularities could be signs of a previous Universe, "echoes" of the last Big Crunch.
They said Penrose was mad. Maybe they were wrong?
We don't know yet. It's going to take a long time to digest just what all this means. No current theory accounts for the Cold Spot. Which means someone is going to have to cook up a new one that will. That won't happen tomorrow, or next week, or maybe even next year. But it will, and it'll be fascinating to find out what the implications are.
Case in point: recently, the American Geophysical Union reported that the Voyager 1 spacecraft had left the Solar System, based upon a press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Except, that's not quite what the JPL press release said. What JPL said was that Voyager had entered a new region of space, but hasn't quite left the Sun's influence yet. They're still waiting for the final sign, the direction of the magnetic field lines, to tell them that Voyager has crossed over into genuine interstellar space.
It won't be the first time we thought a spacecraft has left the Solar System. Back in 1983, Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Neptune, at that time the most distant planet from the Sun. Back then, the common thought was that that was the border. But the more we learn, the farther back the border is pushed.
(Incidentally, Neptune is once again the most distant planet from the Sun, now that Pluto has been demoted to a dwarf planet. But that's neither here nor there ... except that asking whether or not Pluto should be a planet is still a good question for starting a bench-clearing brawl at an astronomical conference.)
Likewise, the Universe itself gets bigger and older every time we look at it.
NASA and the European Space Agency have released the latest results from the Planck Space Telescope, launched in May 2009. Its mission was to expand on the work already done by the earlier COBE and WMAP probes. Basically, what they're trying to do is to capture the Universe's very first light, or what's left of it. As the current theory holds, 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe cooled down enough to become transparent. That's as far back as we can see with any of our telescopes. COBE made the very first map of the microwave background radiation. It broadly confirmed the theory, but turned up some interesting results. To wit, the background radiation is lumpy, non-uniform. The patterns, if there were any, might yield some interesting clues as to the nature of the early Universe. So the WMAP mission was launched as a follow-up, with more sensitive instruments. WMAP was stunningly successful, and its map of the background radiation provided proof for the Lambda-CDM model of the early Universe. We still don't know what that "cold, dark matter" is, but the data provided by WMAP matches very closely with what's predicted by the theory. The Planck spacecraft was launched in 2009 to provide a more detailed data set, which was expected to refine our knowledge still further.
So far, Planck is delivering the goods.
The new map of the microwave background radiation is the most detailed yet, able to display structure and features no one imagined could be seen. For one, the data refines our estimate for the age of the Universe. The new estimate is about 100 million years older than we thought it was, or about 13.8 billion years old. Also, the Universe is not expanding quite as fast as we thought it was. There's less dark energy and more dark matter than we'd previously measured. (Not that we know what the Hell either one of those are, mind you.) But that's not even the most baffling bit.
This is.
Against all expectations, the Universe looks fundamentally different in one direction than it does in another. There's an enormous cold spot. If it's a genuine structure, and not an artifact of measurement, it's the biggest thing ever seen by humans. Some irregularities were visible on the WMAP data, causing Roger Penrose to hypothesize that those irregularities could be signs of a previous Universe, "echoes" of the last Big Crunch.
They said Penrose was mad. Maybe they were wrong?
We don't know yet. It's going to take a long time to digest just what all this means. No current theory accounts for the Cold Spot. Which means someone is going to have to cook up a new one that will. That won't happen tomorrow, or next week, or maybe even next year. But it will, and it'll be fascinating to find out what the implications are.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Video Del Fuego, Part LIX
Now, you may ask why they didn't do it that way for the new rover, Curiosity. There were a number of reasons, most of them dealing with the fact that Curiosity weighs just under a ton. Getting a ton of moving parts to Mars in one piece was ... interesting.
Sadly, Spirit got stuck in 2010, and hasn't been heard from since. But its twin, Opportunity, is still in working order, and still returning useful data. The original two rovers had been planned to last for a 90-day mission. So far, Opportunity has lasted 35 times longer than that. With that track record, it's a good bet that Curiosity should last long enough to exhaust its RTG power supply, giving us pictures and data from the Martian surface for years to come.
UPDATE: This last week, NASA announced that while they haven't found life on Mars yet, they have found that once upon a time, Mars had all the right conditions. Not only that, this proves that all the essential materials are still there.
Friday, March 01, 2013
Far-Out Honeymoon
Earlier today, the second regularly-scheduled Dragon cargo delivery mission blasted off from Florida. Everything went normally, right up to just after the Dragon spacecraft separated from the second stage.
I cocked an eyebrow when I heard "abort passive" on the flight controller loop, because that couldn't have meant anything good. And it didn't: it meant that they were having trouble bringing the maneuvering thrusters on-line. Not permanent trouble, fortunately; they got things ironed out after a few hours. They got the solar panels deployed, and are on course for rendezvous on Sunday, only a day later than originally planned.
Which once again goes to show that this is a damned complicated business. You've got about a bazillion moving parts, just about every one of which has to work, or you're out of luck.
I say this just to introduce the weirdest idea I've heard of in quite some time: a proposal by Dennis Tito to send a married couple on a trip to Mars and back, leaving in 2018. I'm trying to decide if it's utterly insane or not.
It's possible, even if only just barely so. The proposed Falcon Heavy booster could put a Dragon spacecraft, a crew of two, and an inflatable habitat on an Earth-escape trajectory. And the math works out for the trajectory. As long as you get your trans-Mars burn done just right, you'll hit that sweet spot behind Mars that will swing you right back towards Earth. So yeah, the tools are there...
...except that we're still not entirely sure that we can keep two people alive, healthy, and sane for the 501 days it would take to get them back to Earth. It probably bears mentioning that once you've cast your Earth-escape stage away, you're committed for the whole trip. There's no way to abort if something goes wrong. It also bears mentioning that the longest single mission to date has only been 437 days and change. We can be fairly sure that the crew will survive microgravity for that long. We're far less sure about solar flares, or cosmic rays.
But how else are we going to know if people can survive deep space, unless we try? Ultimately, that's what makes this worth trying. Yes, there's a risk that we won't get them back. They're perfectly aware of that. This project will have plenty of volunteers, even so. The chance to be one of the two fastest humans alive, the chance to be the first to Mars, there are many who will consider that a prize worth the risk.
I won't be one of them. First, being cooped up for that long in a Kevlar balloon would drive me nuts. And second, your close-up view of Mars? It's going to be pitch-black. You'll see the sunlit side on your way in, and on your way out, but your flyby will be in total darkness.
Still, it may be worth a try, if they can raise the cash to make it happen.
I cocked an eyebrow when I heard "abort passive" on the flight controller loop, because that couldn't have meant anything good. And it didn't: it meant that they were having trouble bringing the maneuvering thrusters on-line. Not permanent trouble, fortunately; they got things ironed out after a few hours. They got the solar panels deployed, and are on course for rendezvous on Sunday, only a day later than originally planned.
Which once again goes to show that this is a damned complicated business. You've got about a bazillion moving parts, just about every one of which has to work, or you're out of luck.
I say this just to introduce the weirdest idea I've heard of in quite some time: a proposal by Dennis Tito to send a married couple on a trip to Mars and back, leaving in 2018. I'm trying to decide if it's utterly insane or not.
It's possible, even if only just barely so. The proposed Falcon Heavy booster could put a Dragon spacecraft, a crew of two, and an inflatable habitat on an Earth-escape trajectory. And the math works out for the trajectory. As long as you get your trans-Mars burn done just right, you'll hit that sweet spot behind Mars that will swing you right back towards Earth. So yeah, the tools are there...
...except that we're still not entirely sure that we can keep two people alive, healthy, and sane for the 501 days it would take to get them back to Earth. It probably bears mentioning that once you've cast your Earth-escape stage away, you're committed for the whole trip. There's no way to abort if something goes wrong. It also bears mentioning that the longest single mission to date has only been 437 days and change. We can be fairly sure that the crew will survive microgravity for that long. We're far less sure about solar flares, or cosmic rays.
But how else are we going to know if people can survive deep space, unless we try? Ultimately, that's what makes this worth trying. Yes, there's a risk that we won't get them back. They're perfectly aware of that. This project will have plenty of volunteers, even so. The chance to be one of the two fastest humans alive, the chance to be the first to Mars, there are many who will consider that a prize worth the risk.
I won't be one of them. First, being cooped up for that long in a Kevlar balloon would drive me nuts. And second, your close-up view of Mars? It's going to be pitch-black. You'll see the sunlit side on your way in, and on your way out, but your flyby will be in total darkness.
Still, it may be worth a try, if they can raise the cash to make it happen.
Friday, February 22, 2013
A Fine And Enviable Madness
(mostly reposted from February, 2010)
"... it was, in fact, a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm." -- from The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
I love my job. I love the alchemy that takes the stuff of daydreams, and spins it into hard, tangible reality. What we have dreamed, we have done; generations of men dreamed of flight, and dreamed of touching the stars ... and when you look up tonight, you'll see airplanes drifting across the sky in exactly the way that a hundred tons of aluminum shouldn't, and five of our spacecraft are sailing out into interstellar space. Generations of physicians dreamed of a world without disease ... and in one singular case, the dream was realized. I've been vaccinated for smallpox, but most people younger than me haven't.
This is National Engineers' Week. We celebrate it during the week of George Washington's birthday, in honor of our first President's first career as a surveyor. The mechanic arts as they were called then were recognized early to be key to both our prosperity and our security. Whenever America has faced a steep challenge, her engineers have always answered, and delivered the goods.
It's a profession that could easily lead to a swelled head, if Nature wasn't always there to take us down a notch or three as required. We rarely enjoy the "luxury" of hiding our mistakes. An unscrupulous doctor might hide their mistakes in the morgue, and an incompetent lawyer's mistakes vanish into the prison system. But an engineer's mistakes? They tend to come unglued with a loud enough BANG to make the evening news. We never have to look far for accountability, it always comes looking for us.
There are two ways to deal with that kind of responsibility. Some find it too heavy. The rest of us accept the responsibility, and the challenge. We enjoy knowing that our work counts for something. We don't dread the possibility of highly-visible failure; that motivates us to make our work as clean and error-free as we know how. The challenge -- the satisfaction of having done a difficult job well -- is a large part of what gets us out of bed most mornings.
It can be a crazy life sometimes. Schedules get very unpredictable, close to delivery time. But on the whole I wouldn't have it any other way. It truly is "a fine and enviable madness."
Hymn of Breaking Strain
by Rudyard Kipling
THE careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man.
Not on the Stuff - the Man!
But in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind.
To no set gauge they make us -
For no laid course prepare -
And presently o'ertake us
With loads we cannot bear:
Too merciless to bear.
The prudent text-books give it
In tables at the end
The stress that shears a rivet
Or makes a tie-bar bend -
What traffic wrecks macadam -
What concrete should endure -
But we, poor Sons of Adam
Have no such literature,
To warn us or make sure!
We hold all Earth to plunder -
All Time and Space as well -
Too wonder-stale to wonder
At each new miracle;
Till, in the mid-illusion
Of Godhead 'neath our hand,
Falls multiple confusion
On all we did or planned -
The mighty works we planned.
We only of Creation
(Oh, luckier bridge and rail)
Abide the twin damnation -
To fail and know we fail.
Yet we - by which sole token
We know we once were Gods -
Take shame in being broken
However great the odds -
The burden of the Odds.
Oh, veiled and secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain,
Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and pain;
That we - by which sure token
We know Thy ways are true -
In spite of being broken,
Because of being broken
May rise up and build anew
Stand up and build anew.
"... it was, in fact, a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm." -- from The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
I love my job. I love the alchemy that takes the stuff of daydreams, and spins it into hard, tangible reality. What we have dreamed, we have done; generations of men dreamed of flight, and dreamed of touching the stars ... and when you look up tonight, you'll see airplanes drifting across the sky in exactly the way that a hundred tons of aluminum shouldn't, and five of our spacecraft are sailing out into interstellar space. Generations of physicians dreamed of a world without disease ... and in one singular case, the dream was realized. I've been vaccinated for smallpox, but most people younger than me haven't.
This is National Engineers' Week. We celebrate it during the week of George Washington's birthday, in honor of our first President's first career as a surveyor. The mechanic arts as they were called then were recognized early to be key to both our prosperity and our security. Whenever America has faced a steep challenge, her engineers have always answered, and delivered the goods.
It's a profession that could easily lead to a swelled head, if Nature wasn't always there to take us down a notch or three as required. We rarely enjoy the "luxury" of hiding our mistakes. An unscrupulous doctor might hide their mistakes in the morgue, and an incompetent lawyer's mistakes vanish into the prison system. But an engineer's mistakes? They tend to come unglued with a loud enough BANG to make the evening news. We never have to look far for accountability, it always comes looking for us.
There are two ways to deal with that kind of responsibility. Some find it too heavy. The rest of us accept the responsibility, and the challenge. We enjoy knowing that our work counts for something. We don't dread the possibility of highly-visible failure; that motivates us to make our work as clean and error-free as we know how. The challenge -- the satisfaction of having done a difficult job well -- is a large part of what gets us out of bed most mornings.
It can be a crazy life sometimes. Schedules get very unpredictable, close to delivery time. But on the whole I wouldn't have it any other way. It truly is "a fine and enviable madness."
Hymn of Breaking Strain
by Rudyard Kipling
THE careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man.
Not on the Stuff - the Man!
But in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind.
To no set gauge they make us -
For no laid course prepare -
And presently o'ertake us
With loads we cannot bear:
Too merciless to bear.
The prudent text-books give it
In tables at the end
The stress that shears a rivet
Or makes a tie-bar bend -
What traffic wrecks macadam -
What concrete should endure -
But we, poor Sons of Adam
Have no such literature,
To warn us or make sure!
We hold all Earth to plunder -
All Time and Space as well -
Too wonder-stale to wonder
At each new miracle;
Till, in the mid-illusion
Of Godhead 'neath our hand,
Falls multiple confusion
On all we did or planned -
The mighty works we planned.
We only of Creation
(Oh, luckier bridge and rail)
Abide the twin damnation -
To fail and know we fail.
Yet we - by which sole token
We know we once were Gods -
Take shame in being broken
However great the odds -
The burden of the Odds.
Oh, veiled and secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain,
Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and pain;
That we - by which sure token
We know Thy ways are true -
In spite of being broken,
Because of being broken
May rise up and build anew
Stand up and build anew.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Iranian Stealth Fighter
One of the news stories you've seen making the rounds this week is that Iran claims to have built a stealth fighter. I say "claims to have" because...
... that's about fifteen different kinds of wrong, for an airplane where you expect the number of landings to be approximately equal to the number of takeoffs.
First, no way in Hell are those supersonic inlets. They're too small, for a start, and very badly placed. There's no evidence of ramps for compressing the inbound supersonic airflow. And sitting up there? That's a guarantee that you'll stall the engine at a high angle of attack. At which point, the pilot will have to pull the loud handle, and get the heck out of Dodge.
Second, where's the nozzle? Inside the fuselage? Holy crap, that's a really stupid place to put it. If this beast allegedly has an afterburner, you'll only get to use it once. Because, just like after he would after stalling the engine after pulling a high-pitch turn, he'll have to pull the loud handle, and...
Third, where's the radar? That nose is nowhere near big enough to carry anything like a useful military radar. If you go up against an adversary who really does have a proper go-to-war radar, you're going to have a very bad day, because he's going to see you before you see him. Which means that he's going to get the first shot. At which point, you'll have to pull ... well, you get the idea.
And the instrument panel ... no, that doesn't look real either.
Now the wings, I'm fairly sure those wings could keep it airborne. Nice to see they got something right.
No, this isn't a stealth fighter. It's not even a mockup of a stealth fighter. It's an elaborate hoax. To what end, I can't imagine, because exactly no one in our defense establishment is taking this seriously. I mean, people were worried about the Chinese stealth fighter a few years ago. More worried than it deserved, true enough, but at least they're flying an actual prototype.
Nobody should be worrying about this stupid thing. Except, that is, for Iranian test pilots.
... that's about fifteen different kinds of wrong, for an airplane where you expect the number of landings to be approximately equal to the number of takeoffs.
First, no way in Hell are those supersonic inlets. They're too small, for a start, and very badly placed. There's no evidence of ramps for compressing the inbound supersonic airflow. And sitting up there? That's a guarantee that you'll stall the engine at a high angle of attack. At which point, the pilot will have to pull the loud handle, and get the heck out of Dodge.
Second, where's the nozzle? Inside the fuselage? Holy crap, that's a really stupid place to put it. If this beast allegedly has an afterburner, you'll only get to use it once. Because, just like after he would after stalling the engine after pulling a high-pitch turn, he'll have to pull the loud handle, and...
Third, where's the radar? That nose is nowhere near big enough to carry anything like a useful military radar. If you go up against an adversary who really does have a proper go-to-war radar, you're going to have a very bad day, because he's going to see you before you see him. Which means that he's going to get the first shot. At which point, you'll have to pull ... well, you get the idea.
And the instrument panel ... no, that doesn't look real either.
Now the wings, I'm fairly sure those wings could keep it airborne. Nice to see they got something right.
No, this isn't a stealth fighter. It's not even a mockup of a stealth fighter. It's an elaborate hoax. To what end, I can't imagine, because exactly no one in our defense establishment is taking this seriously. I mean, people were worried about the Chinese stealth fighter a few years ago. More worried than it deserved, true enough, but at least they're flying an actual prototype.
Nobody should be worrying about this stupid thing. Except, that is, for Iranian test pilots.
Friday, February 08, 2013
Sesquicentennial, Part XXIII: The Hinge
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
After you read about a few of them, Civil War battles begin to display a depressing sameness to them. One side, we'll call them the Defenders, get to the scene of a battle first. Then, the Attackers show up and try to dislodge them. They usually try flanking attacks first, and when those don't work they go right up the middle. The usual result: appalling casualties on both sides, but most especially for the Attacker. So the battles themselves aren't all that interesting.
Ah, but between the battles ... that's the meat of the matter. And it's not always the movements of armies and reassignments of officers that are of most interest. What really counts in a long war, especially in the modern age, is how well you can keep your troops resupplied. From the beginning, the plan that General Scott laid out for the war was one of ensuring the Union's ability to move men and supplies, while slowly denying the rebels the same. By early 1863, that strategy was beginning to show some fruit. The Union had blockaded all of the Confederacy's ports, severely hampering its ability to conduct trade. To all intents and purposes, aside from a handful of blockade runners, Confederate trade had to go through Mexican ports, then wind their way north and then eastward. Which brings us to one of Jeff Davis' most serious problems.
I've said before that the Confederacy had a fundamental problem: they could raise an army, or they could equip it. There wasn't any good way for them to do both. But I've never yet explained what I meant by that. If we go back here, we can see that the Confederacy really has no manufacturing to speak of. Their original plan was to rely on the power of "King Cotton" to bring Europe, specifically Britain, to come to their aid. Cotton would flow out, and arms would flow in, protected by the Royal Navy. By 1863, it had become painfully obvious that this wasn't going to happen. The Emancipation Proclamation had sunk just about the last nail in the coffin of that strategy. Now, the Confederacy would have to provide just about all of the arms and supplies that their armies in the field would use. Which they could do, if virtually all of their skilled work force weren't already in uniform.
Here, we see one of the fundamental disadvantages of a slave society. In the Union, unskilled workers formed an immense pool of manpower from which soldiers may be drawn. When the draft was instituted it was massively unpopular, to the point of riots in some cities, but the Union Army generally met its manpower goals. In the Confederacy, the vast majority of their unskilled labor pool was ambulatory property. If armed, they'd still be ambulatory, but would no longer be property. Nat Turner showed them what generally happened when you put hot lead and cold steel in a slave's hands. So, the Confederate Army would have to poach from the skilled labor force ... who were sorely needed to run the factories, foundries, and all of the other things that kept the war machine running.
Jeff Davis, then, was on the horns of a dilemma: he had to both raise and equip an army, but only had resources to do one of those well. He decided to take a third option: equip them, and then let them figure out the supply thing on their own.
Napoleon famously said that an army marches on its stomach. His opponent Wellington never said as much, but it's plain from his memoirs that he agreed. Upon reading them, one of his friends remarked that it seemed to him "that your chief business in India was to procure rice and bullocks." "And so it was," replied Wellington, "for if I had rice and bullocks I had men, and if I had men, I knew I could beat the enemy." Wellington's memoirs went into exhaustive detail about his logistical affairs. From his memoirs, we know that one of his cavalry regiments required some 25 tons worth of supplies for three days' action, and about 250 mules with which to haul them. (That's 246 mules to carry the supplies, and four more to carry the hay with which to feed the mules.)
In his honor, I call 25 tons a "Wellington": the amount of food and ammunition to keep a regiment in fighting trim for three days. The Union was usually able to provide a full Wellington for its troops in the field. The Confederacy was usually doing well to supply about half that, with the Rebel troops scrounging the rest as best they could. And that's with the Confederacy being able to move goods in and out of the country via Mexico.
Which brings us back to the hinge: Vicksburg. It was the last stronghold the Confederacy still held on the Mississippi. With Vicksburg, they still have a lifeline to the outside world. Without it, the Union owns the Mississippi from its headwaters to the Gulf, and the Confederacy is cut in two. Everyone knew that Vicksburg was Grant's next objective. Discovering Grant's plans for getting to Vicksburg was a major target of Confederate spies. They would be frustrated in their desires to discover Grant's plans, mainly because Grant himself had no idea how he was going to get there. The approaches from the Mississippi, where the Union generally enjoyed unquestioned naval superiority, were too well-guarded by guns on the bluffs. The city itself was ringed with fortifications. And outside of those were swamps, generally considered impassable.
Generally, that is. But Ulysses S. Grant wasn't going to take that for a final answer. One way or another, come Hell or high water, he was going to have Vicksburg. He'd spend most of the winter and spring figuring out how to get there, but he wasn't about to let anything get in his way.
He'd come too far to give up now.
After you read about a few of them, Civil War battles begin to display a depressing sameness to them. One side, we'll call them the Defenders, get to the scene of a battle first. Then, the Attackers show up and try to dislodge them. They usually try flanking attacks first, and when those don't work they go right up the middle. The usual result: appalling casualties on both sides, but most especially for the Attacker. So the battles themselves aren't all that interesting.
Ah, but between the battles ... that's the meat of the matter. And it's not always the movements of armies and reassignments of officers that are of most interest. What really counts in a long war, especially in the modern age, is how well you can keep your troops resupplied. From the beginning, the plan that General Scott laid out for the war was one of ensuring the Union's ability to move men and supplies, while slowly denying the rebels the same. By early 1863, that strategy was beginning to show some fruit. The Union had blockaded all of the Confederacy's ports, severely hampering its ability to conduct trade. To all intents and purposes, aside from a handful of blockade runners, Confederate trade had to go through Mexican ports, then wind their way north and then eastward. Which brings us to one of Jeff Davis' most serious problems.
I've said before that the Confederacy had a fundamental problem: they could raise an army, or they could equip it. There wasn't any good way for them to do both. But I've never yet explained what I meant by that. If we go back here, we can see that the Confederacy really has no manufacturing to speak of. Their original plan was to rely on the power of "King Cotton" to bring Europe, specifically Britain, to come to their aid. Cotton would flow out, and arms would flow in, protected by the Royal Navy. By 1863, it had become painfully obvious that this wasn't going to happen. The Emancipation Proclamation had sunk just about the last nail in the coffin of that strategy. Now, the Confederacy would have to provide just about all of the arms and supplies that their armies in the field would use. Which they could do, if virtually all of their skilled work force weren't already in uniform.
Here, we see one of the fundamental disadvantages of a slave society. In the Union, unskilled workers formed an immense pool of manpower from which soldiers may be drawn. When the draft was instituted it was massively unpopular, to the point of riots in some cities, but the Union Army generally met its manpower goals. In the Confederacy, the vast majority of their unskilled labor pool was ambulatory property. If armed, they'd still be ambulatory, but would no longer be property. Nat Turner showed them what generally happened when you put hot lead and cold steel in a slave's hands. So, the Confederate Army would have to poach from the skilled labor force ... who were sorely needed to run the factories, foundries, and all of the other things that kept the war machine running.
Jeff Davis, then, was on the horns of a dilemma: he had to both raise and equip an army, but only had resources to do one of those well. He decided to take a third option: equip them, and then let them figure out the supply thing on their own.
Napoleon famously said that an army marches on its stomach. His opponent Wellington never said as much, but it's plain from his memoirs that he agreed. Upon reading them, one of his friends remarked that it seemed to him "that your chief business in India was to procure rice and bullocks." "And so it was," replied Wellington, "for if I had rice and bullocks I had men, and if I had men, I knew I could beat the enemy." Wellington's memoirs went into exhaustive detail about his logistical affairs. From his memoirs, we know that one of his cavalry regiments required some 25 tons worth of supplies for three days' action, and about 250 mules with which to haul them. (That's 246 mules to carry the supplies, and four more to carry the hay with which to feed the mules.)
In his honor, I call 25 tons a "Wellington": the amount of food and ammunition to keep a regiment in fighting trim for three days. The Union was usually able to provide a full Wellington for its troops in the field. The Confederacy was usually doing well to supply about half that, with the Rebel troops scrounging the rest as best they could. And that's with the Confederacy being able to move goods in and out of the country via Mexico.
Which brings us back to the hinge: Vicksburg. It was the last stronghold the Confederacy still held on the Mississippi. With Vicksburg, they still have a lifeline to the outside world. Without it, the Union owns the Mississippi from its headwaters to the Gulf, and the Confederacy is cut in two. Everyone knew that Vicksburg was Grant's next objective. Discovering Grant's plans for getting to Vicksburg was a major target of Confederate spies. They would be frustrated in their desires to discover Grant's plans, mainly because Grant himself had no idea how he was going to get there. The approaches from the Mississippi, where the Union generally enjoyed unquestioned naval superiority, were too well-guarded by guns on the bluffs. The city itself was ringed with fortifications. And outside of those were swamps, generally considered impassable.
Generally, that is. But Ulysses S. Grant wasn't going to take that for a final answer. One way or another, come Hell or high water, he was going to have Vicksburg. He'd spend most of the winter and spring figuring out how to get there, but he wasn't about to let anything get in his way.
He'd come too far to give up now.
Friday, February 01, 2013
Ten Years
Ten years ago, I was sleeping late on a Saturday morning, when I was awakened by a loud sound outside. I had no idea what it was. As soon as I turned on a TV, I found out:
I'm an alumnus of the University of Texas at Arlington. Our Master of Science program in Aerospace Engineering boasts two graduates who've flown in space, and I've met both of them. One is Robert Stewart, and the other was Kalpana Chawla.
And I find that I really can't say anything else about it. This one hurt.
Godspeed, Columbia.
I'm an alumnus of the University of Texas at Arlington. Our Master of Science program in Aerospace Engineering boasts two graduates who've flown in space, and I've met both of them. One is Robert Stewart, and the other was Kalpana Chawla.
And I find that I really can't say anything else about it. This one hurt.
Godspeed, Columbia.
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