There's an old physics joke: 186,000 mi/s. It's not just a good idea. It's the law.
If this week's announced results prove out, they may just have to issue speeding citations to the staff at CERN, in Switzerland. To summarize, a neutrino experiment appeared to result in speeds 20 parts per million above the speed of light in a vacuum.
That ... is damn weird. It calls into question some fairly fundamental assumptions we've made about how we think the Universe works. By fairly fundamental, I mean some of them go back a couple of hundred years. Allow me to explain.
There's a fairly simple thought experiment we can run through to demonstrate why we think nothing can go faster than light. It relies on just three basic assumptions, that I will list below:
1) There is no universally-preferred frame of reference. A slightly less fancy way to put that is that there's no such thing as absolute motion. Motion only makes sense if you can measure it relative to something else. A corollary to this is that, if you're out in the middle of nowhere and have few or no reference points, you can't tell the difference between sitting still and moving at a uniform speed in a straight line. This is called Galilean invariance.
2) Light moves at the same speed in all inertial frames of reference. Another way of saying that is that light always moves at the same speed in a given medium, no matter where or how you measure it. This is one of the cornerstones of the Special Theory of Relativity.
3) All particles that have zero rest mass, like photons, are constrained to move at the speed of light, and only at the speed of light. They cannot accelerate or decelerate, but they can gain or lose energy in frequency.
Now, bearing those three assumptions in mind, let's imagine two spaceships out in intergalactic space. They're far enough away from any other points of reference that they can't really measure their motion all that well against them, so their only points of reference are each other. Which means, they have no real way of telling if they're at rest, or moving. For all they know, they're sitting still while the other ship zips past them. Now, let's also assume that one of the ship is charged up with several million volts, so that when they pass close enough, a spark jumps between the two ships. We won't say anything about how fast they're moving relative to one another. The speed can be arbitrarily high.
From the first ship, what you see is that you're sitting still, then this other ship zips by, and then FLASH! You're at the center of an expanding shell of photons. The situation looks the same from the other ship -- you're sitting still, zoom, FLASH! You're also at the center of an expanding shell of photons.
Again, the speeds of the ships haven't been specified. It doesn't matter how fast they think they're moving, because no matter which way you slice it, a wave-front of photons is racing out ahead of you. The only logical conclusion is that both ships must be moving slower than the speed of light.
That's all well and good. But now we have, at least potentially, a very sticky problem.
If this recent experiment is correct, if the Swiss scientists haven't made any errors, then one or more of the three basic assumptions above must be wrong.
The implications of this...
On one hand, it staggers the mind. Such fundamental notions about the Universe just don't fall every day. But on the other hand, this only involves such high energies that most of us will never see any kind of difference. And on the other other hand, I'm really only certain about three things anyway[1], so it won't bother me too much if the Swiss scientists are right or wrong. And even if they're right, it'll take quite some time for them to figure out exactly which of the above assumptions are wrong, and in what way. It'll be interesting to watch the commotion no matter how it turns out.
Still. That's going to be one hell of a speeding ticket, and I'm glad I don't have to pay.
[1] Conservation of Mass, Conservation of Momentum, and Conservation of Energy. As far as I'm concerned, everything else is open for speculation.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Ten Years.
The relentless fury of the August sun has retreated. I believe I've said elsewhere that Autumn in Texas is usually a time when God apologizes for leaving the oven on Broil for a few months, and the apology takes the form of cool mornings and warm sunshine. Ten years ago today, it was almost exactly the same kind of morning. But with a difference.
That Tuesday morning began for me like any other: I was at my job, wrestling with a pile of code that was stubbornly refusing to do what it was supposed to be doing. The company I was working for had a piece of the FAA's Free Flight Phase 1 project. The specific piece I was working on was the adaptation of pFAST (Passive Final Approach Spacing Tool) to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. It was hard sledding, but that's a tale for another day. After a couple of hours, I'd reached an impasse, and decided to check the news as a bit of a break.
That was as much productive work as I, or anyone else in my office, got done that day.
The news that an airplane had collided with one of the towers didn't really register yet. I thought it was an accident. Something like that had happened once before, back in the '40s, when a B-17 hit the Empire State Building. How something like that happened with modern navigation equipment, though, was a mystery. Then, the second airplane hit, and all doubt was gone.
Once could have been an accident. Twice? No, twice meant it was deliberate action. And what's more, I knew who was responsible. I'd been following the story for years. I remembered the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Khobar Towers. I remembered his 1998 fatwa against Americans, and the attack against the USS Cole. This was his way of finishing the job. A cold fury gripped my heart. They must be made to pay. And I was not alone in that sentiment.
Five years ago, the memory still stung with the ache of unfinished business.
Today, the memory still stings. But at least there is some closure, some completion.
The architect of those attacks is in custody and will never again be a free man, and the man who gave the order is part of the marine food chain. Both lived long enough to see their ideology utterly discredited. The crowds that mobbed Tahrir Square, the citizen-soldiers who liberated Libya inch by inch, they had no use at all for the theocratic state Osama bin Laden championed. The throngs who overthrew one-time strongmen from the Atlantic coast to the Arabian peninsula weren't chanting his name, or that of his movement. Rather, they wanted democracy and self-determination. They had weighed his ideas in the balance, and found them wanting. Bin Laden did not die in glory, but in defeat and despair.
And for our part? On this anniversary, when we look back and reflect on the very real pain and loss of that day, we can look forward as well. When we think of those who lost lives and loved ones that day, we can take solace in the fact that they have been avenged. When we think of the lives and loved ones lost in the wars, we can take comfort in the fact that they did not die totally in vain. From the Maghreb to the Hindu Kush, people have a chance at freedom and self-determination that they have not had in many years, if ever. Some of those stories will end in success. Some will not end so happily. But the ends of those stories will not be written in English, by an American author. Those stories will be written by the people who live them, as is right and proper.
And for our part, our story will also go on. We have our full share of problems. But on the whole, I wouldn't trade them for anyone else's on this Earth.
May God be with you all, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Sesquicentennial, Part XVII: Man in Motion
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
Only a year earlier, he was the picture of abject failure. Virtually nothing he had turned his hand to resulted in success. He was the husband of a devoted wife, and the father of adoring children, and exactly that much was right with his world. He was a miserable figure, shuffling to and from the only job he could find, a clerk in his father's store. At thirty-eight years of age, Ulysses Grant had hit rock bottom.
His fortunes hadn't always looked so grim. His father, Jesse Grant, was well-regarded though not spectacularly wealthy. Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, he was mistakenly nominated to West Point under the name Ulysses S. Grant. He raised no complaint: he'd secretly dreaded having to go by the initials H.U.G., knowing that would mean no end of ribbing from his classmates. He was an indifferent student, graduating 21st out of 39, with two notable exceptions. He was an outstanding horseman, and he was exceptionally talented in mathematics.
Grant didn't actually want to be a career soldier. Oh, he had no qualms about the job, it's just that what he really wanted was to be a professor of mathematics. And that's what almost happened. He wanted the job, West Point wanted him back as an instructor, but this was 1843, and trouble was brewing down on the border with Mexico. Lieutenant Grant would be a soldier, after all.
As a quartermaster, if he were so inclined, he might have seen no action at all. But that wasn't his style. Twice, he was brevetted for bravery, at Molino del Rey and at Chapultepec. This, despite the fact that he was deeply opposed to the war itself. He thought it terribly unjust, and would later write, "I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day, regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."
After the war, Grant remained in the Army. As a result of the Mexican War, the United States had acquired an immense amount of territory, and soldiers would be required to guarantee its safety. Grant's duties were to be as a quartermaster at a succession of forts on the west coast. It was more or less at this point that we'd see a facet of Grant's character that would resurface several times in the future. Grant, in the face of action, was a capable and diligent soldier. Grant, faced with the tedium of garrison duty, did not handle boredom well. It's not known for sure whether or not Grant ever drank on duty, but his commander believed that he had. Grant was given an ultimatum: resign, or face court-martial. He resigned.
For several years, Grant tried to make a go of it as a farmer, on a plot of land his family owned outside of St. Louis, Missouri. But Grant was a poor businessman. After four years, he had to give up farming, and spent a couple of years as a bill collector in St. Louis. This didn't work out, either; and after a string of failed ventures, he was forced to accept a job as a clerk in his father's leather goods store. This is where we find him in late 1860 and early 1861: a broken man, shuffling between his home and his father's store.
His luck began to change in April. After Fort Sumter was attacked, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Rebellion. As it happened, soldiering was something Grant was quite familiar with ... And so it was that Grant helped to recruit a company of volunteers, and accompanied said unit to the state capital at Springfield. This company seemed to be more well-drilled and disciplined than most volunteers, so Governor Richard Yates offered Grant a position to recruit and train new troops. Grant accepted -- this wasn't the field command that he was looking for, but it beat working in his father's store. Besides, if he did a good enough job, perhaps someone would notice.
Someone did notice. Grant's enthusiasm, energy, and efficiency made an impression not only on his soldiers, but on Governor Yates. In June, the Governor promoted Grant to Colonel, and gave him the Twenty-first Illinois volunteer regiment, a particularly unruly regiment of volunteers. Within a few months, they weren't quite so unruly anymore. It's not that Grant was a harsh disciplinarian, or a martinet. He wasn't. But he kept his men busy with drill, attended to their needs diligently, and as is so often the case, his soldiers responded positively to such treatment. This turn-around caught the eye of Major General John Fremont, who'd known Grant by reputation from the Mexican War. He'd been appointed by Lincoln as commander in the West, and Fremont needed someone to take charge of a deteriorating situation in the District of Cairo. Fremont saw Grant as "a man of dogged persistance, and iron will," and tapped him for the post.
What a difference a year makes. From the depths of failure in September 1860, Grant had risen to command of a regiment of volunteers in September 1861. This change of fortunes affected Grant's entire demeanor. He began to walk with a bold, confident step. He was immensely confident of his abilities, but at the same time, kept a fairly solid grasp on the limits of the possible. These two qualities seldom meet in one person.
General Fremont had given Grant orders to venture out and meet the Confederate forces at Belmont. Grant immediately began making the necessary preparations. Soon, he would march out to meet the enemy.
In September 1861, few knew the name Ulysses S. Grant. This was about to change.
Only a year earlier, he was the picture of abject failure. Virtually nothing he had turned his hand to resulted in success. He was the husband of a devoted wife, and the father of adoring children, and exactly that much was right with his world. He was a miserable figure, shuffling to and from the only job he could find, a clerk in his father's store. At thirty-eight years of age, Ulysses Grant had hit rock bottom.
His fortunes hadn't always looked so grim. His father, Jesse Grant, was well-regarded though not spectacularly wealthy. Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, he was mistakenly nominated to West Point under the name Ulysses S. Grant. He raised no complaint: he'd secretly dreaded having to go by the initials H.U.G., knowing that would mean no end of ribbing from his classmates. He was an indifferent student, graduating 21st out of 39, with two notable exceptions. He was an outstanding horseman, and he was exceptionally talented in mathematics.
Grant didn't actually want to be a career soldier. Oh, he had no qualms about the job, it's just that what he really wanted was to be a professor of mathematics. And that's what almost happened. He wanted the job, West Point wanted him back as an instructor, but this was 1843, and trouble was brewing down on the border with Mexico. Lieutenant Grant would be a soldier, after all.
As a quartermaster, if he were so inclined, he might have seen no action at all. But that wasn't his style. Twice, he was brevetted for bravery, at Molino del Rey and at Chapultepec. This, despite the fact that he was deeply opposed to the war itself. He thought it terribly unjust, and would later write, "I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day, regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."
After the war, Grant remained in the Army. As a result of the Mexican War, the United States had acquired an immense amount of territory, and soldiers would be required to guarantee its safety. Grant's duties were to be as a quartermaster at a succession of forts on the west coast. It was more or less at this point that we'd see a facet of Grant's character that would resurface several times in the future. Grant, in the face of action, was a capable and diligent soldier. Grant, faced with the tedium of garrison duty, did not handle boredom well. It's not known for sure whether or not Grant ever drank on duty, but his commander believed that he had. Grant was given an ultimatum: resign, or face court-martial. He resigned.
For several years, Grant tried to make a go of it as a farmer, on a plot of land his family owned outside of St. Louis, Missouri. But Grant was a poor businessman. After four years, he had to give up farming, and spent a couple of years as a bill collector in St. Louis. This didn't work out, either; and after a string of failed ventures, he was forced to accept a job as a clerk in his father's leather goods store. This is where we find him in late 1860 and early 1861: a broken man, shuffling between his home and his father's store.
His luck began to change in April. After Fort Sumter was attacked, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Rebellion. As it happened, soldiering was something Grant was quite familiar with ... And so it was that Grant helped to recruit a company of volunteers, and accompanied said unit to the state capital at Springfield. This company seemed to be more well-drilled and disciplined than most volunteers, so Governor Richard Yates offered Grant a position to recruit and train new troops. Grant accepted -- this wasn't the field command that he was looking for, but it beat working in his father's store. Besides, if he did a good enough job, perhaps someone would notice.
Someone did notice. Grant's enthusiasm, energy, and efficiency made an impression not only on his soldiers, but on Governor Yates. In June, the Governor promoted Grant to Colonel, and gave him the Twenty-first Illinois volunteer regiment, a particularly unruly regiment of volunteers. Within a few months, they weren't quite so unruly anymore. It's not that Grant was a harsh disciplinarian, or a martinet. He wasn't. But he kept his men busy with drill, attended to their needs diligently, and as is so often the case, his soldiers responded positively to such treatment. This turn-around caught the eye of Major General John Fremont, who'd known Grant by reputation from the Mexican War. He'd been appointed by Lincoln as commander in the West, and Fremont needed someone to take charge of a deteriorating situation in the District of Cairo. Fremont saw Grant as "a man of dogged persistance, and iron will," and tapped him for the post.
What a difference a year makes. From the depths of failure in September 1860, Grant had risen to command of a regiment of volunteers in September 1861. This change of fortunes affected Grant's entire demeanor. He began to walk with a bold, confident step. He was immensely confident of his abilities, but at the same time, kept a fairly solid grasp on the limits of the possible. These two qualities seldom meet in one person.
General Fremont had given Grant orders to venture out and meet the Confederate forces at Belmont. Grant immediately began making the necessary preparations. Soon, he would march out to meet the enemy.
In September 1861, few knew the name Ulysses S. Grant. This was about to change.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Video Del Fuego, Part XLVII
The 1950s were a fine time to be an aeronautical engineer. There was so much new ground to be covered. There were so many new ideas to try. Many of those ideas were pretty weird, and there are plenty of perfectly good reasons we don't try them anymore, but no one knew those reasons ... yet. And there was only one way to find out. Which made that era, from approximately 1940 to 1960, such a rewarding time to work at places like Convair, Lockheed, Bell, or North American.
Some of the ideas to come out of that era shaped the way we still build airplanes to this day. Others, not so much. Some really peculiar aircraft parted company with their shadows in those years. For example, did you hear the one about the supersonic seaplane?
This beautiful craft was a contemporary of Convair's other delta-wing fighters, the F-102 and F-106, adapted to take off and land on the open ocean. The basic problem was this: the Navy wanted a supersonic fighter for fleet defense. But, there were serious doubts about being able to launch and recover supersonic fighters from aircraft carriers. So, Convair came up with the idea of adapting the Delta Dart with skids, so that it could take off and land at sea. The F2Y was a stunningly beautiful aircraft, and to this day is the only seaplane to break the sound barrier. That said, landing a delta-wing aircraft on water without hurting yourself is damn hard. They never built more than the one F2Y prototype.
Now, the Navy's designation F2Y leads to a question. Pre-1962, the Navy system for aircraft designation was first, a letter or letters for the mission; second, a series number; and third, a letter for the manufacturer. The numeral "1" was usually omitted. So, the Grumman F4F Wildcat was the fourth Navy fighter built by the Grumman corporation. And the Convair F2Y would have been the second Navy fighter built by Convair. What was the first, you ask?
Hoo boy ... Here was another solution to the problem of basing aircraft on ships. The Convair XFY was to be a VTOL fighter that could take off and land on any ship, meaning that any task force at all could have fighter support, even without a flat-top present. Lockheed also had an entry in this category, the XFV, but it never actually achieved full transition from vertical to horizontal flight, and never flew without a protective undercarriage. The Pogo managed several such transitions. The concept had a serious flaw, though. Imagine, for a moment, trying to land this thing on the fantail of a frigate, pitching and heaving in the middle of the ocean.
Yeah. No one else thought it was a good idea, either. You have to love a flight test report that ends, "We think it highly inadvisable to land this airplane."
We can look back and laugh now, but still ... this would have been a fine time to be a staff engineer at Convair. They got to work on some incredible stuff. For every crazy idea that didn't work, they had one or two that did. Designs that were cutting-edge when conceived were sometimes obsolete by the time they entered production. It was a wild, crazy time, and I'm kind of sorry to have missed it.
Some of the ideas to come out of that era shaped the way we still build airplanes to this day. Others, not so much. Some really peculiar aircraft parted company with their shadows in those years. For example, did you hear the one about the supersonic seaplane?
This beautiful craft was a contemporary of Convair's other delta-wing fighters, the F-102 and F-106, adapted to take off and land on the open ocean. The basic problem was this: the Navy wanted a supersonic fighter for fleet defense. But, there were serious doubts about being able to launch and recover supersonic fighters from aircraft carriers. So, Convair came up with the idea of adapting the Delta Dart with skids, so that it could take off and land at sea. The F2Y was a stunningly beautiful aircraft, and to this day is the only seaplane to break the sound barrier. That said, landing a delta-wing aircraft on water without hurting yourself is damn hard. They never built more than the one F2Y prototype.
Now, the Navy's designation F2Y leads to a question. Pre-1962, the Navy system for aircraft designation was first, a letter or letters for the mission; second, a series number; and third, a letter for the manufacturer. The numeral "1" was usually omitted. So, the Grumman F4F Wildcat was the fourth Navy fighter built by the Grumman corporation. And the Convair F2Y would have been the second Navy fighter built by Convair. What was the first, you ask?
Hoo boy ... Here was another solution to the problem of basing aircraft on ships. The Convair XFY was to be a VTOL fighter that could take off and land on any ship, meaning that any task force at all could have fighter support, even without a flat-top present. Lockheed also had an entry in this category, the XFV, but it never actually achieved full transition from vertical to horizontal flight, and never flew without a protective undercarriage. The Pogo managed several such transitions. The concept had a serious flaw, though. Imagine, for a moment, trying to land this thing on the fantail of a frigate, pitching and heaving in the middle of the ocean.
Yeah. No one else thought it was a good idea, either. You have to love a flight test report that ends, "We think it highly inadvisable to land this airplane."
We can look back and laugh now, but still ... this would have been a fine time to be a staff engineer at Convair. They got to work on some incredible stuff. For every crazy idea that didn't work, they had one or two that did. Designs that were cutting-edge when conceived were sometimes obsolete by the time they entered production. It was a wild, crazy time, and I'm kind of sorry to have missed it.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Election 2012 Preview: Handicapping the Primaries, Part II
Now that football season is underway, it's just about time for the Presidential primary season to being in earnest. Just about everyone who's going to participate in next year's Republican primary has declared their candidacy. And, of course, we already know who the Democratic nominee will be. (You get three guesses. The first two don't count.) With all that said, we're going to dust off our crystal ball, and do some more prognosticating. (All figures from intrade.com, current as of Friday night.)
(Prognostication is something I probably shouldn't do. My record is somewhat less than stellar. I'm on record predicting Donovan McNabb to give the Eagles good reason to regret trading him to the Redskins, after all, and we all know how that turned out. Anyway...)
Democratic Party
I'm only doing this for completeness' sake. It's all over bar the shouting. As I said before, in the modern era, sitting Presidents just don't get turfed for re-nomination. And also in the modern era, they just don't go for a re-do on their running mates, either. So, I'm not even going to bother looking up the numbers. It's Obama/Biden for Team Blue in 2012, unless one or both of them get run over by a bus or something. (Which ain't gonna happen.)
Republican Party
And the Republican race is about to get fun. In the list to follow, one person wasn't even on it back in March, and ... well, let's just get to it.
Rick Perry, 32% -- And, surging out of nowhere, the Governor of Texas is in the lead, at least according to Vegas. He should officially declare his candidacy tomorrow in South Carolina. This is a development that should surprise no one. He spent a good bit of time last year denying he'd seek the Presidency. But it takes an extraordinarily humble man to resist that clarion call, and successful politicians are very seldom humble. He'd already become the longest-serving Governor in Texas' history. What else was there for him to do, but to go for the brass ring? And in a very real sense, his presence sucks all the oxygen out of the tent for everyone else. With his executive experience, his popularity with the Tea Party, and his skill in political skullduggery, he steals damn near everyone's trump cards. The man's got a clear path to the nomination, provided he doesn't do anything utterly stupid.
Mitt Romney, 29% -- Romney still clings stubbornly to second place. As well he should: he's been laying the groundwork for 2012 ever since the dust settled from 2008. But nothing important has changed. The big millstone around his neck is still the fact that ObamaCare is RomneyCare with the serial numbers filed off. He's going to have to find a way to run away from that without looking ridiculous. This feat is probably beyond him. He'll do all right in the Northeast. But once the race swings into the South and West ... well, let's just say Perry's got him bore-sighted.
Sarah Palin, 7% -- Yes, no one else is even out of single digits. Frankly, Palin has waited too long to get into the race. Michele Bachmann has already garnered much of her Tea Party base, and Rick Perry has already stolen most of that thunder. There might be room for two Tea Party candidates in the primary. No way is there room for three. Thanks for playing, Ms. Palin, your consolation prize is a Fox News gig.
Ron Paul, 6% -- Ron Paul will hang on until the bloody, bitter end. He hasn't a ghost of a chance of winning the nomination, but as long as he gets a bully pulpit, he'll use it to air his ideas. He's quite mad, of course, but I respect his persistence.
Michele Bachmann, 5% -- Given that Bachmann will probably win Iowa, I'm surprised to find her this low on the list. I'm going to kick myself for not buying a handful of Bachmann shares now, and unloading them right after the Iowa caucuses. I could turn a tidy profit. Still, she won't last. She's got Iowa, Romney's got New Hampshire, but after the race heads South, it's all Perry all day. (Seriously, I don't see how that dude loses, unless he shoots himself in the foot.)
Tim Pawlenty, 5% -- And sinking like a stone. I don't see how he recovers from the evisceration he got in last night's GOP debate. Stone barking mad Bachmann may be, but she was all over Pawlenty like a cheap suit. This just ain't Tim's year.
Others -- Not much to say. Newt's toast, but we knew that, even if no one's actually told him yet. He's still got a 1% share, for some inexplicable reason. Other than that, I see a whole bunch of names with zeroes by them. To a first approximation, this is probably going to be a three-way race initially: Perry, Romney, and Bachmann. Then, there'll be a down-select to Perry and Romney, and I expect Perry to win the nomination. They're laying down a 32% chance that the VP nominee will be Marco Rubio, but that's no more than a wild guess. As we all know, the VP pick comes down to who wins the nomination, and what sort of VP they want. We don't have enough information to go on yet to make a reasonable prediction.
And The Winner Is...
Currently, the betting line is 51%-47% in favor of the Democratic candidate, if you go by party. On the individuals list, Barack Obama leads with 49%, the nearest competitor being Rick Perry at 17%. It's going to be a tougher sell next year unless the economy improves, but if the Republicans go full-bore extremist, that might scare enough independents back into Obama's column. It'll be an interesting election season next summer and fall. But, I still think it favors the incumbent. Obama/Biden for the win is still worth a buck or two.
Remember, kids, vote early, and vote often!
(Prognostication is something I probably shouldn't do. My record is somewhat less than stellar. I'm on record predicting Donovan McNabb to give the Eagles good reason to regret trading him to the Redskins, after all, and we all know how that turned out. Anyway...)
Democratic Party
I'm only doing this for completeness' sake. It's all over bar the shouting. As I said before, in the modern era, sitting Presidents just don't get turfed for re-nomination. And also in the modern era, they just don't go for a re-do on their running mates, either. So, I'm not even going to bother looking up the numbers. It's Obama/Biden for Team Blue in 2012, unless one or both of them get run over by a bus or something. (Which ain't gonna happen.)
Republican Party
And the Republican race is about to get fun. In the list to follow, one person wasn't even on it back in March, and ... well, let's just get to it.
Rick Perry, 32% -- And, surging out of nowhere, the Governor of Texas is in the lead, at least according to Vegas. He should officially declare his candidacy tomorrow in South Carolina. This is a development that should surprise no one. He spent a good bit of time last year denying he'd seek the Presidency. But it takes an extraordinarily humble man to resist that clarion call, and successful politicians are very seldom humble. He'd already become the longest-serving Governor in Texas' history. What else was there for him to do, but to go for the brass ring? And in a very real sense, his presence sucks all the oxygen out of the tent for everyone else. With his executive experience, his popularity with the Tea Party, and his skill in political skullduggery, he steals damn near everyone's trump cards. The man's got a clear path to the nomination, provided he doesn't do anything utterly stupid.
Mitt Romney, 29% -- Romney still clings stubbornly to second place. As well he should: he's been laying the groundwork for 2012 ever since the dust settled from 2008. But nothing important has changed. The big millstone around his neck is still the fact that ObamaCare is RomneyCare with the serial numbers filed off. He's going to have to find a way to run away from that without looking ridiculous. This feat is probably beyond him. He'll do all right in the Northeast. But once the race swings into the South and West ... well, let's just say Perry's got him bore-sighted.
Sarah Palin, 7% -- Yes, no one else is even out of single digits. Frankly, Palin has waited too long to get into the race. Michele Bachmann has already garnered much of her Tea Party base, and Rick Perry has already stolen most of that thunder. There might be room for two Tea Party candidates in the primary. No way is there room for three. Thanks for playing, Ms. Palin, your consolation prize is a Fox News gig.
Ron Paul, 6% -- Ron Paul will hang on until the bloody, bitter end. He hasn't a ghost of a chance of winning the nomination, but as long as he gets a bully pulpit, he'll use it to air his ideas. He's quite mad, of course, but I respect his persistence.
Michele Bachmann, 5% -- Given that Bachmann will probably win Iowa, I'm surprised to find her this low on the list. I'm going to kick myself for not buying a handful of Bachmann shares now, and unloading them right after the Iowa caucuses. I could turn a tidy profit. Still, she won't last. She's got Iowa, Romney's got New Hampshire, but after the race heads South, it's all Perry all day. (Seriously, I don't see how that dude loses, unless he shoots himself in the foot.)
Tim Pawlenty, 5% -- And sinking like a stone. I don't see how he recovers from the evisceration he got in last night's GOP debate. Stone barking mad Bachmann may be, but she was all over Pawlenty like a cheap suit. This just ain't Tim's year.
Others -- Not much to say. Newt's toast, but we knew that, even if no one's actually told him yet. He's still got a 1% share, for some inexplicable reason. Other than that, I see a whole bunch of names with zeroes by them. To a first approximation, this is probably going to be a three-way race initially: Perry, Romney, and Bachmann. Then, there'll be a down-select to Perry and Romney, and I expect Perry to win the nomination. They're laying down a 32% chance that the VP nominee will be Marco Rubio, but that's no more than a wild guess. As we all know, the VP pick comes down to who wins the nomination, and what sort of VP they want. We don't have enough information to go on yet to make a reasonable prediction.
And The Winner Is...
Currently, the betting line is 51%-47% in favor of the Democratic candidate, if you go by party. On the individuals list, Barack Obama leads with 49%, the nearest competitor being Rick Perry at 17%. It's going to be a tougher sell next year unless the economy improves, but if the Republicans go full-bore extremist, that might scare enough independents back into Obama's column. It'll be an interesting election season next summer and fall. But, I still think it favors the incumbent. Obama/Biden for the win is still worth a buck or two.
Remember, kids, vote early, and vote often!
Friday, July 29, 2011
For Want Of A Nail
I have a fascination with the last irretrievable moment. In every accident, in every major event, there's almost always a definable moment where disaster could have been averted. If only key people had had one key piece of information, if only they'd made one decision differently, everything could have been different.
There was one such moment during the last tragic mission of Columbia. If the manager in charge had pushed for satellite images of the shuttle's underside, the extent of the damage might have been known, and it might have been possible to mount a rescue effort. There's a lot of mights involved ... but we also might have gotten those seven people back alive. And we might be seeing one now, in Washington. But that's not the one I'm talking about today.
On the first of June, 2009, Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. Its automatic systems had blurted out signals of danger, and then, silence. At the time, I had speculated about what might have gone wrong. Speculation was all it amounted to. Without the flight data recorders, no one would ever know the truth of the matter, and the data recorders were buried under eleven thousand feet of ocean. I fully expected no one would ever see them again.
I vastly underestimated the tenacity of France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis. In May 2010, they had narrowed the location down to a five by five kilometer area. That gave them a small enough zone to allow a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to make a more detailed search. In April of this year, they found the wreckage, and with it not only the flight data recorder, but also the cockpit voice recorder. If that wasn't amazing enough, they were able to recover all of the data from both devices. Truly, this was astounding work, and my hat's off to them.
Now, after sifting through the reams of data available to them, the BEA has issued some preliminary reports. It turns out that some of my initial speculations were right, some less so.
The data clearly tells us that the pitot probes had iced over, corrupting the data going into the air data computers. This meant that the data feeding the primary flight displays weren't any good. What's not clear to me yet is exactly what happened next. They don't say if an updraft lifted the nose of the aircraft, or if the ice on the aircraft caused it to slow to a dangerously low speed. I'm guessing the latter, because they say that the crew pulled the nose of the aircraft up, which they probably wouldn't have done if the aircraft was already nose-high. The main point is, the aircraft was already on the verge of a stall, and lifting the nose made a bad problem worse. The aircraft then simply fell out of the sky.
The preliminary report released today says that it's basically a pilot training problem. Pilots typically have little to no training flying an aircraft manually at that speed and altitude, and therefore have little intuition on how they should recover from a situation like this. The BEA recommendation is to add this condition to the pilot training syllabus.
After thinking about it a bit, I have a few observations of my own.
1) Standby instruments rarely get the respect they deserve. Ideally, your cockpit scan should include your standby instruments, especially in a glass-cockpit airplane. If your air data computers are hosed for whatever reason, your standby instruments may still have good information on what your airplane's doing. If your standby instruments don't agree with your primary displays, you've got a problem. Exactly what kind of problem you won't know, but at least you can start looking. This particular failure cascade seems to indicate that the crew were still flying by the primary displays, up to the point where they no longer had any aerodynamic control. Respect your ISIS, ladies and gents, that's what it's there for.
2) Airbus makes an exceptionally sturdy fuselage. Really, this could apply to any modern composite-structure fuselage. They're absurdly strong. From the initial reports, I expected that the aircraft would have broken up in midair from aerodynamic stresses. A mostly aluminum structure probably would have. But from the wreckage, we know that it was intact when it hit the water. It was doing some pretty serious gyrations on the way down, and didn't come apart. That's solid construction.
3) These days, we can find damn near anything, damn near anywhere. I was sure those recorders were gone forever. Fish food, if there are any fish that live two miles down. Apparently, modern sonar is as good as a searchlight. I don't know exactly how those French submarines were able to narrow the field down as close as they did, and for obvious reasons they're not telling. But it's clear that if they want something found on the ocean floor, it can be found. And that wasn't a guarantee ten, or even five years ago.
4) There's a good reason for all this, besides morbid curiosity. The reason people like me pick disasters apart like this isn't that we're morbid toads. We may be, but that's beside the point. We want to know what happened, and how it happened, so we can stop it from happening next time. If that's even possible. The important lesson to come out of all this is that we've uncovered a gap in pilot training. We have the means at our disposal to close that gap. Thirty minutes of simulator time a year, and a pilot will have "experienced" this situation with enough fidelity that he or she will know what to do if the real thing ever happens. The next time this happens we'll probably never hear about it. The passengers will experience a bout of worse than normal turbulence, the pilots will experience five minutes of bowel-freezing terror, but the airplane will arrive at its scheduled destination. We'd have not known this, if we'd let it alone. Poking and prodding is part of our job. Our duty. Not always the most pleasant part, but an essential part nonetheless.
It's not much consolation for the people who lost loved ones two years ago, but this knowledge, painfully gained, may allow us to save the next one. That's certainly worth something.
Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Don Seath, my first professor in Aerospace Engineering, who passed away in May from pancreatic cancer. You taught me well.
There was one such moment during the last tragic mission of Columbia. If the manager in charge had pushed for satellite images of the shuttle's underside, the extent of the damage might have been known, and it might have been possible to mount a rescue effort. There's a lot of mights involved ... but we also might have gotten those seven people back alive. And we might be seeing one now, in Washington. But that's not the one I'm talking about today.
On the first of June, 2009, Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. Its automatic systems had blurted out signals of danger, and then, silence. At the time, I had speculated about what might have gone wrong. Speculation was all it amounted to. Without the flight data recorders, no one would ever know the truth of the matter, and the data recorders were buried under eleven thousand feet of ocean. I fully expected no one would ever see them again.
I vastly underestimated the tenacity of France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis. In May 2010, they had narrowed the location down to a five by five kilometer area. That gave them a small enough zone to allow a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to make a more detailed search. In April of this year, they found the wreckage, and with it not only the flight data recorder, but also the cockpit voice recorder. If that wasn't amazing enough, they were able to recover all of the data from both devices. Truly, this was astounding work, and my hat's off to them.
Now, after sifting through the reams of data available to them, the BEA has issued some preliminary reports. It turns out that some of my initial speculations were right, some less so.
The data clearly tells us that the pitot probes had iced over, corrupting the data going into the air data computers. This meant that the data feeding the primary flight displays weren't any good. What's not clear to me yet is exactly what happened next. They don't say if an updraft lifted the nose of the aircraft, or if the ice on the aircraft caused it to slow to a dangerously low speed. I'm guessing the latter, because they say that the crew pulled the nose of the aircraft up, which they probably wouldn't have done if the aircraft was already nose-high. The main point is, the aircraft was already on the verge of a stall, and lifting the nose made a bad problem worse. The aircraft then simply fell out of the sky.
The preliminary report released today says that it's basically a pilot training problem. Pilots typically have little to no training flying an aircraft manually at that speed and altitude, and therefore have little intuition on how they should recover from a situation like this. The BEA recommendation is to add this condition to the pilot training syllabus.
After thinking about it a bit, I have a few observations of my own.
1) Standby instruments rarely get the respect they deserve. Ideally, your cockpit scan should include your standby instruments, especially in a glass-cockpit airplane. If your air data computers are hosed for whatever reason, your standby instruments may still have good information on what your airplane's doing. If your standby instruments don't agree with your primary displays, you've got a problem. Exactly what kind of problem you won't know, but at least you can start looking. This particular failure cascade seems to indicate that the crew were still flying by the primary displays, up to the point where they no longer had any aerodynamic control. Respect your ISIS, ladies and gents, that's what it's there for.
2) Airbus makes an exceptionally sturdy fuselage. Really, this could apply to any modern composite-structure fuselage. They're absurdly strong. From the initial reports, I expected that the aircraft would have broken up in midair from aerodynamic stresses. A mostly aluminum structure probably would have. But from the wreckage, we know that it was intact when it hit the water. It was doing some pretty serious gyrations on the way down, and didn't come apart. That's solid construction.
3) These days, we can find damn near anything, damn near anywhere. I was sure those recorders were gone forever. Fish food, if there are any fish that live two miles down. Apparently, modern sonar is as good as a searchlight. I don't know exactly how those French submarines were able to narrow the field down as close as they did, and for obvious reasons they're not telling. But it's clear that if they want something found on the ocean floor, it can be found. And that wasn't a guarantee ten, or even five years ago.
4) There's a good reason for all this, besides morbid curiosity. The reason people like me pick disasters apart like this isn't that we're morbid toads. We may be, but that's beside the point. We want to know what happened, and how it happened, so we can stop it from happening next time. If that's even possible. The important lesson to come out of all this is that we've uncovered a gap in pilot training. We have the means at our disposal to close that gap. Thirty minutes of simulator time a year, and a pilot will have "experienced" this situation with enough fidelity that he or she will know what to do if the real thing ever happens. The next time this happens we'll probably never hear about it. The passengers will experience a bout of worse than normal turbulence, the pilots will experience five minutes of bowel-freezing terror, but the airplane will arrive at its scheduled destination. We'd have not known this, if we'd let it alone. Poking and prodding is part of our job. Our duty. Not always the most pleasant part, but an essential part nonetheless.
It's not much consolation for the people who lost loved ones two years ago, but this knowledge, painfully gained, may allow us to save the next one. That's certainly worth something.
Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Don Seath, my first professor in Aerospace Engineering, who passed away in May from pancreatic cancer. You taught me well.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Sesquicentennial, Part XVI: First Clash
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
There is a misconception common to all belligerent parties in virtually ever war that has occurred in human history. It is a misconception so common that the catchphrases associated with it are almost impossible to link to a particular conflict. "Our boys will be home before the leaves fall." "They'll be home before Christmas." While the second can at least be placed confidently after the reign of Constantine the Great, the former has probably been said in every human language that has ever existed.
For one, while it's true that at a war's outset both sides believe that they will win, one side must be wrong. For another, at a war's outset, each side usually believes -- mistakenly -- that the other side is made up of ineffectual pushovers that can't stand the heat. For recent examples, you need only look to the phrases "Mother of all battles" and "Shock and Awe" for prominent cases on both sides. The same was true a century and a half ago. The same was true throughout recorded history. Truly, some things never change.
The fever produced by the simultaneous forces of a fervent belief in victory coupled with a fixed belief in the other side's inherent cowardice caused the major papers of the North to temporarily push Lincoln away from the plan drafted by his army commander, Lieutenant General Winfield Scott. Scott, you remember, had proposed to first surround the Confederacy, then cut it in half. This would take years, but would be the surest way to bring the Confederacy to defeat. No one was balking at the "sure defeat" part, it was the "it would take years" clause that had them dismayed. With such a fine army encamped, and with such a pusillanimous foe, how could our fine boys but win glorious, prompt victory?
In such passions are horrifying disasters born.
The Army of Northeastern Virginia had come into being out of the various companies, brigades, and divisions that had been assembled from the troops gathered to defend Washington, immediately after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April, 1861. President Lincoln appointed Brigadier General Irvin McDowell as its commander. General McDowell was under immense pressure from the Northern press to go out and do something. President Lincoln was, as well. McDowell initially resisted such pressure, sure that his men weren't yet ready for such action. McDowell was well-suited to make such a judgement, having been an instructor of tactics at West Point. It was an objection swept aside by Lincoln: "You are green, it is true, but they are green also; you are all green alike." So, on July 16, General McDowell left Washington with the largest army that had yet been assembled on the North American continent, with the assignment to go out, find the enemy, and engage him closely. Their initial objective was a rail junction at Manassas, Virginia.
The rail junction was held by a much smaller Confederate force under Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, of whom we've heard already. In a coincidence that would become commonplace in the years to follow, Beauregard and McDowell had been classmates at West Point. Beauregard, initially, only commanded 20,000 men against McDowell's 30,000. But one of the advantages of sitting on a rail junction? Reinforcements can ride in as soon as you know you need them. Beauregard held all the crossings of the Bull Run, so while McDowell searched for ways to outflank his old classmate, Beauregard sent dispatches by telegraph calling for extra men.
They almost didn't arrive in time. McDowell held Beauregard's attention with part of his force, while he sent 20,000 men in a flanking move to threaten Beauregard's left flank. They forced a crossing at Stone House, and all that stood between them and Beauregard's rear was a single reduced brigade of Confederate infantry. If the orders had been given and received properly, this might well have been the end of it. But they weren't: the Union brigade that had been intended to lead the attack held up to wait for further orders, and the brigade that had been intended to feint in support found itself out in front all alone. Meanwhile, fresh reinforcements arrived, and Beauregard was able to plug the hole, and the battle was properly joined.
In their defense, flanking maneuvers are very complex, and require very close coordination and communication to pull off, even today. In an era when orders had to be delivered by hand, it required well-trained officers and well-drilled troops to have a realistic chance of doing it at all. At this point, the Union had few of either. For while Lincoln was right, and the Confederacy had this problem also, the Confederate President had guessed right, and had put his best men and best troops on the line between Washington and Richmond, expecting that is where the heaviest blow would fall, first.
I've mentioned this hidden advantage before. It's not so much that the Confederacy had better officers, or better soldiers. It's that, having no previously-existing officer corps to placate, Davis could put his most able men in the most crucial commands. It's no mere coincidence that Beauregard was present at both Fort Sumter and at Bull Run.
The Confederates had another crucial advantage in this battle: interior lines of communication. The battle lines between two armies usually curve, the commander who sits on the inside of the curve has a shorter distance through which he has to move men and orders, which makes controlling the battle much easier.
The sum total of all of this is that, while McDowell initially enjoyed significant advantages in manpower and position, his inexperienced subordinates could not make enough use of those advantages to penetrate the Confederate lines. They certainly tried hard enough. And it was a near-run thing even so. During the battle, the Union artillery commander moved two of his guns to the far end of his line, hoping to fire from enfilade into the Confederate army. At about three in the afternoon, these two guns were overrun by the 33rd Virginia. The 33rd Virginia wore blue uniforms, and the Confederate Stars-and-Bars banner had horizontal stripes that, from a distance, looked almost like the Stars-and-Stripes used by the Union. Orders to fire on the captured guns were countermanded by an officer who mistook the Virginians for Union forces. The Virginians turned the guns on the Federals, marking the turn of the tide. McDowell had lost the initiative, and with the arrival of Confederate reinforcements he had lost the manpower advantage as well. He was forced to order a retreat.
The retreat began well enough, but the order of march was bungled by inexperienced officers. An overturned artillery wagon caught fire, sparking a retreat into a rout. Men who had been marching in good order suddenly turned and ran headlong towards their rear. They were joined by the wealthy citizens of Washington, who had turned out with picnic baskets to watch the glorious display. Retreating troops found the roads jammed with carriages.
One Union officer managed to distinguish himself in the humiliating rout: William Tecumseh Sherman was grazed in the knee and shoulder while leading his men against the enemy, and managed to keep his men in better order during the retreat than most. His superiors would remember this, later.
When he saw the enemy in headlong retreat, President Davis urged his commanders to pursue the enemy closely. But, now that the were on the offensive rather than the defensive, Beauregard discovered to his dismay that inexperience is a knife that cuts both ways. The day's fighting had left his men very disorganized, and it took quite some time to get them sorted back into their proper units again. Beauregard elected not to pursue. McDowell was initially afraid of a Confederate counterattack on Washington, but was able to employ aerial reconnaissance (Professor Lowe's balloon Enterprise) to verify that no such concentration of Confederate forces was happening. Both armies withdrew from the field.
The reaction on both sides could be fairly characterized as shock. The Northerners were shocked when their much-anticipated glorious victory had turned into an ignominious rout. The Southerners were shocked to discover that the Yankees would put up a vigorous fight, after all. Both sides came to the sudden realization that this would be a long war, far longer than many had anticipated. It was now clear that victory would come with a staggeringly high price tag. And it was equally clear that defeat would carry a price still higher. And, above all, one thing was now known with crystal clarity:
The only men who'd be home before the leaves fell would be the maimed and the dead.
There is a misconception common to all belligerent parties in virtually ever war that has occurred in human history. It is a misconception so common that the catchphrases associated with it are almost impossible to link to a particular conflict. "Our boys will be home before the leaves fall." "They'll be home before Christmas." While the second can at least be placed confidently after the reign of Constantine the Great, the former has probably been said in every human language that has ever existed.
For one, while it's true that at a war's outset both sides believe that they will win, one side must be wrong. For another, at a war's outset, each side usually believes -- mistakenly -- that the other side is made up of ineffectual pushovers that can't stand the heat. For recent examples, you need only look to the phrases "Mother of all battles" and "Shock and Awe" for prominent cases on both sides. The same was true a century and a half ago. The same was true throughout recorded history. Truly, some things never change.
The fever produced by the simultaneous forces of a fervent belief in victory coupled with a fixed belief in the other side's inherent cowardice caused the major papers of the North to temporarily push Lincoln away from the plan drafted by his army commander, Lieutenant General Winfield Scott. Scott, you remember, had proposed to first surround the Confederacy, then cut it in half. This would take years, but would be the surest way to bring the Confederacy to defeat. No one was balking at the "sure defeat" part, it was the "it would take years" clause that had them dismayed. With such a fine army encamped, and with such a pusillanimous foe, how could our fine boys but win glorious, prompt victory?
In such passions are horrifying disasters born.
The Army of Northeastern Virginia had come into being out of the various companies, brigades, and divisions that had been assembled from the troops gathered to defend Washington, immediately after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April, 1861. President Lincoln appointed Brigadier General Irvin McDowell as its commander. General McDowell was under immense pressure from the Northern press to go out and do something. President Lincoln was, as well. McDowell initially resisted such pressure, sure that his men weren't yet ready for such action. McDowell was well-suited to make such a judgement, having been an instructor of tactics at West Point. It was an objection swept aside by Lincoln: "You are green, it is true, but they are green also; you are all green alike." So, on July 16, General McDowell left Washington with the largest army that had yet been assembled on the North American continent, with the assignment to go out, find the enemy, and engage him closely. Their initial objective was a rail junction at Manassas, Virginia.
The rail junction was held by a much smaller Confederate force under Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, of whom we've heard already. In a coincidence that would become commonplace in the years to follow, Beauregard and McDowell had been classmates at West Point. Beauregard, initially, only commanded 20,000 men against McDowell's 30,000. But one of the advantages of sitting on a rail junction? Reinforcements can ride in as soon as you know you need them. Beauregard held all the crossings of the Bull Run, so while McDowell searched for ways to outflank his old classmate, Beauregard sent dispatches by telegraph calling for extra men.
They almost didn't arrive in time. McDowell held Beauregard's attention with part of his force, while he sent 20,000 men in a flanking move to threaten Beauregard's left flank. They forced a crossing at Stone House, and all that stood between them and Beauregard's rear was a single reduced brigade of Confederate infantry. If the orders had been given and received properly, this might well have been the end of it. But they weren't: the Union brigade that had been intended to lead the attack held up to wait for further orders, and the brigade that had been intended to feint in support found itself out in front all alone. Meanwhile, fresh reinforcements arrived, and Beauregard was able to plug the hole, and the battle was properly joined.
In their defense, flanking maneuvers are very complex, and require very close coordination and communication to pull off, even today. In an era when orders had to be delivered by hand, it required well-trained officers and well-drilled troops to have a realistic chance of doing it at all. At this point, the Union had few of either. For while Lincoln was right, and the Confederacy had this problem also, the Confederate President had guessed right, and had put his best men and best troops on the line between Washington and Richmond, expecting that is where the heaviest blow would fall, first.
I've mentioned this hidden advantage before. It's not so much that the Confederacy had better officers, or better soldiers. It's that, having no previously-existing officer corps to placate, Davis could put his most able men in the most crucial commands. It's no mere coincidence that Beauregard was present at both Fort Sumter and at Bull Run.
The Confederates had another crucial advantage in this battle: interior lines of communication. The battle lines between two armies usually curve, the commander who sits on the inside of the curve has a shorter distance through which he has to move men and orders, which makes controlling the battle much easier.
The sum total of all of this is that, while McDowell initially enjoyed significant advantages in manpower and position, his inexperienced subordinates could not make enough use of those advantages to penetrate the Confederate lines. They certainly tried hard enough. And it was a near-run thing even so. During the battle, the Union artillery commander moved two of his guns to the far end of his line, hoping to fire from enfilade into the Confederate army. At about three in the afternoon, these two guns were overrun by the 33rd Virginia. The 33rd Virginia wore blue uniforms, and the Confederate Stars-and-Bars banner had horizontal stripes that, from a distance, looked almost like the Stars-and-Stripes used by the Union. Orders to fire on the captured guns were countermanded by an officer who mistook the Virginians for Union forces. The Virginians turned the guns on the Federals, marking the turn of the tide. McDowell had lost the initiative, and with the arrival of Confederate reinforcements he had lost the manpower advantage as well. He was forced to order a retreat.
The retreat began well enough, but the order of march was bungled by inexperienced officers. An overturned artillery wagon caught fire, sparking a retreat into a rout. Men who had been marching in good order suddenly turned and ran headlong towards their rear. They were joined by the wealthy citizens of Washington, who had turned out with picnic baskets to watch the glorious display. Retreating troops found the roads jammed with carriages.
One Union officer managed to distinguish himself in the humiliating rout: William Tecumseh Sherman was grazed in the knee and shoulder while leading his men against the enemy, and managed to keep his men in better order during the retreat than most. His superiors would remember this, later.
When he saw the enemy in headlong retreat, President Davis urged his commanders to pursue the enemy closely. But, now that the were on the offensive rather than the defensive, Beauregard discovered to his dismay that inexperience is a knife that cuts both ways. The day's fighting had left his men very disorganized, and it took quite some time to get them sorted back into their proper units again. Beauregard elected not to pursue. McDowell was initially afraid of a Confederate counterattack on Washington, but was able to employ aerial reconnaissance (Professor Lowe's balloon Enterprise) to verify that no such concentration of Confederate forces was happening. Both armies withdrew from the field.
The reaction on both sides could be fairly characterized as shock. The Northerners were shocked when their much-anticipated glorious victory had turned into an ignominious rout. The Southerners were shocked to discover that the Yankees would put up a vigorous fight, after all. Both sides came to the sudden realization that this would be a long war, far longer than many had anticipated. It was now clear that victory would come with a staggeringly high price tag. And it was equally clear that defeat would carry a price still higher. And, above all, one thing was now known with crystal clarity:
The only men who'd be home before the leaves fell would be the maimed and the dead.
Friday, July 08, 2011
Video Del Fuego, Part XLVI
Atlantis took to the skies today for the last time, closing the books on thirty years of Space Shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center. For the sixth time, we've seen the last launch of an American spacecraft series. As a salute to NASA's fifty-year history of manned spaceflight, here they are: the swan songs.
First: Gus Grissom on America's second spaceflight, Liberty Bell 7, the last flight of the Mercury-Redstone series.
Second: The last flight of the Mercury program, Gordon Cooper aboard Faith 7.
Third: Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin on Gemini XII.
Fourth: Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt, and Ronald Evans on Apollo 17. On this December day in 1972, some say the sun rose twice...
Fifth: That wasn't the end for Apollo, though. Apollo spacecraft would fly four more times, on Saturn IB rockets. The last one would fly in July 1975, carrying Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand on a rendezvous with Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov during the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
Sixth: The next "last one" wouldn't come for another thirty-six years. Today, Atlantis flew into orbit for the last time, carrying Chris Ferguson, Douglas Hurley, Sandra Magnus, and Rex Walheim towards the International Space Station.
As of this writing (11AM Friday) no videos of the launch had been posted to YouTube yet. So, the roll-out will have to stand in for now.
(Addendum, 10Jul11: NASA TV comes through.)
Which spacecraft will be number seven? That isn't yet clear. What is perfectly clear, though, is that there will be one. Despite the problems we're facing, America isn't prepared to give up on this enterprise just yet. Besides, I've got a sneaking suspicion that we've already seen lucky number seven's prototype...
And the journey continues!
First: Gus Grissom on America's second spaceflight, Liberty Bell 7, the last flight of the Mercury-Redstone series.
Second: The last flight of the Mercury program, Gordon Cooper aboard Faith 7.
Third: Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin on Gemini XII.
Fourth: Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt, and Ronald Evans on Apollo 17. On this December day in 1972, some say the sun rose twice...
Fifth: That wasn't the end for Apollo, though. Apollo spacecraft would fly four more times, on Saturn IB rockets. The last one would fly in July 1975, carrying Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand on a rendezvous with Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov during the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
Sixth: The next "last one" wouldn't come for another thirty-six years. Today, Atlantis flew into orbit for the last time, carrying Chris Ferguson, Douglas Hurley, Sandra Magnus, and Rex Walheim towards the International Space Station.
As of this writing (11AM Friday) no videos of the launch had been posted to YouTube yet. So, the roll-out will have to stand in for now.
(Addendum, 10Jul11: NASA TV comes through.)
Which spacecraft will be number seven? That isn't yet clear. What is perfectly clear, though, is that there will be one. Despite the problems we're facing, America isn't prepared to give up on this enterprise just yet. Besides, I've got a sneaking suspicion that we've already seen lucky number seven's prototype...
And the journey continues!
Friday, June 24, 2011
Video Del Fuego, Part XLV
I've been unavoidably detained by my paying gig, but I should be back to something like a normal schedule shortly. In the meantime, there are a couple of May/June 50th Anniversaries worth noting.
Frank Sinatra once said, "Miles Davis never wasted a note, boy, or a word on a fool." He was right. Roughly fifty years ago this summer, Miles Davis released Kind of Blue. And every note is exactly where it should be.
Fifty years later, artists all over are still covering it:
Also about fifty years ago, not quite a month after Yuri Gagarin's first orbital flight, Alan Shepard became the first American to enter space with the flight of Freedom 7. The Atlas rocket that would eventually take Mercury into orbit wasn't quite ready yet (it had an unfortunate tendency to try to burn all of its fuel at the same time) so the first couple of flights used the smaller Redstone missile.
So far as I'm aware, no one's ever attempted a "cover" version of Mercury, which is probably for the best.
Frank Sinatra once said, "Miles Davis never wasted a note, boy, or a word on a fool." He was right. Roughly fifty years ago this summer, Miles Davis released Kind of Blue. And every note is exactly where it should be.
Fifty years later, artists all over are still covering it:
Also about fifty years ago, not quite a month after Yuri Gagarin's first orbital flight, Alan Shepard became the first American to enter space with the flight of Freedom 7. The Atlas rocket that would eventually take Mercury into orbit wasn't quite ready yet (it had an unfortunate tendency to try to burn all of its fuel at the same time) so the first couple of flights used the smaller Redstone missile.
So far as I'm aware, no one's ever attempted a "cover" version of Mercury, which is probably for the best.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Sesquicentennial, Part XV: Tell Me How This Thing Works
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
The month of April and May in 1861 were a very confused -- and confusing -- time. No one was entirely sure what was happening on the ground in some of the border states, least of all the poor folks that lived there.
Take Missouri for example. Missouri's pro-Secession Governor, Claiborne Jackson, called a convention after the initial rush of seceding slave states to consider joining the Confederacy. The convention so convened voted quite convincingly against secession. The Governor wasn't happy with that answer, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Then, after Fort Sumter, the Governor rejected President Lincoln's call for volunteers. Not only that, but after a secessionist mob seized the U.S. Arsenal in Liberty, Missouri, Governor Jackson called out the state militia and put secessionist officers in charge. Then, Captain Nathaniel Lyon of the U.S. Army captured a fair number of said secessionist militia at Camp Jackson ... and all Hell broke loose.
The secessionists failed to make much headway in Missouri, but Governor Jackson got away, with a "government-in-exile" of sorts. Technically, I suppose you could say that Missouri belonged both to the Union and the Confederacy. It was a God-awful mess all around. It was like this all through the border states, particularly in Missouri, parts of Tennessee, and in the northwestern part of Virginia. There was fighting between ardent pro-secessionists, and equally ardent Unionists, but quite often it wasn't really about Secession or Union. All politics is local, after all, and there were a lot of cases where the crisis gave people a semi-legitimate reason to do something they might have wanted to do for decades...
"What's that? That damn wheelbarrow-stealing bastard Jenkins is a secessionist? Well, I reckon that makes me a UNION MAN! Come on boys, get yer squirrel guns!"
Later on, they'd tell their grandchildren about their ardor for liberty and Union, but if they were being honest with themselves, a lot of it in those confused early days was good old-fashioned score-settling. And some of that score-settling wouldn't end for years after the war was officially over...
But not all of the fighting was unorganized. There were a few men who were working according to a plan. Major General George McClellan was one such man. He had the command of the Department of the Ohio, headquartered in Cincinnati. McClellan was a West Point man, and had been generally successful at everything he did. Among other things, he had re-written the Army's cavalry manual, invented a new saddle, and surveyed several railroad routes. He had actually resigned from the Army in 1857 to work for the Illinois Central Railroad. He had also worked for the Ohio and Missouri railroad, so he knew well the importance of the railroad to keeping an army well-supplied. With Virginia seceded, part of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was now in enemy territory. This was a state of affairs that could not be allowed to continue. Also, McClellan had good reason to believe that this part of Virginia was of a strongly pro-Union sentiment, and he could count on considerable local support.
McClellan ordered Colonel Benjamin Kelley to take his troops south, and secure the line of the B&O Railroad. This area of Virginia was only lightly defended, being that no one really expected a major attack here. There's a pretty good reason for that. Northwestern Virginia was a rough, hilly place. It's hard to move men and supplies. The Confederates holding this ground were at the end of a fairly long supply chain, while Col. Kelley would be fairly close to his base. And, if he could seize and hold the railroad, resupply would be fairly simple.
The Battle of Phillipi was a fairly small affair, all told. Some called it the "Phillipi Races", because the Confederates didn't do a whole lot of fighting, and did a lot more running. They were outflanked, outnumbered, and badly outgunned. Only four Union men were killed out of about two thousand, while the Confederates lost 26 of about 800 defenders.
At the time it was dismissed as inconsequential. But there were two important facts about this skirmish. For one, it was the first engagement between regular Federal and regular Confederate forces in an open pitched battle. And for another, it marked the beginning of the long, slow campaign that would proceed down the Ohio river to the Mississippi, and then from the Gulf of Mexico northward, meeting somewhere in the middle. The Union controlled the railroads along the Ohio River, and this would never be seriously threatened by the Confederacy, although they would attempt raids throughout the rest of the war.
The Union was beginning to execute its grand strategy. Would the Confederacy ever have an answer?
The month of April and May in 1861 were a very confused -- and confusing -- time. No one was entirely sure what was happening on the ground in some of the border states, least of all the poor folks that lived there.
Take Missouri for example. Missouri's pro-Secession Governor, Claiborne Jackson, called a convention after the initial rush of seceding slave states to consider joining the Confederacy. The convention so convened voted quite convincingly against secession. The Governor wasn't happy with that answer, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Then, after Fort Sumter, the Governor rejected President Lincoln's call for volunteers. Not only that, but after a secessionist mob seized the U.S. Arsenal in Liberty, Missouri, Governor Jackson called out the state militia and put secessionist officers in charge. Then, Captain Nathaniel Lyon of the U.S. Army captured a fair number of said secessionist militia at Camp Jackson ... and all Hell broke loose.
The secessionists failed to make much headway in Missouri, but Governor Jackson got away, with a "government-in-exile" of sorts. Technically, I suppose you could say that Missouri belonged both to the Union and the Confederacy. It was a God-awful mess all around. It was like this all through the border states, particularly in Missouri, parts of Tennessee, and in the northwestern part of Virginia. There was fighting between ardent pro-secessionists, and equally ardent Unionists, but quite often it wasn't really about Secession or Union. All politics is local, after all, and there were a lot of cases where the crisis gave people a semi-legitimate reason to do something they might have wanted to do for decades...
"What's that? That damn wheelbarrow-stealing bastard Jenkins is a secessionist? Well, I reckon that makes me a UNION MAN! Come on boys, get yer squirrel guns!"
Later on, they'd tell their grandchildren about their ardor for liberty and Union, but if they were being honest with themselves, a lot of it in those confused early days was good old-fashioned score-settling. And some of that score-settling wouldn't end for years after the war was officially over...
But not all of the fighting was unorganized. There were a few men who were working according to a plan. Major General George McClellan was one such man. He had the command of the Department of the Ohio, headquartered in Cincinnati. McClellan was a West Point man, and had been generally successful at everything he did. Among other things, he had re-written the Army's cavalry manual, invented a new saddle, and surveyed several railroad routes. He had actually resigned from the Army in 1857 to work for the Illinois Central Railroad. He had also worked for the Ohio and Missouri railroad, so he knew well the importance of the railroad to keeping an army well-supplied. With Virginia seceded, part of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was now in enemy territory. This was a state of affairs that could not be allowed to continue. Also, McClellan had good reason to believe that this part of Virginia was of a strongly pro-Union sentiment, and he could count on considerable local support.
McClellan ordered Colonel Benjamin Kelley to take his troops south, and secure the line of the B&O Railroad. This area of Virginia was only lightly defended, being that no one really expected a major attack here. There's a pretty good reason for that. Northwestern Virginia was a rough, hilly place. It's hard to move men and supplies. The Confederates holding this ground were at the end of a fairly long supply chain, while Col. Kelley would be fairly close to his base. And, if he could seize and hold the railroad, resupply would be fairly simple.
The Battle of Phillipi was a fairly small affair, all told. Some called it the "Phillipi Races", because the Confederates didn't do a whole lot of fighting, and did a lot more running. They were outflanked, outnumbered, and badly outgunned. Only four Union men were killed out of about two thousand, while the Confederates lost 26 of about 800 defenders.
At the time it was dismissed as inconsequential. But there were two important facts about this skirmish. For one, it was the first engagement between regular Federal and regular Confederate forces in an open pitched battle. And for another, it marked the beginning of the long, slow campaign that would proceed down the Ohio river to the Mississippi, and then from the Gulf of Mexico northward, meeting somewhere in the middle. The Union controlled the railroads along the Ohio River, and this would never be seriously threatened by the Confederacy, although they would attempt raids throughout the rest of the war.
The Union was beginning to execute its grand strategy. Would the Confederacy ever have an answer?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
