Happened last November 29th in Glasgow, Scotland. A police helicopter suffered twin engine failures, both engines quit, and the chopper fell onto the roof of a pub. All three crewmen and seven patrons of the pub were killed. Must have been quite a scene, crowded pub, everyone hoisting beer mugs, and suddenly a helicopter busts thru the ceiling and crashes on the bar.
Accident investigation hasn't found anything useful. Twin engine aircraft are not supposed to have both engines fail. That's why there are two of 'em. There was 5-6 gallons of fuel left in the tanks, enough to 10-15 minutes of flight. Nothing wrong was found in either engine. No radio distress calls were made. The main and tail rotors had stopped turning by the time the helo hit the roof. No evidence of an autorotation to a safe landing. The chopper was just flying along, both engines stop, and it falls like a brick. No one knows why.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
So how big a US Army do we need?
First let look at what we might need the Army to do. How about defending Israel from invasion? How about doing regime change on Iran rather than allowing them to go nuclear? How about staving off an invasion of South Korea? Or, in the aftermath of a second Korean War, doing regime change in Pyongyang? How about intervening in some armpit in Africa to prevent another genocide? How about cleaning out pirate bases in Somalia? How about intervention in the Balkans, or some East European armpit?
I'm not saying that we ought to do any of these things, but I do think America needs the capability, just in case. So what does it take to do the job? We did Iraq with 140,000 troops deployed in country. It would take more to deal with North Korea. Let's say we need 200,000 soldiers on active duty, with maybe that many again in the reserves. Modern war is quick, you gotta run what you brung. There is not time to enlist and train troops, the war is over before that happens.
Obama wants to cut the army down to 450,000 men. Sounds like enough? Dunno. The 140,000 soldiers sent to Iraq were all combat troops, infantry, tankers, gunners. Historically, the US Army has a ratio of tooth to tail of about 9 to1. For every combat soldier carrying weapons in the face of the enemy there are nine support troops driving supply trucks, manning depots, cooking, doing paperwork, fixing jeeps, building schools and bridges, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Based on past experience, a 450,000 man US Army might contain only 45,000 real soldiers, which clearly ain't enough.
In actual fact, American troops have plenty of experience in every line of work. Men capable of fighting on the front line, are capable of doing pretty much anything else that might be needed. I suggest that a lot of the specialists behind the lines could be re trained as infantry and sent to the front. Regular units can do much of the work now done by specialists. If we could get the ratio of tooth to tail down to maybe 2 to 1, then maybe 450,000 men might be enough.
I'm not saying that we ought to do any of these things, but I do think America needs the capability, just in case. So what does it take to do the job? We did Iraq with 140,000 troops deployed in country. It would take more to deal with North Korea. Let's say we need 200,000 soldiers on active duty, with maybe that many again in the reserves. Modern war is quick, you gotta run what you brung. There is not time to enlist and train troops, the war is over before that happens.
Obama wants to cut the army down to 450,000 men. Sounds like enough? Dunno. The 140,000 soldiers sent to Iraq were all combat troops, infantry, tankers, gunners. Historically, the US Army has a ratio of tooth to tail of about 9 to1. For every combat soldier carrying weapons in the face of the enemy there are nine support troops driving supply trucks, manning depots, cooking, doing paperwork, fixing jeeps, building schools and bridges, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Based on past experience, a 450,000 man US Army might contain only 45,000 real soldiers, which clearly ain't enough.
In actual fact, American troops have plenty of experience in every line of work. Men capable of fighting on the front line, are capable of doing pretty much anything else that might be needed. I suggest that a lot of the specialists behind the lines could be re trained as infantry and sent to the front. Regular units can do much of the work now done by specialists. If we could get the ratio of tooth to tail down to maybe 2 to 1, then maybe 450,000 men might be enough.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Mars has rivers
A lot of rivers. We put a photo recon satellite, the Mars Global Surveyor, into orbit around Mars in 1997. It carried wonderful cameras that returned zillions of sharp clear photographs of the Martian surface. The best of the pictures are collected in a softback book "A travelers guide to Mars", William K. Hartmann. Thumbing thru this book, the dried up river beds are striking, and there are lot of 'em. There is no question that they are rivers, even to my layman's eye they really look like rivers. You can see deltas at the end of them where they flowed into ancient Martian seas. Shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs
Some of them flowed recently (like within the last 10 million years). You can tell by counting meteor craters. Old (going back to the formation of Mars) land is wall to wall craters. New land, recent lava flows, has fewer craters, partly because they have had less time to accumulate meteor hits, and partly because the meteor hit rate has dropped off in more recent times. The plentiful meteors at the time of solar system formation got swept up by planets over time. Some of the rivers have no craters at all, which makes them very recent.
The unanswered question is, where did the water come from, and where did it go? We have found a few dozen meteorites on Earth that we believe came from Mars. Some have been dated back to 4500 megayears (pretty much the formation of Mars) and some to as recently as 167 megayears. All of them had been soaked in liquid water at some time in their past, as evidenced by deposits of water borne minerals in cracks and crevices. So there was a lot of water on Mars, as recently as the youngest meteorites. We think the water is still there, soaked into the soil and frozen.
We think Mars has been cold, and short on atmosphere, as it is today, for the last 3000 megayears. So how did the water to form river beds as recently as 10 megayears ago come from? No good answer has been proposed as of yet. We think there is plenty of water frozen in the Martian soil, but how did it melt and flow on the surface? No one knows.
We now think that Mars had open water, seas and rivers from the beginning, say 4500 megayears ago, until perhaps 3000 megayears ago. That gives 1500 megayears for some kind of life to evolve in Martian seas. Perhaps some such life still exists somewhere on Mars.
Some of them flowed recently (like within the last 10 million years). You can tell by counting meteor craters. Old (going back to the formation of Mars) land is wall to wall craters. New land, recent lava flows, has fewer craters, partly because they have had less time to accumulate meteor hits, and partly because the meteor hit rate has dropped off in more recent times. The plentiful meteors at the time of solar system formation got swept up by planets over time. Some of the rivers have no craters at all, which makes them very recent.
The unanswered question is, where did the water come from, and where did it go? We have found a few dozen meteorites on Earth that we believe came from Mars. Some have been dated back to 4500 megayears (pretty much the formation of Mars) and some to as recently as 167 megayears. All of them had been soaked in liquid water at some time in their past, as evidenced by deposits of water borne minerals in cracks and crevices. So there was a lot of water on Mars, as recently as the youngest meteorites. We think the water is still there, soaked into the soil and frozen.
We think Mars has been cold, and short on atmosphere, as it is today, for the last 3000 megayears. So how did the water to form river beds as recently as 10 megayears ago come from? No good answer has been proposed as of yet. We think there is plenty of water frozen in the Martian soil, but how did it melt and flow on the surface? No one knows.
We now think that Mars had open water, seas and rivers from the beginning, say 4500 megayears ago, until perhaps 3000 megayears ago. That gives 1500 megayears for some kind of life to evolve in Martian seas. Perhaps some such life still exists somewhere on Mars.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Aerodynamic efficiency and the airliner of the future
Today's airliners are a long tubular fuselage, carrying the passengers and cargo atop a wing that does all the aerodynamic work, lifts, stability etc. A good deal of sheet metal goes along just to carry the payload. A more efficient design (illustrated on the cover of Aviation Week) blends the wing and the fuselage into a single body, like the B2 flying wing bomber. The B2 is as efficient as it gets, it's all wing, no structure is just along for the ride. Fortunately the payload (iron bombs) is good and dense and doesn't take up much room inside the wing. Passengers are not that dense.
So the blended wing Lockheed design is a wing with a great swelling in the middle to accept a passenger cabin. Trouble is, cabins have to be pressurized, which imposes enormous forces trying to blow the cabin open. With only 5 pounds per square inch cabin pressure, over the 13 million square inches of a typical cabin, you get nearly 70 million pounds of force straining the cabin walls. The only structure that can resist this is a round tube, like present day airliner fuselages. So the Lockheed designers have a cylindrical passenger cabin buried inside their swoopy blended wing/body swelling. Trouble is, we have many feet of space between the cabin wall and the outer skin. Which makes cabin windows impossible. Which doesn't bother the designers, cabin windows are a pain, heavy, prone to leaks, points of weakness, and crack start locations. They are happy to omit cabin windows.
Passengers are not in favor. They like window seats, they like being able to see out, and they like sunshine. Boarding a windowless airliner gives some of them the willies, and depresses many others.
Maybe the conventional jet liner design is not so inefficient after all.
So the blended wing Lockheed design is a wing with a great swelling in the middle to accept a passenger cabin. Trouble is, cabins have to be pressurized, which imposes enormous forces trying to blow the cabin open. With only 5 pounds per square inch cabin pressure, over the 13 million square inches of a typical cabin, you get nearly 70 million pounds of force straining the cabin walls. The only structure that can resist this is a round tube, like present day airliner fuselages. So the Lockheed designers have a cylindrical passenger cabin buried inside their swoopy blended wing/body swelling. Trouble is, we have many feet of space between the cabin wall and the outer skin. Which makes cabin windows impossible. Which doesn't bother the designers, cabin windows are a pain, heavy, prone to leaks, points of weakness, and crack start locations. They are happy to omit cabin windows.
Passengers are not in favor. They like window seats, they like being able to see out, and they like sunshine. Boarding a windowless airliner gives some of them the willies, and depresses many others.
Maybe the conventional jet liner design is not so inefficient after all.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
GIMP, poor man's photo edit program.
Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Very powerful, free, photo edit program. It can do things that Picassa cannot such as correct perspective, filter out artifact, smooth out seams, and bunch of other stuff. Extremely steep learning curve, which is a polite way of saying the program is user hostile. The GIMP people assign whimsical names to things, the on line documentation doesn't describe or explain many obscure concepts used in the program. GIMP enthusiasts claim that GIMP can do everything Adobe Photoshop can do and then some. This may be true, if you have the time to experiment until GIMP starts to work. Version 2.8 can now drive the printer under Windows, something that the previous version 2.6 could not.
Anyhow, wanting to correct the perspective, and being too cheap to buy Photoshop, I downloaded GIMP. And it does work. If someone would write a decent manual, in plain English, it could be a winner.
Anyhow, wanting to correct the perspective, and being too cheap to buy Photoshop, I downloaded GIMP. And it does work. If someone would write a decent manual, in plain English, it could be a winner.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
I'll take the high road and you'll take the low road
And I'll be in Scotland before ye. Scotland, formerly an independent kingdom, merged with England at the beginning of the 17th century. It was part of the deal upon the death of the childless Queen Elizabeth, by which the Scottish King, James, became king of England, as well as of Scotland. So this is a deal that goes way back. Despite some tensions, and a number of old rivalries, the merger worked fairly well, at least to outsiders, it looked like the writ of the London government ran over all of the British Isles, and it has been that way for 400 years.
Zap, Pow, Kablam. Save your whiskey cups, the Scots will rise again. Scottish separatism has come to the point where there will be a referendum on Scottish independence in September. Polling right now is mixed, the referendum might go either way. If Scotland votes to leave Great Britain there are a number of "issues". Like money. The Scots want to keep using the British pound, the Brits have said "No way". The Scots want to become/remain EU members and the EU is saying, "Perhaps, but no guarantees". Who knows what this will do to the British Army, who will have to turn the Black Watch, all the kilts, all the bagpipes over to the Scots. The Brits get to keep their redcoats and bearskin hats, but no more bagpipers piping the troops into the attack, like we see in all the old WWII movies..
Or course Scottish separatism may go the way of Quebec separatism, where it got voted down by a thin margin some years ago, and has died out.
When Quebec separatism was riding high (before the referendum) some Quebec leaders visited Wall St to inquire about floating bonds and exchanging the newly created Quebec currency. According to the Wall St Journal, the Americans poured cold water on the separatist idea. The Quebecers were told, no loans, no bonds, and we won't accept your currency. Which had something to do with the referendum failing a few months later.
Zap, Pow, Kablam. Save your whiskey cups, the Scots will rise again. Scottish separatism has come to the point where there will be a referendum on Scottish independence in September. Polling right now is mixed, the referendum might go either way. If Scotland votes to leave Great Britain there are a number of "issues". Like money. The Scots want to keep using the British pound, the Brits have said "No way". The Scots want to become/remain EU members and the EU is saying, "Perhaps, but no guarantees". Who knows what this will do to the British Army, who will have to turn the Black Watch, all the kilts, all the bagpipes over to the Scots. The Brits get to keep their redcoats and bearskin hats, but no more bagpipers piping the troops into the attack, like we see in all the old WWII movies..
Or course Scottish separatism may go the way of Quebec separatism, where it got voted down by a thin margin some years ago, and has died out.
When Quebec separatism was riding high (before the referendum) some Quebec leaders visited Wall St to inquire about floating bonds and exchanging the newly created Quebec currency. According to the Wall St Journal, the Americans poured cold water on the separatist idea. The Quebecers were told, no loans, no bonds, and we won't accept your currency. Which had something to do with the referendum failing a few months later.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Case of beer bet on Can Am hockey game
Heard on Fox TV this morning. Obama bet a case of beer with Canadian prime minister Stephan Harper on the woman's Can-Am hockey game.
What? A case of Bud Lite against a case of Molson's? You gotta be kidding. Especially as Canadians think American beer is watery and flavorless. I agree with them, and fortunately I live close enough to Canada to get the good stuff.
They should have bet a case of whiskey. A case of Jack Daniels against a case of Canadian Club, now there's a bet.
By the way. Congratulations to both hockey teams.
What? A case of Bud Lite against a case of Molson's? You gotta be kidding. Especially as Canadians think American beer is watery and flavorless. I agree with them, and fortunately I live close enough to Canada to get the good stuff.
They should have bet a case of whiskey. A case of Jack Daniels against a case of Canadian Club, now there's a bet.
By the way. Congratulations to both hockey teams.
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