My Personal Blog

This morning my mother-in-law asked me what I thought of the Sen. Brown news item. Apparently some reporter called his daughters 'prostitutes'. Whether I understand this correctly or not (there may be some translation errors, since I got it second hand), I have no interest in looking into this specific "news item" further. It only confirms my ambivalence toward 90% of what the media calls "news". For the record, I mean no disrespect towards my MIL; she is a very sharp lady, but in this regard is representative of the US media market.

The term "news" implies something new. What, pray tell is new about someone insulting a politician? This story is as old as homo erectus, just as most news is when you change the names and translate to Latin (I've foregone the translation for readability purposes):

Ignoring the obvious historical and geographical errors, this is exactly the same as this news story.

One cannot say the same thing for landing on the Moon, Newton's Law, or the discovery of carbon nanotubes. These things have only happened once, and they are not trivial, but rather, essential to the potential survival of our civilization and most likely our species beyond Earth. Ok, these specific examples are no longer new, but these kind of items are what I call news.

Call me a science snob. Later today, I was catching up on my Nature podcasts and learned that scientists at the Max Planck Institute have determined that non-Africans are 1-4% Neanderthal! Now THAT is news, even if not surprising (at least to those of us who participated in a wrestling team).

This quote was preceded by an example involving algae and certain species of sea hydras. The ramifications of this almost certainly extend to the many forms of E. Coli in the human gut, as well as to the Toxoplasma gondii parasite that breeds in cats, but when present in rats, causes them to lose their (previously healthy) fear of, yes, cats.

However, the concept I found most intriguing was how it might apply to humans parasitizing the Earth. Now, generally I don't buy into the whole 'Gaia Hypothesis', other than to acknowledge that the Earth's biosphere is certainly a very complex thing that evolved by the same rules that govern the evolution of less complex systems. If anything, I'm actually more sympathetic to the 'Medea Hypothesis'. At any rate, Dawkins' statement regarding parasites seems quite prescient regarding the destiny of humans on the planet. Unless we can figure out how to symbiotically work with our planet, I fear we humans are also destined for extinction, and perhaps the Earth is as well.

Building structures to reach space surely predates the modern concept of rockets, probably going back at least to the Tower of Babel. There are a lot of good reasons why humanity should explore this more, and there are also a lot of good practical reasons why we haven’t done so yet. There is a whole website devoted to this topic at www.spaceelevator.com. The great difficulty with space elevators is the vast distance involved. To reach geostationary orbit, a structure some 35,000 km tall is required. For a compressive design, the weight would far exceed the material strength of any known materials. By extending the structure beyond GEO, and using a counterweight, the centrifugal force (caused by the Earth’s rotation) would create a tensile structure, which could theoretically be built using carbon nanotubes cable, with some kind of climber vehicle as the elevator car. This approach is described in Arthur C Clarke’s “The Fountains of Paradise.”

However, realistically speaking, we are a long ways from having the manufacturing capability to produce 100,000 kms of carbon nanotube cable. We are even further from having practical engineering experience with making even simple structures with CNTs. When you start seeing suspension bridges built with the stuff, then maybe we’ll be ready to make a space elevator out of it. Yeah, the stuff is strong in tension (for lengths up to a couple centimeters, so far), but there are a lot of unknowns about how long it lasts, how it reacts over time to weathering, salt water, UV, etc. I haven’t done a cost analysis on it, but when you factor in the risks of committing to a CNT tether style elevator, I wouldn’t hold my breath on finding venture capital. I hope I’m wrong, but I’d bet it will be at least 100 yrs before this technology is advanced enough for any megastructure. Then there are the inherent dangers in a heavier-than-air structure: If this cable snaps, it would wrap around the earth and potentially cause massive amounts of damage. It’s just not responsible engineering at this point. All that said, I hope we start designing this system, so we are ready for the materials technology when it finally catches up.

There is fortunately a third design alternative: a buoyant structure. I am not the first to think of this. In the last couple years, at least a couple others have highlighted this inflatable elevator or “spaceshaft” approach.

Here’s how my version works: Stick a skyscraper on a mountaintop near the equator and start stacking modules on the skyscraper. Each module is essentially a toroidal aerostat (buoyant in its own right), similar in concept to this luxury airship design, but tubular with a center conduit hermetically sealed to the modules above and below it. If something happens to the megastructure, each module separates and floats away. When the center conduit is evacuated of air, it provides additional buoyancy to the megastructure. The taller it is, the easier it is to do this (the air pressure at the tip is less) and the more stable it becomes. Fill the low altitude modules with helium, then start alternating with hydrogen. At higher altitudes, the partial pressure of oxygen becomes too low to be a significant threat of combustion, so more modules could be hydrogen at higher altitudes. The inherent modularity of the system makes it easy to replace weathered components, and the whole thing can be built and used incrementally.

Admittedly, this only gets us to the upper mesosphere/lower ionosphere, at best halfway to LEO, and a hundredth of the way to GEO. However, this is adequate, when combined with traditional rocketry, other propulsion methods such as electodynamic tethers or by utilizing the structure as part of a space pier or launch loop.

I conceive each module would be on the order of 100m long with an inner diameter of perhaps 20m and an outer diameter of 50m. By my calculations, this provides an envelope of around 165,000 cu meters, not including the launch conduit. With helium, this is 140,000kg of lift at 2km altitude, 13,000kg at 20km, neutral buoyancy would occur around 40km. Evacuating the tube would provide an additional 1,000 kg lift at 2km and 2,000kg at 20km.

The weight of the helium is already included in those numbers (hydrogen gives even better performance). So, allot at least several tons of structural material for the membrane and tensegrity elements, another few tons for elevator/launcher electromagnetics. The force of payload launch would be distributively compensated by the overall megastructure. For a tube culminating at 20,000km, and a payload of 100,000kg, each module would only need to support an additional 1/2kg!

That still leaves a few tons of ballast requirement at lower altitudes. How about slapping up some photovoltaics, and/or creating some habitats? Now you’ve got a way to sell this to individuals and families. Add a couple more beanstalks in a cluster, join them horizontally with inflatable walkways and you have a cloud city, with additional stability. Approximately 200,000 modules per launch tube would be needed to reach the stratosphere. More than halfway up they might not be permanently habitable (without additional engineering) due to air pressure, frigid temperatures, and increased cosmic radiation. Otherwise each module represents a single family dwelling.

There is still a whole lot of engineering to be worked out for this concept, of course. We still need to compensate for day/night temperature differentials, wind shear, the FAA, and a lot of things I haven’t even thought of. On the other hand, (unlike the traditional tethered space elevator concept) it is not dependent upon a world government, or magical (by Clark’s definition) materials. That’s not to say it wouldn’t benefit greatly from materials ephemeralization; a lighter superstructure would obviously translate to more capacity for safety, standard of living and self sustainment (ie, gardens, etc).

For the last couple years I’ve been playing around with various open source content management systems (CMS). One of the things I want to be able to do with a CMS is to set up an open source hardware design community, I would like to be able to use the CMS for project management, and set up ad hoc teams in a hierarchy based on the work breakdown structure (WBS). I figure this would require a pretty powerful CMS.

Benchmarking

It may be that a combination of tools will work best, and it seems that a couple of my benchmarks have done precisely this.
Comparable to my Xmaran project, TeamFredNET has a fairly narrow mission (making a moon rover). They utilize a Wikia engine in conjunction with a phpBB forum. It seems that most of the action really occurs inside the wiki discussion pages.
Comparable to my SOS project, CSTART has a broad mission: to engage in research and exploration of the solar system. The CSTART front page is done in WordPress. The forum is done with a WP plugin, but again, it looks as if the heavy work is done using the wiki. In both cases, I like the wiki, because it automatically handles revision control, while documenting the design thought process and discussion. However, it is a little difficult figuring out the task list, which in an open source project is critical to getting the things done. And, ideally, the task list should automatically generate pages, while progress on the pages should feedback to the task list completion status.

CMS Experiences

I started out with some research that indicated the most powerful would be Plone, so that is where I started– and stopped for about six months, just trying to figure out how to modify the theme. My research did indicate that the learning curve for Plone was steep, but I was not prepared for having to learn to be a developer. I recently came back to Plone, now that I’ve learned some Python, and found that Plone themes are still a mystery to me. I’ve also found that the plugin library for Plone is not very extensive or up to date compared to the other CMS I looked at. Plone does however have Zwiki wiki integration

Drupal was listed next for power, and I found the setup unintuitive, but not nearly so arcane as Plone. The extension/plugin availability seemed much better than Plone as well. On the other hand, Drupal does not seem to me any more powerful than Joomla.

I’ve had occasion to play the most with Joomla, and have set up two sites using it. The extension library is excellent, on par with Wordpress, and it is extremely easy to install extensions through the backend. Theme design requires a little bit of familiarity with html and css. I have not learned enough PHP to develop the kind of system I would like for generating content in an open source hardware collaboration project. Most of the pieces seem to be there, but they aren’t really integrated. Surprisingly, the big piece that seems to be missing unfortunately is the wiki extension.

WordPress and Serendipity are both primarily blog CMS. Both are extremely easy to set up and figure out how to use. Wordpress is somewhat more polished and mainstream than Serendipity, and after an annoying tendency to lose my work when Serendipity timed out, I switched over to Wordpress. I eventually got annoyed with the comment spam, and worried about the security of it due to how common WordPress is.

As an astute reader may have noticed, this blog has migrated from Serenity to WordPress to its current incanrnation in TikWiki. I am extremely pleased with TikiWiki's capabilities and ease of use. I've been using it for everything from Xmaran to the CELSS Knowledge Base, with great results. The tracker system offers almost real RDB collaborative capabilities and the profile feature enables TikiWiki to be used out of the box for almost any kind of website I have use for. I was even able to migrate Xmaran from Joomla and maintain the same MilkyWay theme.

Conclusions

TikiWiki rocks! I will most likely migrate SOS at some point as well.

On 01.31.10, In Personal, By Greg

I was a little mystified this week when I unexpectedly received a certified letter. Hoping it didn’t contain a court summons, I opened it and was pleasantly surprised to instead find a check for $200.

Flashback a few months ago, and I was walking down Lincoln Road, minding my own business. By minding my own business, I mean avoiding eye contact with a) the homeless beggars, and to a lesser extent b) the good looking hostesses trying to woo me into their restaurants.

Now, I wasn’t in a particular hurry to be anywhere, but even so, when I’m by myself, I tend to move with a purpose. So I was a little startled and probably more than a little suspicious when a guy comes up to me and asks if he can ask me a question. I always love the irony of that meta-question, but was able to look past my cynicism on the off chance that he was lost and just wanted directions.

What he asked was, “Do you roll your toilet paper under or over?” and he explained that he was taking a marketing poll for Cottonelle toilet paper. I was apparently surprised enough that anyone else cared enough about this innocuous topic, that I actually answered him and explained my thoughtful reasons for being an under roller.

I honestly don’t recall any mention of payment, but I do remember providing my address, so I must have had some motivation to provide my actual address to a marketing company. At any rate, my interview can be found at http://www.cottonellerollpoll.com/.

I recently read an article about how the Russians are planning a mission to try knocking an asteroid off its trajectory. The asteroid, named Apophis, for the Egyptian demon god of darkness and chaos, is slated to pass within 28,000km of Earth in 2029. It is estimated about three times larger than the 1908 Tunguska meteorite, which created an explosion in the Siberian wilderness equivalent to 1000 Hiroshimas. Since Apophis’ discovery in 2004, NASA has been continually downgrading the possibility of a collision with Earth. In 2004 the chances were pegged at 1/37; the latest odds stand at around 1/250,000.

How close is 28,000 km? Well, for comparison, the Moon is 380,000 km. Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO), used for communications satellites, is 37,000 km out. The International Space Station (ISS) is in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), barely out of Earth’s atmosphere at 122 km. I plugged in some of these numbers along with the relative sizes of the Earth and Moon and created a 3D scaled model shown in the screenshot to the right. When you factor in the uncertainty in Apophis’ trajectory, this seems pretty close, but space is big and 28,000 km is still a wide margin. 3000 Hiroshimas is not enough to wipe out the planet, but depending on the location of the strike would certainly be a catastrophe greater than any other in recorded history.

Regarding the Russian announcement, I have to imagine that the folks at NASA are kicking themselves for not doing this themselves, because on the face of it, potentially saving the planet (ok, preventing a 1/250,000 chance of obliterating an area the size of Delaware) seems like an inexpensive opportunity for PR (=funding) as well as an excellent chance to advance science and technology. Perhaps not so obvious is the potential to tap into a mountain of minerals, passing right by our doorstep. The Russian’s have a recent history of utilizing science missions to achieve geopolitical and economic ends. There is probably more than one way to do this, but if someone was able to alter the course of Apophis just enough to go into geosynchronous orbit around Earth, they would have a ready supply of materials for manufacturing satellites, without the great expense of pulling it out of the ground (on Earth) then launching it.

What I find most fascinating is the ridicule the Russians have drawn for making their announcement about heading off Apophis. Maybe it’s sour grapes. Maybe. Maybe there is more than meets the eye here.

A recent poll suggests that most Americans are not in favor of a US space program:

• 50% of Americans (up from 44% last year) say the United States should cut back on space exploration given the current state of the economy. 31% disagree with cutting the space program. The other 19% are not sure.
• 35% believe the government should pay for space research, while 38% think private interests should pick up the tab. 26% ain’t sure.

Are Americans really this deluded? I recall something one of our exchange students told me years ago: “Spain is a great country. We have everything you Americans have. Everything except a space program. That is what makes America great.”

When you learn econ in school, you learn about supply and demand. This is the “real economy”. If you break it down, your “real economy” is based on your resources. These can be natural resources like oil, minerals, water, crops, timber. Natural resources can even be intangible such as a scenic view, in the case of tourism. All of these natural resources are limited (yes, some are renewable, but production is still limited by available energy and by available land). For the sake of brevity, let’s call these natural resources Land. Human resources are the other, more important category. Japan’s economy is the textbook case study: a little island nation with virtually no natural resources, but lots of people with ingenuity and a sense of work ethic. All natural resources require human resources to be utilized, at least until the robots take over (but that’s a whole ‘nother topic). Human resources are the true source of wealth in that they create more efficient ways of utilizing existing natural resources. Let’s call human resources People.

There is also something I call the “imaginary economy.” This is only partially derogatory, and it may or may not have anything to do with the square root of -1. The imaginary economy is based on the concept of speculation, or what people expect the potential value of goods and services to be at some point in the future. Consumer confidence is a measure of this. The whole concept of investment is based on this. I think the Federal Reserve is based on this (but this is controversial and is graduate level econ, so I digress). Obviously, lots of people make lots of money off the imaginary economy. Of course, when I say lots of people, I mainly mean Wall St., but when I say lot’s of money, I mean OBSCENE amounts of money, more than the dollar value of the real economy. If this sounds complex, it’s because it is (remember the -1?), because it deals with human perception, which doesn’t always perceive reality.

If we want the perception of potential economic growth, we need to grow the real economy. Since we’ve shipped much of the real economy to China we have both an opportunity and a challenge in growing the People side of the real economy. In the short term this is the best place to invest. Since the Land side is limited by energy and acreage, the only way to grow this economy is through pursuit of more land, and more energy. No, I’m not suggesting we invade Saudi Arabia.

Reagan’s star wars program of the 80’s spurred the economic success in the 90’s. The whole telecom/dotcom industry was made possible by the technology to put those satellites in orbit. We need to repeat this feat of developing an industrial base (jobs leading to developing talent leading to production of salable goods and services) around energy and land usage. I’m not talking about today’s energy and land. I’m talking about putting together an infrastructure for tomorrow’s energy and land. What’s that, you say?

The first and biggest problem with today’s energy is that it’s not sustainable. We can’t keep borrowing against the future without eventually paying the piper. When I speak of sustainability I mean it in both the environmental and the economic sense. After all, environmentalism is economics at its most basic level. Gen Y realizes this much, even if they’re blind to the rest of my plan.

When it comes to land, we’ve pretty much run up against the limit on this planet. There is still Antarctica, a few wildlife preserves, and the ocean, of course. I think there is probably some room for exploiting the ocean still, in the form of mariculture, but I think it’s also important to leave some of nature intact. Therefore the options are either taking land from someone else (which is a zero sum game, since it may encourage others to do likewise) or looking off the planet. Yes, NASA, this one’s for you. China has figured this out. Iran has announced a space program of their own. We retire the space shuttle at the end of this year without a replacement for at least 5-10yrs. I recall someone recently compared our economics to Ethiopia. Are we going to wait for Ethiopia to land on the moon, before we realize that the future is not on Wall St? At the end of the fifteenth century, the Ming Dynasty forbade Chinese subjects from either building oceangoing ships or leaving the country. This geographic isolationism turned to stagnation of science and philosophy, and left China in the dust while Europeans proceeded to conquer the planet. It is ironic that the roles are now reversed.

The government should not be in the business of micromanaging the economy, but they do have a role to play in strategic development. This is not going to be cheap, of course, but who would YOU like to see get paid to fix the economy? A few elite Wall St bankers who broke the economy in the first place or a bunch of small entrepreneurs and rocket scientists?

This started as a facebook meme, and I decided to post it here on my blog.

0. Rules can always be broken, but the key is to understand the consequences. Sometimes the only consequence is that other people will follow your example. Anyone who has led soldiers or has kids understands the terrible ramifications of this.

1. When it comes to writing, I am a perfectionist. This is why writing a thesis was excruciating for me. Writing 25 random thoughts isn’t quite as bad.

2. Academia has taught me that belief does not equal reality. This applies to both science and religion. Just because we have a model of electrons whizzing around doesn’t mean that that is actually what is happening. Most of what we “know” is analogy. However, as long as the analogy allows us to make life better, we should continue to use it. Until we find a better belief/model. The same applies to religion.

3. I’ve read the Bible, the Koran, the Teachings of Buddha, and the Kama Sutra. I’ve found that most people’s actual beliefs are thankfully inconsistent with the literal doctrine of their religious texts. The exceptions, we call fanatics, and generally agree they should be locked up. It still baffles me why so many people equate religion with morality.

4. I also went to summer Bible camp with my best friend in grade school who was the son of a Baptist preacher. The most lasting thing I learned that summer was Kenny Roger’s, “The Gambler”, which we sang approximately 16 million times consecutively every day until the bus driver made us stop. The culmination of my spiritual studies is that I believe life is a lot like poker.

5. Ends don’t justify means; means only lead to other means; the only end is continued existence, but without meaning, existence is, well, meaningless. Know what I mean?

6. I wept on 9-11 when I realized all we would sacrifice in the name of fighting terrorism. It turns out I was right. Although I am proud to have served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, I wish I could have had a bigger impact. I also am ashamed at how the Bush administration represented my country. If our leaders had better understood #0 and #5, we would not have had Abu Gharaib or Guantanamo.

8. My political beliefs have changed as I’ve gotten older. One thing that has not changed is my belief that two parties are not enough.

9. I’ve been to 38 countries and have lived in 8 different states. My wife accuses me of being a homebody.

10. Old age comes with wisdom, as much as the other way around. Reading the Darwin Awards every year is always entertaining, and makes me feel superior, even though I realize I’ve been lucky at least as many times as I’ve been smart. I have become more humble as I’ve gotten older, perhaps because the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know.

11. If you add up all the statistics of the possible ways to die, they add up to 100% (actually I suspect they actually add up to slightly more than 100%, which either implies exaggeration or that some of us will have to kick the bucket more than once). You can’t be afraid of dying, without being afraid of living.

12. ANYTHING in sufficient quantity is a poison. Everyone wants to sell you something to cure what ails you. Most the time what ails you is too much of something. Unfortunately, in our consumer society there is no good way to make money selling someone less of something (although bottled water comes damn close). The ONLY proven way to extend longevity is caloric restriction. The same concept applies to conservation of the environment. The best medicine is moderation.

13. Most people are not willing to sacrifice consumption for the sake of extending their own lives, much less for the environment. I find that I am like most people in practice. I still need to eat less, and bicycle more than I drive.

14. It took me 5 yrs to get my BS, 12 yrs to get a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, 4 yrs for my MS, and 37 yrs to have my first kid. Needless to say, I don’t believe in destinations, only journeys. For me, it’s the thrill of the hunt, not the trophy on the wall.

15. Even though I’ve studied Russian for 20 yrs, I still can’t have an intelligent conversation in it. However, I can tell when my wife is talking about me.

16. I love to cook. It is a creative outlet for me, akin to invention and performing science experiments. It works best with willing guinea pigs. Unfortunately I like to be one of my own guinea pigs, hence #13.

17. My mom is a great person. I know it’s a cliché, but I attribute most of what I am to her and wish more people (including myself) could be more like her.

18. When I was a teenager, I was a great driver and enjoyed driving. Now driving is just a way to get from A to B, and bad drivers cause me to develop Tourette’s Syndrome until I remember #0 and #17.

19. I always wanted to be an astronaut, up until I got married, when I realized I never want to leave my family for that long. I still believe that the smartest thing we can do collectively is get some of our eggs off this planet, so they are not all in one basket.

20. If I were a benevolent alien (and I deny that I am) of superior intelligence and advanced technology, I would not reveal myself until humans were smart enough to communicate with chimps. If you aren’t smart enough to learn the language of a species who shares your planet and 98% of your DNA, how could you pitiful humans ever hope to understand a completely alien intelligence from another world? By you, I mean us, of course.

21. I’m often accused of liking to play the devils advocate, because I like to say outrageous things in order to have something about which to argue. I’m positive I get this from my dad. On the other hand, I rarely get emotional about an argument.

22. Just because I’m an engineer doesn’t mean I can do complex arithmetic in my head, remember my wife’s phone number, or even count to 25 (see #7).

23. The best advice I know, I didn’t discover until I was almost 30. It has been attributed to many people, most often to Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, so much as what you know for sure that ain’t so.” Along with grad school, and being married to a woman much smarter than I am, this has helped to humble me. Anyone who knew me in high school would agree that I could have used a helping or two of humble pie.

24. Nobody listens to free advice. This never stops most people from giving it. I always wish I could remember this when I’m about to open my big mouth.

25. Psychologists have shown that people never believe the first person who tells them something, but they invariably believe the second person. I never know if people aren’t listening to me because I am too far ahead of my time or because I’m not charging them enough for my advice (see #24). To find out what #7 is, send $25 via Paypal or check.