CHEAP OIL

     Cheap oil may well turn out to be our undoing. The quest for, and development of renewable energy will move to the back burner, the economics no match for oil at sixty dollars a barrel and under.
    The quixotic architect of the current dilemma is arguably President Obama, who simultaneously urges drilling for oil in order to gain energy independence, yet promotes policies to avert climate change. The two policies are at odds with each other. The Saudi’s reduction of the price of oil as a counter measure has thrown a giant wrench in the machinery of energy production.
    The world will now gorge itself on cheap oil, at a rate never before experienced, as a result of modernization of many countries and population growth. It will hasten the day of reckoning, which may also be when climate change has reached the point of irreversIbility.

A COLLOSAL WASTE OF MONEY

      Every day, every living thing on the surface of planet Earth receives free energy from one of the most elegant of chemical transformations, the energy of the stars. It’s called fusion, the combining of two light nuclei to produce a heavier one of slightly lower mass than the sum of the two, with a concurrent release of energy in accordance with Einstein’s equation E=mc²

      Nuclei of deuterium and tritium combine under great heat and pressure to yield helium plus 3.5 MeV and a neutron plus 14.1 MeV......an enormous energy output.

    Of course, in stars, fusion doesn’t stop there.... additional fusion takes place up the periodic table to iron, following which the remaining elements are produced by fission.      All the material in the universe was provided by exploded stars.

      The hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, are the same as used in fusion bombs which were developed in the 1950’s. Setting off a fusion bomb, though, is an instantaneous release of energy, useless for power generation. In a hydrogen bomb ignition is initiated by a fission bomb, configured to compress and heat the hydrogen isotopes to a region where fusion will occur.

      Since the 1950’s there has been an avid interest in many nations to create on Earth an artificial means to tap into this prodigious energy source. Billions have been spent in this quest, following two main ideas on how to achieve controlled fusion.

      One idea is magnetic containment of the plasma. Thermal energy must be added either by the fusion products or by electricity generated by the reactor. The goal is to produce more energy than is necessary to sustain the reaction.

   The U.S program began in 1951 when Lyman Spitzer began work on magnetically confined plasmas. His work led to creation of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where magnetically confined plasmas are still studied. Other major universities began to undertake theoretical studies and experimental work.

   Theoretical work in the Soviet Union during 1950-1951 by I.E. Tann and Andrei Sakarov led to construction of the first tokamak.(a Russian word meaning “a toroidal device for producing controlled nuclear fusion by means of confinement in a magnetic field) and first demonstrated the feasibility of a continuous nuclear fusion reaction.

In 1997 the largest joint experiment was the Joint European Torus (JET). In that year a test run produced a peak of 16.1 MW of fusion power, with a sustained power of 10 MW over a period of 5 seconds. Not much, and the output of this experiment was only sixty-five per cent of the power put into it.

      But bigger plans were afoot with the formation of ITER (InternationalThermonuclear Experimental Reactor), and the funding of an entirely different approach to achieving fusion in the National Ignition Laboratory at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. That method seeks to obtain ignition by focusing powerful lasers on a raindrop sized capsule filled with deuterium and tritium. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore hope to produce a powerful enough implosion of the capsule to achieve ignition.

      ITER was proposed to President Reagan by Gorbachev in the 1980’s. The United States initiated the project, putting together a consortium of participating nations, but later withdrew. and still later decided to participate in a limited role. That largely takes place via the Princeton Plasma Laboratories, funded by the Department of Energy at about 175 million dollars annually. The United States, then, has work underway on the two main approaches to fusion energy.

     ITER continued under French leadership. The experimental laboratories for ITER are located in Cadarache, France and headquarters is located in Barcelona, Spain.

The National Ignition Laboratory (www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/01/the-national-ignition-facility) funding exceeds eight billion dollars. Budget for ITER was established at fifteen billion dollars in 2008 and is certain to be exceeded. Billions more will have to be invested if either concept demonstrates economic and operating feasibility, to produce reliable and safe means of extracting the energy to produce electricity. That appears to be years in the future.

     But here’s the rub: We are already benefitting from a limitless source of fusion energy. Why go to the enormous cost and effort to make it on Earth? It’s called the sun, a safe 93 million miles from Earth. It is free, there are no waste products, and it is reliable. 174 petawatts of radiated energy arrive daily at the upper atmosphere. World energy consumption is about 25 terrawatts. It remains only to apply ingenuity in devising systems to collect it and convert it to electricity. Significantly, we are already doing it, capturing it via photo-voltaic and solar thermal collectors and wind (yes the wind is solar energy. Available wind energy alone is 335 terrawatts).

     The twenty five or so billion dollars being spent on laboratory demonstration of fusion power could have been spent to produce 25 gigawatts of fusion power that is already available from the sun, or advancing the technology for doing so.

     What are we thinking? Admittedly, the research efforts produce technology advancements in computational technique, materials science and processing. But

it may not be a sufficient justification for all the spending.

THOUGHTS FOR 2015

HERE ARE MY THOUGHTS FOR 2015

LONG RANGE FORECAST FOR EVOLUTION

Pole vaulters will eventually orbit Earth.
Women will develop shoulder hooks for purse straps. Eventually theft proof
as purse snatchers become a nuisance.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

New APP shows a fuzzy image on computer. User pulls it into focus and prints
out a prescription for glasses.

Buffalo demonstrates  first  unmanned, GPS guided nuclear powered snow
removal device. It melts the snow at 40 mph ahead of it instead of removing it,

Now that Marijuana is legal, politicians debate whether the ban on growing hemp
should be continued. Lifting it will offend foreign hemp growers.

Germany ships first biodiesel electric cars to US. First near-zero carbon footprint electric car.

It will be revealed for the first time that the purchasing of indulgences at the church
(especially Catholic) actually does work,
and the benefit is in direct proportion to the amount.

Sadly, no amount of treatment will cure a heroin junkie. They’re gone.

Don’t waste money on fusion power. We already have it at a safe 93 million miles distance.
It’s called the sun. All that’s needed is to collect and distribute it and we’re doing that.

Gamma ray pulse may not be a serious threat to life, except for wearers of pacemakers.
Then again, it may be the single reason why life has not proliferated across the universe.
Fermi’s paradox; “Where are they?”

GOOD THINGS TO D0

Pet your dog
Eat broccoli and cauliflower.
Be obedient (Paul said this, didn’t he?)
Don’t let plants wilt. (They are obviously suffering)
Write letters (an unacknowledged cure for a bad day).
Eschew tobacco.
Worship the sun.
Revere Stephen Colbert
Abjure televangelists
Sing, dance and read out loud
Believe in aliens
Love somebody dearly

SAN DIEGO HOSPITALS

A 2014-2015 US News and World Report survey of the best fifty hospitals in the United States, for the categories of illness: Cancer, Cardiology, Neurology and Neurological Surgery, Orthopedics and Gastroenterology shows that San Diego hospitals are seriously flagging. None were rated number one, or anywhere near it. For cancer treatment UC Medical is rated Number 18 in the list of fifty. Number 1 is Memorial Sloan Cancer Center in New York; for Cardiology, Scripps is ranked at Number 18 and UC Medical at Number 23. Number 1 is Cleveland Clinic; There are no hospitals specializing in Neurology and Neurological Surgery in San Diego that made it to the top fifty. Number 1 is Mayo Clinic; in Orthopedics, Scripps is ranked at Number 27 and UC Medical at Number 44, Number 1 is Hospital for Special Surgery in New York; and in Gastroenterology UC Medical is ranked at Number 25. Number 1 is Mayo Clinic.

HYDROGEN POWERED CARS

As a career rocket engineer with experience in handling hydrogen, a common rocket fuel, a New York Times editorial, November 30, titled "Hydrogen Cars, Coming Down the Pike," sparked my interest, due to inherent danger of explosion. The editorial spoke of
hydrogen car development by several manufacturers.

A brief note: We often hear of delay of a rocket launch due to a hydrogen leak. Who is going to guarantee that leaks will not occur in  cars, which are subject to all kinds of road vibrations and even impacts? If rockets can leak, will not some cars?

Another brief note: Insurance companies do not allow presence of volatile fuels in garages, even if contained in ASME code tanks. Will they allow cars, of many designs, fueled by hydrogen?

I can visualize a future New York Times headline: "Entire Condominium Destroyed due to Hydrogen Explosion in Basement Parking Lot.

If I were a resident, I would not sleep well knowing that another resident parked his hydrogen fueled car under me. If I were the owner of a parking lot structure, I would also be concerned. 
 

NEW REALITY

A friend recently e-mailed to me a short article about the Leakey family discoveries of skeletons of primitive man. My reply follows: 

Interesting, but small stuff in the grand scheme of things because it has little perceivable affect on contemporary times.
A couple of ideas  follow which are unsettling, if not downright scary though, and I offer these to your circulation list, a convenient, bright audience.
Evolution of technology has far outpaced biological evolution. The latter is slow, responding to environmental  effects and occasional mutations accidents of nature. But technology is advancing asymptotically, and can be observed, year to year. It diminishes, at the same time, the importance of biological evolution. Not only  is the change accelerating, but the rate of change  is too. One manifestation of this is future multiplication of the capability of the human brain, perhaps trillions of times.
It's part of the theme of Ray Kurtzweil's book:  "The Singularity is Here," in which he defines a future that has computers linked to the human brain.
He's right. It is already happening on a primitive scale. The reader of this, attentive to screen, is already a rapidly evolving being, seated with a virtual umbilical connected to an external brain - the PC. It's addictive nature guarantees that the trend is unstoppable, and with time the external brain will provide more and more of humanity's demands. Fascinating, scary stuff.

Even more scary - we are very much alone in the universe. Astronomers, theorizing and using the most advanced telescopy -  Atacama, Keck, Hubble, etc, can't tell us anything about the universe as it currently exists. Step outside and view the stars. except for a planet or two and the moon, everything you see is as it was - years, tens of years, thousands millions, billions of years ago. Nearly everything is unreal.
Suppose an advanced telescope were to discover a planet bustling with signs of an advanced civilization as near as three thousand light years, just a short distance away as the universe goes. A message from them to explore for other beings might not have arrived yet. Any attempted communication by us would not see a response for six thousand years. Civilizations come and go in that time frame.
Assuredly, we are very much alone in the universe.  

HOW DID THE PLANETS FORM?

HOW DID THE PLANETS FORM?

By Edward Hujsak

( What follows seems obvious, but there are theories and theories, all supported by their own sets of conjectures.)

A common theory about the moon, generally accepted, is that it was scarfed out of Earth when a huge asteroid passed close by. Another theory is that it was somehow handed off from Venus. But evidence to the contrary is in plain sight. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.....all have multiple moons....as many as sixty-seven in orbits around Jupiter.

What is uncontested is that the planets' beginnings were in the form of gas blobs. Uncontested because the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune still exist in that state. It is likely, from observation of other planets, that surrounding the gas blobs were lots of rocks which were gradually drawn into the gaseous spheres through loss of momentum caused by collisions, and gravity, ending up as solid planets with a surrounding atmosphere.Some of the rocks were too big to be drawn in. Our moon is one of them.

How the planets evolved after that is apparently dependent on the strength of their gravitational fields. Mercury, for example was too small to hold on to its atmosphere. Closest to the sun, it was simply blown away by solar pressure. Venus, next closest to the sun, with a gravity like Earth's, has an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and its nearness to the sun resulted in runaway global warming.... a window into a possible fate for Earth if carbon dioxide concentration reaches a tipping point. We do not have any idea what that tipping point is.

Earth, occupying an orbit averaging about ninety-four million miles from the sun, had a strong carbon dioxide component component. When it cooled, plant life became possible, out of which the atmosphere acquired a strong oxygen component. That, in turn, made animal life possible.

Mars, unfortunately, with a gravity only thirty-eight percent that of Earth, suffered the same fate as Mercury. Its atmosphere was blown away. Some life may have formed there, and possibly still exists in underground caverns but so far no evidence has been uncovered. A visitor to Mars might survive in a deep cavern. But had better like to eat mushrooms, as they would likely thrive in a damp. warm enclosure.

The outer gas planets will probably never reach a state like Earth- a large body of merged rock with a surrounding thin atmosphere, though they have all accumulated some rocks, as shown by evidence of solid cores. Also, the gas blobs are just too big. There simply aren't enough rocks. Saturn, maybe, if collisions cause enough loss of momentum to cause the ring matter to be drawn in. But Saturn is pretty far out. Solar pressure, the only known significant disturbing influence is small at Saturn's distance from the sun.

In any case, none of the giant gas planets could support life as we know it.

Planet forming – a big show- and right before our eyes! Slow, though. A lifetime is too short to see any action.

KAROL THE ENGINEER

KAROL THE ENGINEER by Edward Hujsak

He was head and shoulders above most engineers; hands on, analytical, inventive, possessing an innate ability to evaluate and tackle any task. Karol was next to the oldest in a family of twelve, born in New Hampshire to Polish Immigrants. He attended the University of New Hampshire and received a Masters Degree in chemical engineering there, along with a military commission through the ROTC. He served on General Bradley's staff during World War II. After the war he earned a second degree in chemical engineering at MIT, on the G.I. Bill.

Tall, brawny, and tanned, he excelled as a swimmer and pole vaulter. He was active in the 4-H club and the Grange and secured a seventy-five dollar scholarship from that organization to pay for his first year's tuition at the University. Summers he worked in the machine shop adjoining Frank Hazeltine's excelsior factory, an experience that would serve him well in his later years. He also worked as an ice man for Hazeltine, delivering ice from a dump truck to the locals.

His first and only professional job was with Stanolind, an independent oil and gas company with offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa remained his lifelong base, where he raised three adoring children with Dorothy, his wife for more than fifty years.
Early on, his assignments centered on exploration. Oil companies are constantly on the prowl, worldwide, for potential oil deposits. One of his exploratory trips took him far up the Orinoco River to assess development of a large bitumen deposit in Venezuela. Frequent trips were made to petroleum deposits in Canada.

North and East of Edmonton, Canada, a cold and uninhabited region spotted with diamond willows, is an immense deposit of bitumen, stretching over roughly a square, four hundred miles on a side. Stanolind had an interest in this deposit. The ore is commonly known as tar sand, consisting of sandstone that is saturated with a low grade oil, a black, viscous, tarry substance. Extensive tar sand deposits occur in several other places around the world, notably in Russia, Siberia and Venezuela. The ore can be processed by applying heat, to release a low grade oil that can be piped to refineries and converted into a variety of petroleum products. In a time of high oil prices, it became profitable for the first time to exploit this resource. It is this product that is the reason for the infamous Keystone pipeline. If the truth be known, the pipeline is unlikely to benefit the U.S. market. Rather, it is a pipeline for Canada to Texas oil refineries, and thence to world markets for refined petroleum, as well as the highly toxic “coke” that is a byproduct.

In the first weeks at Stanolind, Karol was sent to Texas with a senior companion to examine a synthetic gasoline production facility. Stanolind had purchased it for a few cents on the dollar when the original owners were unable to make it work after spending millions of dollars to build it. The two men spent a few days days looking it over. Then Karol said, “Let's see if we can get this thing to work.” They were successful, much to delight of managers at Stanolind.

A budding idea drew his full attention to promoting a scheme for exploiting the
tar sand deposits. In a short time, Stanolind management was convinced and prepared to spend millions of dollars to develop it in the Canadian deposit.
His idea was to build controlled underground fires to melt the tar sands. The oil would puddle and would be brought to the surface by conventional pumping methods. There were, as expected, many skeptics in other participating companies, who predicted a black, smokey environment, impossible to work in, and eventually prevailed in championing a system that employed huge shovels for surface mining, crushing the material and transporting it on giant dump trucks to miles-long moving belts that terminated at a processing facility. That method, however, is producing a vast wasteland, dotted with mountains of tailings which encircle ponds of toxic water. A consequence was death to countless unfortunate birds that alit there.

The experiment proceeded over many months, night and day, winter and summer, in the course of which he hoped to establish the drilling protocols and methods for setting and controlling the underground fires. As time went by, although oil was successfully pumped from the underground melt, it was concluded that the process was too complex to be trusted to everyday workmen.

There were two main camps established to carry out the experiment, located fifty miles apart and serviced by a supply line out of Edmonton. The road between was a seasonal hazard, but best in the winter months when it became a regularly plowed, packed snow road. The safety of personnel, especially in winter, led to a “Buddy” policy, to avoid the dangers of going out alone into frigid weather. They had no mobile telephones then, and relied mainly on radio.

Nevertheless, there was an occasion during the dark winter months that Karol had need to travel from one camp to the other. There was no “buddy” available so he set off on the fifty mile journey in a company Jeep by himself. Half way there on the frigid white highway a rear wheel came off the Jeep.

Often, when caught in a panic situation, human beings are prone to make quick and rash decisions that they would not normally make, that could, in many cases, be fatal. Such events are commonly attributed to a catch-all phrase: human error. In this case, it could have been fatal. Stranded in the frigid wilderness, miles from help, no communication.

Flashlight in hand, Karol backtracked on foot, hoping to find at least three of the missing lug nuts that held the wheel in place. He found one a short distance away, another about a half mile down the snow highway, and another a similar distance beyond. Three was enough, They would hold the wheel in place. He trotted back to the Jeep, hastily emplaced the wheel on a jacked-up Jeep, and secured it in place. He then jumped into the warm cabin and continued on his journey.

In retrospect, absent the panic situation, a calmer mind would have seen that a
lug nut could have been “borrowed” from each of the other three wheels, but he realized that with chagrin only later.

Karol sensed that the underground fire concept would soon taper off, as the above ground operations progressed under the ownership of the several companies now involved in the tar sands. At the extremity of his back yard he built a small machine shop where he aimed to develop a product that he could manufacture during his retirement years. An opportunity turned up to make small oil filters for an oil company. It opened a window into a possible niche business.

Karol took early retirement to manufacture high capacity oil filters to service the petroleum industry. He moved into a larger industrial manufacturing building, and soon was delivering massive filters of his own design to customers all over the world. Wary of excessive growth, however, he kept the operation small, with only one welder helping him. At age 89, when his certification as a welder came up for renewal, he quietly closed the doors on his enterprise.
Karol was my brother. He died at the age of 90 in 2005.

ELECTRIC CAR MYTHOLOGY

Blind to designers and developers of electric cars, primarily the plug-in variety so that bat- tery charge is easily available from the grid, is the fact that any unbiased evaluation will show that for most benefit the present designs are highly regional and in the aggregate, benefits in regard to climate change and burning of fossil fuel are open to question. Away in the background, though, the way to an acceptable design has been identified. In the words of an EPA executive: “The auto industry has yet to wake up.”

Lost indeed, when the CEO of a major manufacturer of electric cars pronounces: “We’ve got to have electric cars and get off using fossil fuels,” when his product is almost wholly dependent on energy generated by fossil fuels. 

The current situation is murky, at best. Existing gasoline powered cars boast an unassailable attribute called stand-alone independence. Independence is lost with grid dependent electric cars.The Federal Government, including its agency concerned with such matters, encourages manufacture of electric cars that draw power from the grid without regard to the consequences. To name one: There are frequent power outages from storms that may take days or weeks to get back to normal. The situation is apt to get worse rather than improve as a result of global warming, which indeed, the electric car in its present design may exacerbate.

Electric cars that obtain their battery charge by plugging into the grid in regions like Washington State and Western New York where electric power is primarily hydro do make sense.They also make sense in areas where power to the grid is geothermal, photoelectric, solar thermal, wind but these as yet form a very small part of the total U.S. power generated. Nuclear energy may fit the description of clean supply until one realizes that these plants operate at capacity and further demand is supplied by fossil fuel burning plants.

The percentage of electric cars that depend on a grid supplied by fossil fuels correlates roughly with the percentage of U.S. power generation that is fossil fuel based, which is about two thirds. Nuclear is another nineteen percent, and all other sources combined furnish a mere ten per cent.
Visions of an electric car as a coal burner or a natural gas burner may go against the grain, but that is the reality. Technology and systems engineering have missed the boat, But it is not too late to change, because the technology to do so is already a hundred years old.

Thermodynamic efficiency and resultant impact on climate change, i.e. release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere are the key issues. Published data on generating plant efficiency vary, but typically fall within a range from twenty eight percent to about thirty-three per cent for coal burning plants and thirty three to thirty eight percent for natural gas burning plants. A limited number of combined cycle plants perform as high as fifty per cent. There are 600 coal burning plants distributed around the United States. All but two states generate a part of their electrical energy in coal plants. The owner of an electric car is thus quite likely to be driving a coal burner, or at least a natural gas burner, since two thirds of the U.S. power supply comes from those two sources. From the standpoint of efficiency, for example, should one be drawing power from a coal burning plant that operates at twenty eight per cent efficiency, an electric car would be operating at an efficiency that takes into account additional drive system losses, which are about ten per cent. With a thermal efficiency well under thirty percent, besides continuing to rely on fossil fuels, the electric car is thus a poor second to modern gasoline burning motor cars, which may have a thermal efficiency as high as forty per cent.

The Chevrolet Volt, if driven locally, with frequent charges of its battery from the grid,
may be nothing more than a coal burner. At extended ranges, when its gasoline fueled engine kicks in, it becomes a conventional automobile, operating on refined fossil fuel. Claims of benefit to climate change are ill-founded.

An alternative to depending on the grid for electrical power is on-board power generation. That immediately brings to mind fuel cells instead of batteries, drawing on a supply of stored hydrogen or methane. The idea is old and has yet to gain traction. In 1959 Allis-Chalmers built a farm tractor that operated on natural gas fuel cells. It was successful but the concept was not carried beyond a demonstrator vehicle. These fuels have problems with leakage probability. For that reason insurance companies will doubtless ban garaging of such vehicles. Systems under pressure are not dependably leak proof. We see it in aircraft, rockets, and even in the air conditioning systems of automobiles. These are relatively few in number. With millions of automobiles, leakage, because of the fire and explosion dangers involve, becomes a serious problem

The safe technology for an on-board system with a potential near-zero carbon footprint originated a hundred years ago with the introduction of the diesel electric locomotive, first in Europe, then in the United States. Its many advantages led to displacement of all steam locomotives. The same technology is applicable to automobiles, with the exception that the Diesel engines driving the generator would be bio-Diesel, now coming into common usage. Still, seamless transition to all bio seems likely, as ordinary Diesel fuel can be substituted for bio-Diesel if required. Only a modest complement of batteries is needed for the bio-Diesel to keep charged. Diesel engines in development offer prospects of operating efficiencies as high as fifty-percent. On-board generation in this manner offers prospect of automobiles with a thousand mile range and a near zero carbon footprint, a feature no electric car can claim today.

Availability of biofuel is an attendant issue, and offers opportunity rather than problems. Among the many potential sources is hemp, which is currently banned erroneously as a source of smokable cannabis. Hemp will grow virtually anywhere, including land that is otherwise unusable. Bio-fuels are the subject of research in many areas, for example, in Craig Venter’s new research facility on the campus of the University of California, San Diego.
Hemp could become an enormous new cash crop for farmers.

With this recommended approach to electric car design, the driver preserves stand-alone independence and has confidence that the car being driven does not contribute to global warming. These are fundamental to sensible electric car design.

EXILUS II

Sail on, my love,
Sail on!
The Furies await
The arrival of a sister.

Bitter, the winds
That will take you there,
Upon raging seas,
In the dark of the night.

WAR

Do not send young men into war.
Let them have fun With our battle machines 
In the deserts and the skies above. 
When war comes, For one cause or another, 
Only men over seventy May rise to do battle, 
to die, gloriously, valiantly, 
heroically, without regret. 
Wars must go on. 
They must never cease, 
Because they define humanity.

Edward J. Hujsak

July, 2014

copyright free 

MISSION FOR NASA'S SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM

The following op-ed was published in the June 23, 2014 issue of Space News

MISSION FOR SLS by Edward Hujsak
Now may be a propitious time to raise the question: Is it better to undertake an occasional manned mission, at a cost of many billions of dollars, to explore asteroids, return to the moon, and journey to Mars, or should we stay close to the planet and exploit a region that has so far been only touched upon, despite the availability of the hugely expensive but sparsely manned Interna- tional Space Station. An April 22 column by Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, titled “NASA’s lofty goal of a manned Mars mission doesn’t match budget reality,” and subsequently printed in other newspapers under the title: “Lost in Space,” underscores the confusion concerning the future.
There are two dominant scenarios, admitted;y with variations in each:

1. Occasional high dollar ventures by astronauts to destinations like asteroids, Mars and the moon. For the most part, these are long, dangerous journeys, unlikely, however to sustain public interest for long, until the destination is reached and then there is a short spurt of heart-stopping activity. (missions to Mars generate wide interest only after the spacecraft has landed).Then, the long journey home. This scenario calls for infrequent SLS launches which will therefore be very high cost, and result in exploring space at a snail’s pace. The United States is arguably the leader in undertaking such missions, having already sent astronauts to the moon several decades ago. But it is also the leader in robotic missions, even to the distant planets. A four decade hiatus has followed the last exploratory manned mission: Apollo. Will another such hiatus follow a manned mission to Mars?

2,The second scenario envisions a robust activity along several lines in low Earth orbit, quite within existing capability and for which the pattern has already been set by the Soviet Union’s Mir and the United States’ Skylab, follow-on to Apollo. Instead of monster structures like the International Space Station, what is envisioned are turnkey stations mirroring Skylab, of a size that can be lifted into orbit by single flights of the SLS....around seventy-five metric tons.

It is a fair assumption that many nations in the world would like independent access to a turnkey station, through lease or actual purchase, as well as transportation to and from. A part of it may simply be prestige, but more likely it would be independent research by its own scientists who need the space environment to proceed. These activities may range from medical research to fundamental materials research and development, particularly in the nano region, a relatively new frontier. A second application that caters to frivolous but adventurous tastes is tourist hotels. For some, and there are many who can afford it, a week in earth orbit would be the adventure of a lifetime.

The new paradigm envisions a bustling near-Earth activity, with perhaps hundreds of people in orbit doing valuable work in multiple stations, and at the same time proceeding with robotic exploration of the outer regions, which is being done now with spectacular success. It foretells major new industries.....design and construction of work stations, design, development and implementation of a reusable transportation system for economical transfer of personnel, and a system for control, monitoring and servicing of stations as they age in service. It brings into focus the challenge of operating in low Earth orbit with positive return on investment, as we do at geosynchronous orbit.

This is the only plausible scenario that will ensure a requirement for SLS flights at a reasonable rate. For other proposed missions, flights will be few and far between.......possibly years apart. Thus they will be very expensive if one factors in the cost of keeping a launch crew and production in place.

The United States is not the only nation that can undertake this unique opportunity. Russia can certainly do it, and one wonders to what purpose they would be undertaking development of an HLLV, with a seventy-five metric ton payload capacity, as recently announced. China too, a recent newcomer, with no presence at the International Space Station, has already a demonstrated ability with its own station and is capable of huge surprises.

In summary, this is one way to keep a vibrant space program in place, with inherent drivers to develop a reusable passenger transportation system, vastly improved situation for beneficial discoveries, improved cooperation among nations and an enormous new employment base for technological talent that presently lies dormant, risking loss of skills in an extremely valuable area.

Mars and asteroids can wait. If we take the route of missions spaced decades apart, of which there may be just one-of, there will exist little reason for the next generation to look to space as a career opportunity.

ELECTRIC CARS AND THEIR MANY QUESTIONABLE DESIGNS

THE FOLLOWING PAPER WAS SENT TO THE TRANSPORTATION HEAD AT THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA).

This article is to point out the many fallacious notions and approaches to electric car designs and finally suggests an approach which, hopefully, the Department of Energy will sponsor.
To begin: electric cars which charge their batteries from the grid are highly regional in their efficacy. A car like the Tesla, for example, may make sense in Washington State or in Western New York where the energy source for the grid is predominately hydro. Also in regions where solar, wind and geothermal are available, and where nuclear power plants generate electrical energy. The latter may be significant, furnishing nineteen percent of US Power, but the other sources are insignificant. By far the greatest part of US energy is supplied by coal and natural gas burning plants (sixty-four percent). Because of the low thermal efficiency of these plants, the thermal efficiency of electric cars that draw from the grid runs less than that of most modern gasoline powered cars.This has huge negative implications.
We arrive then, at the question: “Are there other approaches to electric car designs?” We soon discover that there are two general approaches: electric cars that have a large bank of batteries and draw from the grid and electric cars that have on-board generation from various sources with a modest complement of batteries. The first approach has engendered an assortment of research and development programs to develop a lighter weight, more efficient, long life and less costly battery.
But it does nothing to reduce the electric car’s dependence on fossil fuels. A continued trend and expansion along this line has ominous log term consequences. It is because of the gradual conversion of coal burning plants to “natural gas” which occurs as both fossil fuel and non-fossil fuel....the latter in prodigious amounts, probably world-wide, yet to be uncovered. The salt brines deep under the states of Louisiana and Texas alone contain an estimated deposit of methane amounting to 150,000 quads (annual total energy consumption in the United States is 70 quads). Burning and subsequent release of all that carbon as carbon dioxide is unthinkable.
With on-board generation, one immediately comes up with either hydrogen fuel cells (as far back as 1947 Allis-Chalmers built and demonstrated a tractor that ran on methane fuel cells). But besides the question of safety and doubtfulness that

insurance companies will approve the garaging of hydrogen or natural gas fuel cell powered cars, there are other serious considerations. Where does hydrogen come from? The standard industrial process makes it from methane, with attendant release of the compound’s carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Another method is electrolysis at off-peak hours in generating plants. This might be effective in hydro plants, but doubtfully elsewhere. Meanwhile, California has inexplicably embarked on creating a distribution of hydrogen gas stations.
With all the questions raised and doubtful gains of on-board generation with fuel cells, there is still a better way to build an electric car, with unassailable benefits. Still favoring on-board generation of power, it is a design that uses a high- performance biodiesel generator that runs at constant speed to keep a small bank of batteries charged, taking advantage of the fact that current development points to diesel efficiencies approaching fifty percent. Availability of biodiesel fuel is growing. California already has nineteen biodiesel dispensing stations.
Such an automobile could easily boast of a thousand mile range. Moreover, it has added flexibility in that short trips like to the grocery store needn’t start the diesel engine, and if on a long trip one runs out of fuel, batteries are enough to make it to the next biodiesel pump.
Creation of a demonstrator by the EPA as a model for the automotive industry would be a relatively simple engineering effort and could be done for under $100K. Strongly recommended is an RFP to do this, with appropriate funding.

THE YEAR OF THE DAISY

I'm happy to report that my new book THE YEAR OF THE DAISY AND OTHER LOVE POEMS
is in print.... a limited edition of 500, all copies signed and numbered It will shortly be available on Amazon, but can be purchased directly from the publisher  Mina-Helwig Company, PO Box 1292, La Jolla, CA 92038-1292 ($29.95 ppd , check or m.o.).
The book is dedicated to "Two remarkable women" and is beautifully illustrated by my grandniece, artist Elizabeth Zaikowski (artofelizabethzaikowski.com).
I may have posted  the title poem before, but to repeat:

The Year of the Daisy

That was the year
That daisies all decided
to perform flawlessly,
To help humanity
Along its faltering way
Every one, its petals plucked
To rhythmic chants:
She loves me, she loves me not,
Would tell you that she loves you.
He loves me, he loves me not,
Would tell you that he loves you.

It was her favorite flower, you know.
Garlands framed the altar
Where we said our last good byes.

Now this lavender bloom,
Lifted from the roadside,
Has graced my table for a week.
Drawn into its lonely self at night,
It flares to fullness at daybreak,
atop a dime store, Ming inspired,
Thin-stem porcelain vase.
I pluck its petals one by one.
She loves me, she loves me not.
She loves me, she loves me not
.................She loves me

A MISSION FOR NASA's SLS

In theory, energy needs at the biosphere’s existing population level of close to seven billion could be met  with a mix of clean sources that are  hydro, nuclear, photovoltaic (ground), solar thermal, geothermal, biofuels and photovoltaic (space based) and thus arrest the oncoming problem of climate change. Thorium based nuclear plants are an interesting possibility as thorium is plentiful.
    Where does space exploitation enter the picture? Studies during the latter part of the twentieth century confirmed the feasibility of erecting giga-watt scale solar power  collectors stationed at geosyncronous orbit, configured to beam power via microwave to terrestrial receivers. As a minimum, the government should fund the development and deployment of a demonstrator. If successful, in the normal course of events, utilities companies would take over, just as industry followed up when communications satellites were shown to be practical and economically promising. At present, lacking any serious mission, it makes sense from several aspects as a first mission for the SLS, not the least of which is prospect of payback.
    If Earth population growth continues at the present rate of around one per cent per year, it will double in under seventy years, and energy demand will concurrently at least double and could triple as consumer demand spreads across the globe.  Emissions will grow with population growth, and deforestation will reduce corrective ability, thus speeding up climate change.  The last ten years were the warmest on record. The trend is likely to continue, probably at a higher rate, due to the nature of positive feedback. Disbelievers confuse weather with climate change. A weather event like the exceedingly cold parts of the United states during the winter of 2014 underscores the arguments of the disbelievers. The consequences of climate change have been predicted and must be taken seriously: higher temperatures, calamitous storms, flooded lands from ocean levels, uninhabitable tropics, starvation and mass die-offs, and massive  diasporas into areas of moderate temperature, Canada and Siberia.
    On the bright side, and paradoxically also on the dark side, it is turning out that carbon based energy is plentiful, even if the population doubles and even without any effort to produce clean energy. The problem facing humanity is to stop its use or suffer the consequences. Absent serious concern and action, corporate power and weak governance are likely to prevent anything of the sort occurring. Politics will prevent any corrective measure like the suggested space power development from being promoted and funded.
    The elephant in the room is methane.... non-fossil methane, which is secreted in prodigious quantities beneath Earth’s surface. In  Earth’s early history, before there was plant life, methane was a significant component of the atmosphere. Along with other gases, it was pushed into subterranean cavities and fissures, as well as into solution in hot brines in vast quantities and sealed by subsequent crustal movements. As an example, estimates of the amount of methane dissolved in hot brines deep below Louisiana and Texas and extending into the Gulf run as high as 105,000 quads. The annual U.S. energy consumption is about 70 quads. How many such deposits exist worldwide? U.S. patents cover extraction methods that are already in development. In another area, non-fossil methane is harvested by employing advanced drilling technology and fracking, to fracture  the methane-containing rocky structure with high pressure water, releasing the entrapped  gas. All this spells big trouble, as corporate power and greed will exploit and keep governance in a state of helplessness.
    Perceptive, sensitive and sensible governance would say no. This source of energy must stay bottled up because it will certainly lead to the ruination of the biosphere. We have the ability, and we have the technology to obtain our energy, clean energy, from where it is the most plentiful.... from the sun.
    NASA  sponsored studies of space based solar power in the last decades of the twentieth century. Feasibility was proven. A sensible first mission for the SLS would be a solar power demonstrator. In the course of events, with success, utilities companies will step in, much as communications companies stepped in when the government demonstrated geosynchronous communications satellites.