Category Archives: Travel

Danes … in Space!

3 Replies

Copenhagen Suborbitals announced the the successful static test firing of their XLR-2 hybrid rocket motor on October 19th, 2008. The company states: “Our mission is very simple. We are working towards launching a human being into space.”

The rocket motor is comprised of a system that injects liquid oxygen into a solid epoxy core to generate combustion and thrust.  The victim astronaut assumes the position a semi-squatting position with their head in the clear plastic nose cone.  The passenger compartment is lifted into a parabolic trajectory topping the magic altitude of 100 km. I guess you get to call yourself an astronaut if you fly above 100 km.

( You see, the purpose of the rocket motor is to deliver the passenger to the scene of the disaster.)

I think I’ll pass my ticket to someone else this time.

Review: “Little Women” at the Lyceum

5 Replies

August 30, 2008, Arrow Rock, Missouri.  Like most boys, I failed to read Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women.  Okay, to be fair, a slight elaboration is needed. I failed to summon the interest in reading it.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that we were going to drive 744 miles (one way) to see a musical based on the book. The musical production of this story was staged at the Lyceum Theatre in Arrow Rock, Missouri. The theatre is a refurbished church and sits on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River valley. Lewis & Clark stopped there according to the historical markers.

Arrow Rock is a charming though obscure tourist village configured with a handfull of antique shops, B & B’s, and minor eateries. The town was a mid-19th century river port. Numerous warehouses and transport operations were once in operation. Eventually, the town went into a prolonged quiescent phase with the coming of rail transport. As if to cement its extinction, the Missouri River later changed its course and moved a mile away.

The town is now part of the Arrow Rock State Historic Site. The historic site status of the area has brought some traffic into this sleepy little hamlet.

And then there is the Lyceum Theatre. What is notable about this Theatre is not so much the setting as the quality of the actors it attracts. The productions are Actors Equity operations and the casting calls are in New York City. The actors fly in and reside in a dormitory in Arrow Rock for the duration of the production.

The result is a musical talent pool of high quality. We found the production of Little Women to be cleanly energetic and very crisp.  The stagecraft was very professional and relied on a liberal use of scrims and lighting.

The vocal talent across the cast was superb. The actor playing sister and lead character “Jo” was Mallory Hawks. She captured considerable depth in the part and displayed a verve that never failed to charm. This actor’s voice was exceptionally strong and clear. She was cannily emotive and lead the audience through an emotional series of highs and lows during the performance. I wish her well in her career.

For accomodations I would recommend the Down Over Bed and Breakfast in Arrow Rock. It is run by a charming retired couple who present a fantastic breakfast spread. It is reasonably priced and provides a relaxing setting for chronically twittered city folk.

Roadtrip

2 Replies

Th’ Gaussling & family are off on a road trip to the darkest interior of Missouri. With any luck, we’ll spot some of the fabled “hill people” at the nearby Road Kill Festival. We’ll partake in the local custom of dining on tree climbing mammals tenderized by an ’82 Chevy pickup.

I’ll be teaching a Festival shortcourse called HB-302 “Advanced Hillbilly Engineering Methods”, in the big white tent. Bring your own duct tape and uni-strut.

Climbus Maximus

4 Replies

Th’ Gaussling just received this photo of his good friend Paul on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. This is a real accomplishment and my hat is off to him.  Paul is a tenured perfesser of chemistry and is accustomed to slogging up endless slopes in the rarified air.  We overlap in our fascination with asymmetric lactam enolate alkylations and pyridazine chemistry.

Paul on Top of Africa

Paul on Top of Africa

Some Dam Photos

2 Replies

If you pay extra while on tour at Hoover Dam, the government will let you walk through a few extra corridors deep inside the dam. Near the end of the tour you can extend your camera outside an air vent from halfway down the structure and take a picture.

View of Hoover Dam from Air vent

View of Hoover Dam from Air vent

A major bridge project is underway that will, when complete, bypass traffic from the dam. Hoover Dam provides a crossing for Hwy 93 from NV to AZ.  The hope is that this thing gets done before NASA lands on the moon again.  The bridge will allow Homeland Security to shut the dam down to traffic and tourism in case bin Laden decides to try out the latest dam buster suicide vests.
Bridge Over Hoover Dam

Bridge Over Hoover Dam

Crime Scene in Gallup

7 Replies

August 5, 2008, Gallup, NM. Woke up in a cheap motel in Gallup this morning to the sound of crime scene investigators working up a scene 2 doors down. Something serious happened. Detectives milling about while 3 fellows in rubber gloves were handling evidence on the hood of their car. They had some sort of kit and were busy running their procedure. Somebody had a bad day.

Update. According to the lady at the desk, somebody expired in their room. The police were doing their routine schtick looking for signs of foul play.

Today we drove north on Route 666 491 through the Navajo Nation to a geometric point of interest where 4 states collide.

The Navajo’s charge $3/head for access to this geopolitical point. It is a remote spot where imaginary lines intersect. You can buy fry bread and refrigerator magnets in the numerous kiosks.

Things overheard at 4-Corners: The Navajo lady in the information shack was explaining (rather proudly) to a tourist from Toledo that the Utes refer to the Navajo as “Head Bashers” and “Bloody Knives”.  Hmmm. Some bad blood there.

Virgin Galactic’s 200 k$ Shuttlecock Ride

4 Replies

Pack your bags, boys and girls. Virgin Galactic is going to display their SpaceShipTwo at the upcoming AirVenture show in Oshkosh.  For 200 k$ you can strap a reusable rocket plane to your backside and take a suborbital flight. The AirVenture website has an animated video of a flight that is worth seeing. (The animators left out the floating vomitus that is sure to be a part of the experience.)

The designer and builder is none other than Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites. This second generation suborbital vehicle uses the same reentry stabilization scheme that the first vehicle used. The lifting craft has 4 engines- two outboard of each of the twin fuselage sections. It has 4 engines instead of two to protect against the undesirable situation of loss of thrust from one side of the plane. With the engines so far from the centerline, the asymmmetric thrust that would result would make the plane difficult to fly.

The space vehicle is carried to a suitably high altitude (ca 50,000 ft) for release followed by an 80 second boost from the rocket motor. The boost phase sends the craft into a suborbital arc carrying the craft to a projected 361,000 ft peak altitude.  The passengers are treated to a period of weightlessness between the moment the rocket motor quits and when the reentry phase begins to encounter significant atmospheric drag.

At some point after the boost is complete, the tail booms pitch into an elevated position quite far from the centerline of the craft. The craft has reaction motors that stabilize the flight attitude during the phase in which the aerodynamic control surfaces are ineffective.

The reentry attitude is one in which the underbody of the craft faces in the direction of motion so as to provide maximum drag. The elevated, or “feathered” tail elements serve to stabilize the motion of the craft as it accelerates belly first into the ever thickening atmosphere.  The stabilization that the feathered empannage provides is much like the stabilization afforded a shuttlecock.

The feathering configuration helps the crew manage the kinetic energy developed during reentry to the atmosphere. The scheme includes a deadstick landing, so energy management is quite important.  Eventually, the tail booms retract to the in-line position and the craft transitions to a gliding condition with conventional flight control surfaces.

Hometown Industry

1 Reply

Ah, the sweet drone of American English. It’s nice to travel, but it’s nicer to be home.

The conference in Bangkok was useful in many ways. For the most part, it gave Th’ Gaussling some needed perspective in an important segment of the Asian chemical market. North America is far from doomed, market-wise, though it is critical that we curb the rate of chemical de-industrialization going on here.

Manufacturing is the bedrock of our economy and one of the major pillars of our culture. I think that the notion of clean telecommuting promoted by the computer industry leads to the expectation that the country can become one large bedroom community, with dirty heavy industry left to banana republics and Asian tigers.

This notion is absurd and self destructive. If paper mills, refineries, and coal mines are too polluting, then industry needs to collaborate better with the chemical engineering departments around the country. If semiconductor and pharmaceutical manufacturing is too costly in the states, then industry needs to collaborate better with our research institutions.

We have too many non-technical MBA’s driving the country and it has to change. Ruthless finance manipulations must be replaced by ruthless technological advance. Delicate, abstract investment contrivances should be superceded by robust scientific and engineering achievement.