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Travels and Images
WEEK 47 2004
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Saturday 20
November
2004
Saturday - out of town.
Friday 19 November
2004
Friday - on travel.
Thursday 18
November 2004
Thursday
- keeping pretty busy with things.
I watched an interesting show on Discovery Channel on the assassination
of John F. Kennedy. Generally I just roll my eyes and change the
channel when these come on - I'm not much of a conspiracy believer -
but this seemed rather better researched than most. It seemed to show
that the 'lone gunman' theory was quite plausible after all, with
reenactments and such, that the 'grassy knoll' shooter was unlikely and
that the 'magic bullet' needn't have been so magical after all.
I head down to San Diego - and dialup - tomorrow, so light to
non-existent posting for a few days...
Wednesday
17 November 2004
Wednesday - just working away on stuff.
Not a lot to say. At the request of a reader I have now removed the 120
seconds refresh tag from these pages. He said that IE would jump back
to the top of the page each time it refreshed, thus making it hard to
read through "the Socratic war crimes
stuff". Heh. [ But it was Okay in Firefox 1.0, which is what
people should be using these days anyway.]
A entertaining Slovakian
Slovenian web page: The
Glory of Carniola. An excerpt:
I really don't want to die in a
Slovenian roundabout. Like you and
everyone else, I want to die with dignity. Maybe asleep in bed. Or
listening to music on the sofa. Or surrounded by loved ones. Definitely
not bleeding to death in an automotive wreck in a Godforsaken
roundabout. With the last thing I ever hear being some teenager in a Metallica shirt standing over me saying,
"Woah, that was totally awesome!!! Did that fireball hurt? Are you
okay?"
I felt, after being in England a while, that I could drive adequately
in Europe, roundabouts excepted.
Someday, maybe.
Tonight it is 'Chinese Acrobats' at the LPAC. I am well enough to go
out I think - just a little congested now - and since I already paid
for the tickets and am eager to get out of the house I'm going to give
it a try.
Tuesday 16 November
2004
Tuesday - the Hyper-X had a successful
flight. I watched via NasaTv online,
which was pretty cool. I recognized many of the faces and voices. A
successful engine light and burn. As one engineer remarked it was
either neutral acceleration or net thrust. I never heard the results of
the Mach=7 flight, but within a few days they had preliminary claims of
net thrust.
Which reminds me of a story. A few years back there was a scramjet test
in Australia, and some of the personnel came out to Dryden to talk
about it. The talk was to be after lunch, and during lunch I mentioned
to my co-workers at the table that the big question, the golden fleece of hypersonic research,
was net thrust
and that it would be very interesting to see what was said. The first
thing said was "We did not achieve net thrust. We were not looking for net thrust, just in-flight
stable supersonic combustion." Ahem. Unbeknownst to me, they had
been sitting at the next table during lunch and overheard my comment.
And their achievement was indeed a first, and a notable and laudable
success.
We like to think of the Edwards AFB range as "big". Heh. The range in
Australia is the size of the state of New Mexico!
It was interesting watching the conference on today's flight, and the
various answers to variations on "Where are you going from
here?". Because the answer is, basically, nowhere. The aeronautics programs
have been cut at NASA, and will continue to decline for the foreseeable
future. Which, given the importance of civil and military aeronautics
is sad, and foolish. But it's the way it is. But to the hypersonics
people, some of whom have working towards this goal for fifty years, it's a day to remember!
Monday
15 November 2004
Monday - working away, not a lot to say.
The Hyper-X was scheduled to fly a Mach 10 test, but didn't because of
comm troubles. Maybe tomorrow they say. Best of luck to them.
Heh - I can remember sitting for hours, bored out of my mind, waiting
for the telemetry and comm guys to get their accursed stuff working. Or
mechanical problems on the old B-52 launch vehicle, or the test article
itself. The newbies are always excited by the idea of spending time in
the control room or SAF, those of us that have actually done it are a
bit less enthused. It had to be done - Dryden is, after all, a flight
test organization - but it can be tedious.
Sunday 14 November
2004
Sunday - Went for a walk and took a
few pictures of the turning leaves. Watched some bad teevee.
The
final part of the 'Ed's book report'
Finished the third and final part of 'Ripples of Battle', which covers
the battle of Delium in 424 B.C. I have to say that I wasn't as
impressed by it as by the first two parts, but then again, I'm an
American and Shiloh and Okinawa were American battles. Delium was one
of the first big battles of the Peloponnesian war, between Athens and
Boeotia - a second front in Athens war against Sparta, and was a
terrible defeat for Athens.
It needn't have been - Athens was winning the battle when some
Boeotian calvary troops showed up on the Athenian flank, and the
Athenians, thinking great reinforcements for the Boetians were
arriving, panicked, broke, and were cut down in retreat.
The ripples that Hanson identifies here are
- the survival of Socrates on the Athenian side
- the survival of Alcibiades on the Athenian side
- the death of the Athenian general and survival of the Boetian
general
Socrates was a middle aged hoplite (foot soldier) in this battle,
and managed to survive the retreat, staying calm and collected. He was
probably at this time more of a 'natural philosopher', i.e. scientist,
than a philosopher in the sense of morals and value - that came later,
but only because he survived the battle. So the big ripple (wave?) is
his survival and importance to western thought and philosophy.
Alcibiades was a military genius whose only allegiance was to
himself. He eventually fought for, and against, Athens, Sparta and
Persia. His survival was
partially responsible for the eventual defeat of Athens.
The death of the Athenian general, Hippocrates, was probably because
the custom at this time was to 'lead from the front'. Generally battles
prior to this time had been mostly small, between neighboring cities,
and were simply groups of soldiers lining up a hundred yards or so
apart, then having at it for an hour or two, after which it was over
and everyone went home. Little in the way of strategy or tactics took
place. But by 424 BC this had started to change.
The cause of the battle was strategic
- Athens wanted to secure her northern border, but the Athenian general
fought the battle itself old style. Like Johnson at Shiloh this caused
his death, and there was no-one to lead and avert panic when an
unexpected enemy appeared. The Boeotian general, Pandrogas, apparently
was not leading from the
front, but rather was in control enough of the battle to detach calvary
units around the side of the Athenians to panic them. He was using
modern tactics, and thus he
survived, and his side won. No doubt this
was noticed and remarked upon at the time, and probably emulated.
