Counting My Blessings

A few weeks ago, my Jeep started to drip.

It began with just a few mysterious drops of liquid on my garage floor. It wasn't a huge amount of liquid, so I wasn't too concerned. Just something to keep an eye on.

When I went to Jiffy Lube for my oil change, I asked the greasy yokels to see if they could determine what was leaking and where it was coming from. They determined it was coolant but probably not something that required immediate attention. They then went on to encourage me to get my front and rear differential "serviced" and to replace my papal white air filter. I was disinclined to acquiesce to their request. Means "no".

But last week the discharge became increasingly copious. Climaxing on Friday when I left my office to find a stream of coolant flowing from beneath my beloved Jeep and down the garage ramp. I could even see an arc of drops in front of my jeep from where I had backed into my parking spot.

Nothing says "Friday" like having your vehicle positioned to head straight the fuck out!

Because I had to have my radiator replaced a few years ago, I still had some 50/50 coolant mix in my trunk. So I pulled it out, topped off the overflow reservoir before driving home. In fact I put in just a little too much.

I kept an eye on the thermostat on the way home, but it never wavered off the middle point. No hint of overheating. So again, not that concerned.

Saturday morning, I check the garage and there is a huge stream of coolant on the floor running the length of my Jeep! Not. Fucking. Good.

I pop the hood and notice two things.

1. Overflow reservoir is mostly empty, but not completely empty.
2. Radiator is completely full. Green liquid, right on top.

Like any good arm chair scientist, I reach some logical conclusions based on my observations.

1. The radiator was recently replaced, the radiator is full of coolant, therefore the radiator is not the source of the leak.

2. The overflow reservoir is almost, but not entirely empty. I suspect a leak between the overflow reservoir and the radiator small enough to be dependant upon the temperature of the coolant (heat causes things to expand) and the volume of the liquid (large volume weighs more and exerts more force).

I'm thinking an old, dried up, brittle, hose (my 2nd wife's favored "term of endearment" for me, BTW), has developed a leak. I'm thinking it should be a cheap fix.

My preferred garage is closed on Saturday and Sunday, so I decide to hole-up for the weekend and get the Jeep in first thing Monday morning.

Today was payday. So this morning I had 2 priorities. Get the Jeep checked out and cover my rent check.

Dropped off my Jeep and the garage staff shuttled me to work. Covered my rent check. Feeling pretty good about my Monday.

Until (wait for it) I get the call from the garage.

1. The leak is coming from the radiator and it needs to be replaced. It was still under warranty so it was "only" about $320.00.

2. Coolant is "seeping" from the water pump.

3. Coolant is "seeping" from the thermostat.

Now, I'm 54 years old. I'm accustomed to a little "seepage". I can live with that.

So although $320.00 was WAY more than I expected to spend, I told him to go ahead and replace the radiator, but hold off on the water pump and thermostat.

Sucks to be me, not what I expected, but I can live with it.

Until I get the next call.

After they replaced the radiator and re pressurized the coolant system, the water pump went tits up. Now the Jeep is undriveable unless I replace the water pump.

Now I'm looking at $635.00 just to pick my Jeep up and drive it home!

Fuck me running! Today was payday and I am already broke!

I live paycheck to paycheck. I get paid on the 15th and the end of the month. The end of the month covers my rent. The 15th covers utilities, cable, cell phone and car insurance. I don't have any credit cards, no outstanding loans, no mortgage, no car payments. It's a bit precarious, but it works for me.

I had been putting some cash aside for a new set of tires and shocks, so I had a very marginal buffer. This saved my ass.

I was able to move some things around and I think I can make this work. Barely.

The owner's wife picks me up after work and takes me back to the garage. She's a chatty little thing. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. I forget how it came up in the conversation, but at some point I'm listening to her talk about their trips to Vegas, their Caribbean cruises, their home on the lake and their boat!

I start tweaking out!

BITCH! I'm about to pay you $635.00 that I don't actually have! Gonna need you to SHUT THE FUCK UP about your lavish motherfucking lifestyle!

But at my lowest point, I complained to my closest confidant that this is one of the WORST things about not being in a relationship. Having to deal with this kind of shit all on your own, without anyone having your back.

Her reply brought me back down to Earth.

"Well then get a relationship, goober! U will be OK. :) I do plenty all by my damn self! U can do it too! SUCK IT UP! LOL! :)"

This, people, is why she's my best friend.

Lessons Learned:

1. I'm a whiny little bitch. I'm facing a moderately challenging 2 weeks. Millions of people deal with overwhelmingly challenging circumstances every fucking day for their entire lives, year, after year, after year. I need to shut the fuck up.

2. I'm lucky to have a job. A whole lot of people don't.

3. The timing was in my favor. The catastrophic failure occurred immediately before my payday and I had the money to pay for the repair.

4. Keep shoveling as much money as I can into savings!

5. Friends who don't hesitate to mercilessly bitch-slap some perspective into you are more valuable than a vault full of gold.

Tiger Woods - What Really Happened

Tiger Woods plays golf for a living and is married to a fucking Supermodel.


They're rich as fuck. They have kids.


They have pets.



Yet despite having a seemingly perfect life, the rumor is he had an affair with professional skank Rachel Uchitel.

[thanks @manningtheship http://bit.ly/859fxx]


Now we have word that Tiger left his house after 2am and accidently hit a fire hydrant and and tree, after which his wife broke out the back wind shield of his SUV to rescue him.

BOOL! SHEET!

I've been married a couple of times and been in a A LOT of relationships. Here's what I think happened.

He got into a fight with his wife over his affair, she grabbed one of his own golf clubs and came after him wanting to cave his fucking skull in. He called 911 (tape to surface later) and he ran for his life in his SUV. She threw the fucking golf club at him breaking out his rear window, and he was so freaked out he didn't notice the fire hydrant and the tree he crashed in to.

"Windermere police chief Daniel Saylor told The Associated Press that officers found Woods, 33, lying in the street with his wife, Elin Nordegren, next to him.

She told officers she was in the house when she heard the accident and "came out and broke the back window with a golf club". Woods had lacerations to his upper and lower lips, and he had blood in his mouth, Saylor said."

Again, BOOLSHEET! She dragged his ass out of his fucked up Escalade and beat the shit out of him till the police showed up and pulled her ass off of him!

As in all exclusive communities (like Johnson County), the police exist not to enforce the law, but to protect the reputations of the rich residents and their children.

Expect official statements from every level of government and law enforcement to continue to cover up the alcohol-fueled, domestic violence angle.

Until the truth finally forces its way to the surface.

I got 20 bucks says I'm right.


Anybody want to take that bet?

More Sloppy Reporting

Sometimes, I think they do this shit on purpose to drive me insane! Actually, that's no longer a drive, it's more like a short putt!

[insert soft, polite, golf tournament applause here]

Found this news story on KMBC.com today. No byline, so not sure who to blame for this abortion.

Scientist Confirms Meteorite Landed In Kan.

10-Year-Old Found Black Rock On Saturday

It's a short article and I don't want to abuse the "Fair Use" doctrine, so I'll cut to the money shot.

"Don Stimpson of Haviland, a biophysicist who owns the Kansas Meteorite Museum and Nature Center near Greensburg, said he is convinced the rock is a meteorite.

Stimpson saw the rock during a visit to Liberal Tuesday. He said it likely came from the atmosphere around the sun and fell as far as 100 million miles."

"...the atmosphere around the sun..." Seriously?

So, you're saying that meteoroid which entered the atmosphere and became the meteorite which Opie found originated in the Corona of the sun?



Because I was not aware that the corona of the sun produced bolides and hurled them at the Earth in the solar wind.

I'll have to fire off an email to Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy and let him know to add "mean Sun throwing rocks at Earth" to the next revision of "Death From The Skies".

We've all heard the story about how dropping a penny off the Empire State Building could kill somebody.

Imagine how potentially deadly this hunk o' sun-stone was after it "...fell as far as 100 million miles." I assume this "biophysicist" was alluding to the fact that the sun that spat this rock at us is 93 million miles away (rounding up FAIL).

Just for the record, shit in space doesn't just "fall" to Earth! There are some pretty complicated orbital mechanics that goven how bodies with mass interact with each other.

Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket!

Just for the record, a few facts.

Most of the really bright meteors you see are the bright streaks left by meteoroids about the size of a grain of sand.

The source of most meteoroids is comet residue orbiting the sun at a perpendicular angle to the orbit of the Earth. It's not so much that the meteoroids hit us, it's more like we plow into them them.

Oh, and one last fact, THEY AREN'T GENERATED IN THE SOLAR CORONA!!!

Fuck!

Altair

I was bored this afternoon so I did some googling on the Constellation Program. Specifically the Altair Lunar Lander design.

It's a beast!

Look at the relative size of an Apollo astronaut to a Lunar Module...


Compared to Constellation Program astronauts to the Altair...


Of course, it needs to be a beast. The Lunar Module only needed to land and support 2 astronauts for a few days.

Altair will land 4 astronauts and support them for up to 2 weeks while their empty and automated Orion transport vehicle remains in lunar orbit awaiting their return.



That's a lot of consumables! Air, water, food, equipment, not to mention infrastructure for the permanent lunar bases.

I know I'm geeking out about this so I'll try to keep it (relatively) short.

One of the biggest problems the Apollo astronauts had was lunar dust. On Earth, dust is a soft, fluffy annoyance. On the moon, it is a jagged, abrasive hazard that clings to everything with static electricity and works its way into the deepest crevices and can compromise the integrity of spacesuits and life support equipment.



Altair attempts to solve this problem with a "front porch". It will have its own air lock!

In order to make an Apollo era moonwalk, the astronauts had to don their bulky EVA suits in the Lunar Module, depressurize the Ascent Stage and leave the front door open as they cavorted on the lunar surface.

While working on the lunar surface, they got really, really, dirty!



When they were done, they wore those dirty suits back into the Ascent Stage, repressurized the module and breathed in all of that abrasive lunar dust as it worked it's way into the primitive electronics and life support equipment. It also carried a static charge which posed its own risk to the equipment.

Altair will have an airlock that serves as storage space for the lunar EVA suits and the equipment to be deployed on the lunar surface. All of the dusty EVA stuff gets left in the airlock when the astronauts re-enter the ascent module.


You can see the airlock in the above illustration as the domed cylindrical object just to the right of the Ascent Module. The airlock is actually part of the Descent Module structure and remains on the lunar surface. It gets left behind on the lunar surface as the Ascent Module returns to Lunar Orbit to rendezvous with the Orion return vehicle.



That's a sweet piece of engineering!

Here is a tour of a really rough mock up of Altair where you can see just how big that "front porch" is.

The Altair Lunar Lander is to the Apollo Lunar Module what the Boeing 787 is to the Douglas DC 3.

I just love this shit!

"NASA finds 'significant' water on moon"

Full Disclosure - The graphic above came from this Flickr account and is in no way related to the facts of this story.

(CNN) -- NASA said Friday it had discovered water on the moon, opening "a new chapter" that could allow for the development of a lunar space station.

The discovery was announced by project scientist Anthony Colaprete at a midday news conference.

"I'm here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit; we found a significant amount" -- about a dozen, two-gallon bucketfuls, he said, holding up several white plastic containers.

The find is based on preliminary data collected when the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, intentionally crashed October 9 into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole.

After the satellite struck, a rocket flew through the debris cloud, measuring the amount of water and providing a host of other data, Colaprete said.

The project team concentrated on data from the satellite's spectrometers, which provide the best information about the presence of water, Colaprete said. A spectrometer helps identify the composition of materials by examining light they emit or absorb.

Before I cut loose with a major SQUEEEEEEEEEE I have to get a couple of things out of my system, because this type of sloppy reporting, hell, just sloppy writing drives me nucking futs!

Let's start with the very first sentence.

"NASA said Friday it had discovered water on the moon, opening "a new chapter" that could allow for the development of a lunar space station."

OK, a "space station" is an orbiting facility like the ISS. It's called a space station because it's you know, IN SPACE. A facility on the moon would be a "Lunar Base" or a "Lunar Outpost" or a "Lunar Research Station". Saying "lunar space station" is like saying "suburban aircraft carrier".

"The find is based on preliminary data collected when the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, intentionally crashed October 9 into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole.

After the satellite struck, a rocket flew through the debris cloud, measuring the amount of water and providing a host of other data, Colaprete said."

]]BANGING HEAD ON DESK[[

No, no, sweet bleeding Jebus, NO! Fuck!

The "Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS" was the satellite. Know how I know it was the satellite? Because the word satellite is part of it's fucking name!

The rocket referenced is the spent Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V that launched the LCROSS.

After putting them both on the proper trajectory to impact Cabeus crater, the booster and satellite swung around so that the now empty and useless booster was the leading edge of the stack with the satellite trailing.

On final approach, the two separated and the Centaur became the primary impactor followed by the LCROSS which contained the all of the instrumentation, recording and transmission equipment needed to test the ejecta of the Centaur's impact for the presence of water vapor and send the information back to Earth for analysis.

So if, as the story reported, "After the satellite struck, a rocket flew through the debris cloud, measuring the amount of water and providing a host of other data" then this mission would have been a massive, monumental, biblical FAIL and some former aerospace engineer would be asking some stoners "Do you want to SuperSize that and make it a Combo?"

Now, I'm fairly knowledgeable about space stuff. But I wasn't entirely sure about the details of the mission. I wanted to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass.

"How did you do that XO?"

I'm glad you asked.

I did not fly to the Northrop Grumman clean-room facility at Redondo Beach, California and interview payload scientist Kimberly Ennico or software engineer Mark Shirley.

Nor did I pay a visit to NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California which is managing the mission, conducting mission operations, and developed the payload instruments to interview the NASA Project Managers.

No, I took a different approach.

I FUCKING GOOGLED "LCROSS MISSION PROFILE"!!

Guess what? Very top of the list!

You don't need a degree in journalism or a huge news-gathering budget and corporate infrastructure to fact check a news story. But you do need to be able to type 3 words into Google.

That's the sloppy reporting part.

The sloppy writing part was in the very next fucking sentence.

"The project team concentrated on data from the satellite's spectrometers, which provide the best information about the presence of water,"

WHOA! Wait! What? The "satellite's" spectrometers were able to provide data AFTER it had impacted the moon, followed by the "rocket" that flew through the satellite's plume of debris?

Holy Fuck! Those NASA engineers really know their shit! Their Kung Fu is STRONG!

I'm sorry. I meant for this to be about how important this discovery is but I got distracted by the shitty reporting.

And here's the thing. I notice these things because I am freakishly well versed in all things aeronautical and astronomical. Most folks wouldn't know that they were being misinformed.

But the fact that a major news outlet could get the story wrong when it is so incredibly fucking easy to get it right begs the question: How many other news stories do you hear that are also just plain wrong?

My guess is, almost all of them.

I'll try to write about the importance of lunar water again and will attempt to stay focused.

Sorry!

Thanks

My Dad served in two wars. He volunteered to serve in the Merchant Marines during WWII.


Then he was drafted into the Army during The Korean War.


His dad, my grandfather, served in the Signal Corps during WWI. Thanks, Pawie!




Both of my uncles on my mom's side served in WWII.

Thanks Uncle Bobby!


Thanks Uncle Stanley!



Thanks to all the Veterans.

The Weight of Software

Throwing shit into outer space has always been a battle between weight and thrust with gravity playing the referee.

You have to be able to generate more thrust than your payload weighs, and you have to keep doing that until the ballistic trajectory of your payload exceeds the diameter of the object you are trying to orbit.



But in order to generate the thrust you need propellant. For rockets that is liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which is very heavy and requires refrigeration, pressurization, fuel pumps, electronic monitoring equipment, triple redundancy, fail safe switches and more moving parts than any other machine made by man to keep it from blowing up like a bomb. All of which weighs something and requires more thrust.

So everything you launch into orbit has to be just strong enough to get the job done, but not a single bit stronger.

The modified Atlas ballistic missile that launched John Glenn into orbit had an aluminum skin thinner than a dime. It relied on the pressure of the hydrogen and oxygen fuel tanks to keep it rigid. It was basically a big, highly explosive, metal balloon with a really ballsy guy sitting on top.



That part of the rocket that looks white? It's actually the same color as the silvery aluminum parts. It's just covered with frost due to the frozen hydrogen and oxygen aboard. All of that frost carries a weight too. Everything has to be calculated to the last ounce.



See all of those big, huge, ice chunks falling off of the Apollo 11 Saturn V booster during the launch? They all weighed something and had to be factored into the weight of the booster by the engineers.

The Grumman Lunar Module that Neil Armstrong piloted to the surface of the moon with less than 10 seconds of fuel left had a skin about as thick as the heavy duty aluminum foil you use for your turkey on Thanksgiving.



So one of the design requirements that aeronautical engineers impose is to determine the weight of each component of the rocket stack early in the design so they know how much thrust will be required.

As software became a part of rockets to control navigation and fuel consumption, the aeronautical engineers wanted to know the weight of the software.

The programmers responded that it didn't weigh anything.

One day an aeronautical engineer came back all upset. He was holding a deck of punch cards and was insisting that this was what the software weighed.



To which the programmers responded, "No, you don't understand. We only use the holes."