Monthly Archives: September 2012

View 743 Thursday, September 27, 2012

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

So Romney says he was joking about opening a jetplane window? Mad Magazine made a similar joke, long ago, in their parody of "Lost In Space". In the first panel the family was choking from lack of air; the robot droned, "why-don’t-you-open-a-window?" They did this, and it worked!

That joke worked for Mad because it’s a satire magazine; you read it knowing that nothing in it is meant as a factual statement. Is Romney running a satire campaign? Perhaps he should leave clowning to the professionals.

But seriously… one of the burdens of power is that the office does not permit joking. Or mistakes. Or spontaneity. All masters are slaves.

One of the privileges of power is to surround yourself with intelligent people so that if you say something that turns out to be wrong, someone will correct you. Of course there are politicians who do not choose to have intelligent people around them, and who intimidate their advisors so that they are not corrected; but the best do not operate that way. There may be people so intelligent that they never think or say anything egregiously incorrect, but I don’t know any of them. All of the competent leaders I have known – Reagan, Newt Gingrich, General Graham, Max Hunter, Possony – have expected their friends to speak up if they disagreed, and surrounded themselves with intelligent friends and advisors. As I have said often, one of the advantages of being me is that I have intelligent readers who will tell me if I say something silly, whether it was a simple mistake or due to incorrect information or just a slip of the mind.

I don’t know Romney, but having seen his accomplishments, particularly the reconstruction of the Olympic Games session, I would bet a lot that he likes to have smart people around him. As it happens I was on one of the advisory committees to Mr. Uberoff when he headed the LA 1984 Olympics (having been minorly involved in the LA bid made by Mayor Yorty). My involvement was mostly inconsequential but I was close enough to management to see just how complicated the task was, and how easy it would be to lose a lot of money without trying very hard.

As to windows on airplanes, the ventilation problem in the event of smoke in the cabin is not trivial.

For anyone interested in cabin smoke:

Jerry,

Many airliners still retain the option to open a window in the cockpit, at least on the ground. That’s because the pilot may have no way to exit the aircraft in the event of a fire preventing the pilot from reaching another exit. Smoke in the cockpit is one of the worst airborne emergencies for 2 reasons. First, the smoke may be so toxic that onset of neurological deficit or blood-oxygen transport problems may be only a matter of seconds. Second, the first indication of an aircraft fire or smoke/fumes in the cockpit is usually someone on board saying “hey do you smell something?”, at which point everyone around immediately takes a deep breath or two, inhaling quite a bit of whatever is in the air, delaying starting the emergency procedure procedures while everyone sits around going “I dunno it smells like a bad air filter, what do you think?”

In military aviation we try to beat these considerations into the brains of our student pilots, but over time a little complacency often sets in.

When airborne depending on the aircraft type, there may be an option to depressurize and “ram-dump” the environmental system, which opens ram air ducts to force outside air into the cockpit/cabin. I’m sure every aircraft will have variations in how this works but the basic idea that there is a switch that immediately shuts off conditioned pressurized air circulation and opens up ram-air from the outside is pretty much standard. It isn’t much different from opening a window.

I do know that my one major smoke/fume in the cockpit incident dropped my blood oxygen level to around 85% in a matter of minutes and resulted in an overnight hospital stay, from only 2 or 3 breaths of the smoke-filled air before I got on 100% oxygen.

Sean

I have limited experience with cabin smoke but the one I had went much as described: “Hey do you smell something funny?” Followed by discussion followed by “Let’s get this bird down fast!” Fortunately it was minor, although at 38,000 feet nothing involving blue smoke is really minor.

This isn’t really a mail bag, and I do have a lot of interesting mail. I’ve been subject to allergies this week, and Roberta has been gone East to see the grandkids. She’ll be home tomorrow and with luck things will go back to something like normal.

I have several messages pointing to http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/organ_ghouls_of_doom_suit_LxCZMP5uRGgI6yn3ywMN9J 

It is not unexpected – indeed the point of Niven’s story was that this was inevitable – but it’s still a bit scary.

View 743 Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The Internet is abuzz with stories of how stupid Romney must be because he said something about aircraft ventilation. The occasion was a heavy smoke incident on a flight that his wife took. The Huffington Post went insane with laughter about how Romney was so stupid he wondered why you can’t just open the windows on a jet plane. Clearly he is not qualified to be President, and in fact must be so incompetent as to need a keeper. Of course the first assumption is that the Huffington Post and other media must be joking; but apparently they were not.

Next comes the ‘news’ that Romney was joking. Probably graveyard humor on hearing that his wife had been in danger but was now safe. Whether or not Romney was joking, which should have been obvious – it’s not as if he has never been aboard a jet airplane. He may even have owned one – it’s not quite so trivial a question as you might at first think. As it happens I know something about this from a long time ago.

This was once a serious topic for discussion and study. As it happens I was in the Human Factors and Reliability Group at Boeing when the 707 went commercial. Boeing’s marketing methods for the 707 were simple: the Company brought the Chief Pilots of most of the major airlines to Seattle as guests to watch the Gold Cup 90-mile unlimited hydroplane boat races from the Boeing barge on Lake Washington. The Gold cup is run in heats, with a major break between heats for mechanical overhaul, and during one of the recesses, without prior announcement, the watching crowd (and the TV audience of course) was told to Look Up! Here comes the new Boeing 707 Stratocruiser! At which point Chief Test Pilot Tex Johnston brought the Dash 90 – the flying prototype of the 707 – down the length of Lake Washington, and at about 700 feet he barrel rolls just in front of the Boeing barge. The result was that within a week every senior pilot in America was in his President’s office panting “We gotta have one!” and Boeing had about a hundred orders within a month.

Boeing began building and selling the 707. Howard Hughes came up to Boeing Field in his private Constellation, and camped out at the end of the runway (with about 17 young lady starlets and stewardesses) while negotiating the design and purchase of a fleet of them. The commercial jet age began.

But within a month of the first commercial passenger jet flight – people paid a premium price for a jet ticket, since it cut hours off cross country flight times – they had a cabin pressure loss above 40,000 feet. The passenger oxygen masks deployed, but people didn’t know how to use them. The pilots did an emergency dive to 7500 feet, then a more gradual descent, so that there was enough oxygen content and cabin pressure for breathing without oxygen masks, but the FAA gave Boeing notice that within 30 days we had to give sufficient evidence that the passenger oxygen system was safe or the 707 fleet would be grounded. Dr. Don Stuhring, the Boeing Central Medical flight surgeon, and I as a human factors engineer were given the task: come up with evidence acceptable to the aviation medicine and human factors professional community, and do it fast.

We spent the next three weeks at the University of Washington altitude chamber. Of course Boeing had a good altitude chamber – in fact a better one than the UW – but we wanted the UW people involved in the experiments including data collection so there would be no question of the accuracy of the data. We took several rides to 40,000 feet a day – actually on most I took them, with Dr. Stuhring outside to preside if there was medical need, which there never was – and flew flight profiles of emergency cabin pressure losses, rapid descent to 10,000 feet and gradual descent to 5,000, with the subjects using the emergency oxygen system while we monitored blood oxygen content, heart rate, and other data. In those days collecting physiological data from non-restrained subjects was very difficult, and I had to use a bank of analog computers to filter out electronic noise. The subjects were paid volunteers from the UW student body, faculty, and staff, and included young and old, sick and healthy. It was a heck of a month, but we got the data, it was accepted by the relevant boards, and the 707 wasn’t grounded.

We (Don Stuhring and I) also participated in discussions about ventilation. What would happen if there were smoke incidents? Obviously you can’t open the cabin to external ventilation if you’re much above 10,000 feet, but rapid descent will fix that. Deployment of the passenger oxygen system will buy you some time, but if the smoke isn’t dissipated you got problems. There was serious discussion of building in external windows operable by the cabin crew. The alternative was a pilot controlled ventilation system, which raises the question of its reliability. We had considerable confidence in the competence of the flight attendants – generally known as stewardesses – despite the public  ‘coffee, tea, or milk?’ jokes about ‘stews’; and if we started looking into things that might fill the cabin with smoke most of those might also cripple a pilot compartment controlled ventilation system. I remember saying something to the effect that I had a lot more confidence that Miss Sparling here can open the window than I have in the hydraulics working after parts of it turn into blue smoke.

We’ve come a long way from those days in the 1950’s, but clearly there’s still the possibility of a smoke incident and ventilation problem. And some of us may remember that prior to jet aircraft there were manually operable windows on passenger airline craft. Didn’t George Kennedy open one of them and fire a flare in one of the sequels to “Airport”?

For those who don’t know: without a very efficient oxygen mask delivering pure oxygen, you won’t perform well, or even last long, above 30,000 feet. We learned a lot about that in World War II. With pure oxygen at positive pressure you can manage at about 43,000 feet (this is from memory, but it’s in the right range) but you’re already in need of a pressure suit.

Of course if you’re inhaling smoke at high altitudes you’re really in trouble. Efficient ventilation of aircraft at high altitudes has been the subject of considerable study, particularly for military aircraft – how do you get a Flying Fortress home if there’s smoke in the cabin and AA guns below? But I wouldn’t expect the Huffington Post columnists or editors to know much about that. Their “update” on the incident still doesn’t show much understanding, but that’s to be expected too. Which is fine; my point is that it’s a more complex subject than they think, and Mr. Romney is clearly aware of that. I doubt he knows as much about it as I do, but that’s another story. At one time Stuhring and I knew more about it than perhaps anyone did, not because I was so smart, but because I had reason to think about it. Mr. Romney has a tendency to answer questions asked of him, and to have confidence that if what he says is wrong, someone will correct him. That was true of Newt Gingrich, too, and it’s no bad trait for a President since it shows that he expects to have smart advisors who will say what they think.

The incident tells a lot about many people; perhaps more about the press than about Mr. Romney.

I’ll do a mail bag, but we have a couple of interesting references to things you may not have seen.

An interesting comment on today

<http://tvsac.net/BarryMeek/BM0705.html>

The author is a retired ambulance paramedic, former broadcaster, mountain bike tour guide and commercial pilot.

Mike

and

50 years of the Jetsons.

<http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/2012/09/50-years-of-the-jetsons-why-the-show-still-matters/>

–

Roland Dobbins

I recall the first season of the Jetsons, and of course the endless replays. It really did affect our expectations of the future.

View 742 Saturday, September 22, 2012

The ambassador’s journal was found in the sacked consulate in Benghazi, and it appears that days before the siege and attack on the American consulate in Benghazi Ambassador Stevens was concerned about the lack of security in the consulate. http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/tv/170856871.html?refer=y

Presumably he passed his concerns on to the State Department in Washington, which seems to have done – well, nothing. But State is angry with CNN for copying the journal before passing it on to the ambassador’s family, and for releasing part of it. Meanwhile, it is now clear that both the consulate and the socalled ‘safe’ house were under fairly accurate mortar fire. In my experience one does not become proficient at mortar operations without training and practice, and carrying the base and tube and projectiles requires some preparation; it’s not the sort of thing one carries to a demonstration. The evidence for this being a well planned attack, not some kind of reaction to a a movie trailer, is pretty overwhelming. It is also evident that our people in Tripoli knew that security was insufficient and were concerned about an attack on the 9-11 anniversary. We do not know why State and the White House did nothing about the predicted attack. Doubtless they have their reasons, and perhaps we will find them out in days to come.

The evidence mounts that Ambassador Stevens was both tortured and raped before he died.

John Dvorak has sent this to his friends:

everything wrong with computers

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2012/09/22/everything-wrong-with-computers-epitomized-in-a-screenshot/

—

John C. Dvorak, KJ6LNG

No comment seems required.

A FIRE IN THE SKY

I also have

Endevour

> I heard the Endeavor go through the Valley but I was not able to see

> it from here. It’s now down at LAX. In the old days I’d have been out

> at Edwards to see it take off. An era has ended.

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who thinks that you are part of an irrelevant bygone era.

Don

But I am not sure what I should do with it. Or indeed what it means. I make no secret of having mixed emotions about the Shuttle. The design was wrong and the design criteria included requiring the services of the large standing army of development scientists who had made Apollo possible. Had I stayed in the aerospace industry, say in Operations Research at North American Rockwell – I would doubtless have benefitted from Shuttle. And in 1980, when we were preparing the transition team papers for the incoming Reagan Administration, the Administrator of NASA came to Larry Niven’s house to plead the case for continuing Shuttle on the grounds that it might be flawed, but it was all we had. (It had not yet flown an orbital mission.)

And it was all we had for manned space flight, and it was possible that it could evolve into a truly reusable space ship. It didn’t. From the first Shuttle required operation of the Shuttle main engines at more than 100% of their design rated thrust, and that meant that after each flight they had to be reconstructed. Shuttle was a rebuildable spacecraft, but it was not reusable in the usual operational sense – refuel it and fly again. And over time we found that the Shuttle annual budget was independent of the number of flights. Shuttle ate much of the dream of manned space flight.

Worse, NASA Houston and the standing army insisted on keeping the low pressure pure oxygen space suit system rather than developing the NASA Ames higher pressure air suit. This compromised all the Shuttle EVA missions since it required pure oxygen prebreathing, meaning that the pressure in the Shuttle on missions in which an EVA was planned had to be at low pressure pure oxygen; and that in turn meant that the number of molecules of cooling ‘air’ would be low, meaning that many of the electronics in Shuttle had to be shut down until after the last EVA.

There were other flaws. And yet: Shuttle accomplished much. And she was all we had. And yes, I loved seeing her fly, and I can’t listen to ‘Fly Columbia’ without a tear. And if that doesn’t get to you, and you can hear Fire in the Sky without emotion, then – well. It’s not my place to insult my readers.

A long time ago Larry Niven pointed out to Carl Sagan that every time Carl and his people won the argument that robots would do, and we did not need a manned space program, he lost more support for space. The American people were willing to pay to send humans to space. They were not so concerned with taxing themselves to send robots and only robots. Exploring the universe has a purpose, and part of that purpose is to find new resources, and new habitats, for humanity. As Tsiolkovsky said long ago, the Earth is too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in. And as I said long ago in A Step Farther Out http://www.amazon.com/Step-Farther-Out-Jerry-Pournelle/dp/0441785832 90% of the resources easily available to the human race are not on the Earth at all. Even inefficient space exploration has a high potential payoff.

It may be that I am part of an irrelevant and bygone era, but if so, then so are you all. Arthur Clarke said it well: if the human race is to survive, than for most of its history the word ‘ship’ will mean ‘space ship.’ If we do not go to space, all of humanity will one day be part of an irrelevant and bygone era.