Just Sunday I was talking to a friend about

Combined Cycle Farnsworth Driven Nuclear Thermal Propulsion.

Here is Farnsworth with his fusor...

Essentially, you run a nuclear power plant in the -K region, pushing the neutron level to critical with a Farnsworth neutron generator or an accelerator with Deuterium & Tritium in the gun. The heat from the nuclear engine is used to pump liquid hydrogen to high velocities, and heat it to expansion. The hot hydrogen flows through the nuclear power plant, cooling the reactor, and reaching maximum velocity through heat absorbtion. The external heat engine also powers an electron gun, which is used to improve exhaust characteristics and velocities.

Yeah, I really wanted to work on one, but NASA never funds anything that will actually go into space. They only fund professors to sit around and dream up ever less likely nuclear engines, like the CCFDNTP. Well, the designs have gone around the block, and now some people are apparantly using them for ground work.

First for accelerator-driven nuclear reactor

So what is all the excitement? Well, with an accelerator of Farnsworth running the K up to critical, the reactor can be designed without the ability to go critical, much less super critical. It definitely reduces the possible danger of catastrophic failure. In the event the detectors decide there are too many neutrons, the computer can shut off the accelerator. Since all the speed of those reactions can be nano to micro second, the reactor can be micro-controlled in a way that a "Insert cooling rods" reactor could never be.



I'm happy that the technology is being developed, I'll be a lot happier when the atomic rockets light up.

Tattoos are not as unusual as they used to be. Heck, even relatively acceptable rocket scientists have tattoos these days. My good friend Dewey Mason and his wife Paula have a shop over in Muscle Shoals and they produce beautiful work. I get to look at some every day. I think their website is nice, but lordy, they could use a link. It took me a while to find it. SO, if you are looking for ink on your skin and you live in North Alabama or Middle Tennessee, check them out. Blackbeard's Tattoo Parlour
K' outa here.

 
My wife saw similar sites when she drove around Russia. The old soviet war machine built a lot of crappy industrial sites, most of which are no longer in service. Like Detroit, there are a lot of places in Russia that would cost more to tear down than they are worth. Apparently this old rocket factory is still churning out boosters, or something. Most of it isn't being used, so it isn't well cared for. Like an old missile silo, it is a relic of a bygone age.

Caution! Men Working... Maybe not anymore.
Take a look at a mostly inactive industrial plant on the edge of a major city. Beautiful, ugly, but stark, very stark. Makes me want to film an apocalypse film there.

It has been a strange year, and I appreciate my readers, and my co-contributors, for sticking it out with me. We started last year on a good note. I had funding, my wife had a job, I had a rockin' Christmas. This year, not so much. I don't have funding, my wife can't get full time, and Christmas was nice, but quiet. Last March I went to Gulf Wars and had a great time, I think. I was planning on reporting my war stories when I got back. I had to run to a conference, but by the time I unpacked, things had gone weird. Last April was Tornado alley here in Huntsville.

After April things have gone a bit off. I had a decent amount of property damage and lost income from two weeks without power. I got a bit more time to think and be with my wife. I really call those good days, but they were a bit unsettling at the time.

There was the (now usual) hype that any bad weather is global climate change. Again, I'm stealing images from wattsupwiththat which they stole from noaa.


Of course that ends in 2010, in 2011 we had 84 events,which doesn't make the 1974 record, but is definitely in second place. Twice as many as an average year, and about all that increase in my back yard. There is still evidence everywhere of the tragedy. Buildings which haven't been rebuilt, fences propped up with boards, and whole swaths of trees missing. Driving north on Wall-Triana, there are these gaps, like someone decided to put in power lines, and bulldozed a swath a hundred yards wide and miles long. Houses there haven't been rebuilt. In some cases, there is no owner left to do the rebuilding. In most cases, the owner has decided to move out of the tornado alley. I can't blame them.

I'm looking for more contributors to this site. If you are interested, email me, or comment on this post. Thanks.

This is from the Wattsupwiththat.com page, a nice graph of NOAA.gov data. The part I like is comparing the signal from January 2000 to December 2012. I believe we have a winner. Of course, in time we will have the real answer, but I think we have maxed around 80 - 85 sunspots vs. 120 ish from January 2000. I think we will have a mild level of activity for the next three years, then it will tail off back to near zero again.

Basically, for those who didn't harden their spacecraft, You got away with it this time.If I were to plan a mission to Mars, I'd set a launch in 2014, for three years of clear sailing. Be back safe at home before 2023, because that might be a rough year. No idea, we could Dalton minimum for fifty years, but we could go back to high flux cycles just as easily.

There is no science to predicting the upcoming solar cycles. We can simply look over the last 100 years and pick .. "Oh Oh I like number 4!" Thats not prediction, that is going to the Kentucky Derby and saying "I bet a horse wins the race!" I'll be willing to guarantee that 1) the solar cycle continues 2) the next peak will be around 2023 - 2025, and 3) the sun will surprise us on every other detail.


Hey, don't touch that, its hot!
 

Flying cloud sparks UFO mystery

Soyuz back in service after failed launch

It in fact was a UFO mystery. The Russians apparently didn't tell their own people about a failed launch. The "Flying Cloud" has been a mystery for several days before the Soyuz launch failure was announced in their own country. Go Russia! See what a history of disinformation and poor information distribution can lead to.

Space.com calls this the year of the restless sun.

Honestly, it is an above average year. But, it can be considered highly because of two factors,

1) there hasn't been any interesting solar events since about 2006, and really not much since 2003. Heck, I still consider the Bastille Day 2000 events as a benchmark, but the Halloween 2006 were exceptional. So, five years and nothing really worth mentioning. This year we had a handful, maybe six, x-class flares. They weren't for the record books, but they existed, which beats out last year. (Where we had ... I can't remember... but like 100 sunspots or something? I mean dead-sun.)

2) we really have exceptional cameras pointed at the sun these days. The STEREO cameras turn every event into a watch-able movie. We'll never know what the Carrington Flare looked like, but some po-dunk CME that didn't even escape the sun was my wallpaper for two months.




image above from space.com

soho page

Probably not worth arguing over. If OE was still in the business, I'd ask him what the solar peak was and he'd have it within a week. I expect the new models haven't gotten anything right yet, and may not have it right now. I believe that we are already AT solar maximum, and further growth isn't likely. We'll see if 2012 has a hotter sun or a weaker sun than 2011. (Or, about the same.) In the picture above, you can just about see the Solar Jet streams about to converge on the equator. I can't measure how long that will take, but when it does, the solar cycle starts sliding back toward minimum. It could be soon, The experts are still saying 2 years out. Hmm.