Government Interest in Thermo

Green Thursday – TGIT - Thank Government It’s Thursday

Yeah today with tongue in cheek we thank our Government for their new found interest in Thermo. Today the Senate will not take up a vote on the energy bill as it stands with added taxes on oil companies. The end to the filibuster was one vote short http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/13/congress.energy.ap/index.html

The thermodynamic genii will take up the vote minus the added taxes provision. Hopefully the part on increased efficiency in energy use will remain intact.

While Congress was debating our energy future a global meeting was held in Bali and the US remained the sole holdout on the Kyoto Protocol http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071206/ap_on_re_as/bali_us_under_siege

I had suggested the Gangrene Award for politicians and celebrities who pretend to be green while spewing more than average amounts of carbon dioxide. Steve Malloy of Junk Science must be a reader of TT. He blogged about the Greenest Hypocrites of 2007. He listed old Alfalfa as his numero uno pick. His number ten pick is the California Hypocritenator http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315721,00.html

Enough about cold hearted politicians who pretend photosynthesis was intended to propel 800 million vehicles that weigh on average 3,000 pounds. Talking about cold Oklahoma got nailed with an ice storm of epic proportions. Can you see the truck that is hidden in the ice covered tree in the photo below?



For precipitation to occur as ice a warm front actually has to traverse over and above a cold front and then thermo takes over and it rains water in a solid form.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316271,00.html

I am glad to inform the TT readership that Smell Oil is getting into the Algae to BioDiesel game. I hove opined that algae to BioDiesel is a far better thermodynamic and social idea than using corn to produce BioEthanol. A lot of the research is being performed in Hawaii so I may just have to take a trip out there to investigate. I am asking TT readers to donate their frequent flier miles so I don’t use my personal Lear JET and increase my carbon Bigfootprint. The US DOE reports as follows:

Shell and HR Biopetroleum to Grow Algae for Biofuels
A researcher examines algae cultures at the Natural Energy Laboratory Hawaii Authority. See a larger version of this photo.Credit: Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc announced yesterday that it will work with HR Biopetroleum to build a pilot facility for growing algae as a source of biofuels. The facility will cultivate algae in seawater ponds, then harvest the algae and extract oil from them for conversion into fuels such as biodiesel. Construction of the facility will begin immediately on a parcel of land leased from the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA), which is located on the shore of the Hawaiian island of Kona. The NELHA site is ideal for the project because it pipes in a constant supply of clean, fresh ocean water. NELHA was originally built to support a DOE project for ocean thermal energy conversion, and it continues to employ the project's seawater supply pipes to support a variety of research projects and commercial enterprises, including facilities that currently grow and harvest algae for pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements. Shell and HR Biopetroleum have formed a joint venture company, called Cellana, to develop the biofuels project.
Algae grow rapidly and can have a high percentage of lipids, or oils. They can double their mass several times a day and produce at least 15 times more oil per acre than alternatives such as rapeseed, palms, soybeans, or jatropha. Moreover, algae-growing facilities can be built on coastal land unsuitable for conventional agriculture. The Cellana facility will grow only non-genetically modified, marine microalgae species in open-air ponds using proprietary technology. It will also use bottled carbon dioxide to test the algae's ability to capture carbon. To support the facility, academic research programs at the University of Hawaii, the University of Southern Mississippi, and Canada's Dalhousie University will screen natural microalgae species to find the strains that produce the highest yields and the most oil. See the Shell press release and the NELHA Web site.
Shell isn't the only oil company that's exploring the potential of algae. In late October, Chevron Corporation and DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced that they had entered into a collaborative research and development agreement to produce biofuels from algae. Under the agreement, Chevron and NREL scientists will collaborate to identify and develop algae strains that can be economically harvested and processed into transportation fuels such as jet fuel. See the NREL press release.



The word of the day is cacophony. This is the sound of the phonies in Congress disagreeing on how much to tax the poor oil companies. Interestingly the opposite of cacophony is euphony I guess the European Union (EU) had something to do with this definition


cacophony \kuh-KAH-fuh-nee\, noun:1. Harsh or discordant sound; dissonance.2. The use of harsh or discordant sounds in literary composition.
New York was then a cacophony of sounds -- a dozen accents ricocheting off surrounding buildings as immigrant mothers called their children home for supper, noon whistles blowing, vendors hawking their wares on the streets, children shouting, horses whinnying, and people yelling.-- Herbert G. Goldman, Banjo Eyes
The mammoth central station towered over the platforms, and with the cacophony from whooshing steam, shrill whistles, shouts and the heaving of hand and horse carts, not only was it the biggest, noisiest, most confusing experience any of them had ever encountered, but the city was almost unimaginable.-- Christopher Ogden, Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg
Cacophony comes from Greek kakophonia, from kakophonos, from kakos, "bad" + phone, "sound." The adjective form is cacophonous. The opposite of cacophony is euphony.

Anniversary of the invention of the first transistor

Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Gates It’s Thursday

This is not about Billy the Billionaire but about gates that allow electrons to flow. It is the sixtieth anniversary of the invention of the first transistor . A transistor is a gate that allows electrons to flow or can stop electrons from flowing depending whether the gate is open or closed http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=AJUDVGU2Q0WAGQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=204300928

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor


The boys at Bell Labs came up with the transistor in 1947. http://i.cmpnet.com/embedded/2007/December07/1207esdGanssle03.gif This solid state device replaced the vacuum tube old Tommy Edison had invented back in the 19th century.




Eighteen years after the first working transistor Gordon Moore wrote a paper that became Moore’s Law in which he postulated that going forward from 1965 every two years manufacturers of solid state integrated circuits would be able to double the number of transistors in their devices. This has held true for the past 42 years and now we have memory and logic chips with over five hundred million transistors in each chip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law


With all these transistors on a single device the big hurdle to overcome is the dissipation of the heat generated within the circuit and therefore Thermo is again the subject of much research.

Intel intends to produce a tri-gate or three dimensional based chip that will use less energy and therefore dissipate less heat. Intel is claiming they can obey Moore’s Law for at least another decade http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20060612corp.htm


I am happy to report American motorists are getting smarter and the Smart car should sell well when it is introduced to the USA next year http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/transportation/article/demand-smart-car-high-according-daimler-ag_389907_8.html

Everything is slimming down in the USA. We are now eating smaller plates of food. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071129/lf_nm_life/food_trends_dc Glad to see bottled water is non longer on the top twenty hot items.

Talking about smarts a five year chimp had better short term memory that a team of college kids in Japan. Perhaps we should all have a chimp as a pet so we can find our keys to our smart car http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/03/chimp.memory.ap/index.html


All this touching of screens reminds me of the new technology termed “energy harvesting” . Light switch that are wireless that get to emit a radio frequency signal by merely pressing on the switch are coming to market. Theses switches do not need batteries and are not wired into the wall. Just the pressure of touching them charges them to send a radio signal to the light in a room to turn on or off. A new 57 story skyscraper in Madrid spain will be equipped with the energy harvesting light switches. This will allow walls to be moved without have to deal with relocating wiring. http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=QGXC1ZWBKI13WQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=204600613


The word of the day is deracinate or to uproot. We will soon deracinate the humble light switch

Word of the DayThursday December 6, 2007
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deracinate \dee-RAS-uh-nayt\, transitive verb:1. To pluck up by the roots; to uproot.2. To displace from one's native or accustomed environment.
In the People's Republic, communism's utilitarian bent first poisoned the culinary arts and then, in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, tried to deracinate what were regarded as the insidious strains of China's former culture.-- Benjamin and Christina Schwarz, "Going All Out for Chinese", The Atlantic, January 1999
He was a Jew who was never given a chance to belong anywhere, a deracinated intellectual.-- David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind
Deracinate comes from Middle French desraciner, from des-, "from" (from Latin de-) + racine, "root" (from Late Latin radicina, from Latin radix, radic-). The noun form is deracination.

Turkey Meat and Gravlox

TGIT – Thank Gravlox It’s Thursday

Thanksgiving has come and gone and I have discovered that turkey meat is really not the largest source of triptophan. It has been shown that gram for gram cheddar cheese actually contains more triptophan than turkey meat. http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071121/sc_livescience/thankgivingmythturkeymakesyousleepy This why after eating a double double animal style at In and Out Burger I go to sleep for a week. For those of you who do not have a local In and Out Burger a double double has two slices of processed cheddar cheese


Now what does Gravlox have to do with this?

Fish oil that is prevalent in salmon can be fed to cows to lower their emissions of methane. http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/export/03-2003_449.html
I know by now some of you are chuckling that cows emit methane from their behinds but once again you have the wrong side of the argument. Cows burp out methane. In fact burped methane from cows and other animals is a significant fraction of the methane emissions on planet earth. The EPA reported that Enteric Fermentation, polite way of saying Greps (the Yiddish word for burp) emits about the same quantity of methane as Landfills. For us all these cows burping and causing the planet to warm is The Greps of Wrath. Remember from a previous TT that one pound of methane has the same greenhouse effect as 21 pounds of carbon dioxide. http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html



On a positive note the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center in NYC will be lit by some 30,000 LED lights this year and this will save 2,213 kilowatthours every night the tree is lit. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/11/21/green.christmas.ap/index.html


The word of the day is hirsute to be hippylike. This makes sense to me it means you have a suit made or hair from the Latin hirsutis

hirsute \HUR-soot; HIR-soot; hur-SOOT; hir-SOOT\, adjective:Covered with hair; set with bristles; shaggy; hairy.
The Bear . . . makes the rounds of the clubs "disguised" in trench coat and broad-brimmed hat, hoping (successfully, it seems) to be mistaken for a rather hirsute human.-- Richard M. Sudhalter, "The Bear Comes Home': Composing the Words That Might Capture Jazz", New York Times, August 29, 1999
First of all, your nose is nearly covered with your bloody moustache and your beard, Mr Gogarty replied. Mr Allen apologised for his "hirsute" appearance.-- Paul Cullen, "No ambush sprung on returning Gogarty", Irish Times, March 23, 1999
He was incredibly hirsute: there was even a thick pelt of hair on the back of his hands.-- Tama Janowitz, By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee
Hirsute comes from Latin hirsutus, "covered with hair, rough, shaggy, prickly."

Genentech’s GRide program

Green Thursday TGIT - Thank GRide It’s Thursday http://www.gene.com/gene/about/environmental/commitment/gases.jsp


Today is the first anniversary of Genentech’s GRide program where employees are rewarded for not bringing a car to the campus. I have opined on the brilliance of this program and Andrew Tobias a TT subscriber as well as a very well known finance and political person carried the Carpooligans blog that I wrote a few months back http://www.andrewtobias.com/bkoldcolumns/070821.html

The Marin County Carpooligans can be proud. Collectively over the past 365 days we have 515 times that GRide has rewarded us with a $4 reward. We have therefore received $2,060 collectively for the past year. Assuming each round trip would have consumed 2 gallons of gasoline we reduced the gasoline consumption of the US by 1,030 gallons. Each gallon of gasoline equates to 22 pounds of CO2 emissions so the Carpooligans have collectively reduced CO2 emissions by 22,660 pounds over the past year. We have also reduced the GDP quite considerably by an amount of $8,240 as we estimate that each trip not taken saves approximately $16 dollars.

While the Marin crowd who frolic in hot tubs (according to Bush Senior) when not carpooling have been saving money and the air the US government continues to waste money on ethanol. Ethanol production is way up this year. We will likely produce over 6 billion gallons of ethanol in the US this year. Over $3 billion has been wasted on direct subsidies of the ethanol fuel and a similar amount was given to the farmers to produce the corn that feeds these ethanol plants. We chuckle about the Russians being a bunch of vodka drinking drunkards. Russia only produced 178 million gallons of ethanol last year primarily for drinking and their ethanol production is on the decline. The USA has overtaken Brazil on the ethanol binge. My data come from the ethanol trade group Renewable Fuels Association http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/statistics/#B



All this talk of booze is making my head spin. I am excited by the recent discovery of gamma ray bursts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst This phenomenal amount of energy release occurs when hypernova stars collapse into black holes. I can’t wait for the shares of Exxon Mobil to do likewise when all of America join the Carpooligan Gang. I remember reading the play The Effect Of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds back in high school. http://www.enotes.com/effects-gamma/




Forbes had an article on Fast Cars http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/103775/Most-Power-Packed-Cars;_ylt=AuHDzdjsFY.sJXAK911n2ZK7YWsA

100,000 American’s with a collective IQ of three below plankton were interviewed to yield the result that fuel economy is ranked eighth in most important feature for buying a car. Perhaps the firm that produced the survey J D Power biased the results toward horsepower so that they could become an even more powerful force in the survey world. Had a firm named J D Fuel Economy produced the survey the results would have certainly been different.

I hope you all enjoyed Halloween last night. I am happy to report that some of the world’s sugar still goes into its intended use of giving us the pleasure of eating sweets rather than being wasted on bio-fuels.

The word of the day is forcible. Dictionary.com must have been one of the J D Power survey respondents as there was all this discussion about the use of force required to have power packed cars. More next week

Word of the DayThursday November 1, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
forcible \FOR-suh-buhl\, adjective:1. Using force against opposition or resistance; effected or accomplished by force; as, "forcible entry or abduction."2. Characterized by force, efficiency, or energy; powerful.
Robbery, the forcible taking of property from the person of the victim, is the crime most likely to be committed by a stranger; 75 percent of victims are robbed by strangers.-- Adam Walinsky, "The Crisis of Public Order", The Atlantic, July 1995
The separation of religion from the state does not mean the establishment of irreligion by the state, still less the forcible imposition of an anti-religious philosophy.-- Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage", The Atlantic, September 1990
Mr. Wilson replied to Mr. Evarts in a forcible argument, wasting no words, and showing clearly that there was no precedent in any impeachment case tried by the Senate for granting so much delay at this stage of the proceedings.-- "President Johnson's Answer to the Charges and Specifications", New York Times, March 23, 1868
It was a masterpiece, the Cincinnati Daily Gazette declared, "the most pointed and most forcible political letter ever written."-- "Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist", The Atlantic, October 1996
Forcible ultimately derives from Latin fortis, "strong."

Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Geeks It’s Thursday

A TT subscriber Mark McBride is the owner and host of a website called OmniNerd. http://www.omninerd.com Mark will post each TT to the site and that way nerds, geeks, or just plain thermodynamicists will be able to enjoy thermo Thursday.

I had promised an analysis of the Toyota Prius versus a Corolla but an Omninerd beet me to the punch with a very good analysis of the Prius http://www.omninerd.com/articles/Is_a_Hybrid_Worth_It I was going to blog about a person who carpools and whether a Corolla is then better than a Prius. My belief is that it is obviously better to own a Corolla and carpool than own a Prius and not carpool. The effective fuel economy on a Corolla with two people alternating their driving is higher than the one person in a Prius. The cost of ownership of a Corolla is lower, and the added benefit of lessening the amount of cars on the road for all other motorists is also considerable. I once opined that more than 2 billion gallons of gasoline are wasted in traffic jams in the USA in addition to the more than 4 billion hours of wasted time of the motorists stuck in traffic. If we had 2/3 of the cars filled with 2 people instead of 1 person we would eliminate 1/3 of the vehicles from the road and this would free up traffic flow considerably. My crystal ball says we would better than halve the wasted time and gasoline eaten up by traffic jams. On this basis over 1 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved by not sitting in traffic. On top of this if we had one third fewer cars on the road (about 70 million vehicles) each not using 2 gallons a day for the five work days a week this carpooling effort would directly save 35 billion gallons of gasoline a year. On this basis oil prices would drop back to $2 a gallon and America would be saved. I carpool and us Carpooligans are the Paul Reveres of the 21st century.

Our science department has noticed some interesting research into nano diamonds. These diamonds are simply carbon crystals that that of the order of a nanometer in diameter. These diamonds can deliver chemotherapy to their target http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/19/nanodiamonds.drugs/index.html DeBeers is investigation the pharmacokinetics data to find out if a nano diamond is forever

Mayor Dilly Dally of Chicago who should have read a TT from over six months ago has woken up and acted to limit bottled water in the windy city with a tax on the plastic bottle http://news.aol.com/story/_a/bottled-water-backlash-brews-in-cities/20071018094209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001 He must have called his friend Gavel Newsome for some advice and finally this distant relative of Richard the Third has brought down the gavel on Dasiai http://www.dasani.com/flash.htm Dasani has responded with an add campaign title make our mouth water. But Dilly Dally has an ace up his sleeve and will respond with his magnum 38 saying maybe your mouth will water, but I can make you breath through your skin

All this talk of violence makes me shake. There is a new breed of chips that can generate electricity by capturing or harvesting energy from light, vibrations or even temperature difference. http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=TYSMWQLQJVLMGQSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=202400930 I think we will be able to power wrist watches (quartz drive) from body heat. We also may be able to power an Ipod from walking.

The appendix may have a useful purpose after all as a reservoir of beneficial bacteria to aid digestion. Kind of like natural yogurt http://news.aol.com/story/_a/appendix-is-useful-after-all-scientists/20071005184009990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001





It is kind of scary that Craig Venter is about to unleash a new form of life in the form a genetically modified bacterium http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299857,00.html I kind of prefer the inhabitants of my appendix over the bacteria being synthesized in Rockville MD, even if Venter claims they will chew up global warming gases

The word of the day is stentorian. As this blog is rated G for TGIT I will not make a play on words about stentorian gases but these load voices could provide the vibrations to power the new breed of energy harvesting chips

stentorian \sten-TOR-ee-uhn\, adjective:Extremely loud.
Around his family, Sergeant Charles Mingus Sr. was easily angered and often violent and closemouthed the rest of the time, except when he gave orders in a stentorian voice that carried the assumption of command.-- Gene Santoro, Myself When I Am Real
He broke the tradition of stentorian tenors, whose big voices and melodramatic high notes were needed to fill the concert halls and vaudeville houses.-- Richard Corliss, "The Book on Bing Crosby", Time, May 17, 2001
Then a stentorian voice blared an all-points bulletin: "Calling the G-men! Calling all Americans to war on the underworld!"-- Strobe Talbott, "Resisting the Gangbusters Option", Time, October 15, 1990
The bearded, often curmudgeonly Knoller can be found in the press filing center on most every presidential trip, his stentorian voice booming out 35-second takes for radio -- as many as 20 a day -- and shaping the day's news for dozens of journalists who can't help but hear him.-- Dana Milbank, "Bush by the Numbers, as Told by a Diligent Scorekeeper", Washington Post, September 3, 2002
Stentorian comes from Stentor, a Greek herald in the Trojan War. According to Homer's Iliad, his voice was as loud as that of fifty men combined.

Mass and Grams

TGIT – Thank Grams It’s Thursday Today we will discuss mass and grams are a unit of measure of mass

First a thank you to Ajay for his blog on how Brother Gibb had an oldie disco hit song titled “How deep is your love of thermo”

The EPA has reported the mileage cars sold in 2007 can expect. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s07001.pdf

Interestingly the average mass of vehicles sold in the USA has increased significantly since 1987 from 3,221 pounds to 4,144 pounds or 1,873,088 grams. The average horsepower of a vehicle has almost doubled since 1987 from 118 to 223 horsepower. The heaviest horse in history had a mass of 3,360 pounds or about the mass of the average vehicle sold in the USA in 1987. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/22809 The acceleration of the average vehicle measured in the time taken to get from zero to sixty MPH has decreased from 13.1 seconds to 9.6 seconds in the past twenty years. The fuel economy of the average vehicle has decreased from 22.0 mpg to 20.2 mpg because of the change in mass, horsepower and the proliferation of trucks (SUVs included) from only 28% of vehicles sold in 1987 to 49% of the vehicles to be sold in 2007.

Going back further than Brother Gibb to Brother Newton and his second law of motion http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/newton3laws.html we all know that the force that is needed to be applied to an object to yield a set acceleration is directly proportional to the mass ( F=MA ). In accelerating cars from zero to sixty there are some other forces (resistance) to be overcome such as wind resistance and rolling resistance but for the moment will simply deal with old Isaac’s second law. The mass of the vehicles has increased in the past twenty years by 29%. Acceleration increased by 36% so accounting for increased mass and increased acceleration one would have expected the required force from the engine to have increased by 75% which is in line with the added horsepower in the 2007 models. So how did we only get a 8% reduction in fuel efficiency? This can be answered by the improved efficiency of the later model engines. Primarily as a result of fuel injection, multi valve engines, and variable valve timing that were not available back in the old days. These improvements all relate to how the fuel is burned in the engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_injection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-valve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_valve_timing




Below is a cut out of a fuel injector

Below is a cut out of Honda’s variable valve timing engine




Going forward we will have higher compression engines, direct fuel injection and of course smaller and lighter vehicles. We can thank the Governator for the proliferation of SUVs as his movie Kindergarten Cop started the Hummer rage http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0422-02.htm My prediction is that within a decade the average mass of a vehicle will drop to value we had in 1987 and the average fuel efficiency will be close to 30 mpg. Also within a decade we will have long forgotten Arnie.



Here is some good news from Michigan and it is not about the heavy metal vehicles they produce there. The city of Ann Arbor will convert 1,400 street lights to LEDs http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Oct17/0,4670,TechBitCityapossBrightIdea,00.html Raleigh and Toronto have also begun to use LEDs. Maybe Hollywood will be next.

All this talk about weapons of mass combustion brings me to my final point of the week. Raytheon a defense contractor has developed a heat ray weapon http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UASDYV2WZ3VAOQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=202400400

This is the ultimate terrible misuse of thermo! Imagine the government spent $40 million to develop a ray gun that heats the top 1/64” of your skin to 130 degrees F. This goes beyond tasers and will be marketed as the Blaser.

The word of the day is abscond. If a cop was pointing the heat ray gun at me I would certainly abscond

Word of the DayThursday October 18, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
abscond \ab-SKOND\, intransitive verb:To depart secretly; to steal away and hide oneself -- used especially of persons who withdraw to avoid arrest or prosecution.
The criminal is not concerned with influencing or affecting public opinion: he simply wants to abscond with his money or accomplish his mercenary task in the quickest and easiest way possible so that he may reap his reward and enjoy the fruits of his labours.-- Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism
Pearl, now an orphan (her father having absconded shortly after her conception), has been taken to live with her great-aunt Margaret in the north of England.-- Zoe Heller, Everything You Know
Abscond comes from Latin abscondere, "to conceal," from ab-, abs-, "away" + condere, "to put, to place."

Space Exploration

TGIT - Thank Gagarin It’s Thursday

Yes we have to thank the Reds (not Cincinnati) for today’s episode of TT. It is exactly 50 years ago today that space exploration began. The USSR launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298728,00.html This 180 pound payload sat atop a R7 Rocket. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/r7.html Sputnik did nothing except send some radio noise back to earth http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/sputnik.wav

For the non baby boomers who never looked at the sky in October 1957 to view the flight path of Sputnik, Gagarin was the first person to go into space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin Gagarin was selected because of his small stature. He was only 5 foot 2 inches tall.

Actually the object that was visible in the night sky that Hunting for Red October was not Sputnik (it was simply too small) but was the second stage of the rocket that launched Sputnik.





.



How much fuel was used to place the little noise maker in orbit? The Russian website lists the specification of 253 metric tons of propellant. The propellant was kerosene the same fuel used by jets. A pound of kerosene has a fuel value of approximately 19,000 BTUs. Therefore approximately 10.5 billion BTUS were needed to set the space race in motion. This amount of energy is equivalent to 92,000 gallons of gasoline or enough gasoline for the average US motorist to drive for over 125 years.

We continue the space race and have launched many more satellites that now clutter the near space around earth. But Sputnik was the first and that is why we remember it.

Talking about space and time, we have a report on how much time commuters waste in traffic. http://www.kentucky.com/101/story/180483.html Los Angeles leads the US in wasting time in traffic jams with each motorist wasting 72 hours each year. San Francisco is not far behind. Gagarin only spent one hour and 48 minutes in space so we all should get the medal of the soviet empire for the long time we spend cooped up in our capsules. In total we Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic wasting 2.9 billion gallons of gasoline crawling bumper to bumper. This amount of wasted gasoline could have launched over 31,500 sputniks. I therefore suggest a solution to this waste of time, money and precious BTUs. Let’s carpool! If we halve the number of vehicles on the road in rush hour we will not waste 3 days a year stuck on the freeways in the city of angels. Next week I will discuss how it is better for the earth and your pocketbook to buy a Corolla and carpool than buying a Prius and driving on your own to work.

The word of the day is redoubtable. I do believe that the accomplishment of Yuri Gagarin remains redoubtable.

redoubtable \rih-DOW-tuh-buhl\, adjective:1. Arousing fear or alarm; formidable.2. Illustrious; eminent; worthy of respect or honor.
He had been particularly involved in and articulate over policy toward East Asia, stressing the threat from China after the Communists won power there in 1949, and had made dramatic impressions of competence and coolness on two occasions -- under the physical threat of a crowd in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1958, and in a dramatic kitchen debate in the Soviet Union in 1959 with the redoubtable Nikita Khrushchev.-- William Bundy, A Tangled Web
The prospect was daunting, not least because Evelyn was still a redoubtable figure on campus whom I saw almost every day and to whom I went for advice almost as regularly.-- Keith Stewart Thomson, The Common But Less Frequent Loon and Other Essays
At the head of the table, as committee chair, sat the redoubtable Howard Mumford Jones—a teacher famed even at Harvard for his fierce authority, his wide-ranging erudition, and his intolerant exacting preciseness.-- Nicholas Delbanco, The Lost Suitcase
Redoubtable derives from Old French redouter, "to dread," from Medieval Latin redubitare, "to fear," literally "to doubt back at," from Latin re- + dubitare, "to doubt."