The "rocketman" post

As mentioned a couple of posts back, I was delighted (much more so than my wife, children, or any other person in the vicinity, it seemed) to see a "rocketman" again last Sunday.  Here's video of him doing a daytime practice at the same Brisbane showgrounds where we were:



The guy doing the flying is David Clarke, who calls himself "Ozrocketman."  (Not sure I'm keen on the name, but it hardly matters.)   He has his own website, and is an ex RAAF aeronautical maintenance engineer who appears to have decided to try to make a business out of promotional flying using his own, homebuilt jetpack rocketpack.  Good luck to him.

On his site there's an excellent video from a kid's TV show explaining how this old "rocketbelt" design (famously built by Bell Laboratories in the late 1950's) works:



For a simplified illustration of why there are three tanks, see this:

David Clarke refers to "ten years" of research to make his own personal rocketpack, although it's a little hard to see why it would take so long these days - there seem to be many enthusiasts on the Web.  I think I have mentioned before on this blog that you can even order one from a Mexican aviation company.  Their website looks flashy, but honestly,  I wouldn't be paying the deposit without some good reassurance that they are still in business.  It would also appear that you might still be able to buy one from an American company which claims their model can fly for up to 75 seconds.  (That seems optimistic - most sites talk of a about a 30 second maximum.) 

Interestingly, it's via the Mexican company's website that I found an ad for a 2010 Discovery documentary about another Australian named David who wanted his own rocketbelt.  Here's the blurb:

Australian jet pilot David Mayman builds and flies his own Rocket Belt. This is the story of a tenacious Australian Jet Pilot, David Mayman, as he strives to achieve his childhood dream of building and free-flying his very own Rocket Belt, only to discover he faces a nearly impossible task. Collaborating with the world’s leading Rocket Belt engineers David risks life and limb to become the world’s next Rocketman. ROCKET COMPULSION will take the audience on a ride that shows point blank why less people have flown Rocket Belts than have walked on the Moon.

In fact, the documentary has its own website too, with a page of short video clips from it, including this one talking about the history of its design:



But by far the oddest tale of what has happened with a rocketbelt is the story of three Americans in the 1990's who went into a partnership to build their own one for profit.  They had a spectacular falling out; one of them was murdered, the rocketbelt went missing, and the partner who had taken it was kidnapped, kept in a box and threatened with it being thrown in the sea.

The story has been the subject of a book, but you can read about it at this site, or just watch the embedded videos there summarising the story.   Pretty amazing.

But going back to technical stuff:  Howstuffworks explains the dangers and expense involved in the hydrogen peroxide rocketbelt:

 Rocket belts run on hydrogen peroxide fuel, which is not explosive on its own. This makes rocket belts slightly safer than jet packs. When the hydrogen peroxide is combined with pressurized liquid nitrogen and a silver catalyst, the chemical reaction generates superheated steam that shoots out of twin rocket nozzles at 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (704.4 degrees Celsius). There's no flame, but it's still extremely dangerous. The result is 800 horsepower or about 300 pounds of thrust [source: CNN.com]. Hydrogen peroxide is a good, reliable fuel, and it's only by-product is water. However, it's very expensive, costing about $250 per gallon (3.78-liters). Each flight uses almost all of the fuel in the tank -- about seven gallons (26.5-liters) per flight.

Some other sites make mention of the pilot having insulated pants legs to make sure the superheated steam doesn't burn them.  I guess you certainly wouldn't want to be too close under a "rocketman" hovering over you. 

 But given their limited flight time, it was interesting to read of an attempt in the 1960's to develop an actual jet powered backpack, which I might have read about before, but forgotten:

In 1969 Wendell Moore and John K. Hulbert of Bell Aerosystems had Williams Research Corporation design a turbojet small enough to be carried on a man's back. The jet was mounted with the intake facing the ground and the exhaust shooting upward to a pipe that split the outflow and pointed back down. Two nozzles were located just in back of the pilot's shoulders similar to those on the rocket belt. The jet had less power for its weight than the rocket engine, but also used much less fuel. Tests were carried out that showed that the pack could carry a man in the air for ten minutes, and with improvements the flight time might reach as long as a half hour (This device turns out to be the one I'd actually seen on the cover of Popular Science). The jet pack seemed to solve the biggest problem associated with the rocket belt: range. Twenty-one seconds was now thirty minutes. 

Here's a photo of this shortlived device from the same site:

Wikipedia (under the entry "Jet pack", but which also talks of the hydrogen peroxide rocketbelt, which just goes to show how confused the terminology in this field has become) gives some further details as to what happened with the turbojet pack:

In 1965 Bell Aerosystems concluded a new contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a jet pack with a turbojet engine. This project was called the "Jet Flying Belt", or simply the "Jet Belt". Wendell Moore and John K. Hulbert, a specialist in gas turbines, worked to design a new turbojet pack. Williams Research Corporation (now Williams International) in Walled Lake, Michigan, designed and built a new turbojet engine to Bell's specifications in 1969. It was called the WR19, had a rated thrust of 430 pounds of thrust (195 kgf, 1,910 newtons) and weighed 68 pounds (31 kg).

The first free flight of the Jet Belt took place on 7 April 1969 at the Niagara Falls Municipal Airport. Pilot Robert Courter flew about 100 meters in a circle at an altitude of 7 meters, reaching a speed of 45 km/h. The following flights were longer, up to 5 minutes. Theoretically, this new pack could fly for 25 minutes at velocities up to 135 km/h.

In spite of successful tests, the U.S. Army lost interest. The pack was complex to maintain and too heavy. Landing with its weight on his back was hazardous to the pilot, and catastrophic loss of a turbine blade could have been lethal.

Thus, the Bell Jet Flying Belt remained an experimental model. On 29 May 1969, Wendell Moore died of complications from a heart attack he had suffered six months earlier, and work on the turbojet pack was ended. Bell sold the sole version of the "Bell pack", together with the patents and technical documentation, to Williams Research Corporation. This pack is now in the Williams International company museum.

 How sad.   Of course, flying with your spine mere centimetres from spinning turbine blades which have been known, from time to time, to shatter and spray out in all directions does make this a design one which few might like to risk.   Still, I assume turbines have improved a hell of a lot since 1969, and I wonder if it will ever be reattempted.

It's taken me a while to find it, but here's some video of the jetpack being flown (and not just in a test setting either: it looks like it got a PR outing to the public):



As it happens, while reading about all of this, news turned up that the New Zealand developed "jetpack" (more like a mini personal flying vehicle, really, but it still looks awesome) has advanced:

The New Zealand makers of a one-person jetpack hope to have it on sale by the middle of next year. The Martin Aircraft company says its jetpack can reach speeds of up to 70 kilometres per hour and soar 1 kilometre high. 

The Christchurch-based firm has been testing its prototype 12 via remote control. 

The New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority said the jetpack has now been issued with an experimental flight permit for development test flying, which allows someone to pilot the aircraft.

 In case you have missed it, this is what they look like:

  

I'm seriously looking forward to seeing one of these at the Ekka in the future.

Q&A reaches new I&A* levels

Last night while composing my account of Sunday's expedition, the ABC's Q&A show was on in the background.

Someone should make a highlight tape of how spectacularly annoying Christopher Pyne and Janet Albrechtsen (who, I only recently realised, separated from her husband a couple of years ago and is now the partner of Liberal heavy weight Michael Kroger) frequently showed themselves to be.   In a further bizarre twist, it seemed to me that Tony Jones kept cutting Penny Wong short in her attempts at responses to yapping Pyne's over the top claims.

I then saw Malcolm Turnbull being very sarcastic on Lateline with Anthony Albanese.  

The one upside of this is that I think the Coalition is already looking very cocky and too self assured that they are going to win the election. 

With only a percent or two to swing in the right seats, this could well come back to bite them.

* Irritating and annoying.

Yet again, an Ekka report

Look, there was no "House of Pork" to be spotted yesterday at the RNA show, but it was replaced by something much more significant:  the re-appearance of a "rocketman" display which I had not seen live since about 1968, by my rough reckoning.

The rocketman deserves an entire post of his own, as it led me today to read up on the history and design of the equipment, and it was more interesting than I expected.

But for this post, some observations:

*   for the last two years, the family has enjoyed the auditorium 30 minute shows, which usually have an anachronistic aspect to them.  (In 2011, it was the "Sideshow Superstars", which was pleasantly grotesque in parts; and last year it was a stage hypnotist act,  a form of entertainment which I thought had died out by about 1990.)   This year it was a pretty standard "magic and illusion" act, by a young-ish performer whose comedy shtick seemed to be to play (or be - he was pretty convincing) the vain, sleazy jerk.   Yes, he even managed a "sometimes when they say 'no', they mean 'yes'" reference about women; a joke played without irony, and which did, to a modern audience's credibility, managed to get only a few groans in response.  The tricks were competently done, but were of a stock standard variety for a stage magician these days, and as such did not really contain any element of surprise, as you could tell from the somewhat muted audience reaction.

I therefore consider this year's auditorium show a failure.  I wonder what they'll dig up for next year.  The Kransky Sisters are (as part of the act, I am sure) from a Queensland country town, and may well have been in the local CWA.  I think they may be worth a try...

*  Now onto the troublesome topic of the evening "ring" entertainment.   This year they did do a large re-vamp,  which had its good points and not so good points.  First, having a so-so female pop star sing (or lip sync?) songs in the distant centre of a stadium, and then get driven around to sing from four perimeter "stages," quickly became pretty tedious.  The fact that some of the dance choreography involved much hip thrusting (and the pre-performance video of the singer was of an extraordinarily overt "I'm a sex kitten thinking about sex" variety), it seemed an appeal to a audience that was simply not there to see such content.

The rocketman bit was given some attempt at context by having a man in an Ironman costume come out for a drive by appearance; the logic seeming to be that although we can't make the dude in the costume fly, we can get someone else airborne for 10 seconds.  Meanwhile, Fake Ironman snuck over to another position where he later pretended to play heavy metal guitar during the fireworks display.   Kind of wacky; but Fake Ironman need not bother turning up again next year.  (Unlike the actual rocketman, who can come back any time as far as I'm concerned.)

The fireworks, flame, laser and water fountain show was actually pretty good and continued the trajectory of increasing complexity that has been evident for the last few years.  I'm not entirely sure how you get a job that involves designing such a show, but I like to imagine how strange some of the suggestions at the brainstorming session may have been when the final outcome includes Fake Ironman doing a bad heavy metal impression.

*  The showgrounds are undergoing major, major re-development, and the new convention centre at the heart of it was open for the first time and looked reasonably impressive in the upstairs area.   However, it seems a very "brave" decision to put food outlets on a newly carpetted convention hall floor.   Curry, wine, satay sauce, waffles with cream and syrupy fruit are all going to find their way onto the floor by the end of the week.   It's going to drive the cleaners berserk, I expect.

Or can someone in the know explain to me the secret to what seems to be a bit of a crazy decision as to how to use the convention room floor space?   Is the carpet of some special stain and oil resistant fabric that will solve this pretty obvious practical problem?  I don't think it was made of carpet squares that can be individually replaced, but I didn't get down on my hands and knees to examine it closely.

The convention centre is of much smaller area than the absolutely massive (and quite recently expanded) Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre at Southbank.  I love that place, and was told a couple of years ago by someone who has worked there for a long time that it is a very successful international convention centre; I hope the new one at the RNA showgrounds can find its niche in the market.

The Abbott powerbase react to the debate

I didn't see the political debate last night:  I was watching a jetpack rocketman doing a 10 second spin around the Brisbane showgrounds instead, which was much more exciting, I'm sure.  (My annual report on the Ekka will appear soon enough.)

But I see from having a quick look at Catallaxy that the sclerotic brains trust of the Abbott power base reacted like this:

The interesting Atlantic

My last post came from The Atlantic, which has a couple of other interesting articles up:

*  one showing a few cards from the time of the suffragette movement seeking to inspire fear that men would be completely emasculated.  The "suffragette madonna" gets particular attention:

That's quite an odd mind that came up with that, if you ask me.  (Although I have to say it strikes me as something the mysteriously 1950's Catholic re-incarnation of a man known as Currency Lad would approve of.)













As for this card:

you might have to click to enlarge it, but what is that thing coming out of the baby's mouth?  It looks strangely like it is connected to a computer mouse, but there is presumably another explanation.





*  The other article that caught my eye was one talking about the relatively high wages McDonald's employees get in Australia, compared to the US, at least if they are above teenage years.   Of course, the article does acknowledge that this also means that Australian outlets of the Golden Arches are full of teenage staff, who are (so I believe) worked in a particularly high pressure fashion to extract every bit of human output for the lavish $8 an hour they get paid.   Still, if you're an adult, you are much better off here working for McDonald's than in the US, and the article suggests (quite rightly) that perhaps consumers can tolerate marginally higher prices so that not every staff member in the store is expected to work for the equivalent of pocket money.

*  Wait, there's a third article that's fascinating - a summary of the pre-flight routine of astronaut Alan Shepherd, in which we learn something new - the Mercury astronauts had tiny tattoos to mark the spot for their electrodes (!)   There's a photo of Shepherd in his spacesuit too:

I always liked the slim fitting, silvery Mercury era spacesuits:  they are what a spacesuit should look like, much more so than the later, bulkier, white Apollo suits.

A fair bit of work has apparently been done on the tight, body hugging design for future suits that features in some science fiction (Jerry Pournelle used to feature it a fair bit in his books),  but unless they are silver, they just won't be as cool looking...

Unusual habits on the high seas

The Strange Sexual Quirk of Filipino Seafarers - Ryan Jacobs - The Atlantic

Actually, apart from the amateur attempts at body modification of which I had not heard before, the article gives a pretty interesting discussion about how Filipinos came to dominate seafaring. 

From the "only in Japan" files

'Sun Child' statue to symbolize Fukushima recovery at Aichi festival

NAGOYA—A giant child wearing a fluorescent yellow hazmat suit to guard against radiation arrived on Aug. 6 in one of the venues for Aichi Triennale 2013, a powerful symbol that conveys a message of hope for the future.

Contemporary artist Kenji Yanobe, 47, created the “Sun Child” statue hoping that the areas affected by the 2011 accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will recover from the disaster. The accident was triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

“This is a monument of recovery that makes people think about the coming future,” Yanobe said.

So, what does this "monument" look like:

Uhuh.

The old problem with tattoos

An interesting piece here on the history of tattoos in ancient Greece and Rome:

Tattoos today are decorative and voluntary, even if sometimes recklessly selected and deeply regretted later. But in ancient Greek and Rome tattoos were punitive, forcibly inflicted on slaves, prisoners of war, and wrong-doers. Tattooing captives was common in wartime. For example, in the fifth century BC Athens defeated the island of Samos and tattooed their Samian prisoners’ foreheads with Athens’ mascot the owl. Later, the Samians crushed the Athenians and tattooed their captives with the Samos emblem, a warship. In 413 BC, after Athens’ disastrous defeat at Syacuse, 7,000 Athenian soldiers were captured. Their foreheads were tattooed with the symbol of Syracuse, a horse, and they were sent as slave to work the quarries. Slaves were routinely tattooed and runaway slaves had sentences such as “Stop me, I’m a runaway” crudely gouged and inked into their faces.

These dehumanizing tattoos were not artistic or carefully applied: ink was simply poured into grooves carved in flesh with three iron needles bound together, with no thought of hygiene. There was copious bleeding; infection could be ugly. The indelible marks turned one’s body into a text recording forever one’s captivity, enslavement, or guilt. Naturally, there was a market for hiding or removing shameful tattoos, should one be lucky enough to escape a master or prison. Some opted for a painless approach: Grow long bangs to cover forehead tattoos. During the Roman era, pirates’ crews offered a haven for many criminals and runaway slaves. The dashing pirate scarf trick—tying a bandana around their foreheads—was invented to mask the tattoos of one’s old life.

Mormon underdaks

Here's a pretty non judgemental explanation of the Mormon "temple garments" - the much derided "magic underwear."

I've never looked this up in detail before.  Now I know.

The Libertarian* horoscope

Aynian:  a mooching loser will make your day a misery.  Kick them in the shins.

Collectivarian:  once again, you do something stupid to help drag humanity back to the dark ages.

Smokertarian:   a good day to enjoy your domination over the forces of nature by going through at least a pack of 30, and that's just after lunch. 

Roarkian:   two, possibly three, members of the opposite sex will want you to aggressively have your way with them.  Enjoy, you magnificent beast. 

Lootarian: just do us a favour and die in a train crash, won’t you?

....etc (further suggestions are welcome).

* yes, yes, we know about Ayn’s claims about the term.

Possibly significant physics news

Has LHCb spotted physics beyond the Standard Model? - physicsworld.com

 One of seven experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the LHCb experiment focuses on the physics of B-mesons – those particles containing the bottom (or beauty) quark – produced during proton collisions. One process of great interest is the decay of a B-meson into a kaon (K*) and two muons: B →  K*μ⁺μ^–. This is a relatively rare decay and according to the Standard Model it occurs only because of the subtle effects of heavier particles – W and Z bosons – that mediate the weak force. As a result, particles that are not described by the Standard Model may be contributing to the decay and so their effects could be measured by LHCb. Evidence that this decay happens in a manner that the Standard Model cannot explain could point the way to "new physics".

It'll be a while before they feel certain this is happening, though.

Let's catch up with Tony Abbott and his dynamic power base

Electric optimism

Electric Cars Are Doing Better Than Hybrids Did in Their First Three Years | MIT Technology Review

There's much to learn in the infographic at the above link.

Improbable idea for a webcam

Last night,  for no particular reason (other than a generic interest in krill,) I thought that I should post an image of the Southern crustacean.

It turns out I can do better than that.  For some reason known only to someone in Hobart, the Australian Antarctic Division of the Australian government's environment department has, since 2008, run a regularly updating video of its krill aquarium.  Yes, every 15 minutes, you can see a new short video of krill being krill. 

There might be odder webcams of bits of nature in captivity out there, but this one would have to rank pretty high in the peculiar stakes.

They do have big eyes, by the way.

Update:  for those readers who can't be bothered clicking on the link, here's a shot of what they were up to 10 minutes ago:

 

In slightly more interesting webcams from the Australian Antarctic Division, here's a shot from Macquarie Island this morning:

Gee.  It seems not very high above the high water mark, in a ocean known for rough weather, doesn't it?  If you look at the 48 hour time lapse video they make from the webcam, it looks even worse.

 

Good memories

Dolphins remember each other for decades 

I didn't know this about dolphin "names":

Between the ages of about 4 months and a year, every bottlenose dolphin settles on a whistle of its own that stays the same for the rest of the dolphin's life. In another recent study, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences², Stephanie King and Vincent Janik, two marine-mammal biologists at the University of St Andrews, UK, have shown that dolphins use these whistles in the same way as humans use names: they voice their own whistles to identify themselves to others, and they mimic others’ whistles to call to them.

Tony had a dream

OK, maybe I have to confirm to readers that it's Gina*, and who knows, maybe it's her dream too...

* Gina is joining the club of rich Australians who are losing in court.  I thought this might cheer her up...

Why do it?

Sam Rockwell in talks for Poltergeist remake | Film | theguardian.com

It's always a puzzle as to why people want to do remakes of films which were critical and commercial successes at the time.  (At least if they are not based on earlier, "classic" stories or novels.)

So this seems a very strange proposal.

"Poltergeist" was an enormously enjoyable and witty fright flick; well directed, written and cast.   It played as emotionally real as well (remember the scene where the spirit of the girl passes through the mother, and her reaction?)

Why remake it?

What? Is Abbott doing the full Romney?

It was just mentioned on Lateline, as breaking news, that the ABC understands the Coalition will tomorrow announce a tax cut for companies, worth $5 billion (I think) over an unspecified period.

Well, if true, those Liberal Party operative trips to learn how to do politics with the Tea Party influenced GOP is going to backfire.

Because everyone knows, the way to deal with an ongoing government revenue problem (and government debt dis-arrs-ter)  is for it to, um, cut revenue.

Update:  So, I see the justification is expected to be:

a.   that it compensates big companies for the parental leave plan levy. (Responses noted in some comments at The Guardian:  "yeah, big companies like the banks are doing it so tough we must be very careful they never hurt"; and "so Abbott is effectively having the public fund it after all".)  

b.  part of the Henry Tax review proposed cutting the company tax rate.  But,  um, didn't he also expect a mining tax to usefully increase revenue for the government?

Update 2:  to be honest, to do the full Romney, a politician or economist has to have read Ayn Rand and say things that indicates he's thinking in terms of Moochers and Looters.   Abbott is (note dear readers:  I am giving him a compliment) almost certainly not silly enough to have read Rand, and his Australian variety of Catholicism helps ensure that he is happily free of the weird Randian influence that we see in US Catholic/libertarian Republicans.   Still, there's always a slim hope that at some point in the campaign he might make some comment about what a bunch of losers some of the electorate are, and then we award him "the full Romney". 

Update 3:  well, even with all the normal reservations (online polls are hardly scientific and can be scammed easily by partisan players, particularly during a campaign, and this is a Fairfax poll after all, etc etc) I would still guess that the response shown here on the issue indicates most people aren't overly impressed with the policy:

Update 4: so, the "we never saw a tax cut we didn't like - it helps ensure the teeny, tiny government we believe in on ideological grounds" crowd are noting Labor's not so long ago support of lowering the rate of company tax. But Wong handled this pretty well on radio this morning - Labor was saying they were "aiming for" this when they were also saying they could be back in surplus in a couple of years. That hasn't happened, and won't for a while yet, so they put off the company tax reductions too.

Isn't the problem for the Coalition that, as they like to run with simplistic economics arguments that governments have to control their budgets like households do, then that approach is going to come back to bite them when they try to go with Laffer curve, trickle down arguments for lowering taxes at a time when they are simultaneously saying there is a government debt crisis.

More evidence I'm not alone...

Slate has a article entitled Clint Eastwood made Mitt Romney's strategist vomit, and other tales. with some short extracts from a book about the 2012 US Presidential campaign. Given that I was scathing at the time of wingnutty people who thought that the Clint Eastwood "empty chair" performance was brilliant, I am happy to see that even as it was happening, it was freaking out Romney people (or, at least, one of them):

Stuart Stevens, watching in another room in the hall, was literally sickened. He walked out of the room and threw up.

- Balz on how Romney's ad guru watched the RNC Clint Eastwood speech.

Heh.

No one cares? Excellent...

Avatar sequels? Three? No one cares. Here's why.

I have seen about 10 minutes of Avatar while the kids were watching it on DVD.  The blue characters looked a bit cartoonish to me.  I had no interest in the story, which is just about a guy who goes blue, and  native, isn't it?  James Cameron is personally bizarrely brave (even thinking about sinking for hours into the black, crushing abyss in a one man submarine makes me feel claustrophobic) but I have never cared much for his films. 

So I was pleased to read this article which explains that the film hasn't had the same cultural longevity as its box office might suggest.  Good.