THE FUTURE!

Alright, I'll post something new soon, but if anyone wants proof that the future is here and its completely incomprehensible, read this headline.

More links

Yeah, I'm doing it again.
I decided to search for Space Odyssey references on the NASA Technical Report Server to see what came up. Then I decided to widen the search to other movies.
Here's 2001: A Space Odyssey
Here's Star Wars
Here's Alien
Here's Extra Terrestrial ('ET' got no results)
Here's Star Trek
Here's War of the Worlds (actually I search 'War Worlds', since the NTRS gave me everything with 'of' and 'the' in the title)
'Flash Gordon', 'Battlestar Galactica', and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' gave up nothing; and 'Buck Rogers' told me there is a guy called Roger Buck. De la Terre à la Lune seems to have caused a conniption. If the ISS falls from the sky, don't blame me.
It seems that the two most influential Sci-Fi things at NASA are Space Odyssey and Star Trek, which is probably because they concentrate on the techie stuff more than the others. Kubrick's obsession with accuracy means that Space Odyssey is the only movie that people have considered as literal inspiration, while the Trek references are mostly to guest appearances by the Cast, or the shuttle prototype being called Enterprise, which probably means the folks at NASA like Bill Shatner a whole lot. Star Wars gets little mention, considering it was once a Reagan administration policy. Papers on actual aliens only appear at the end of the searches for Alien and Extra Terrestrial which is a tad odd. This one paper called 'the Interstellar Conspiracy, keeps popping up, and with a title like that, who can resist?

And here's a photo of a planet orbiting another star (actually the researchers aren't sure if its a planet or a planet-like object, whatever that means).

Let me know if any of the links don't work.

I can't believe its come to this

So I'm going to defer to the last refuge of the blogger, the page of links.

First up, up a follow up on everybody's favourite car, the Citroen DS. This may well be the greatest car chase captured on film. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVhx9iZNSmk (Edit: Thanks to Travis for telling me this link was broken. Its fixed now. Edit: Now it is)

Secondly, with all the Hadrons flying about, some of you have heard me talking about a thing called Heim Theory. Its an alternative unified theory that hasn't gotten any peer review, but seems pretty promising, not least because it may allow some form of hyperdrive (Also it supposedly predicts all the fundamental paticles... HYPERDRIVE!). Check out the wiki page here, but also have a look at the reference down the bottom to the AIAA paper on the hyperdrive application (then explain it to me).

Talking of space, the harderst part of space travel is the first hundred miles up. Jonathon Goff over at Selenian Boondocks has just finished an incredibly well written series of articles on getting up there. You can read it here.

And back to cars again. Here's a nice set of photos taken behind the scenes of the Mercedes Benz museum. I'd have the white 300SL, and the blue curvy transporter with the Silver Arrows racer on the back.

Oh, and here's climb dance.

Alright, that's enough for now. Let me know if any of the links don't work and I'll try and think of something other than cars and spaceships to write about next time.

LHC's Eve

So tomorrrow the Large Hadron Collider is going to have a particle stream inject for the first time; and to all the theoretical physicists waiting for confirmation out there, I just want you to know: Your all wrong, probably.

My Favourite Things #2

There's really only one reason I want to watch The Day of the Jackal, and it isn't Edward Fox. In 1955 18 years of development culminated in Citroen's successor to the Traction Avant, the DS. The DS is simply unlike anything car ever made. Here's a picture:

The Prettiest of all things

I saw my first DS in a driveway in the Blue Mountains. The humidity had rusted the body- which was yellow anyway- and the tires had perished. The thing is, if the engine still worked and the suspension was all right, it would've driven without the tires. This was the first car in the world to have height adjustable hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension, which meant it didn't so much drive as glide. As is patently obvious, it was oddly yet iconically proportioned. The curves are simple yet striking, and the taper towards the back gives it an epic look to match the wallowing ride quality. The nose effortlessly combines the shape of a sixties Italian coupe (in 1955) with the separate fenders of the 30s, framed by double streamlined headlamps tailing into fender skirts.

This was one of the first cars with something approaching sequential shift. The clutch was hydraulically controlled, meaning you only had to ease up on the throttle to change gear using the column shift mounted next to the single spoke steering wheel. It was one of the first production cars to use electronic fuel injection, and the first to have front disc brakes. So your new BMW M3 has a carbon fibre roof to keep the centre of mass down? Well the DS had a fibreglass roof to do the same thing. In 1955. Until 1976.

The DS stayed in production for 21 years, undergoing very few changes, mostly a tiny bit of restyling, a few new gearboxes, and a gradual increase in engine power, since the DS was initially chronically underpowered. One thing it did gain was turning head lamps that allowed the driver to see around corners.

I was once told that engineering is a balance of many variables, and the DS is surely one of the most balanced machines of all time. The body styling is iconic without being garish, and aerodynamic to boot, and the technology is truly innovative without being gadgety. Its been called one of the most influential cars of the 20th century, yet nothing has ever come close in terms of individuality, and the DS remains ahead of its time even today.

If I were going to buy one (and I seriously hope to), I'd be aiming for the DS23 with the fuel injection and 5-speed manual, although that's mostly for the power. An earlier engine had hemispherical heads, and being able to say you have a hemi in a car like this offers tempting bragging rights. Swivelling headlights under streamlined glass is a must, and I'd go for an unassuming colour like beige or grey, although deep blue is also tempting. Although the yellow one I first saw is still rusting away in the Mountains...

One final thing. DS is pronounced déesse, which is the French word for Goddess. Oh my, its even got a pun for a name.

You can see some very pretty pictures here. be sure to checkout the detail photos too.

R.I.P, Microwave

Someone took our microwave from the collection pile today. The thing was about twenty years old, and had started making explosion noises when we turned it on, so we had to get a knew one. It's a pitty, becasue that thing was the easiest machine in the world to drive. Instead of having a bunch of buttons that said things like "Potatoes", it had two dials; one for power and one for time-which also spun backwards to act as the timer. Behind the doof frame was a sticker that had recommended times on it, nut it was really up to you how much you cooked things. The dials were huge, and had a nice bit of tactile feedback in them, unlike the squares you push on the new machine. It had no clock, and instead of a chime it had an actual bell that I think was connected to the timer dial. Unfortunately- as well as the aformentioned explosions- the sheilding was going, and it horrible fake wood veneer that was peeling off.
I'm not just getting nostalgic here. This was a machine that did just what it was supposed to and nothing more. The controls were uncluttered and intuitive, and didn't try and second guess what people wanted to do with it (what if I don't want to cook potatoes?). I kinda think that if you combined a modern magnetron with some dials and a lack of clock-and made it white- you could build a better microwave.

A List!

So its finally come to this, a list on Alias Mr Hackenbacker. To make up for the notable lack of science in the last post, I decided I needed an extra helping pretty damn quick. And since this is blog is notionally an attempt at science communication, I decided to make a list of the people who have made that job easier, the n best nerds of all time.

Randall Monroe: I'm guessing most of you know Randall as the guy who writes XKCD. That little web comic has done more to put a human face on geekiness than anything else.

Douglas Adams: Most people know Douglas Adams as the creator of Hitchhikers. But he was also a rampant nerd and mac user. a self taught science commentator, Adams used his profound wit to turn scientific concepts on their head. I can't really do it justice here, you should get Salmon of Doubt and read Is There an Artificial God?. Its up the back, around page 126.

Julius Sumner Miller: YOUR IGNORANCE MAKES ME ANGRY! I don't actually know much about Julius Sumner Miller, since he was on the telly before I was born. I do know that he basically invented science communication in this country, even though he was American. I do know he used to frighten people by going a bit mental when they couldn't keep up, or were a bit slow on the uptake, but it was science as it should be, driven by curiosity and hurtling blindly towards insight and conclusion without fear of the consequences.

Richard Feynmann: SEX! That's right. The adventuring bongo playing strip clubbing quantum mechanics guy. Feynmann was not content to accept other peoples theories if he didn't think they were good enough, and if he didn't like them he damn well made his own. They were right too.

Doc Emmet Brown: Probably the closest to a role model for scientists ever committed to film. The guy never let up, and people liked him too.

Carl Sagan: You want to know who put those plaques on space probes for the aliens to find? It was this guy. Sagan wrote Contact, made Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, and made being a scientist who thinks about aliens respectable. He campaigned against Nuclear Weapons, figured out a lot of that stuff you learnt about the planets in primary school. Science as hope, oh hell yeah.

Albert Einstein: All the stuff I wrote up there about the other guys applies to Uncle Albert.

TIME's Person of the Century

The Runners up: A few flaws here

Mythbusters: Scientific accuracy! No wait, explosions! Mythbusters is great, it promotes skepticism, and has a lot of fire and funny hats. But for whatever reason, it usually gets the scientific method wrong. Most often there's no control, and not enough control of the variables. Curiosity is great, but untested answers don't do it justice.

Brains: Brains from Thunderbirds is the Mr. Hackenbacker this blog is named after. He has a stutter, terrible glasses, and a pocket protector. But in the world of Thunderbirds he gets all the respect for building gigantic rescue machines and airships and such. The problem is, in real life, people aren't that obsessed with machines. He's a nerd who gets respect, but only in a world created by nerds.



The complete opposite: Some people who make things harder


Phil Plait: Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website and book are supposed to dispel bad science and mistakes you see in the movies. That'd be great, if Phil wasn't so damn snarky.


Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker is one of the best science books I've ever read. However, Dawkins recent tirades against religion make the scientific method sound like dogma, which is kind of the opposite of what he is trying to achieve.

And the Winner is...

I went to Toys'R'Us today, to look for the new Honda racer concept thing from Hot Wheels. I couldn't find it, but I did wander past the back wall, and remembered that I was going to right about the winner of a hypothetical 'Best toy ever for people who like science and stuff' competition, judged solely by me. The nominees are:

1. LEGO

2. My talking Einstein action figure with the flat batteries.

The winner is LEGO! Oh my, what a surprise. Consider, the entire LEGO range- from Duplo to mindstorm- is interconnectable. Blocks from 1968 will connect to blocks from last Friday. This is a level of standardisation that is higher than NASA's. Starting with Episode 1 in 1998/9, LEGO has used licenced characters, instead of in-house ranges. This gives it a huge marketing advantage (have you heard of K*NEX lately?), but since its kept the modularity, it hasn't sold out. There was a time there when the licenced kits had a lot of big specialty pieces that weren't "proper" LEGO, but the Indiana Jones and Batman lines seem to have reversed that. What all this means is that kids can make Batman and Han Solo fight the sorting hat, and isn't that the point of childhood?
The thing, the big thing, though, is the brickiness. Its all just some bricks you put together. You start with Duplo bricks the size of your fist, work up through pirates and space ships, build race cars in technic, and build robots with mindstorm as a final year project. And all the space ships and pirates and race cars and Batmen can be pulled apart and put together again to make some sort of racing space bat pirate.
So LEGO is basically a mashup of all the other toys. It truly is the best thing ever.

Travis is WRONG! and other important facts

The comments section of my last blog erupted into a comment war that I should really respond to. OK, it was just Travis (hello Travis!). But I still need to respond. Most of this is things I see as misconceptions about evolution in general. I don't think Travis mentioned all of them, but I think they're all related- and good to know- so I've thrown them in here for the fun of it.

Firstly, I'm sure we've all heard claims that evolution is "just a theory". This has mostly come from the Intelligent Design people, and it's been widely condemned as misleading. The fact is, evolution is "just a theory". That means its a pretty good description of how things work. What it is not is a description of how things should work. Admittedly, saying evolution is the way things should work is mostly the work of Hollywood biologists (who, remarkably, are mostly Lamarkists). But this makes it quite a common misconception, and a bit of a dangerous one. Frankly I have no idea how things should work, but assuming the status quo is best is quite bonkers.

" Beware the voice of the Profit!"? Erm, no actually. To be profitable, you have to make the best use of available resources, to produce something that ultimately makes life easier for people. This is also what a good genetic trait does. It turns out that ultimately, profitability is an extension of the need to survive. So it follows that people who are trying to produce something profitable, are actually aiding survival. Mining companies produce energy and materials for building shelter and transport. The more they produce, for the least effort, the more profitable they become. The thing that makes things difficult is money. Not all things can be easily compared. An hour of a watchmaker's time is not directly comparable to a tonne of iron ore. This is why a universal unit, money was introduced. Money should make things easier, but the fact is although it can measure the value of most useful things, there are still a lot that it can't, things like knowledge, and health. Another problem is that you can't always figure out what the most profitable thing to do is, but that's pretty obvious. It does however, have a very significant consequence, which I'll write about later (except I'll probably forget, its all part of the fun here at Alias Mr Hackenbacker).

Travis also mentioned short term profitability, and apparently he doesn't like it. Here's the thing though. An organism might receive a new trait through genetic mutation that in the long run might make it the king of all creation. The problem is though, that if the trait is not immediately useful, it is not selected. Similarly, if a company isn't profitable (producing something useful) pretty much all the time, it just consumes capital (resources), and fails. So short term profitability is just another extension of one consequence of natural selection.

I hope I've said something useful here. There are several more conclusions I could make, but this is supposed to be a technology blog, not "Hiram explains capitalism", so from now on its shiny things and loud explosions. And probably more bloody evolution.

Clearin' some Shit

If you're wondering where I've been, well I've been busy. Major projects don't do themselves, even when there's nothing to do.
I figured I'd return to the blagosphere by clearing up something I've figured out, but have never told anybody (I'm like that woman in Hitchhiker's who figures out the meaning of life just before the Vogons destroy the world, except I'm not a woman, and the Vogons represent apathy). A couple of blog posts I made earlier depend on this something, which is why I'm cleaing this up now (if that doesn't make sense, your not thinking fourth dimensionally).
Life has existed on Earth for about a billion years (out of the 4 billion years that the earth has existed, out of the 13.7 billion years the universe has existed). This has culminated in the rather sexy form you see now. Also, ponies! The weird thing is, sexy folk and ponies are related. The reason sexy folk and ponies look different is because of evolution. Evolution is made up of two basic things; natural selection and genetic mutation. natural selection means that physical features of an organism that are not useful to survival tend to lead to the death of the organism that possess them, while those that are useful promote survival. This is an extraordinarily efficient proccess. The obvious question is, where did these physical features come from in the first place? The answer is extraordinarily complex and subtle, but the simple answer is random changes in the genes of the organism. I really am simplifiying for the sake of brevity here, and if you want a fuller answer you should really read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. It's really dense, but remarkably clear, and it has no agenda like a lot of his books. Anyway, the thing to remember is that genes mutate and throw up new physical features, which either contribute to survival and themselves survive, or don't and disappear. This proccess worked perfectly well by itself for hundreds of millions of years.
Them something strang happened. Evolution had produced these things called apes. People still like to argue about what exactly happened, but apes became intelligent. They could analyse problems, solve them, and communicate the solution to other apes. Biologists can point out that a lot of animals can do this, but it seems the apes were just better at it at the right time. Eventually the apes began to record the things going on around them. They could also make tools to solve problems, rather than just using bits of their anatomy. What apes had then, was a remarkable combination of traits that simply changed the way evolution worked. Problem solving was previously the domain of a random proccess, the mutation of genes. The problem was, genes couldn't see the problem they were solving. To use an ancient phrase, the watchmaker was blind. Apes were not blind. Using a brain to solve a problem meant that they could see what was needed and try and make that, not as an extension of their bodies, but as a seperate and eventually reusable tool. There was another problem with genes, they only recorded what worked at the time, and nothing else. this wasn't true of the ape mind, it was capable of recording the past, building a library of ideas both successful and unsuccessful to draw on if and when the need arose.
This means you, ape. This is what you're suppposed to do with that spiderweb of neurons of yours. The problem is, we aren't doing it very well. Looking at problems and solving them isn't done very well at the moment (biofuel?), and we apes need to do science on more things, to see how they work, so we can solve all our problems. We're also not doing so great at that learning from our mistakes part, from what I can see (Hello, Mr Costa!). I just think its time for more Large Hadron Colliders, more Tacoma Narrows, and less Kyle Sandilands.

Disclaimer: As far as I can tell current knowledge of early human evolution goes something like: First there were mokeys, them some cool stuff happened, then uh...Egyptians? There are still a lot of questions about how we got to where we are today. I don't think the details matter so much to the point of this post, but if I've made glaringly obvious mistake, fell free to say so in the comments.

Tilt my rotor

There's this thing that's starting to turn up on the news and the cover of Time magazine and movies like Transformers. Its the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, and its the world's first operational tiltrotor. A tiltrotor is essentially a conventional aeroplane, except with normal engines replaced with oversized turboprops that can tilt up to vertical and act as helicopter rotors, thus making the thing capable of vertical take-off. Tiltrotors are- in theory at least- supposed to combine the flexibility of a helicopter with the range and speed of an aeroplane. I've got a feeling that some of the compromises involved reduce the actual performance to something less than spectacular. But I'll leave that for another post. Today I want to start from the beginning, and talk about one of the first tiltrotors, the Bell XV-3.

The XV-3 was the first experiment in tiltrotoring, being built in 1955 to iron out the kinks in the concept. The testing program was dominated by aeroelastic troubles, the combination of traditionally built wings and the relatively new art of helicopter rotor design creating some interesting maths at a time when people were still using analog computers. Playing around with the XV-3 solved the first round of problems with the tiltrotor concept, paving the way for the V-22- now seeing action with the Marine Corp in Iraq- and its in-development civilian counterpart, the BA609.

There is however, one vital difference between the XV-3 and the V-22. The XV-3 had a single engine located in the fuselage, driving the rotors through a long drive-shaft through the wings to the rotors at the tips, while the V-22 has the engines at the tips, tilting with the rotors. At first glance the tilting engines might seem like the better option. It sounds simpler, it eliminates the weight of the drive shaft, and after all it is found on the production model of a military aircraft. But here's the problem, the V-22 also has a drive-shaft between the rotors, so that if one engine fails the other can power both rotors. So suddenly the superiority of the tilt-engine-pod isn't so clear.

Mounting the engine on the wing tip and tilting it presents other problems too. The control wiring, and more importantly fuel piping (and probably some hydraulic lines too) have to pass through the pivot, crowding a lot of complex joints that add weight into a tight space. Cantilevering the engines off the wing creates structural problems. At least on land, the wing root has to take all that load, which means it has to be stronger, which means it has to be heavier. The majority of tiltrotors have been investigated by the military. Military rotor craft usually have some kind of armoured floor, to protect the cargo, passengers, and whatever else is in the fuselage. With tilt-engine-pods, that does not include the engines. With the engines mounted on the fuselage driving the rotors through drive shafts it does. Also, mounting the engines on the fuselage decreases the angular momentum of the craft in roll, providing a nice increase in maneuverability.

It is claimed that since the drive-shaft on a tilt-engine-podded craft is for emergency use only, it can be lighter, but such a drive-shaft still needs to carry sufficient power to keep the thing aloft, which is not inconsiderable. It is also worth mentioning that since the shaft only need operate for short periods (probably one half of a full range return journey), you can cut down a lot of the weight needed to give the thing a reasonable service life. I have to wonder though, whether the weight saving is as significant as is claimed.

So far I've failed to mention the 100-pound gorilla in the corner of the drive-shaft showroom, the horrible horrible vibrations. Having a spinning shaft running the length of a fairly flexible wing tends to shake the assembly to pieces in a pretty short length of time. This is probably why the tilt-pod-rotor configuration was chosen in the first place. But here's the thing, since the XV-3 testing was shut down, several things happened. Stiffer materials such as carbon fibre were developed, as was sophisticated computing capable of analysing vibrational modes in tiltrotors. Long drive-shafts have been used in other aerospace applications, such as helicopter tail rotors (the Sikorsky H-53 being a particularly high-powered and successful example), and I believe some of the tandem rotor choppers (like the Chinhook) have to use drive-shafts to power the front rotor.

So I have to wonder if the move away from centre mounted engines driving tip rotors through drive-shafts is the best possible direction for tiltrotor aircraft. I suspect that I may have oversimplified the above arguments a bit (I neglected mentioning gearboxes and swashplates on the assumption that they were the same for each type, which may not be the case), but I really think that centre mounted engines have a distinct advantage over tilt-engine-pods that is worth pursuing.
What is interesting to me is why centre mounted engines have been essentially forgotten for most tiltrotors. I suspect a large part of it is the protracted development of the tiltrotor in general which has been going on since the mid-fifties, but is only now seeing production. But a more significant if subtler effect lies in the fact that the tiltrotor concept was too far ahead of its time. The inability to properly analyse the vibration modes of the XV-3 led to the adoption of tilt-engine-pods in test aircraft-namely the XV-15, the precursor to the V-22- to simplify the engineering and results from testing. The development of fairly successful drive-shafts went unnoticed by the tiltrotor's designers, who were probably focused on other things. The interesting thing is that although it is only one aircraft, the V-22 has been in development for so long that it is now the face of tiltrotor aircraft, and so the tilt-engine-pod is seen as the defacto choice of engine placement. What happened then, was that the practical application of an idea grew not out of a thorough and complete analysis of all possible designs, but as an iteration of a well known design. That design was originally analysed as it was the easiest possible design to analyse. The V-22- a combat aircraft- shows the pedigree of a research aircraft. I wonder then if this is proof that the tiltrotor is undergoing proper evolution, rather than a simple progression of designs. The anatomy of the tiltrotor has retained those phenotypes that while not optimal, in the past provided an advantage, and so were selected.
I kind of cheated you here, because I want to talk about evolution, not aeroplanes. I think the really important thing to realise is that this needn't be so. Human beings possess both memory (of the XV-3) and some damn good computers, something that DNA does not. We are able to revisit and consider our failures, rather than carrying on blind to our history. Our flying machines therefore are not limited to random mutation and survival of the fittest, and should be all the better for it.

Some Of My Favourite Things #1

(I said before I was going to do a couple of lists. I've now decided not to, since the Internet is mostly made up of lists and pictures of cats. So I thought instead I'd start an occasional feature about machines I really like for one reason or another. Here we go!)

NASA is going back to the Moon on a ship called Orion. Its basically an upgraded Apollo capsule, and it is not the first space ship called Orion. Back in 1958, General Atomics started work on Project Orion, a fiery old-testament spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs. The thing was supposed to weigh 4000 tonnes, 400 of which made up a pushed plate connected to the rest of the ship by 5-storey high nitrogen filled shock absorbers. The plate was there to absorb the focused blast from fusion boosted fission devices thrown out the back of the ship. The thing was ridiculously primitive, yet incredibly powerful. It is the only proposed spaceship capable of taking off from the Earth's surface and performing an interplanetary voyage with a single stage. A scaled down version to fit a Saturn V upper stage was also proposed. The fallout would have killed people, which is why it was ultimately never built (the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 was the immediate reason), although a test of the pusher plate was performed with conventional explosives.

This is probably the most optimistic thing ever attempted by man. This was an interplanetary spacecraft that was supposed to be made from regular steel. The mass budget included a two tonne barber's chair. The missions were planned on the assumption that the General Atomics design team (which included physicist Freeman Dyson and bomb designer Ted Taylor) would be going along for the ride. This machine was a serious attempt to take the bombs that razed cities to the ground and use them to create for real the space opera adventures of the forties. It was Space Odyssey before Space Odyssey was even made.

Like most of spaceship proposals Orion was hopelessly uneconomic. By the time the designs were finally filed away, the only justification for its continued existence was the unfounded suspicion the the USSR was conducting a similar project. All that is left now are a few design projects under the much less alarmist heading of "pulsed plasma propulsion", and the General Atomics building- a cylindrical office the exact diameter of the 4000 tonne proposal.

Completely useless, absurdly dangerous, absolutely practical and God damned exciting.

References: Mostly taken from Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson. George is the son of Freeman, and interviewed first hand many of the people who worked for General Atomics. The book is a bit of a mess, but full of first hand accounts of an atomic spaceship.

There's also this: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=679#more-679 which has a picture of the 4000t proposal,

and this: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html for all your atomic rocket needs.

Explosions 'n' shit

I want to talk about CGI. I want to do this, because last year the highest grossing movies -the ones that the most people went and saw- were all CGI heavy, but none of them won an Academy Award. I figure this means that although 300, Spiderman 3, and Transformers were all fun (which is the point of movies), they didn't really make for compelling viewing, while Juno and No Country for Old Men did. Since this is notionally a technology blog, I'm going to try and figure out if CGI itself really has anything to do with this.

I'll start with the obvious, since a lot of people are saying that CGI is used as a substitute for proper plotting and character (I'm looking at you Michael Bay). Compare the original The Poseidon Adventure from 1972 with 2006's Poseidon. The former featured smallish sets and unconvincing model work, which left plenty room for Gene Hackman's struggle with God, Ernest Borgnine's embarrassment over marrying a prostitute, and Shelley Whithers' swimming. The latter killed off unlikeable characters in increasingly unlikely scenarios, sometimes by having them kill each other. It held the Guiness World Record for the most detailed CGI model in a film. What we have here is a clear example of too much CGI (and that model was used a lot) at the expense of drama.

I think it's time to put the lesson here in its most important terms: There is only so much money under the bed, and more CGI means less money for everything else. But I don't think this is strictly fair on CGI. The money is spent on CGI because people want CGI. I'm not going to argue about why, or even who (Its Michael Bay, mostly), because it seem pretty obvious that you could spend CGI money on other things, like real props, or real scripts, or real people. Like most everything, there can be too much CGI, and deciding how much CGI there is is as much a part of good filmmaking as casting or scripting.

I don't think that was a surprise to anyone, so I'll move on. To Revenge of the Sith. Just so you know, I have to try really hard not to mention all the reasons this movie sucked, and just mention one. You know in Empire Strikes Back when Vader tells Luke who he really is, and Luke is dangling off an aerial? You know how Han spends most of that movie up to his knees in wiring? Did you see that in Revenge of the Sith? No. Harrison Ford looked genuinely perturbed when the guts of the Millenium Falcon sparked in his face, probably because a chunk of pyrotechnics actually went off near his eyes. For most of Episodes II and III, Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor look at most mildly irritated, even when riding robots through lava for some reason.

The thing is, Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen couldn't see lava-robots, they could just see a giant green room. Which is why they act like they are in a giant green room, and debate betrayal and the nature of good and evil (or something), instead of worrying about the fucking lava.

This is a more fundamental problem than over-use. CGI can't actually be present during recording, so actors have nothing to react to. But this is not a new problem: actors could hardly react realistically to stop-frame animation dinosaurs back in the thirties, and they didn't have to. Model work was separated from the live action sets for reasons of necessity, which meant actors weren't really called on to react to things that weren't there. split screened effects changed the situation slightly, but there was never any interaction with physical objects that weren't in the room. So again the problem isn't with CGI itself, rather its use, which in Episode III was hardly judicious (I think at the end there is a CGI Peter Cushing). So there is a limit to what CGI can do well, but that's true of almost everything in film making. Deciding when to use CGI is also part of good filmmaking.

I think now its time to talk about a real problem with CGI. The 1933 King Kong was a pretty simple movie. It had straight-forward characters with few dimensions that didn't develop, and the plot consisted of a series of set pieces where a giant gorilla broke things, usually people. But to show the gorilla breaking things took hours and hours of stop-frame, slightly adjusting the plasticene models, taking a photo, then repeating: a second of film took about thirty photos. That's really hard, since it takes forever and needs to be really well coordinated. The 2005 King Kong was basically the same story, with some mild character development, and a shitload more action. Instead of stop-framing, the animators built an incredibly detailed CG model, including the underlying bone and muscle structure, as well as software to translate human expressions inot gorilla expression. This was then combined with motion capture from a suit worn by Andy Serkis. I have no idea what most of that means, since like most people I've never done anything like it. I have, however, made models, and know thirty photos is a lot for one second of footage. Here I think is the most important characteristic of CGI. People have no idea how it works, its just "all done with computers". The average movie-goer can't really relate to the effort put into coding, like they can with model making and taking loads and loads of photos. The incredible complexity of CGI also means that opening titles now say "Visual effects by Industrial Light and Magic" with the closing credits full of names that are too small to read. Back in the day there were no closing credits, and the titles said "Special effects by Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen" and that was that. So if there is any problem with CGI itself, it is that it is difficult to relate to, since noone knows know who made it or how they did it.

So I hope I have made a good point here, that techinology only makes things better if you use it right, and that art, real art, is better if people know how hard it is to make. I mostly hope though, that noone actually makes a Macgyver Movie.

Separate the variables

In 1712, Thomas Newcomen patented the first practical steam engine. The defining feature of this and other early steam engines was that it didn't run on steam. Steam at little over atmospheric pressure was admitted to the cylinder, and them water was injected into the cylinder, condensing the steam and creating a vacuum that allowed the pressure of the air outside to push the cylinder down. It worked well enough, and its ability to lift large amounts of water over great heights allowed mining to be extended to greater depths, and the abundance of urchins in Cornwall to be finally put to good use (this is a historical fact). In 1765, James Watt, an instrument maker from Scotland filed a patent for a separate condenser, which created the vacuum in a component other than the cylinder, which meant that the cylinder didn't have to reheated after every stroke, and saved a considerable amount of coal, which meant more of the stuff that was dug out of the ground could be sent to London and traded for urchins (This fact is even more historical).

A statue of James Watt. Note that in real life James Watt was rarely covered in green moss, and that the pigeon was actually invented by Nikola Tesla.

What's interesting is that Watt didn't just bang his head on a kettle and think up the separate condenser. Watt had performed a series of systematic experiments to determine the property's of steam at the University of Glasgow to determine the properties of steam, with the intention of creating an engine that only used an amount of steam equivalent to the volume of the cylinder (Newcomen's engine, with its cylinder cooled from the condensing, would then condense admitted steam on the cylinder walls, meaning that more than a cylinder full of steam had to be used). Watt never documented how exactly he conceived of the separate condenser, but it is unlikely he was hit on the head with a kettle and it just came to him (that sort of thing only happens to fictional characters such as Doc Emmett Brown and Sir Isaac Newton). What I think is interesting is that for to accurately understand the effect of each property of steam- the pressure, temperature, dryness and so on- he would have had to ensure that the experiments design to test each one were not affected by the others. He would have had to separate the variables. Watt's separate condenser allowed one process to operate (the condensing), without interfering with another (the action of the piston). Is it possible that Watt was inspired by the need to separate the variables to separate the different process of the steam cycle into different components?
I don't know, I just thought that up one Sunday. Regardless of whether my hypothesis is true or not, it does reveal something about the nature of engineering. A truly successful machine is one that is understandable. Since most machines are pretty complex, it helps if each component only does one thing, so you can design it to do that and that only. This why shock absorbers absorb shock, and don't organise your taxes.
But being understandable is not the defining characteristic of a design, the defining characteristic is whether it works or not. Something that works quite well is a person's blood stream, blood flow delivers oxygen to where it is needed in the body, but it also acts as a coolant, redistributing the heat generated by different organs. This means that you don't need to maintain two different fluid systems with two different pumps, but it also means that the thermodynamics of the human body is much more complex, since the delivered oxygen increases the anount of waste heat which needs to be carried away, with the composition of the blood changing as oxygen is replaced by carbon dioxide. The reason this works is that the human blood flow was evolved rather than designed, and so there was no need to understand why it worked, only that it did work.
With the increase in computing power that came in the second half of the 20th century, the ability to document and analyse (and therefore design) complex systems increased greatly. Additionally, engineers are now starting to study living things to see how they work, in order to design better machines. It is possible that in the near future we will see a slew of new designs, featuring components that have more than one purpose, and that are well understood. It is also possible that this has already happened, and that I just haven't noticed. Either way, its what I'd do.

Whither NASA?

NASA, the people who brought you "The Moon Landing" and "Hey, is that a roast beef sandwich?" are planning to reboot the franchise with the highly anticipated "Moon Landing 2: In Space". Many people blame the recent down-turn of the former cult phenomenon on its insistence on focusing on the "Shuttle" aspect of the commodity, a move that drove away many when the Nixon Administration's plan for routine access to space failed to materialise, spin offs such as "doing science" and "actually we invented Teflon" (which they didn't, it just sort of happened in a bottle this one time) likewise failing to impress. not helping the problem is the fact that the series (of space projects) currently involves people with names like Michael Griffin and Andy Thomas, a far cry from the Harrison Storms and Virgil Grissoms of the golden age of space stuff (which-like most golden ages was the sixties).

So will a return to the roots of NASA bring people to the fold? The answer is probably not. Many similar cultural icons have sort a fresh audience by bringing in some retro chic. Part of the reason is that the current breath of fresh air isn't all that fresh, and is looking like it won't work very well.

NASA's current design for a man-rated booster, shown to scale with a cheap biro for comparison.

Is this really what the NASA of old, the NASA we cared about, the NASA that made us sit down in front of the TV with all the family, was all about? Not really. My NASA, the one I knew in primary school was better than that, it pushed the boundaries, it was Fonzie, not Pottsy. So what made the big N what it was, and what can make it great again? I figure three things.

1. Stop being a nerd: Seriously, leave the science to the geeks, NAS. Tin Tin went to the moon too, but he left it to Professor Calculus to find out what all those snazzy rocks meant.

2. Get a job. Hey NASA, you know that Obama guy that everybody likes? He wants to stop "ML2:IS" and give the money to school kids! Do you remember back when you were called NACA, and you made all those ducts and things? Do you remember how that impressed people? And you know all that stuff for the flying car that you've got down in the basement? Well I think that would really impress people! People really like you when you give them a flying car!

3. "ML2:IS" sounds kind of cool, but it needs to be FASTER, or FURTHER, or RED or something. We've all seen the Moon, its dull and grey, but you know what movie people really liked? Total Recall. You should do something like that, or something.

I think if NASA did that, they could be the darling of public access television, or at least get a parade.

P.S They should totally hire me

And Hello!

So that was the first post of my new blog. Did you like it? I thought it was awful, but you liked it right? Aww thanks! Now I can keep writing and it might even get better than it already is (if that's possible!). I'll be updating when I have something to talk about, which may take a while. I'm guessing that most of the people reading this know me, so if you have any suggestions just tell me at lunch (also,I didn't check before publishing, so there are loads of spelling mistakes). Here is a list of upcoming topics:
-Concorde or Citroen DS: which is sexier?
-My love/hate relationship with Jeremy Clarkson
-Michael Costa, a shouting match
-Why science is exciting again (aka things you already know about, but with more exclamation!!!!!)
-The ten best names for things that engineers built
cheers
me

History's Lessons Lost

Once upon a time (it was 1833), an engineer with the epic name of Isambard Kingdom Brunel was hired to build a railway. The railway was going to go from London to Bristol, but being the type of person to live up to his name's epicity, Isambard (can I call him Isy? no?) decided it wasn't epic enough, and had to go all the way to New York (except by then it was actually a boat). Even that wasn't epic enough, and so the Great Western Railway was built to a gauge of 7' 1/4", instead of George Stephenson's more common "coal gauge" of 4' 8 1/2". The reasoning was that the wider gauge would make for more stabe trains, allowing them to travel much faster than previously thought possible. Even the promise of epic speeds was not enough, and Isambard decided that to make things really epic he needed some truely inovative locomotives. They had names like Hurricane and Viper and had wheels ten feet high and had geared speed reduction at a time when gears were mostly found in clocks. They were all terrible. After spending too many late nights keeping the shambling wrecks on the rails, Brunel's deputy went over his head, and had the company directors appoint him superintentant of locomotives, allowing him to create a set of standard designs with a high number of components common to all the locomotives in the fleet.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, shown with his characteristic stove pipe hat, gag cigar, higher-than-thou pants, and gigantic chains

(uselessness not pictured)

Meanwhile, pretty much evryone else had caught the railway mania, and lines were pushed ahead all over the place. The problem was that Brunel's choice of a different gauge to that of Stephenson had forced everyone else choose too. In 1845 a Royal commision was formed to decide on a standard gauge for the country, and settled on 4' 8 1/2", which was used by most other countries in the Northern hemisphere, and had by then was called the 'standard gauge' by almost everyone (and still is, by the way).
So eventually, all the experimental apects of the Great Western Railway were eliminated, since the ability to connect with the other railways around it and use well known common machinery was more profitable, whether the standards they used gave the best performance or not*.
This a trueism that has been demonstrated time and time again on railways around the world for the last 200 years (I'll be explaining why in a later post). Unfortunately, it has to be re-learnt every few years or so. At the moment the Iemma government wants to construct an East-West Metro to serve the rapidly growing outer suburbs of Sydney. Granted, a Metro offers cheaper construction (it only has single deck carriages), its lighter, and its quicker for passengers to get on and off. But it is also totally different to every other public transport system in Sydney, so while Metro trains might be able to run on the existing network, it will never be completely compatible, and will thus will never be part of an "integrated transport solution" that everybody wants to talk about. Neither will the existing monorail and light rail, which have so far gone either in circles or out to a park.
Ultimately, any technology needs to be considered in the context of the world around it, rather than in the confines of the feasability study. Lets hope that the folks in charge of Sydney's brand new trains get up and take a look outside.


*as it turns out, a wider gauge didn't offer that much greater stability, but did prevent the use of tight curvature. Likewise, all of Brunels original locomotoves were technological dead ends.