Man of Science, Man of Faith

I want to chat about my favorite disaccharide, sucrose, also known as table sugar. Since the development of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), every food and beverage producer that could replace sugar with HFCS has, but why? It turns out that the US government has imposed steep tariffs on sugar imports since the Civil War. On top of the tariffs, the USDA sets limits on the amount of domestic sugar that may be sold annually, creating an artificially limited supply. This keeps US sugar prices two to three times above free-market prices.

It should come as no surprise that hard candy manufacturers – who have to use real sugar – have moved out of the country to avoid these troubles. The domestic sweetener industry isn’t losing sleep over any of this, though. For sugar growers, they get a great deal. Because the government helps prop up prices and sets production limits, they don’t have to work hard to compete in the sugarcane market. Also benefitting are corn growers since all of the HFCS comes from them.

Big consumers of sugar – candymakers and soft drink producers to name two – have grown tired of this system and are pushing to ditch the tariffs and production caps. I’m taking their side. I prefer things sweetened with sugar over those sweetened with HFCS.

An article in BusinessWeek got me started on this tirade. I’d link you to it, but you have to register and possibly buy something, so nevermind on that. You should also check out the Wikipedia article on HFCS. Pay special attention to the part where normal corn syrup is run through a process with alpha-amylase, glucoamylase, glucose isomerase, liquid chromotography, back-blending and plenty of ion-exchange. Not that sugar production is chemically uninvolved, but production of actual raw sugar is pretty simple: boil sugar juice. Bleaching the sugar to make it nice and white is a bit disturbing, but not too bad. Anyway, let your local congress critter know that sugar tariffs aren’t cool.

As if anyone really cares, I actually checked out my numbers on the heat pump. It turns out that at full tilt boogie, the compressor, fan, and water pump pull 2.9kW. This lowers the cost-per-hour to $0.1531, making it an incredible cost savings over gas. In cold weather, most heat pumps switch over to electrical resistance heat. An equivalent amount of resistance heat to our 3-ton heatpump is 10.5kW meaning a cost of $0.5544/hr. Most folks without gas end up in this situation. Why don’t we? Our heat pump is ground-coupled, also called geothermal or ground-source. What we have is a 1200′ loop of pipe buried 6′ down that we circulate water through. At 6′ down, the temperature is near 60F year round. Instead of trying to extract heat from cold outside air in the winter, we can pull heat out of the ground all day long. In fact, most heat pumps will quit working and switch to electrical heat in cold weather simply because the outside unit will move its heat into your house, condense water, freeze it and promptly quit working. We have a similar advantage for summer cooling – we can pump heat into the dirt instead of trying to get rid of it in 90F air. And there’s no ugly box outside the house.

We’ve told people building new houses that they should consider ground-source. So far, they haven’t. They also have higher utility bills.

We are what we eat, right? There is a very interesting article over at the New York Times. It is a look at how science has, over the years, worked to make our diet “better.” What the article points out is that as we have fooled around with our food in the name of nutrition, we have at times inadvertently screwed our health. It also speaks to the rising popularity of boxed and engineered “health-food” items that may or may not actually be healthy and/or food. It is a good read and I agree with it. As our food becomes more fooled around with, as we feed our livestock antibiotics and hormones to raise productivity and as we tinker with the genes of crops at the molecular level*, we put ourselves at greater risk of declining health.

The antibiotics trend is especially troubling to me, mostly because I’m a firm believer in the encouragement of beneficial bacteria and the regularly challenged immune system. Antibiotics kill essentially all bacteria, good and evil, something that science is discovering to be detrimental to health. In fact, without the bacteria in your gut, you wouldn’t be able to get nearly as much energy and nutrition out of what you eat. Antibiotics can also lead to super-bugs that are highly resistant to antibiotics. That isn’t to say I’m completely against the use of antibiotics. Sometimes it is the way to go. If I’ve got a raging infection, give me the drugs, doc. What I’m saying, though, is that beneficial bacteria actually help keep the baddies from taking hold and the immune system needs to be given a chance to fight on its own.

A great portion of the livestock industry, though, gives animals antibiotics their whole lives. Not just when they’re sick. The drugs make it into our waterways and into us. And it isn’t good for us.

But that isn’t what the article is all about. You should read it.

* We have for hundreds of years been tinkering with the genes of plans through selective breeding. I see the distinction in that when selectively breeding a plant, nature generally doesn’t allow hazardous properties to find their way into the fold. It is when we start taking bits of DNA from completely different species that we are setting ourselves up for trouble.

Odd sort of word, isn’t it? I came across the term while doing a bit of comparison shopping. Just to warn you, for most, this discussion is about to get tediously boring. What I wanted to do was compare the cost of heating our home with the heat pump we have to an equivalent amount of heating derived from natural gas. The caveat here is that I don’t know exactly how much electricity our heat pump pulls, but a generous and probably high guess is 6kW. Electricity costs us $0.0528/kWh, making our cost to heat (or cool) $0.3166/hour.

The heating/cooling capacity of our heat pump is 3 tons. This is pretty normal sizing for medium sized houses. 3 tons of heating works out to a rate of 36,000 BTU/hour. Natural gas is priced per thousand cubic feet (Mcf)*. At 80% efficiency, one Mcf of natural gas releases about 1.049 million BTUs when burned. This means that an equivalent amount of heating consumes 0.0342 Mcf per hour. According to DOE resources, in October 2006, residential natural gas prices were running about $12.74/Mcf. At that price, it would cost us $0.4372/hour to heat.

With the demand for heating at 5 hours a day during an cold month, that $0.1206 per hour difference could cost us an extra $14.95.

Anyway, back to contango. It isn’t, as my previous use would suggest, a verb. It is a term used to describe a situation in futures trading when the price for future delivery of a commodity is higher than the spot price. It is a normal condition arising from the fact that holding a non-perishable commodity generally costs something to the holder. That commodity you have to deliver in the future ties up storage space and the costs involved are figured into the futures contract. It is the price to pay for the guarantee that the commodity in question will be available when you need it without you having to store it. If, on the other hand, you can buy the commodity on the spot market and store it more cheaply than the party you’d be making a futures contract with… well, you do the math.

* Yes, I am well aware of the fact that abbreviating “thousand cubic feet” as Mcf is completely counterintuitive. It is, oddly enough, a Roman numerial type of deal with ‘M’ standing in for 1000. “Hundred cubic feet” is thus abbreviated Ccf. The same applies to BTUs: MBTU is actually 1000 BTUs. One million is, thusly, MMBTU. I don’t make this stuff up.

The Space Shuttle fleet has been flying now for about 25 years. In that time, there have been, unfortunately, two losses of crew and craft. Without question, both could have been prevented. A good number of folks – in government and not – combine that record with the cost of flying the shuttle and question why we continue to fly it. They also look at NASA’s post-Columbia culture and see numerous delays and safety-related scrubs and claim that the shuttle fleet is unsafe, unreliable, and generally wasteful. If you look at the direct costs involved with each launch, the shuttle costs about $60 million for each launch.

The initial contract for the Shuttle program was awarded early in the 1970’s. Construction on the first Shuttle airframe, Enterprise, began in June 1974. Designs for the vehicle had been in development since the late 60’s. Yeah – that’s right: the 60’s. We’re flying to space in a vehicle whose basic design is nearly 40 years old. The technology is, of course, quite a bit newer. Instruments and equipment have been upgraded and the airframe modified where necessary.

The design lifetime for each orbiter is 100 flights. Discovery, first launched in 1984, has recorded 32 flights. Atlantis has done 27 since its first flight in 1985. Endeavor, the newest, has done 19 since 1992. If the airframes are capable of really lasting to their design life, there is easily a lot of life left in the fleet.

Discovery is due for retirement in 2010.
Atlantis is due for retirement in 2008.
Endeavor is due for retirement in 2010.

Basically, they’re just being kept around to haul up pieces for the International Space Station and people to put them together. So, you might be asking, what then? What will, as our good President Bush has tasked us to do, take us to the moon and to Mars? Answer: the Orion. Think overgrown Apollo. Sort of.

Orion is basically two vehicle systems. There is a two-stage booster to lift a crew module (CM) and a service module (SM). The lift vehicle for this stack is called the Aries I. For a first stage, it will use a 5-segment solid booster derived from that currently used on the Shuttle. The second stage will be powered by an Apollo-derived J2X engine fuelled with liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX). While the solid booster may be recovered, the second stage is a throw-away.

The service module will provide propulsion, power and life support to the crew module. Only the CM returns to Earth. All of the equipment in the SM – an engine, solar cells, life support equipment – burns up in our atmosphere. Since the vehicle will be solar powered, there is no need for fuel cells (hydrogen + oxygen = electricity and water). However, this isn’t the savings it seems: no water out of the fuel cells means that every drop of water that goes will have to be carried along and recycled. The CM will parachute back to the surface, this time on land rather than sea as the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions did. I guess you have to have something to differentiate.

Notice that there is no lunar lander mentioned above. If you go to the moon, you need a lander. That will be launched in the Aries V. It will be powered by 5 RS-68 engines fueled with LOX and LH2 assisted by two solid boosters. It has a second stage similar to the Aries I.

Let’s tally. For a moon mission, you’ll be using 3 solid boosters, 5 RS-68 engines, 2 J2x engines, a Delta II-derived second stage engine on the SM. That’s just engines. You’ve also got tons of stuff that doesn’t ever come back. You can’t inspect things that failed. They’re gone.

A few facts.
The projected design life of the CM is 10 flights. It has an ablative heat shield that must be replaced after each flight.
The Shuttle was designed for 100 flights. It has a ceramic tile heat shield that is inspected with tiles replaced as necessary.

Each of the RS-68 engines is projected to cost $20 million. That’s $100 million for each launch.
The Shuttle’s engines cost $50 million each. They are designed to last 30 flights. That works out to $450 million for 90 flights. The engines are torn down, inspected and repaired after each flight.

The Orion CM is projected to accommodate 6 crew in about 545 cubic feet of space in one area. It is about 2.5 times larger than the Apollo CM.

The Shuttle has 2,325 cubic feet of space spread essentially over two decks and can accommodate 7. And that is with the airlock inside. Move it to the cargo bay and you’ve got 2,625 cubic feet. It also can carry 53,000 lbs to low Earth orbit in a cargo space 15 feet wide and 60 feet long. Then it can play with it using a robotic arm.

The Orion has no airlock. And no cargo capability.

The longest Apollo mission was just over 12 and a half days in duration.

The Shuttle’s longest mission was just over 17 and a half. 13 day flights are routine.

I don’t know that the shuttle could get us to the moon, but I’d like to believe that with a bit of Yankee ingenuity, it could. It could carry a lunar lander in the cargo bay with, I presume, enough room for the extra fuel required to perform a trans-lunar flight. And I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to spend two weeks crammed into a tin can with 5 other people while traveling to anywhere. Longer missions are also possible with the shuttle; currently, Endeavor is undergoing a refit to allow extra provisions to be “jacked” into its current systems.

So let’s build 4 or 5 new shuttles using all that we’ve learned in the last 30 years and take them to the moon. The basic design appears to be as sound today as it was 40 years ago. Orion is just a step backward. That’s my take boys and girls. What’s yours?