Man of Science, Man of Faith

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.

Over the past few years, a handful of people I went to school with have met early ends of one sort or another. Generally they were just that – I’d neither had a class with them nor had occasion to speak to them. This evening while poking around Facebook, the handy “News Feed” showed that Courtney Saunders and Jill had recently joined a group called “Praying for Erin.” A quick look at the group led to the cold fact that Erin was Erin Adkins Wilson and the prayer was because she had cancer. Sharp eyes will note the past tense verbs. She passed on yesterday morning and in all honesty, I barely knew her. If I remember correctly, she occupied the seat in front of me in Algebra II some ten years ago. My gut tells me that I may have helped her out in class, but I don’t clearly remember.

As tangential as that relationship might be, her death hits awfully close to home. I spent 90 days less than three feet from her and probably helped her learn something. It’s not anything like losing a family member or spouse, but it does leave me a bit empty inside knowing that she is gone along with the weak tie between us.

Erin Renae Adkins Wilson 1980-2006

Had I not voted today, my vote probably wouldn’t have been missed in the grand scheme. Sadly, there seem to be a great many folks who probably don’t vote because of that “my vote doesn’t really matter” mindset. It is true that one vote among many doesn’t matter much, assuming a wide margin. It is exceedingly true, though, that a country full of people with that mindset won’t have much of an election. The relative few who do vote will determine who is in charge.

I won’t claim that the upcoming figures are exact, but it looks as if only 26% of West Virginia’s population voted. A minority of people decided what is right for the majority. Granted that in the statistical world a random sample of sufficient size yields an accurate result. Assuming the votes were counted correctly, the roughly 418,000 votes cast in West Virginia yield an error of just +/- 0.1%. That is assuming, of course, that the views of the sample represent the views of the whole. They may not.

So the question I’d like to ask is, “What the hell happened to the other 74% of you?” Was it too much to ask for you to take ten minutes to go vote? Couldn’t get to a polling place, you say? Well you can vote early, but you do have to go to the courthouse. Well, alright, I see your point. But “I just don’t care” isn’t an excuse that’ll fly with me. You care. You complain about Iraq, you’ve certainly got feelings on terrorism, and you certainly have a stance on gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research. If you didn’t go vote, don’t expect me to listen to you complain about the way your representative at whichever level of government is handling it. You had your chance.

Honestly, though, I can see where it would be difficult to get to your polling place. For the last 220 years, we have had to make sure people vote at their designated polling place simply because we couldn’t tell if they had voted somewhere else previously. With the advent of the internet being available practically everywhere, there is no reason that we shouldn’t be able to vote at any polling place, whether it be your local school, the fire station two blocks away, or the hotdog cart outside your office at lunchtime. I’m not just talking locally, either. This should be a nationwide system. For that matter, it should be worldwide. If you’re out of the country on election day, you ought to take a quick trip to the US Embassy, show your ID and cast your ballot.

I heard a story on NPR’s All Things Considered about the election in Nicaragua. Toward the end of the story, there was an interview of former President Jimmy Carter. The Carter Center acts as a thrid party to monitor elections in developing or unstable democracies to make sure they’re fair. When asked about upcoming US elections, Carter had this to say:

“It would not qualify at all for instance for participation by the Carter Center in observing. We require for instance that there be uniform voting procedures throughout an entire nation. In the United States you’ve got not only fragmented from one state to another but also from one county to another.”

Wow. That’s not a bit damning at all. Check out the story, though. It’s interesting, especially President Carter’s comments. And go vote next time you can.

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?

The North Coast Limited was Northern Pacific’s service between Chicago and Seattle. It began operation in 1900 and continued through 1970. The Vista-Dome was probably added to the line in the 1950s.

Popular history states that the idea was dreamed up by Western Pacific president Harry Mitchell while he was riding in the cab of a diesel locomotive through the Rockies. He realized that the passengers on the train couldn’t share that view so he came up with a passenger car with an observation dome on top to allow passengers a full view of the scenery around the train.

Before we were all in such a hurry to get places and when travel was still civil, rail travel was the way to go. Trains generally afforded passengers plenty of room to move about and even a berth to lay down and sleep. Good food served in a dining car was also a given. While it may have taken 2-½ days to get from Chicago to Seattle, you got to see some of America’s most beautiful natural treasures doing it – the North Coast Limited crossed 28 individual mountain ranges and passed by over 1,400 miles of river.