On Tue, 29 Aug 2017 06:02:08 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Monday, August 28, 2017 at 5:41:03 PM UTC-7, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 10:29:26 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Monday, August 28, 2017 at 10:08:57 AM UTC-7, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 10:04:40 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Monday, August 28, 2017 at 9:43:53 AM UTC-7, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 08:41:34 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 3:42:27 PM UTC-7, Ed Huntress wrote:
If you're interested in this story, it may be in print somewhere, but
it's also in this podcast that you can listen to online, with no
add-on apps:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/p...s-ukraine.html

Hint: They didn't do it themselves.

--
Ed Huntress

Hi Ed,
It is equally likely that they came from Samara.
They are based on Sergey Korolyov's closed cycle hardware design.
Sixty of them ended up in a warehouse and have been sold off over the years to various interested parties, including the one I saw run at Aerojet in the 90's.
Those were for the N30 done at OKB-1.
RD 180's are the same design.
Bob Ford from Lockheed and Bill Hoffman from Aerojet spent time finding this stuff as part of a team of Americans sent to Russia after the USSR dissolved.
Energomash builds and sells the RD 180 for use in America's heavy lift launch vehicles.
We build the bus but they supply the engines/motors.

Take Care

One way or another, it appears that the North Koreans failed
consistently when they tried to build their own motors, but suddenly
started having success -- with much more challenging rockets -- when
they switched to the Russian design.

--
Ed Huntress

The Russians had the same experience, Ed.
In fact, failure was part of their process.

Well, so did we. The thing about the Koreans that's different is that
they were able to leap over a whole string of growing pains (making a
mid-range rocket of their own that was reliable; stepping up to a
full-blown ICBM from a mediocre mid-range rocket, and having success
right from the start), because they just used someone else's motors.

Too bad they were able to get their hands on them.

They didn't expect to succeed on first attempts at any of this.

In the end, however, they ended up with motors that outperformed anything the US ever built. They had to because they lacked the resources that we had.
It takes a lot to make closed cycle rocket motors work.
We didn't think we could do so and get a man on the moon first.
And we had the money to build an expensive kluge and then did it.

Anyway, I don't think Lil Kim wants to launch anything at anyone.
He just doesn't want to be the next Saddam Hussein...

That's a delicious thought....

--
Ed Huntress

Ukraine is the worlds second largest criminal enterprise, Ed.
Preceded by Russia and followed by US Law Enforcement.

I'm not surprised by anything that is undertaken at this point.
Put off/disappointed but not shocked.
Anyway, worked on some of this stuff and knew people.
Met them anyway.

Thinking that any technology can be embargoed on a permanent basis is foolish in the same sense that teaching 15 year olds that abstinence is an effective method of birth control is successful.

Not going to happen.

I didn't think we'd be able to shut it down, but it's useful to know
they're getting it from the outside. I'd hate to think they could leap
ahead that fast in ICBM technical capability

The problem with this hasn't changed.
You have to get a million pounds off the ground and going fast.
It's easy as an intellectual exercise but difficult as an engineering task.
The F-1 setup on the Saturn V produced four and a half thousand metric tons of thrust. The Russian N30 even more.

Just designing a structure to withstand that is problematic when you are weight constrained.
It just wouldn't do to have your rocket motor launch itself through the length of the bus.



Catch any fish lately?

Not a big year, but I had some good bluefishing earlier in the summer.
Right now we're expecting the small ones (called "snapper blues") to
give us some fun for the next month or so on fresh-water ultralight
gear.

Are they good eating?

You probably thought that was a simple question. g The short answer
is that they are delicious IF they're caught by someone who knows to
gut them and ice them within 5 minutes (no joke) of bringing them over
the side. Otherwise, they're awful. Don't ever eat one bought in a
fish market.

They have the fastest digestive system of any fish known to science,
and their digestive juices penetrate the digestive-system walls and
attack the flesh in roughly five minutes after death.

I've had my fill of perch for the year. Maybe the decade.

Gee, yellow perch are one of the best-eating freshwater fish. You must
be picky.


LOL


Besides here I mean.

RCM is not too bad but there are some strange animals showing up in
the cross-postings...

Some things never change.




Well the biggest threat to the human race has generally been the human race.
It looks like we have finally brought forth something that will do the job and doesn't require anyone to pull the trigger, so to speak.
We are pulling the trigger every day and demanding more and better triggers.
LOL

Asimov, Clarke, Heinlien and Bradbury were prophets I guess.

The most obvious manifestation of what's being done is self driving vehicles and it isn't the self driving aspect. It is the way they actually work and learn.
Computers incorporate experience better than humans and connected over networks, the experience of a single vehicle is learned by all of them nearly simultaneously in real time. They update their own software.
Something less obvious is modern drone technology.
The stuff under the radar and taken for granted is likely to be the most impactful.
Our energy grid is an example.
Were the systems that control our energy grid to fail or be disrupted we literally don't have the ability at this point to restore service.
At all.
The required work force doesn't exist.
I read a white paper published last week by Siemens that estimated a restoration time line of about a month to begin bringing the grid back on line after a successful attack that brought it down and that is only true if someone can collect up the people and figure out a communication network to direct them.

Looks like real trouble though. AI and machine learning might well be the death of the human race.
Sooner or later.

That is my view and I don't worry much about these things because there is nothing that can be done.

Thanks. I needed some cheering up this morning. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress