Category: technology

Neat Tech: Radio Plasma Drive

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NASA Ad Astra Ink Second Space Act Agreement in “Vasimr” Engine (subscription required)

NASA is working with Ad Astra Rocket Co. on it’s Vasimr engine. It uses radio waves to heat electrically charged fluids to extremely high temperatures for fuel efficiency, controlling the resulting plasmas for thrust and insulating nearby structures with magnetic fields.

ISP appears to be in the 5K-12K seconds range (PDF), or more than 10 to more than 30x that of chemical rockets.

Unlike Ion, it’s supposed to support higher thrust levels, on the order of 100+ N, compared to the millinewton levels for Ion drives.

Israel Wants JSF As Soon As Possible, But Has Problems With Aircraft

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Unlike Japan, Israel has come to the conclusion that there will be no F-22 sales, so they want JSF deliveries as soon as possible (paid subscription reqired, preferably starting in 2012, because they want to add stealth as soon as possible.

There are, however, some road bumps on the way:

  • Lockheed-Martin is saying that there can be no foreign deliveries until 2014.
  • There are no Israeli weapons qualified for use on the aircraft, and it’s closed, tightly integrated architecture will make qualifying those weapons (Python 5 AAM and successors, Spice PGM) extremely difficult.
  • The IAF does not believe that it can perform its missions as a single seat aircraft.
    • As an aside, the USAF has been trying to get rid of the weapons system operator (guy in back) for years, probably to free up a few more planes for the fly-boys.
  • Integration of Israeli radar and EW systems could “difficult and expensive”.

These issues mirror many of the UK’s issue with the aircraft, where, as it currently stands, the RAF and the RNAF will not be able to maintain the aircraft fully, and in some cases aircraft would have to be sent back to the States for maintenance or upgrade.

A Puff Piece on The Future Combat System-Manned Ground Vehicle

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I think that Iraq has changed the way that the US Army looks at conflict. It’s obvious now that most of the obstacles that the US military will face are those in a counter-insurgency or similar non-conventional warfare.

That being the case, it is not surprising that the Army’s largest program, the Future Combat System (FCS), and in particular the Manned Ground Vehicle (FCS-MGV) is being redesigned.

That being said, the article I linked to is far more optimistic than I think is justified.

My background: I worked for three years on the Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle (FRMV), basically an armored wrecker, variant of the FCS-MGV.

As to the changes, the first is having, “the suspension and seats inside the 27-ton MGV will be suspended from the ceiling, not bolted to the floor”. I’m dubious of this.

As anyone who has tried to get out of a hammock knows, it’s not easy. It’s less easy when one is in full battle gear (one variant, the ICV will carry 9 troops in addition to crew), and I think that the whole “getting hung up on the straps” is highly problematic.

Additionally, there may be issues of motion sickness, but I don’t have the background to evaluate that.

The article also goes on at great length about how the modular armor will allow upgrades as technology develops. This is absolutely true, but this is not a new development. It was always a required part of allowing the vehicle to achieve C-130 mobility.

The active protection system does qualify as a significant improvement in survivability against some threats, long range ATGWs, long rod penetrators, and short range RPGs.

It’s cannot to provide protection against IEDs, and it’s unlikely to be able to effect explosively formed penetrators, as the reaction time is too slow. Additionally, the system relies on radars, which means that the vehicle will be an emitter on the field, which can compromise signature reduction.

The purchase of the Israeli Trophy APS should give some good indications of the actual battlefield utility of such systems.

My guess is that the systems, APS, modular armor, and (perhaps) seats are far more likely to find their way into legacy systems than it is for the FCS-MGV to see service, with the possible exception of the NLOS-C howitzer system.

Israelis Looking at Air Launched Microsats

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Israel already has its own independent launch capability, and as a result of launching targets for its Arrow ABM system, it also has a background in a properly sized air born launcher for quick response (Paid subscription required).

It would be based on the Blue Sparrow and Black Sparrow targets, which are launched from an F-15.

One of the things driving this are the constraints on Israel’s current launcher:The program to field a tactically responsive launcher is shaped by Israel’s unique geographic constraints: The existing Shavit rocket has to be fired west-to-east across the Mediterranean to avoid violating the airspace of Israel’s neighbors. The launch direction also restricts Shavit’s payload potential, which in turn has limited the size of Israeli military communications and surveillance satellites.

Using an aerial launcher will allow launches with earth’s rotation, giving greater payload.

Facebook Has Not Jumped the Shark, It Is In the Tank, Being Devoured

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Josh Quittner has a very well written essay on Facebook, and I loved the opening ‘graph:

A lot of people say that Facebook has jumped the shark. That’s flat out wrong. In fact, Facebook is now being devoured by the shark. There’s so much blood in the water, it’s attracting other sharks. And if Facebook’s not careful, one of them is bound to come along and finish it off. I’ve never seen anything like it in the annals of fast-rising tech companies that fail.

Love the devoured by shark bit. Go read the essay, and the comments.

Pentagon Wants 50-Caliber Guided Bullets

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This is a stupid idea.

I understand the idea, that this will allow even longer ranger sniping, but this technology already exists in antitank guided missiles, out to at least 5000 meters.

If you replace the missile warhead with an inert one, it eliminates the collateral damage problem, and a 500 km/h 10 kilo missile hitting someone will make them even deader than a .50 cal round. It’s something like dropping a safe from a second story window on them.

This is just another hole in which the military dumps money so that generals can get cushy jobs after retirement.

US Orders IsraeliActive Protection Systems

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About 18 months ago, there was a minor scandal when the Pentagon eschewed the already tested and ready for deployment Israeli Trophy active protection system in favor of the Raytheon APS system.

Given what was happening in Iraq, it was concluded that someone was to close to US contractors, and too distant from troop needs.

The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, has declared the system Technology Readiness Level 9, which means that it is ready for immediate deployment, and ordered a set.

Cox Also Shutting Down P2P Traffic

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They are using the same method as Comcast, though they are more honest about it, as evidenced by this response from the company:

To ensure the best possible online experience for our customers, Cox actively manages network traffic through a variety of methods including traffic prioritization and protocol filtering. Cox does not prohibit the use of file-sharing services for uploads or downloads, or discriminate against any specific services in any way. To help our customers make the most out of their Internet experience, we take proactive measures to ensure that bandwidth intensive applications do not negatively impact their service. These network management practices are outlined in our subscriber agreement and Acceptable Use Policy.

Certainly, I can see how, during periods of high bandwidth, one might want to drop priority on bit-torrent or similar applications (full disclosure, I use bit-torrent), but this is basically blocking:

According to Topolski, Cox is in fact using traffic shaping to degrade p2p traffic. In analyzing a user log, he has concluded that Cox is using traffic shaping hardware to send forged TCP/IP packets with the RST (reset) flag set — with the goal of disrupting eDonkey traffic. He’s been unable to tell precisely what hardware Cox is using, but he notes that the technique being used is very similar to Comcast’s treatment of BitTorrent.

It raises two questions: what is it about cable companies that make them so inclined to bull this bull$#@!, and why are they going through a backdoor block, as opposed to simply lowering the priority of the packets on their own internal network.

Brazil Looking at Nuclear Sub Force

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Brazil hasallocated $540 million in R&D on the submarine and on enrichment.

They believe that they can build a submarine for $1.2 billion.

They already have the enrichment technology down.

The justification is the newly discovered offshore Tupi field and its 5 billion to 8 billion barrels of oil reserves.

Truth be told, if all they want is an air-independent coastal defense boat, there are options out there, both with stored LOX, and the idea of using a smaller nuke plant, to provide underwater endurance, but not the higher underwater transit speeds of the US fleet submarines.

Attorney General Calls for Veto if no Telco Immunity

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Pat Leahy has an ammendment stripping out the telco immunity from the FISA update. Michael Mukasey and DNI Michael McConnell, who believes that any discussion of intelligence will kill us all, have authored a letter to the Juciciary committee opposing the change:

“We strongly oppose the proposed substitute amendment. If the substitute is part of a bill that is presented to the president, we and the president’s other senior advisers will recommend that he veto the bill.

Who the hell cares if Bush vetos this bill?

If nothing gets passed, we go back to the old law, and the old restrictions, in a few months.

Virtual Suicide Bombing

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Clive Thompson plays Halo 3 online. Because he has a life, and does not spend 10-20 hours a day on line, his skills, and his power are limited.

However, he has found a way to even the scales:

.…

Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I’m only making it easier for them to shoot me — and thus I’m marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.

But at the last second, before I die, I’ll whip out a sticky plasma grenade — and throw it at them. Because I’ve run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I’ll die — but he’ll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone “from beyond the grave.”)

It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber — or a kamikaze pilot.

….

What is interesting here is that the dynamic is pretty much identical to those of an insurgency. While the stakes are clearly less, no one is actually dying, the power dynamics are the same, and so are the resulting tactics.

Honda to Use Ultracapacitor Tech in Hybrids

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Honda will be putting ultracapacitors in their cars in the next few years. They will use it on a fuel cell vehicle to handle demand peaks.

Capacitors have some advantages and disadvantages relative to batteries.

The pluses: hey don’t wear out, and they can put out a lot of juice in a short time (they are in camera flashes).

The minuses: They slowly* leak stored energy over time., and they have lower energy density.

The technology is advancing rather quickly†, so the disadvantages may decrease.

You could also use the capacitors in conjunction with batteries to go with a higher energy/lower power battere (higher power means lower energy and vice verse),

*Very slowly, as anyone who has gotten knocked on their when they open up a TV that has been in a junkyard for two years can attest.
†When I was in school, I was told that a 1 Farad capacitor would be the bigger than a a pick up truck, now there are commercially available ones that are smaller than a thimble.

AT&T/NSA Hoovered the Entire Bloody Internet

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Mark Klein is an American hero.

For those of you who don’t know, Mark Klein is a retired technician at AT&T, and he was responsible for running wires to a splitter for the benefit of Room 641A of 611 Folsom Street, the secret room set up by the NSA at AT&T’s offices in San Francisco. He is Now lobbying congress not to grant retroactive immunity to the Telcos over the illegal NSA spying.

“That was my ‘aha!’ moment,” Klein said. “They’re sending the entire Internet to the secret room.”

The diagram showed splitters, glass prisms that split signals from each network into two identical copies. One fed into the secret room, the other proceeded to its destination, he said.

“This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style,” he said. “The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T’s customers but everybody’s.”

The illegal wiretapping that most telcos did on behalf of the NSA was far more extensive than previously revealed.

This was not targeted at foreign calls routed through the US. Nor was it calls where one party was overseas. The NSA is actively collecting ALL THE DATA going through AT&T internet exchange point. Everything. Every email, every google query, every music download, every IP telephone call (and BTW, pretty much all long distance telephone calls at some point use TCP/IP these days.)

They took everything.

The telcos are claiming that they need immunity, because they were just being good citizens, and that they were not clear on the law.

There is one problem with argument, as Mr. Klein noted on Olbermann, THESE ENTITIES WROTE THE LAWS INVOLVED. They were heavily involved in drafting the laws at every step of the way.

They knowingly broke the laws, and they did because they saw the example of Qwest, where the government retaliated by denying and pulling contracts, and they chose to break the law because it was profitable.

Radiohead $2.26 on every album download

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Remember when I commented on Radiohead making their album available online and allowing their fans to pay whatever they wanted?

After 29 days, some numbers are in, $2.26/album, with about $2.7 million in total sales. The coverage, of coursee, is that this is a pittance compared to the $19.95 for a CD, but that’s not what the band gets, that’s what the studio, retailer, record executive’s coke dealer and worthless brother-in-law, etc. get, not the artists.

Radiohead mad a lot more money in a few weeks than than they would in a few decades doing this. I recall hearing an interview with Aimee Man, formerly of ‘Til Tuesday, and she releases under her own label now, but her old stuff, the stuff that made the top ten and hit MTV forever, it was still “not recouped”, i.e. she had gotten no royalties.

The phenomenon is going to move down the chain, and I won’t shed a tear to see the demise of the record distributor paracites.

Free Market Gets Us Slower More Expensive Internet

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No surprise, the U.S. is lagging in broadband penetration, performance and price, and it is falling further behind. The free market shills claim that it’s bad data, but every study confirms this.

This is not surprising. Telcos are not in the business of providing good service. They are in the business of making money, and it is far more profitable to use their natural monopoly, the ownership of the last mile of wire to the home, to keep competitors out than it is for them to invest in new equipment.

Given recent deregulatory decisions by the FCC, the level of competition, and hence the level of innovation are low, and prices are high. They will remain that way until the government steps in.

A Spammer and A Genius

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It appears that spammers are using sex to enlist human brain power to foil Captchas.

This is a Captcha:

Basically, the spammers have, “created a Windows game which shows a woman in a state of undress when people correctly type in text shown in an accompanying image”.

The Captcha comes from a site that uses them to prevent spam, Yahoo comes to mind as a prominent example.

This is brilliant. Evil, but brilliant. If only this man could use his powers of technology and psychology for good, instead of evil.