2023 Quotes

Year 5! How did we get this far? I’m not quite sure but I’m happy we made it.

For some context: after graduating high school in 2019, I made a post that I continually updated with quotes I came across that I liked or thought were interesting. That post lasted through 2020, at which point I started with the yearly collections. Here is the link for 2021, and here is the link for 2022.

Below is the log for 2023! (Updated March 2023)

“There is a story about two frogs trapped in a crock of cream. One sees how hopeless it is, gives up and drowns. The other is too stupid to know he’s licked; he keeps on paddling. In a few hours he has churned so much butter that it forms an island, on which he floats, cool and comfortable, until the milkmaid comes and chucks him out.”
— Have Space Suit -- Will Travel
“I don’t care how you get to sleep. Personally I hit myself over the head with a hammer.”
— Have Space Suit -- Will Travel
“He wasn’t human but that wasn’t what hurt. Elephants aren’t human but they are very nice people.”
— Have Space Suit -- Will Travel
“Kip, how can you expect to face a firing squad calmly if this upsets you?”
— Have Space Suit -- Will Travel
“There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”
— Have Space Suit -- Will Travel
“‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I want to go to the Moon.’ ‘Certainly,’ he answered and looked back at his book. It was Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, which he must know by heart. I said, ‘Dad, please! I’m serious.’ This time he closed the book on a finger and said gently, ‘I said it was all right. Go ahead.’ ‘Yes . . . but how?’ ‘Eh?’ He looked mildly surprised. ‘Why, that’s your problem Clifford.’”
— Have Space Suit -- Will Travel
“The memories of her life returned but the pain did not.”
— Imaginary Friend
“Everyone gets an ending. Whether or not it’s happy is up to them.”
— Imaginary Friend
“And when you were a little girl, you were so mad, you thought you could close your eyes and destroy the world. But you never tried because you didn’t know where you would live.”
— Imaginary Friend
“Sorry doesn’t survive. People do.”
— Imaginary Friend
“He said he was too busy with finals to play longer, but we’ll catch more in the summer. That would be so great. It’s important to have things to look forward to.”
— Imaginary Friend
“‘A certain man,’ said Rex, as he turned around the corner with Margot, ‘once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish—but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.’”
— Laughter in the Dark, Nabokov
“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
— The Idiot
“As the current rapid expansion of the Internet is fueled by the realization of its capacity to promote information sharing, we should understand that the network’s first role in information sharing was sharing the information about its own design and operation through the RFC documents. This unique method for evolving new capabilities in the network will continue to be critical to future evolution of the Internet.”
— A Brief History of the Internet
“You will love again the stranger who was your self.”
— Derek Walcott
“Do what’s best for you. You’re the one who has to live with it.”
— Stiff, in the context of taking care of your loved ones after they pass away

2022 Quotes

Sometime back in 2019 I made a post that I continually updated with quotes I came across that I liked or thought were interesting. Last year, I made a similar post for 2021. In keeping with the tradition, here is the log for 2022! (Updated December 2022)

“When the time came for the flyby on that perfect summer day in August, the test pilot, Alvin M. “Tex” Johnston, with Jim Ganner as copilot and Bell Whitehead as engineer, rolled the plane as it passed over the Gold Cup course with two hundred thousand people watching. The big 707 was not inverted for long, but the effect was stunning. Allen called Johnston to his office the next day and asked, ‘What did you think you were doing yesterday?’ Tex replied, ‘Selling the airplane.’”
— Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival
“We have to be constantly jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
— If This Isn't Nice, What Is?
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
— If This Isn't Nice, What Is?
“Notice when you’re happy, and know when you’ve got enough.”
— If This Isn't Nice, What Is?
“But about my Uncle Alex, who is up in Heaven now. One of the things he found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’”
— If This Isn't Nice, What Is?
“The members of your graduating class are not sleepy, are not listless, are not apathetic. They are simply performing the experiment of doing without hate. Hate is the missing vitamin or mineral or whatever in their diet, they have sensed correctly that hate, in the long run, is about as nourishing as cyanide. This a very exciting thing they are doing, and I wish them well.”
— If This Isn't Nice, What Is?
“‘I knew you were,’ I said. ‘Somehow I think the other kids’ll grow out of it. But I don’t think we will, Ralph. I think we’ll keep waiting.’”
— R is for Rocket
“‘We all have passions,’ he told the students sitting before him on the floor. ‘You don’t get to choose them, they pick you. But you have to be alert to them. You have to be looking for them. And when you find your passion, it’s a fantastic gift for you because it gives you direction. It gives you a purpose. You can have a job. You can have a career. Or you can have a calling.’”
— The Space Barons
“We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, ‘Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.’”
— The Space Barons
“All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.”
— Norman Maclean
“Another difference is that we are above it, and it is uniformly bright. No misty days, no towering thunderheads; all that is below, and superbright in the unfiltered sunlight, which spreads cheeriness over the whole scene below. No doom, no gloom, only optimism. This is a better world than the one down there. Fantastic!”
— Mike Collins
“My good friend, fellow jogger, and occasional cynic Jack Whitelaw says that a strong heart merely serves to prolong the agony of terminal cancer patients, a theory I try not to think about as I puff around the track.”
— Mike Collins
“Villains on a cosmic scale are where you find them, and the imagination has found some majestic ones indeed, including exploding suns and invading Martians. Real life, in recent years, has found some actual villains that would have seemed most imaginary not too long ago, as, for instance, nuclear bombs and melting icecaps.”
— Life's Bottleneck, Isaac Asimov
“The only secrets worth protecting were in the minds of the very scientists the authorities wanted to exclude.”
— William Lanouette
“This was my idea of a Fermi Question: Turn every experience into a question. Can you analyze it? If not, you’ll learn something. If you can, you’ll also learn something.”
— Phil Morrison on Enrico Fermi, The Age of Radiance
“We need to build in a tolerance for people who will throw their careers in front of a runaway train. And when they do, we need bosses who will say, ‘I’ve got your back.’”
— Ciannilli, The Burning Blue
“You don’t have to work all the time but you should think all the time.”
— Bob Grubbs, as quoted by my Dad

Ejecting a Bear at Mach 2

The B-58 Hustler viewed from the Grissom Air Museum guard tower.

About a month ago I got the chance to visit the Grissom Air Museum which sits just over an hour away from Purdue. I was very excited because the museum boasted a variety of neat planes from fighter jets to commercial planes to a Lockheed D-21. It was a very neat museum, and really wonderful because most of the exhibits are out in a grassy field with a winding walkway through the planes. This gives you the ability to really get up close and personal with the planes. If you’re ever in the vicinity of Peru Indiana, I would highly recommend stopping by!

Besides the D-21, there was a very interesting exhibit in the outdoor park that wasn’t a plane: a supersonic rocket-powered test sled. This test sled is pictured below:

The B-58 Supersonic Test Sled

As you can see, it’s pretty much just a mock-up of the cockpit of a B-58 but put on rails. The special thing about this test sled though, is the tests it was utilized for.

This sled, known as the ‘Texas Hustler’ was designed and tested at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in the 1950’s. Its purpose was to test the emergency ejection system for the Convair B-58 Hustler, which was the first operational bomber that was capable of flying at Mach 2. This speed poses various engineering challenges from the standpoint of an emergency egress system, and they ran into nearly all of them. A standard ejection system, in which the crew-person’s seat is blasted out of the aircraft ensured nearly certain death at such speeds. To resolve this issue, the Stanley B-58 Escape Pod was developed.

The Stanley B-58 Escape Pod (Source)

In the event that the cabin became depressurized or an emergency ejection was necessary, this capsule would encapsulate the crew-person in a clamshell fashion. The telescoping doors you see on the right would close, and then the capsule would pressurize, a hatch would be blown off of the cockpit, and the capsule would be ejected. The system then became a little survival capsule for the crew-person, with a parachute, food, water, and oxygen. A similar system was made for the XB-70.

But this isn’t the end of the story. The real kicker of this whole experiment is how the Air Force chose to see if such an escape system was survivable. Such an unproven system cannot be tested on humans, and unfortunately the technology at the time meant an animal would be subjected to see if it would work. Like me, you might figure that they used a monkey, or maybe a pig to stand in for a human. Well, like me, you would be totally wrong and most likely very surprised that the Air Force instead tested this system using two bears, one named Yogi and one named Big John.

To conduct a test of the capsule, they would first drug Yogi or Big John, and then load one of them into the test sled. From there, the test sled would roar down a 4 mile long track, boosted by rocket motors to supersonic speeds, at which point the bear would ejected. Once these tests were verified, the bears were sent up in a B-58 fitted with the capsules. Yogi boasts an ejection speed of over 800 mph at 35,000 feet, while Big John boasts one over 1000 mph at 45,000 feet. From everything I can dig up on the internet, it seems that thankfully both bears survived and validated the emergency ejection system. To top off the whole experience, the Grissom Air Museum gift shop even has little toy stuffed bears that pay homage to Yogi and Big John.

So, I’ll reiterate: if you’re ever near Peru Indiana, I would highly encourage you to go see the rocket-powered B-58 test sled that ejected some bears at supersonic speeds. It certainly seems to be one-of-a-kind.

Recently I got the chance to go back to the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. It’s also a wonderful museum that is packed with all types of planes and really cool things, including many X-planes. Among the planes in one of the densely packed hangars however was a familiar friend: the B-58 Hustler, and its escape pod. Below is a picture of the one in Dayton:

The Stanley B-58 Escape Pod

Firefly Alpha Launch (with a stowaway from Purdue!)

The Astra launch less than a week ago was quite the show, and I think I’m still processing what happened. The whole team did a great job, and while it wasn’t the launch they were hoping for, I’m confident they’ll get it the next time. So, instead I’ll talk about Firefly’s first launch, which happened today (and which I’m watching live right now, although this will be posted later)!

This was a big deal for Firefly, as it was their first full-scale test with the hopes of delivering a payload to low Earth orbit. They launched their rocket Alpha, which is a two-stage liquid fueled rocket that feeds off of liquid oxygen and kerosene. Something else neat is that besides being quite small yet incredibly powerful, the whole launch vehicle is entirely made from carbon fiber composites. Many companies and organizations as of late (Relativity Space, NASA SLS, Rocket Lab, etc) have been making this shift into composites and other manufacturing techniques such as metal 3D printing as a means of driving down launch weight and production costs and time.

Besides testing out some new structural technology, Alpha also has the goal of delivering a stacked payload to low Earth orbit. You can read about the entire contents of the rocket here, but in this article I want to focus on the payload that came from Purdue, Cal Poly SLO, and NASA. The neat thing about it is that it is an interesting application of what is called a passive drag sail. It will have the same effect as the parachute that slowed the Space Shuttle when it landed back on Earth; it’s goal is to slow down the second stage on which it is attached to in order for it to begin to fall back to Earth. It’s a genius way to deorbit the second stage since it is passive, which means that it requires no extra fuel just for a deorbit maneuver. This means the rocket can carry that fuel or excess mass for other more interesting purposes, and that the object can deorbit faster, which reduces the possibility that it might collide with other objects in orbit. Below is a rendering of how the drag sail will work:

And, as a Purdue student, I couldn’t not include a picture of the drag sail and some of its creators in the atrium of Armstrong Hall here on campus:

Anthony Cover, David Spencer, and Arly Black standing by Spinnaker-3, the drag sail they helped to create.

Anthony Cover, David Spencer, and Arly Black standing by Spinnaker-3, the drag sail they helped to create.

If you want to read more about the Spinnaker-3 drag sail project, I’ve linked some resources that know a lot more than I do below:

Now for the launch. Keep in mind, that no company has ever succeeded in making it to orbit on their first try. SpaceX took many attempts, as did others, and many companies are still trying. And, I also applaud Firefly for the theme of this first launch, which is DREAM, which stands for Dedicated Research & Education Accelerator Mission. It means that priority was given to projects from small startups and research institutions and universities, which I just love. It shows they are really dedicated to their mission of making space for everyone.

First off, the abort at around T-5 seconds was quite the teaser for this launch. They really had me, but it makes sense that when you’re launching an expensive vehicle you want to be sure everything is as perfect as you can get it. Around an hour later, everything was ready for launch, and they blasted off from Vandenberg! Everything seemed to be going well, except for the fact that there was no call that the vehicle had gone supersonic. A moment or so later the vehicle did go supersonic, but this means either an engine cut off or the 4 first stage engines were underperforming as a whole. Then however came a terrifying moment of tumbling, and moments later the flight termination system was activated and the vehicle was blown up. I’ve got to get to bed now as it is pretty late, but I’ll be back when some analysis has come back about what happen.

It’s now the Saturday after the launch and some new information has come out! At least from the space community on Twitter. One impressive thing about the launch is that once the vehicle started tumbling, it did not break apart. This is a huge testament to the structural team at Firefly, just like how the first 30 seconds of the Astra launch spoke volumes of their GNC team. For the vehicle to not have torn itself apart is a big deal. Scott Manley, a YouTube space guru, thinks that 1 of the 4 engines flamed out upon ascent, thus causing the vehicle to go supersonic too late. Additionally, the thrust vectoring mechanism on Alpha only acts in 1 axis across 4 different engines, so losing the control from this possible flame out could have caused the catastrophic tumbling that began after the vehicle went supersonic, due to increased aerodynamic forces and a lack of ability to control the vehicle. If you want to see his full overview, I would highly recommend watching the video he put out on the topic.

While I’m sad the payloads didn’t make it to space, I think it was a great first attempt, and I can’t wait to see what Firefly does next!

The Mystery Pyramidal Rocket

IMG_0831.jpg

It is a tradition for me to splurge on a bunch of books that arrive just in time for when I have a break, so in keeping with this tradition I ordered a veritable array just in time for the conclusion of my summer internship at Microsoft and my statics class. Among the pile now sitting at the base of my desk are these two books: Spaceflight Dynamics by William E. Wiesel and Control Systems Engineering by Norman S. Nise. Both of which immediately captivated me with their covers, as they both featured this oddly pyramidal rocket, that seemed to be a single stage and also looked like nothing else I had ever seen before. It was also interesting, as they appeared on two textbooks whose topics imply this vehicle was doing some very important and challenging things.

So, I took to Google to try to figure out what it was. I tried a lot of different searches, ranging from ‘NASA triangle rocket’ to ‘NASA concept reusable rocket’ and many more variations on the shape and purpose, but all I got was radio silence. It was like I was experiencing communications blackout in a re-entering Mercury capsule. I then tried googling the specific contents of the covers, and still no dice. I began reading Spaceflight Dynamics, scanning for any indication of what this mysterious machine was, but to no avail. As I’m writing this, I curiously checked the inside cover for Control Systems Engineering and it says exactly what it is and where the photos are from, which is slightly embarrassing for me, but my impatience and a circuitous route make for a better story.

After an arduous (5 minutes) amount of time poking around on the internet, I finally figured out what it was: the McDonnell Douglas DC-X. It was one of the first VTVL (vertical takeoff, vertical landing) rockets to be brought to life in the early nineties and was intended to be a reusable single-stage-to-orbit rocket that was devised by McDonnell Douglass in partnership with the DoD’s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). It later on fizzled out at SDIO and got passed on to NASA. The interesting part is that these two book covers actually tell a bit of this story. The image on the left for Control Systems Engineering is actually a composition of real images taken at a test launch at White Sands, New Mexico, when the project was still under SDIO. The image on Spaceflight Dynamics however clearly sports the NASA logo, and actually shows the DC-XA, with the ‘A’ standing for advanced, based on the changes in design NASA made.

Douglas SASSTO

Douglas SASSTO

DC stands for nothing more than ‘Delta Clipper’ according to Google, and is supposed to pay homage to the McDonnell Douglas line of famous airliners. The whole thing just looks fantastically futuristic, and I must say I am a big fan of the design. In researching this vehicle I also found out about the Douglass SASSTO (Saturn Application Single Stage to Orbit) launch system from 1967 which is also just bananas. The more amazing part is how some variations of the SASSTO look similar to New Shepard, or to Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo today.

But, back to the DC-X. Thanks to YouTube, I was able to find the video of the flight that is actually on the cover of Control Systems Engineering. It’s given below, and I think you’ll find it really neat since it was so long ago. It’s especially neat given how Blue Origin and SpaceX have grown so much in the past decade as offering reusable systems. Speaking of which, it turns out when this program was scrapped by NASA, a lot of the engineers went to work for Blue Origin, and that a fair bit of the design of the DC-X inspired New Shepard. I think this is quite apparent in the landing legs myself.

Something else interesting about the DC-X is that it didn’t perform a flip maneuver - that is, it was planned to re-enter the atmosphere with it’s aft side down; hence why it had a head shield on the bottom of its pyramidal shape. This does however make sense because it has a large surface area so thus is can displace lots of heat, and it means less maneuvering, but it was different from the consensus at the time which is interesting.

The final neat couple of facts I’ll leave with you are that the eye-catching pyramidal shell was custom made by Scaled Composites (it all makes sense now), and that it used 4 Pratt and Whitney engines (according to Control Systems Engineering). A rather interesting part to all of this is that other sources say that is used 4 RL-10 engines which are made by Aerojet Rocketdyne. If anyone knows what it actually used, I would love to hear about it. Wikipedia, funnily enough, describes the rocket as being made from ‘off the shelf parts’. I’ll be quite happy just as soon as I can find on which shelves these parts can be found. Finally, it flew a total of 12 times, had some cute little control surfaces, and Pete Conrad was even present at some of the launches in New Mexico.