Category Archives: Science

Science

RIP Scott Crossfield – First Man to Fly at Mach 2

Posted on by

The BBC is reporting that Scott Crossfield (84) has been killed flying a single engined aircraft in the US. He was the first person to fly at twice the speed of sound in the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket, the only time that particular aircraft did so (they’d had to specially tweak it):

In addition to adding the nozzle extensions, the NACA flight team at the HSFRS chilled the fuel (alcohol) so more could be poured into the tank and waxed the fuselage to reduce drag. With these preparations and employing a flight plan devised by project engineer Herman O. Ankenbruck to fly to an altitude of approximately 72,000 feet and push over into a slight dive, Crossfield made aviation history on November 20, 1953, when he flew to Mach 2.005 (1,291 miles per hour). He became the first pilot to reach Mach 2 in this, the only flight in which the Skyrocket flew that fast.

Leon Brooks is back!

Posted on by

Well well, less than 2 months ago I wrote:

Leon, I hope you make a speedy and thorough recovery. Get well soon.

Well, check this out, here’s Leon’s first blog post since the accident! Leon – you are amazing!

My brain is now essentially OK — modulo some bits of Short Term Memory killled by the total loser’s antics — and the body is steadily rebuilding, so I do have a viable future as this develops.

The most disturbing part of it is that the subtext of his post implies that the “accident” was anything but – he writes:

I truly have ZERO appreciation for a selfish waste of space and oxygen who hurts people for the hell of it, including that it had already hurt several others before applying it’s stupid malice to me.

Sometimes I despair for humanity, but then people like Leon come along and give me some hope. Leon – it is so good to see you back in the virtual world again – keep fighting!

Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Posted on by

An interesting article from LWN about Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Open Source.

ECC is based on some very deep math involving elliptic curves in a finite field. It relies on the difficulty of solving the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) in much the same way that RSA depends on the difficulty of factoring the product of two large primes. The best known method for solving ECDLP is fully exponential, whereas the number field sieve (for factoring) is sub-exponential. This allows ECC to use drastically smaller keys to provide the equivalent security; a 160-bit ECC key is equivalent to a 1024-bit RSA key.

As always though, there are the problems of patents..

The wild card in the ECC patent arena seems to be Certicom which claims a large number of ECC patents and has not made a clear statement of its intentions with regard to open source implementations. The NSA licensed Certicom’s patents for $25 million to allow them and their suppliers to use ECC, lending some credence to at least some of the Certicom patents. Other companies also have patents on various pieces of ECC technology.

Be interesting to see what happens..

Venus Express Telemetry is Good!

Posted on by

The last piece of the puzzle is in, the ESA have confirmed that they have telemetry from Venus Express and have held a press conference to announce everything looks A-OK with the spacecraft. Congratulations to all involved!

Emily quotes Don McCoy, Venus Express Project Manager saying:

In fact we have quite a bit margin of fuel on board. We allocate extra fuel for a bad launch, for maneuvers on route, [and everything was nominal] so we probably have enough fuel to do the extended mission, and quite frankly I think we could do another one after that. We have enough fuel for 4 and a half to 6 years.

This could be a really interesting mission..

Venus Express Arrives!

Posted on by

The Planetary Society’s Emily Lakdawalla is reporting from Darmstadt that the European Space Agency’s Venus Express is in orbit!

She does sound one note of caution though, saying:

while the S-band signal has indicated that the spacecraft has shut down its main engine properly, it does not yet indicate the full health of the spacecraft; that will only happen at 11:13 local time, when (if) they detect the X-band signal from the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna.

So congratulations on getting there, and here’s hoping the spacecraft reports it is in good shape!

Report: Failing to Curb Greenhouse Gasses May Hurt Australias Economy

Posted on by

Here’s an interesting news item from the ABC about a report commissioned by 6 big companies (not known to be Eco-warriors or Greenies) including BP Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation and carried out by CSIRO and Allen Consulting Group which claims that delaying action on climate change would harm the Australian economy when compared with having to take action later.

The ACF’s press release on the report is here and the actual report is linked from here.

Interesting points from the press release:

  • A 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is possible while maintaining strong economic growth, with real GDP averaging 2.1 per cent p.a. through to 2050 if early action is taken;
  • In comparison to early action, delaying action to 2022 would result in lower real GDP growth by an average of 0.2 per cent p.a. through to 2050, and concentrate any disruptive shocks over a shorter period;
  • An additional 3.5 million jobs will still be created in the economy under the early action scenario over the period 2013-2050; equating to 250,000 more jobs than under the delayed action scenario.

I hate being ill..

Posted on by

I’ve been really lucky with my health, so having come down with what I reckon to be food poisoning in the early hours of Sunday morning was not fun. I’m over the worst of it now though and I reckon I’ll be able to eat something for the first time in 36 hours – then it’s into the massage chair and have a nice bath.