Cristopher Cross ~ Ride Like The Wind

On the road last night, this song was playing on the radio. I wanted to put it up here, but forgot about it until just now. I was riding like the wind last night trying to get home from a long way away. The song fit my mood. Right now, I just feel tired.

Ace: Why That 7.8% Unemployment Figure Is Raising Eyebrows

Ace of Spades

You don't even have to think Obama cooked the books (though Jay Cost reminds that that does happen) to look at the number with suspicion.

The economy simply did not add 873,000 jobs last month. It simply did not. The payroll survey says it added a mere 114,000.

There is absolutely no confirmatory data suggesting that the 873,000 number is right and the 114,000 number is wrong. As one guy asked on Twitter -- did payroll taxes jump up past month?

Cooking the books?  Maybe.

1MW Solar Powered Laser Made in Uzbekistan

vadaenergy via Wikipedia  (filed in Solar Power on Mar.25, 2009)

Seems to correlate with the Coaster series, so here goes...

• Uzbek researchers want to make a 40-meter tower, tapped with 62 electronically controllable mirrors, arranged in a concave form that focus the Sun’s power onto a solar furnace. The mirrors almost have half the size of a football field, and the whole system is able to focus 1MW of energy into the furnace.
• The accomplishment of the project “Development of optimal technology of conversion of solar energy into laser emission” is coordinated by the youngest Research Center of the country - the Institute of Materials Science SPU “Physics-Sun” of the Uzbek Academy of Science. 
• The solar furnace will be able to bear temperatures of up to 3000 degrees Celsius.
• The biggest problem for the laser system developers became the prevention of its overheating.
• A computer controls the cooling of the multi-crystal shanks of the laser with distilled water. 

More here.  An updated article (9/2011 or a year ago) on Science Daily- Parabolic mirrors concentrate sunlight to power lasers

A pdf file of Japanese researchers who want to beam power from space to the ground.  If Kirk Sorensen is right, this is a mistake.  Why beam power to the ground?  Use the power to beam power to stuff already in space, like a spacecraft.

Coaster No. 11

Part 11 of the series.

Have decided to reconsider the idea of using curved mirrors- this leaves the question: how to reflect the light to a convenient place?  Let's study the following pic:

Infinia Prototype CSP dish, page 11 pdf doc

The idea here is to put a mirror in place of the Stirling Engine.  The question that arises is this: can the mirror survive the concentrated solar light and not melt?  If that question can't be answered affirmatively, then we are sunk with this idea.  If it can, that means the light can be redirected to where we want it.   Happy days.

I would prefer to reflect the light along the support structure.  It would move vertically like the light does in a periscope in a submarine.

Update:

The answer to the question was not directly answerable in the web, but I did ask the following question

Can a laser ever be powerful enough to burn a hole in a reflecting mirror?

with the answer being that if the laser is powerful enough, then yes.  I am going to guess that concentrated solar will not be as intense as a laser, but that may be wrong.

Update:

The last update just above linked to the possibility of generating a laser directly from concentrated solar light. If this is feasible, the it would be an exciting prospect for this application, in my opinion. For if you could convert concentrated solar into a laser, then you could put the laser where you want it. Then it would become a trivial exercise to make the heat exchanger work like it is envisioned here. Moreover, it may be possible to get higher ISP's as well. Higher than 850.

Songified debate

These guys are good.  I was just thinking about them this past week.  The first song of theirs I remember seeing was the The Backing Up Song.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Note:  this is what my impression was before looking at the Household numbers.

Obama claimed yesterday that the unemployment numbers showed that his economic plans are working.

I suspect that this is wrong because the trend has been different over the course of this "recovery".

All that the unemployment rate measures is the number of people who are looking for jobs and can't find one.  To show how absurd Obama's claim is, consider this hypothetical--- if nobody has a job and nobody is looking for one, the unemployment rate would be zero.

But the hypothetical isn't quite as hypothetical as that--- because that is what is happening to a lesser extent.  For example, if more people enter the workforce than the number who find jobs, it has to mean that nobody is looking for a job.  That's just about what happened---only 100k jobs were created, but over 3 times that number entered the workforce.

If the economy was truly growing and created lots of new jobs, that number should be reversed.  That is more jobs would be created than the number of people available.

The real indicator of the poor state of economic health is the soaring debt numbers and the falling incomes.  But Obama won't cite those numbers.  He has to cite a statistical fluke in order to claim success.

Now that I've covered my initial impression, let's look at what I usually look at when I discuss the employment situation--- the Household data.

873,000 more working last month!  This is a great number, but is probably a fluke, not a trend.

If you were to get this kind of numbers for several months running, it would be great news.  Bring out the champagne and pop the corks time.  But, hold the champagne.  Happy days are not here again.  The other numbers aren't so rosy. Those numbers aren't evident here, but in the main report.

For example, incomes aren't rising much, hours worked aren't rising much.

Coaster series: Experimenting with mirrors--- reflecting light

Part 9 of series:  Concentrated Solar Thermal Rocket

Some pics I took yesterday while experimenting with a small hand held mirror.

Sunrise

A picture of a light before sunrise

There's a reflected light from the side mirror to the hand held mirror.  The light divides the shadow at the bottom of the door.  Can you see it?

Experimenting with reflection of light showed me a little about what needs to be done in placing the mirrors.

All of these little "experiments" made me remember the time I went to a barbershop where there were mirrors facing each other.  The mirrors reflecting themselves into an infinity of copies of reflections.  Light will bounce back and forth infinitely if the mirrors face each other like that.

Anyway, I figure the mirrors should be placed along the path taken and then angled down a little to the target.

I begin to think about the size of the mirrors and the numbers needed.  I wonder how much  light can fresnel lens handle if you have 1000 mirrors?   If 10 mirrors per fresnel lens, you would need 100 lenses.

Also, what if you hit with light several locations on ring?  How many rocket motors will you need?  And so forth.

Update:

Oops!  This is part 10, not part 9.