Hovercraft
I’ve only ever ridden in a hovercraft once and that was in Hong Kong, when to celebrate the sale of Artemis to Lockheed, C and myself had a few days holiday in the colony.
We did the tourist trip to Canton, where you took a hovercraft up the Pearl River and then took a train back.
This is a Chinese video from YouTube of a hovercraft similar to the one on which we rode.
I asked Google, “What Killed The Hovercraft” and found two articles on the BBC.
The first was an emotional article, which was entitled Hovercraft Capsize Disaster Off Hampshire Coast Recalled 50 years On.
Just look what has happened in recent times to Boeing, after the problems with the 737 MAX.
The second is a more factual article, which is entitled What happened to passenger hovercraft?, where this is the sub-heading.
It’s 60 years since the British inventor Christopher Cockerell demonstrated the principles of the hovercraft using a cat food tin and a vacuum cleaner. Great things were promised for this mode of transport, but it never really caught on. Why?
I saw that demonstration.
These three paragraphs of the BBC article discuss the end of passenger hovercraft.
The cross-Channel service from Dover to Calais closed, external in 2000. The two vessels, the Princess Anne and the Princess Margaret, could carry only 52 cars. Larger ferries and cheaper-to-power catamarans, as well as the Channel Tunnel, proved too much competition. Routes in Japan and Sierra Leone have also since ceased.
“The problem militating against expansion has always been the noise for residents, who have to hear the hovercraft all day, 365 days a year,” says Warwick Jacobs, who runs the Hovercraft Museum, at Gosport, Hampshire. “The sound can travel quite a way, depending on the wind speed. We could have had hovercraft running on the Thames, for instance, but they’d have been too noisy.”
Recent models are quieter than their predecessors because of more efficient engines, while plans are in place to build electric-powered hovercraft, which will reduce the decibel count even further, Jacobs says.
Note.
- Over the years, I have been involved with anti-noise technology and even talked to McDonnell Douglas about it for one of their airliners.
- Electric propulsion and anti-noise technology are just two of those technologies that could transform the economics and unfriendly features of the hovercraft.
But what hovercraft need is a killer application in a high profile area, that gets engineers thinking.
SaxaVord ‘A Real Spaceport Now’ After First Rocket Explosion
The title of this post, is the same as that of the title of this article on The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
Despite the disappointment of last Monday’s fire engineers remain confident that the Unst site is ready for launch
These are the first two paragraphs.
Nothing could look more ominous for the European space industry than the tower of flame lighting up the skies over Shetland’s SaxaVord spaceport when a prototype engine suddenly and spectacularly caught fire on the launchpad last week.
The blaze was certainly “a nightmare” for the engineers of Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), the German company that hoped to conduct its first vertical rocket launch this year.
These are my thoughts and some from the article.
- I can remember a headline of Ike’s Phutnik, in a tabloid, when the United States tried to launch their first satellite.
- The safety systems seem to have worked well and no-one was hurt.
- The Chief Operating Officer of Rocket Factory Augsburg, still seems to have the ambition to make the project succeed.
- The operators are confident that SaxaVord will be ready for the next trials, whenever they are required.
- There is interest from Malaysia, to launch earth observation satellites.
- Scotland also offers other opportunities to southeast Asian tech businesses, as there are no launch sites in the region.
But most importantly, SaxaVord is generating interest from a wide range of users, as this paragraph indicates.
Others have already decided. SaxaVord has struck launch agreements with Lockheed Martin, the US aerospace giant and the German company HyImpulse as well as the UK’s Skyrora. Another four deals with international satellite companies are said to be in the offing.
If an established company were to launch a successful satellite, it could make all the difference to SaxaVord.
Conclusion
These are the last two paragraphs of the article.
Interest on this global scale enables the Scottish space pioneers to shrug off Monday’s blaze and the bad publicity it entailed. For anyone thinking the fire was bad news, emails from colleagues in the US told an altogether different story.
“You’re a real spaceport now,” read one message to a Shetland engineer. “You can’t call yourself a spaceport until you’ve had a rocket blow up!”
I have been to a party at NASA in Houston and they wouldn’t have been as successful, as they have, if they gave up on a failure. They try, try and try again.
Japan Expands Offshore Wind Development Into Exclusive Economic Zone
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
The Japanese Government has passed an amendment to the “Act on Promoting the Utilization of Sea Areas”, expanding the area for setting up offshore wind to the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
These two paragraphs give more details.
The Japanese government aims to deploy 10 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and 30-45 GW by 2040, including floating wind, as part of its target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
The new legislation would allow wind farms to be installed further out to sea from current territorial and internal waters, according to a joint statement by the government, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.
The Japanese seem to have devised a simple bid process, that gives rights to generate electricity for thirty years.
But then as a Director of Lockheed told me thirty years ago, the Japanese don’t have the same high levels of lawyers that the US, UK and other countries have, so they can move a lot faster and are easier to do business with.
This Wikipedia entry is entitled Wind Power in Japan.
This is the opening paragraph.
In Japan’s electricity sector, wind power generates a small proportion of the country’s electricity. It has been estimated that Japan has the potential for 144 gigawatts (GW) for onshore wind and 608 GW of offshore wind capacity. As of 2020, the country had a total installed capacity of 4.2 GW.
From the potential of 608 GW of offshore wind capacity, it looks like Japan is in a very similar position to the UK and the Japanese can also reap the wind.
Coeliac Journey Through Covid-19 – Introduction
Introduction
I am coeliac and I had an interesting journey through the Covid-19 pandemic.
My experiences will be laid out in this narrative, as I believe they might be of use to someone.
I was born in 1947 and after a good education at Minchenden Grammar School in North London, I read Electrical Engineering and Electronics at Liverpool University, where in addition to getting a B. Eng degree, I met and married my late wife; Celia. We had three boys in the early seventies.
My working life was mainly spent in the solving of mathematical problems and writing software to perform complex calculations mainly in the fields of data analysis, project management, statistics and the solving of simultaneous differential equations.
The Artemis software, that I wrote in the 1970s, controlled the building of the Channel Tunnel, was the software of choice in the development of the North Sea oil and gas fields and was even used by NASA to plan the missions of the Space Shuttles and their refurbishment after each flight.
My business partners and myself sold the company to the American aerospace company; Lockheed in the 1980s.
Since then, I have been involved in various ventures.
The most successful was to back two inventors, who had developed an aerosol valve that used nitrogen as the propellant.
We sold that on to Johnson & Johnson, but the experience led to the development of the Respimat Inhaler for Boehringer Ingelheim.
Are The Office Of Rail And Road (Or Their Lawyers) Too Risk Averse?
An article in the April 2022 Edition of Modern Railways is entitled Uckfield Third Rail Is NR Priority.
This is the first two paragraphs.
Electrification of the line between Hurst Green and Uckfield in East Sussex and the remodelling of East Croydon are the top Network Rail investment priorities south of the river, according to Southern Region Managing Director John Halsall. He told Modern Railways that third rail is now the preferred option for the Uckfield Line, as it would allow the route to use the pool of third-rail EMUs in the area. This is in preference to the plan involving overhead electrification and use of dual-voltage units put forward by then-Network Rail director Chris Gibb in his 2017 report (p66, September 2017 issue).
NR has put forward options for mitigating the safety risk involved with the third-rail system, including switching off the power in station areas when no trains are present and section isolation systems to protect track workers. ‘The Office of Rail and Road hasn’t yet confirmed third rail would be acceptable, but we are working out ways in which it could be’ Mr Halsall told Modern Railways. He added that bi-mode trains with batteries were not a feasible option on this line, as the 10-car trains in use on the route would not be able to draw sufficient charge between London and Hurst Green to power the train over the 25 miles on to Uckfield.
As an Electrical Engineer, who’s first real job in industry at fifteen was installing safety guards on guillotines nearly sixty years ago, I don’t believe that an acceptable solution can’t be devised.
But as at Kirkby on Merseyside, the Office Of Rail And Road, do seem to be stubbornly against any further third-rail installations in the UK.
I wonder what, the Office Of Rail And Road would say, if Transport for London wanted to extend an Underground Line for a few miles to serve a new housing development? On previous experience, I suspect Nanny would say no!
But is it more than just third-rail, where the Office Of Rail And Road is refusing to allow some technologies on the railway?
Battery-Electric Trains
I first rode in a viable battery-electric train in February 2015, but we still haven’t seen any other battery-electric trains in service on UK railways running under battery power.
Does the Office Of Rail And Road, believe that battery-electric trains are unsafe, with the lithium-ion batteries likely to catch fire at any time?
Hydrogen-Powered Trains
The hydrogen-powered Alstom Coradia iLint has been in service in Germany since September 2018.
But progress towards a viable hydrogen train has been very slow in the UK, with the only exception being demonstrations at COP26.
Are The Office Of Rail And Road still frightened of the Hindenburg?
Although hydrogen-powered buses have been allowed.
A Tale From Lockheed
When Metier Management Systems were sold to Lockheed, I worked for the American company for a couple of years.
I met some of their directors and they told some good American lawyer jokes, such was their disgust for the more money-grabbing of the American legal profession.
At the time, Flight International published details of an innovative landing aid for aircraft, that had been developed by Lockheed. It was a suitcase-sized landing light, that could be quickly setup up on a rough landing strip, so that aircraft, like a Hercules, with an outstanding rough field performance could land safely.
I read somewhere that a Flying Doctor service or similar had acquired some of these landing aids, so they could provide a better service to their clients.
But Lockheed’s lawyers were horrified, that they would get sued, if someone was seriously injured or even died, whilst the aid was being used.
Apparently, in the end, the aids were marked Not For Use In The USA.
Conclusion
I do wonder, if third-rail electrification, battery-electric trains and hydrogen-powered trains have come up against a wall created by over-cautious lawyers.
Long-Duration Energy Storage Milestones Achieved By Lockheed, Eos And Form Energy
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
Lockheed
I find it significant that Lockheed Martin have developed a new redox flow battery, which is a 500kW / 2.5MWh system.
Last year, the company had revenue of nearly sixty billion dollars, with a net income of over six billion dollars. They certainly have the resources and the name to make a big impression on the long-duration storage market.
Their GridStar Flow technology is also detailed on this page on the Lockheed Martin web site.
The page lists these features.
- Optimized for 6+ hours of flexible discharge
- Flexibility to switch between products to maximize revenue
- 100 percent depth-of-discharge with minimal degradation
- A design life of 20 years
- Ability to size energy and power independently
- Mildly alkaline, aqueous electrolytes that are safe (nonflammable, noncorrosive, stable)
- Competitive total cost of ownership
It looks impressive.
EOS Energy
EOS Energy can’t be doing badly, as they’re preparing to list on NASDAQ.
Form Energy
Form Energy are also reported to have had a $70 million investment.
Conclusion
It appears long duration energy storage is doing well across the pond.
My money would be on Lockheed to produce the most successful product.
The Anonymous Widower 