Battle of the Webcasts! Elon vs Jeff. Elon wins!

A current big entertainment for Techies is the Space Race between SpaceX led by Elon Musk and Blue Origin led by Jeff Bezos. While possibly equal in terms of technology achievements, Elon's showmanship is attracting lots of attention and love. Part of that is the live webcasts of his rocket launches which have a genuine drama to them as in will the experimental landing bring joy - or groans as another crash relives the glory pioneer days of 1960. Jeff has been secretive up until now. But today Jeff gave us a first live webcast of a Blue Origin flight.

Where's the showmanship, Jeff? OK, I took it in from about 5 min before launch to the end. Not one human being appeared. The camera stayed on the rocket waiting to go while 2 unseen humans provided a commentary. Contrast this with the SpaceX webcasts hosted by enthusiastic engineers who bring it all alive, including women who are fast becoming beloved of educators everywhere as science career role models for girls. Variety of camera points of view with action cams on the rockets ready to take us into the critical moments and these are getting better with each launch. And we get clips about the rocket work the hosts and hostesses have been doing.

The audience views say something - from the most recent webcasts.
Blue Origin (19 Jun 2016) 177,728 views
SpaceX most recent (15 Jun 2016) 600,378 views
SpaceX breakthrough (08 Apr 2016) 1,561,346 views - historical landing at 27 min

Blue Origin (19 Jun 2016)

SpaceX  (27 May 2016):

Tech Story - Project "HiTechFromLoTech" - SteamFlash Rocket Motor

Update - Project HiTechFromLoTech now has its own blog - the story continues at:
http://HiTechFromLoTech.blogspot.com

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My "maker" attention was well captured by the SpaceX booster retrieve success of 21 Dec 2015. Thinks, can we on a smaller scale do exciting tech by putting ideas together in interesting ways? And what more practical activities can we come up with to get school students excited about tech? Needs a name - "Project HiTechFromLoTech".

That train of thought quickly led to the amazing Peter Beck.
Peter made a breakthrough by observing that batteries and electric motors have improved recently so it is now possible to simplify and advance liquid fuel rockets with electric fuel pumps.

I started gathering info about those amazingly powerful hobby – model – aircraft etc LiPo batteries.
Thinks .. can we go further than a support system - can a powerful battery directly propel the rocket? Some calculations suggest that it MAY be possible to run a rocket directly from a LiPo battery via an Electric Flash Boiler.

This is NOT like the fearsome “Skycycle X2” flown by Evel Knievel where the water was kept in a high-pressure heated container.
More effective (and safer) here to carry cold (or small advantage warm) water which feeds into a small “flash” unit heating a small amount of water to steam at any one time.

As of today, Sat, 06 Feb 2016, I have made a trial nichrome wire heating coil and I am close to the first water boiling experiment. Watch this space! Or should that be - "Watch this .. Space!".

References and Links:

Zuppero, A. Schnitzler, G. Larson, T. (1998). Nuclear-Heated Steam Rocket Using Lunar Ice.
http://www.neofuel.com/moonicerocket/

SpaceX (2016) "The Falcon Has Landed" | Recap of Falcon 9 launch and landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANv5UfZsvZQ

Wikipedia (2014). Steam Rocket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_rocket

Youtube (2013). Snake River Canyon jump 1973-EVEL KNIEVEL Awesome video!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-toCdPlXd6I

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Update - Project HiTechFromLoTech now has its own blog - the story continues at:
http://HiTechFromLoTech.blogspot.com

Tech Story - Follow-up - SpaceX success with rocket booster recovery

Mon, 20 Dec 2015, USA date. SpaceX were successful with their experiment of flying their rocket booster back to base and soft-landing it. Video coverage: skip to 31:00 min mark for the landing.
http://www.spacex.com/webcast/
(Scroll down past the still photos for the video.)

I monitored news coverage. From here in NZ I saw reasonable coverage by the NZ Herald newspaper website and the BBC. A big disappointment was TVNZ One News which is the biggest TV broadcaster in NZ. This has a history as a semi-commercial broadcaster with public service broadcasting aims along the lines of a mini BBC. In recent years, while still government owned, it has gone more and more commercial and received a lot of criticism for dumbing down. I suggest that poor coverage of this event supports that assertion.  I watched most of the 6pm broadcast news that day and next day and saw no coverage. Its website had brief coverage but only of the launch while missing the main point by failing to show or comment on the recovery.

Backstory "The Why and How of Landing Rockets" at:
http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/06/24/why-and-how-landing-rockets

Tech Story - SpaceX rocket launch today to attempt space travel breakthrough

http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

Major tech news story with big implications. SpaceX is launching satellites today but it is what they are going to attempt afterwards that could make history. They will try to fly the rocket booster back to base and soft-land it so they can reuse it.  Rocket reuse has been an engineering challenge for at least 50 years and if today's experiment works it will be a major advance in bringing down the cost of spaceflight and opening up "the final frontier".

Backstory "The Why and How of Landing Rockets" at:
http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/06/24/why-and-how-landing-rockets

Tech Story - Outlook 2010 stops sending after upgrade to Windows 10

Had problem - tried fixes - now sharing the one that worked.

The problem:
Computer upgraded from Windows 8.1 to the new Windows 10. Then Outlook 2010 email system would not send emails. Variety of error messages about network connection errors but checking other internet use - all OK. Did searches. Tried a variety of suggested fixes. Sharing the one that worked.

http://www.ajpcsolutions.com/outlook-stops-sending-mail-after-windows-10-upgrade-fix/

In brief:
Run the command prompt as an administrator. Run this command:
sfc /scannow

Thank-you "AJPC"!

Tech Story - Sony NEX-5N crash and fix - "unable to use memory card - Format?"

Last night - good filming session on project "Brave Love".

Today - problem.  Number one camera, Sony NEX-5N giving strange problems leading to a complete crash.

Fix.  Change the battery.

Insight.  This happened with my number 2 battery running low giving strange problems rather than useful warning messages.  Number 2 battery is a low cost 3rd party pattern battery.  Good service for 2 years but now this.

On changing the battery, everything came right.

Does this mean avoid 3rd party batteries?  I don't think so.  We just need to be aware that the "pattern" battery can give strange results when it is running low and the fix is to charge and/or change the battery.

What are these "strange problems"?

1.  I tried an experiment to shoot test video with "precision digital zoom".
(Aside, I know it does not make normal logical sense to do this but this is a special case where I wanted to try out some vintage c-mount lenses on the NEX.)  The video recording froze. Here was the classic case of the battery going low co-inciding with an unusual experiment so I lose a lot of time assuming that the event is connected with the unusual experiment.


2.  Repeating message on-screen.

"unable to use memory card
Format?"

This message does not make sense because there is only a "no" option with no way of responding with a "yes".

This message alternated with
"re-insert memory card"

3.   Dim-light dead
After some repeats of 2 above, NEX got into a state where switch the camera on, and the lcd screen lights up slightly, ie slightly lighter than the black of the off state.  And nothing else.  That one had me thinking battery.  Change batteries and everything recovered.

This may seem like a trivial and obvious piece of knowledge, but on running the Google search "unable to use memory card - Format?", I did not find useful information so maybe it is useful to put this into the internet mix with the contribution - "low battery - charge and/or change it!".

Thought experiment! The follow-up experiment which I do not have time to do would be to run an equally aged official battery to a low level and see if it delivers the same or more graceful behaviour.

And what about that play with old c-mount lenses?  With a battery change I discover that this is for stills only. Any "precision digital zoom" setting disappears when I press the video record button.

Congratulations to Bronwyn Calder - short story published in Landfall 229

Congratulations to my wife Bronwyn Calder - also my frequent film-making partner including her work on "Brave Love". Bronwyn won the "Graeme Lay Short Story Competition" run by the "NZ Society of Authors" with her short story "Endless Sea" set on a cruise ship visiting the Antarctic. "Endless Sea" has now  been published in "Landfall 229".  "Landfall" is a New Zealand literary journal and it is high status for NZ writers to appear in it.

Comments from the competition judge:
Hypnotic descriptions of the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic constitute the physical background to this story. The underlying theme is one of attempted escape and a yearning for personal fulfilment, aims which are ultimately defeated. Yet at the same time the woman narrator is made aware, by the ice which surrounds her, and the banal reactions of others to it, of the importance of what she has left behind. A finely conceived and executed story and a very worthy winner.

Links:
Landfall 229 description from publisher Otago University Press

Landfall 229 at "Time Out" bookstore

Askar - a fantasy novel by Bronwyn Calder

The Graeme Lay Short Story Award, 2014: Judge’s Report