Construction ideas

2/8/26:

There seems to be some interest in this post... I watched the video again, and yes, it is indeed interesting.

In particular, the ideas that make the structure weigh a lot less; are of particular interest to me.  The reason is that the more stuff you have to haul around, the bigger the machinery that you have to bring along in order to do the construction work.  Out there in the desert, where facilities are not yet available; this could be a real help.

That's true especially for me right now.  I cannot move around like I used to.

5/3/25:

Space Station idea discussed

2/6/26:

Another video no longer operative, so this one is substituted in its stead. A note about this original post: I recall that John Hunter said that a gas gun could put something from the moon into lunar orbit, and the gas could be at room temperature. So, if memory serves, that is definitely something to think about right there.

2/16/13:

Using a Hunter Gas gun to deploy a space station from the moon.

Another crosspost : It is darkest just before getting even darker

 

  Today wasn't supposed to be a blogging day, per se. But it has turned out that way. Reminds me of the Lenny Kravitz song that I remember hearing on the radio on the way back home from "da Ranch".  I gotta get away.

  Is it about to go pitch black, like Chairman Mao once said?

  Or things about to get much better?

  We all live on the edge of destruction. All the time. There was no time when this wasn't true. Think about it.

After some thought, it appears that the trailer idea is flawed.  It won't work economically.  The problem is that the cost isn't better than just renting a car.  I figured that range extension would improve the sales of battery powered cars, but the cost of fuel cells is just too high to make that work.

It is a discouraging thought.  For one thing, getting a large enough supply of platinum so as to lower prices won't be easy.  It won't happen soon, and it may not ever happen at all.  In addition, the progress of finding other catalysts to replace costly platinum does not appear to be very fast.  Finally, there appears to be significant skepticism in some quarters that this will ever work at all.

That leaves batteries.  I haven't heard much news on that subject for the last several years.  At one time, I was a bit more optimistic about batteries.  Not so much now.  It's taking too long.

With electrical cars not in the cards soon, we are left with internal combustion engines.  That's unsettling because of the hostility that the environmentalists have for fossil fuels.  Biofuels may be possible, but it will need an assist from electricity.  It is probably going to be hard to make all of that drop-in capacity from biofuels.  Biofuels can only serve to make fossil fuels go further.  It can't be a substitute.

It is encouraging that a lot of fossil fuel supplies are said to be coming to market in the next few years, but that is going to meet with some strong political opposition.

Politics is a problem, not a solution.   The left's solutions are not going to be pleasant.  The left just got mostly a green light to continue its hostility to the one option that will work.

I'm getting a bad feeling about this.  The outcome of the election was not encouraging.  Innovations are not progressing as fast as needed.  Political trends are moving in the wrong direction.  Not looking good.

A bright spot?  There's still the possibility of getting that platinum from space.  But it won't get much help from Uncle Sam.

Houston, we have a problem.

Cross-posted: "Sun-Free Photovoltaics: Materials Engineered to Give Off Precisely Tuned Wavelengths of Light When Heated"

 

A short research on the post indicates no new news. Perhaps a more in-depth search could reveal more. As of now, there's nothing new to report.

Thermoelectrics can do this too. Perhaps it could be considered as a type of thermoelectric generator. This is the method by which the Curiosity rover is powered. The difference is the heat source. This device uses hydrocarbon fuel source, but the Curiosity rover uses decaying plutonium--yep radioactivity...

The type of heat is considered "waste heat". It may come in handy for small power jobs. You cannot power something big with waste heat, I would think. But for cars, you might power a radio, or some of the instruments and sensors.

The original post on the main blog , 8/4/2011

ScienceDaily (July 31, 2011)

• MIT researchers have made a button-sized power generator fueled by butane that can run three times longer than a lithium-ion battery of the same weight; the device can then be recharged instantly, just by snapping in a tiny cartridge of fresh fuel.
• It has long been known that photovoltaic (PV) cells needn't always run on sunlight.
• thermal emitter that radiates only the wavelengths that the PV diode can absorb and convert into electricity, while suppressing other wavelengths
• Celanovic is confident that with further work his team can triple the current energy density. "At that point, our TPV generator could power your smartphone for a whole week without being recharged," he says.

I found this story by way of PC magazine, which had a story about Elon Musk.  That story was linked from Next Big Future.   By the way, the link wasn't direct, I had to dig a little to find it.

One may wonder if such a system can be scaled up, so that it can be made into a battery which could power an automobile.

LPP Fusion investors' meeting on YouTube

 

  LPP Fusion just concluded a funding drive, which met its goals of $500k. While other companies of this type spend more money, these guys are making do on a lot less.

  Think the Wright Brothers here.  They are like the Wright Brothers, who didn't need super quantities of money in order to do science, but they did need some.

  But the Focus Fusion boys will need lots of dough to build their machines for commercialization, provided that their experiments succeed in getting more juice out than what's going in.

  LPP Fusion keeps their investors up to date on what's going on. Since I own (1) one share, I get monthly updates.   You will see the reports on the coding blog.

  No special reason for that.  Maybe to get people to go there.

Cross posted from the main blog: "A million things to worry about"

Update, 2/4/26:

  Here's another cross post about the off-grid project on the main blog.  It was clicked on, so I will respond to that here on this blog, because this blog has the off-grid topics now.

  Enough of the blog-splaining for this post.

  The off-grid project is on hold.  Nothing can be done about it because there's no money.  I won't borrow the money, which I could do.  There needs to be an income in order to fund the project.  Plus I don't have the skill-set to do the things I want to do.  I did spend a lot of time upgrading my skill-sets so that I could, but there's just not enough time for all that.

  The harsh truth here is that I may never get back to that.  My health is not good enough to do much labor anymore.  About all I could do is to supervise the work that others would do.  Or, I could run some mechanical gizmos, like construction equipment.  Stuff like bobcats and such.

  All of that takes lots of $$$$$$$, which I don't have.  No money, no time, no progress.  There's a forlorn hope that the coding efforts could eventually bring in some money.

  There was a saying in the space business---No bucks, no Buck Rogers.  This off-grid project ain't Buck Rogers, but the general idea is similar.

  Anyway, it will have to stay on hold indefinitely.

4/5/15:

The original post on the main blog:

But you can't do a damn thing about any of it.

All you can do is just do the best you can.  The rest of it's out of your hands.  That's how I look at this.  I sit here thinking about how many things can go wrong, and there's a guarantee that something will.  Maybe a lot of things because a lot of things have already gone wrong.

Well, I've prepped all that I can.  Unless I want to stay here all month prepping for a trip I never take, I'd better get going.

Until I come back, the blog will be dark.  Perhaps I'll write something out there if things really stink it up.

I will attempt to do some reviews with my Kindle out there, but something tells me I may not have the time.

We'll just have to see how it goes.

Until then, signing off.

Cross posted from the main blog: Off grid post, 1-3-23

 

2/3/26:

  This one is a off-grid post, so why is it over there?

  I can be disorganized at times.

  Anyway, off-grid posts should go in this blog, now.  Hence, the cross-post.

  Now that the "splaining" is done, what the heck did I want to write?

  Oh yeah. You know I did melt that expended candle wax, and made new candles. But it really wasn't all that fun, after all.   Pretty sure I didn't do that again.

  After thinking about it, maybe a better solution would've have been to make long skinny candles instead of the fat ones.  The fat ones melt down too fast.  The shorter the wick, the shorter the burn time.  Or so the theory goes.  Never did it again.

  You know that burning those candles in tight places might generate enough warmth to feel it in a cold day.  But there's not that much energy in just a small thing like a candle.  This can be experimented with, for better results.  I figure you could put the candle under a pot, and see how long it takes to make the water hot.    Then set up a heat exchanger, like I did with ice in a big ice chest one summer. It was in 2017, if memory serves.   I didn't like all the work back then, and bought a window unit to keep cool.

The original post :

Today was kinda satisfying because I did something that pleased me to do. It wasn't that long ago that it got really cold. Prior to this, and when it was in the forecast, I noted something I wanted to try. It was candles for heating in an emergency.

Lots of people lost their power during that cold snap a couple years back. If power is lost in cold weather, without anything to back up, that could be a problem. This seemed to be the most elementary of solutions, and not that expensive nor complicated. Too good to be true, though.

The result was pretty disappointing, as I should have expected as much. A candle doesn't produce much heat. It might work okay in small places, but the living area here was too big for something that small to produce enough heat to do the job that might be needed. You can call that a failure, but that's okay.

It does seem like a pretty neat idea though, because it looks like you can recycle the wax and make new candles out of the old. The only new thing you need is a wick. So I got some wicks, and today, I melted down the candles and made some new ones. A little thing, but very satisfying.

Maybe the simple pleasures are the best.

Beats the hell out of a few things that I could mention, but won't.

Learning to code is easier said than done

2/2/26:

An eventful month on the new blog. It is going well now. It's getting more and more capable as I add features to it. Rather than doing that here, go to the blog itself.

So why come back here? To that question, the answer "why not?". There can be a hierarchy of updates for that blog. This could be the one that is most infrequently made. After that, are inline updates on the top entry in the blog ( as of the moment, it is the top entry). I use my scrolling box feature to just update to that box, you see. For more frequent updates still, go to the calendar entry for that day. But a less frequent feature just now added is to use a pdf file for updates. Those pdf files will offer more details than what can be put on a calendar entry. On top of it all, you can see a history of updates. That hasn't been all ironed out yet, as I just thought of another thing I'd like to add. Details at the blogger's blog.

1/4/26:

The database has over 20 entries now. This post is very long. This will be the last update to it, I hope.

12/26/25:

Now I am writing python code to query a database that I am creating. So far, it may have only 4 entries in it. But over time, the database can grow into a long list of entries.

So there's time to get the python code to work properly. As a matter of fact, it is already working. Not completely properly, but it is in a working order of a somewhat acceptable way. It does return a "false" positive sometimes. But that can be fixed.

To include all the videos that have ever been embedded would be a massive undertaking. There must be hundreds of them. It might be best to let the list grow from this date, and maybe throw in a few on other searches, as they are made in the future. Anyway, that is the update for today.

12/24/25:

Instead of php and javascript, I re-wrote it into python. It's done offline, and has to be uploaded to the space, but it appears to work. It's not being shown because the file is for January.

So now, I can truthfully say that the data manipulation is done entirely by my code. Nobody else's editor is involved. But it isn't what I think it should be, all the same.

12/21/25:

Groan! When I went to work on it again this morn, the system seems to have blown up my space. So I saved my files, and reset the space. Nothing is working right now.

Maybe I'm back to square one. Seemed to be so close yesterday. But another snag, and then Kaputski. I went on a search for some answers, and I was going to try something new this morning. Fat chance, as mentioned above.

It looks like W3Schools is not an easy enviornment to do some simple real world computer coding. The project I'm working on is not at all hard, in fact, it is trivial. Yet on W3Schools, it is like pulling teeth in order to do the simplest things. It was like that with these other AI assisted learning environments.

So now I've tried 3 of these-- Boot.dev, Scrimba, and now W3Schools. None of them seem to do what I'd like to do. Sure, you can learn a bit with these systems, but it isn't likely to stay with you if you cannot do anything but read tutorials, and try extraodinarily simple exercises. For example, I finished the Python course on Boot.dev, but when I refreshed my knowledge on W3Schools, it was like starting over.

Two hackneyed expressions sum it up: 1) You learn by doing, and 2) Use it or lose it. Consequently, without any way to practice your coding skills on useful projects, this W3Schools spaces environment I'm using, is not likely to be very useful.

Consider this last update a type of review. I'm reviewing these 3 websites for learning how to code, and I have to consider them all a big fat failure. I don't think an employer can expect to hire people on the basis of getting cerficates from these places. They'll get some newbies who may know a little, but they won't know much. I cannot believe a certificate at one of these places will do much good--but I could be wrong.

In sum, about all you can accomplish is getting a certificate that says you know something. It may be true when you finish taking the exams, but the shelf life will render all that work meaningless within a short time.

Oh well. It may be time to move on from this. But I hate to concede defeat. But it's just not working out. Quick update: I took down the link from the main page to the W3Schools page I created. Seems little point now to keep it.

12/20/25:

This was one of those days in which past progress looks like a mirage. You think you see a successful ending, and BOOM! The thing rises up out of nowhere, or so it seems; and knocks you back down.

Now there's doubt again. It's getting frustrating. Maybe I can tee it up again tomorrow, but it is getting rather tiresome.

12/19/25: [updated @ 7:45 PM]

'Twas a productive day. Not too much further to go, and it will be a done deal. Then what? I guess I will worry about that later.


[posted @ 8:19 AM]


If you ever get into the middle of something, and realize the whole thing may need to be re-worked, do you do it? Or keep on the same path, since you've put so much effort into it?

That's the question before me now. There's a fix to the work I've got already, but it may as well be all re-written. Anyway, this has all been a learning experience. A few things could have been explained better, so that I wouldn't under-estimate the task I set myself to. There's a whole lot more to this than meets the eye.

Indeed! Which is one of the dark sides of the world wide web. Too much of it is hidden from view. A lot of bad stuff can go on behind the scenes. Know what I mean, Vern?

12/18/25:

Some minor successes to report. From here on out, it will be a hard slog to get to the finish line. But it looks like I just might make it.

12/16/25:

It may be hard to tell, but there's still progress being made. Once I hit an insurmountable wall, I'll throw in the towel. Not to that point yet. I've throw more shit on the wall than can be imagined, and nothing sticks. But there's some hopeful signs that can keep me going.

There may be a way to crack this code, and if there is, I will find it. Hopefully, that's true.

12/15/25:

Just to confirm that the file is public again. It may remain so, although it cannot be guaranteed to be permanent.

Work has moved to another space within the w3 environment. In that space, it may be possible to finish the program. It should be noted that there's a thing called a "front-end", and a "back-end". When I decided that I wanted to input data to be used to update the website, I unknowingly blundered into the "back-end" side of the game. The front-end and the back-end are two different thangs.

So I cannot work on this thang, so I'll go to work on the other thang. I hope that is clear. Frankly, it gives me a headache.

12/14/25:

Looks like I will have to concede a (hopefully temporary) defeat in my intentions for my personal calendar project. Consequently, the calendar will be public for now, while I continue to puzzle it all out. It may never be achievable for reasons I won't go into for right now, but I definitely have an opinion as to why this isn't possible right now.

12/11/25:

At the end of this project, what once seemed difficult may look trivial in retrospect. But that is all the part of the growth process. In this process, I will become more proficient at the craft.

If there's anybody curious about a Computer Science graduate struggling to write a baby program for the internet, please keep in mind that my education was back in the late 70's and early '80's. Personal computers were just a toy back then. There was no world wide web. There was no JavaScript or HTML. Nor any of the other things that you need to day in order to make web pages. There was no web. But I repeat myself. I've gotten old and decrepit too. Repeating myself may be attributed to a declining noodle, amongst other things. But there will be an endeavor to perservere.

More progress has been made. I will get there one of these days, but the pace seems rather slow... @ 6:44 AM

circa 5:45 PM:

It's getting closer all the time. I may put it back up with the new code, which will integrate the new calendar part. But it's like the "Gulf Freeway", always under construction. Except when it isn't.

So the way I will work it, for awhile at least, the page will become available again when there's no construction. That might be after 10 PM local time each day. This may not always hold, though. It's still too early to put back, I will announce the schedule for viewing the page, if anyone's interested.@ 5:44 PM

12/6/25:

Progress is being made... There are many ways to attack the problem as outlined in the webpage... There's one idea that is coming along, but how to demonstrate it on a web page? I can't really do that unless I want to make the thing available to anybody viewing the page.. Or password protect it. Otherwise, anybody could mess with my page... Anyway, a way to edit the calendar data, and then display it on a page could be sufficient.

The problem with it as it is, is that it is hardwired into the code. I have to change the code, not the data. To edit the data could be a private thing that anybody could do with a text editor, but I wanted an interactive page, not a text editor. Can't be done without introducing the risk mentioned in the above paragraph.

So what good is it? Well, the aforementioned text editor and the file layout is harder to read. This code simplifies the input and output of the webpage. Unfortunately, it cannot be done unless someone has their own private web page. Those can be had for a price. But I'm not selling those.

12/5/25:

It seems that I've hit another snag with my calendar page, drat it. There are details to this business that can be quite puzzling at times. Well, that's a good word for the situation. I'm very puzzled about something. Par for the course, I guess.

11/15/25:

8:25 PM:

No javascript is necessary.  Just a little html.

2:42 PM:

There's this idea that has popped up, and it involves embedding my own videos on my own site. That means, no more YouTube. Or Rumble. Is that possible? Well, before it is over, I will find out. Basically, the javascript just plays the video. You supply the video, and the javascript plays it. It may involve some other things, but that is the basic concept. If so, I just may embed a video into the spot that I've reserved on my page.

I have a video in mind. It took a little while to locate it. It is a video of my trip out to the land, so it fits right into the site. I want to edit it a bit before I put it up. My narration sucks, so I'll just dub in some music or something. I need a video editor. There's one that will work in Linux, but probably not on my Raspberry Pi.

If all goes according to plan, I'll kill a couple birds with one stone. I'll be able to present the land for sale (if I choose), and be able to show it as an example of my computer skills. Who knows? Somebody might think it is good enough to pay for.

11/14/25:: (oops!--got the date wrong, fixed now)

Time flies, it's almost halfway through this month. As time goes by, I'll continue practicing my html. I'm working new ideas I learn as I go, and put it into places on this website, and on the main site. Plus there's a couple other sites that I work with for practice.

See what this paragraph does in blogger..., looks like it doesn't do anything at all. hmmm, it works on a standalone page, but that cannot be proven here.

I messed with the font, and that may be getting blocked. The blogger platform has font directives available--shown in this paragraph. Maybe I have to content myself with those, and cannot add my own. Or there could be some other explanation.

Update:  Now all these a linked together.  Starting from the canva page, I can get here, or to the one I designed from scratch and back again.  Made a few changes to the canva page too.

11/11/25:

I'm collecting practice pages as a hobby. Another one here.

11/9/25:

A glutton for punishment. Back to this again. I found another place that has a few features that will allow me to practice some skills. It doesn't cost anything either. (w3schools) Actually, I've tried this one before, but stopped for some reason. Maybe I didn't like it.

So it's back to where I began a few years ago. At this rate, it will take me 20 years to learn anything if I learn anything at all. Twenty years is never as far as I'm concerned. Good reason for it. I won't last that long.

10/29/25:

Now we're talking. After watching many videos, and experimenting, I finally got a button on the darned thing. It goes to a website of my choice. Also a text box as link that goes to a website. It isn't much, but it is something. I try to do a little something to the new site each day.

10/26/25:

If you want to learn to code, you may spend a lot of time, and you may not be able to do anything significant.

 

Trouble is in finding a place and a way to practice some skills. The online teaching may leave something to be desired also.

So far it has proved to be a disappointment.

Shorter Starship?

1/28/26:

 

Author: Space Zone

Description:

       “Starship is too tall—there’s no way it can land on the Moon!” That’s        something you hear a lot from critics of the Starship program.

There's a few familiar things about this video. Is it the same? Maybe not, but a side-by-side comparison can be made from this post. I'll embed the most recent below:



Now for the original.

10/24/25:

 

A shorter Starship may not be a SpaceX idea. All the same, I like the idea. I even speculated on such a proposition myself.

 

So here's a video that discusses it, but with a lot of added filler at the beginning. I skipped that, and got to the point.

 

 

 

 

Are they the same? Quick update: Nope, not the same. But there's one very similar element---the shorter mini-Starship.

This New Technology Could Kill TSMC and ASML

  Author: Anastasi In Tech

  Could this be the next big thing?

Description: Anastasi discusses this new technology, how it works; and the first results.

How Rubberized Asphalt Is Made From Millions Of Old Tires Inside Massive Recycling Factory

 

Author:The Factoran

Description:Every year, more than one point five billion tires reach the end of their service life worldwide, creating one of the most persistent waste problems on the planet.

Comment:  Have no fear for the future.  There are solutions to problems.

Coding skills for what?

  Update:

  New blog. Details over there. Anyway, no more blogging on this blog about my coding. All coding issues will be blogged on the new coding blog.

  There is a league at w3schools, where you can compete with others for points. Points are awarded for completed lessons and challenges and so forth.

  This may be bragging, but I tend to finish near the top every week.

  But the competition is not very fierce. It did start that way, but I got suspicious that it wasn't for real. I don't know if I've changed my mind on that or not.

  At this point, there's not much left to do. Perhaps I could go for a certificate, but that means more money spent. I'm not going to spend more money on this. Not that it was all that much anyway.

  The question now is what to do with this. I don't want a job at a company. It may be a marketable skill, but my working career is over. If I could find something that didn't require punching a clock, I'd consider it.

  I don't want to keep posting on this either. So here I am. What to do with this?

Why Everyone Is Moving Away from GPUs

  Title: "Why Everyone Is Moving Away from GPUs"

Author: Anastasi In Tech

Description: "Dive deep into AI and Learn Automations, Build AI Agents,"

Big bet on Gallium

Anastasi in Tech

  Data centers are power-hungry. A lot of the power goes through cooling. Data centers plan to scale to 5 Gigawatt.

  There's a bottleneck that lives between the chips. The gold rush is solving the heat problem.

  Copper is the old way, and now is the wrong way. It has reached its limits. Companies need to get around the copper problem.

  Light is the new way, but it doesn't work well with silicon and copper.

  A new way may have been found with the use of Germanium arsenide.

  Optics works great, and is everywhere where it is needed most, inside the chips themselves. All the power is being lost in the silicon and copper. Just a few more centimeters separate from a solution.

 The one who cracks this problem will control the AI space.

  Materials research non-profit organization (Imec) in Belgium may have found a solution. They searched through all the periodic table. The settled on Gallium arsenide. Once you couldn't build lasers on silicon, but a geometric trick enabled them to place the gallium arsenide on the silicon chip.

 But there's still a problem. Gallium gets it closer, but not all the way. Something new is needed. Enter Germanium. In particular, a compound of Germanium and Silicon. In theory, this should work, but there's a problem with putting it into the crystal. They tweaked it and tweaked it until they got it to work well.

 These two innovations allowed them to finally bridge the 2 cm gap. Now the money guys are betting on this development.

 Optics is the future, not copper.

 

Civilization Decays "by forgetting obvious things"

The scoop:

  Got this link in my mailbox, and it is an interesting read of about 8 minutes.

Basic premises:

  Americans have lost the plot. What is being criticized is called capitalism, but it is not capitalism, but rather, state capitalism. As state capitalism is not truly free enterprise, it cannot be said to be capitalism.



  New money chases fleeting stock market wealth, but old money invests in "real assets"-- like real estate.  Well, hot damn!

Comment:

  Yep, I'm land rich, but money poor. You cannot do that much with land with your own two hands alone. You just may need OPM (other people's money). But there's no substitute for brains and good judgement. Don't know what that says about ME, but it may not be all that impressive. But, I don't give up easily.

LPP Fusion news (Focus Fusion)

Can TAE Start Building A Working Fusion Plant In 2026?

Summary:

Lerner and Karamitsos team up to critique the recent merger of Trump Media and Technology Group with TAE ( a fusion company).

  Lerner is the chief scientist at LPP Fusion.

  Basically, the article says that TAE hasn't done the necessary preliminary scientific work to back up their claims.

Comment:

  Lerner also says that LPP Fusion holds the lead in Fusion Research. Of course he says that. Why would anybody waste their time if they didn't believe in what they're doing?

  The advantage that Trump brings to the table is MONEY. LPP Fusion is nickle and dimes, but Trump is pushing millions into the pile.

  But money doesn't always win.  For example, the Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics, and they were going up against the heavy hitters of their day. History shows who won that race. I've got my money on LPP Fusion. But that's because I'm not prosperous enough to put what little I have in anything else!  David and Goliath, here we come.

  I've been watching LPP Fusion for a long time now. For over a decade, if memory serves.

  They could always use a bit of help, and I've thrown in what little I can spare. Let the "best man" win, the saying goes.

Safest large city in the USA

The video is about El Paso, Texas. Which happens to be about a two hour drive from my land out in West Texas. Interesting video.

X-15 rocket plane

12/13/25:

  A consideration to the subject of being "worth it" to do this, would be in how much energy could be expected to be recovered from this? A calculation from the Nuclear Rocket pegged the energy to thrust ratio at about 1 Mw per 50 lb of thrust. Hence, if 10 Mw could be recovered, then 500 lb of thrust could potentially be produced.

  So that question must be answered before you could answer the question as to whether or not it would be "worth it". You'd also have to consider the additional weight added to the vehicle, because if you add more weight than thrust, it wouldn't be worth it at ground level, but maybe at high velocities and altitudes. It all depends.

  For example, the Space Shuttle did not achieve orbit with the hydrogen tank and main engines. It achieved only 98% orbit velocity. Then the tank was dropped into the Indian Ocean, and the OMS thrusters took the Shuttle the rest of the way. The Shuttle massed out maybe 150 tons,but those OMS thrusters did not generate that kind of thrust.

  The point being that you wouldn't need a great amount of thrust, but you would still need enough in order to make it all worthwhile. What would that be? Looking at energy potential recovery as one consideration, there are others. Among these is weight added through this additional capability, and complexity in terms of reliability and so forth.

12/12/25:

  The link references the x-15 rocket plane of the late 50's early 60's. It could be a way to use the energy of the atmosphere as a recycled energy that could add thrust, and increase ISP, or so I speculate.

  This may be a cockeyed idea, so it goes here on the speculation blog.

  The idea is from the study of nuclear thermal engines, and Parkin's doctoral thesis, written about here many years ago. If you heat up something, and then use that heat to expand a gas, such as hydrogen; you can achieve some pretty high ISP. Or so the thinking goes here.

  At hypersonic velocities, as you travel through the atmosphere, there is a tremendous amount of heat generated. So, what if there was a way to harvest some of that, as well as some of the atmospheric oxygen, so as to lessen the amount of fuel that is needed to reach high velocities?

  Fuel can be used to cool the surfaces down so that the vehicle doesn't burn up. If that fuel were also to be used as an afterburner with oxygen gathered from the atmosphere at high velocities, would it be worth it in terms of complexities and so forth?

  Indeed, would it even be feasible to exploit that? If temperatures on the skin of a vehicle get hot enough, it can in principle, work the same as a nuclear thermal engine, or on an aeroshell that Parkin's envisioned.

  The reaction mass would be hydrogen, which is the preferred reaction mass in a nuclear thermal engine. After the massive expansion from cryogenic temperatures to a much hotter temperature, plus the added effect of burning the hydrogen, perhaps on could get an extra boost, and thereby increasing performance.

  Anyway, it is an idea.

New e-bike has arrived

 Haven't tried it out yet. Wrong! It has, see the scrollable window below for new details.

12/12/25:

   Another one bites the dust. Can't use the thing because... well, because. So it's gone now.

   I'll have to try something else for exercise. That idea didn't work.

11/26/25:

Well now. There's progress, but it is not there yet. Which reminds me of the kid in the car who likes to ask: "Are we there yet?" No, we aren't there yet.

The reverse stirrup mentioned earlier consists of old speaker wire,velcro, and duct tape. Ah, duct tape. It comes in handy for a lot of situations. The duct tape gives a nice surface for the velcro to stick to. One side of the velcro attaches to my shoe laces,and the other attaches to the stirrup. So when I want to take my foot off the pedal, the velcro will give way, and my foot doesn't stay stuck in the stirrup.

It's hard for me to get the pedal in position so that I can get going with the bike. The e-bike seems to need some help getting going.  Perhaps the design assumption was that the rider would press down on the pedals to get started. This is easier said than done in my condition, as my legs have gotten weak.

In other words, I haven't even gotten the e-bike moving yet. But I'm getting there. It's like learning how to ride a bike all over again. This has a few complications that I didn't think about.

11/25/25:

There's a significant problem here that needs solving. The solution is to make a "reverse-stirrup", which would solve the problem of getting my feet on the pedals. Also, to keep them on the pedals. A stirrup for riding a horse may serve a similar purpose. But no need to get into that. I need this reverse-stirrup to stay on my feet, but not too firmly. That's because I need my feet on the ground when standing up.

So I made this reverse-stirrup, and I have to make it fit before I can make it so that it can be tested. So the test was to see if this can be a feasible solution. So far, nothing has ruled it in or out. Call it a "meh" so far.

7:39 PM, 11/23/25:

There's something different about my posts lately. The difference is the scrollable windows, with a different background color and text combination.

The advantage is that it extends how much can go on one page. Other posts don't get lost in the verbiage of long posts. If a post is long with a lot of updates, the reader can scroll through as long as it is of interest to the reader.

It wasn't used here on this post because I got lazy. It takes a bit more effort to set it up. ---on the other hand, it wasn't so hard, and I cut and pasted it on this post instead!  BTW, I got an idea that I will try out tomorrow.  If it works, then I can use the e-bike after all.

9:10 AM:

Putting the e-bike together was a dream. But the road test was a nightmare. The problem isn't the bike. It's me. I'm in such poor condition that I cannot manage the thing. At least not yet. There's no alternative here. Either I get this thing working, or it's another  mistake.   

Incidentally, this came as a bit of a surprise.  I didn't even consider the possibility that I would have a physical problem handling it.

5:38 AM:

It still needs some assembly. It pleases me to report that the e-bike looks almost ready to go. It is mostly assembled already. Happy days.

The items left to put on should be no problem. But it is still dark as I type this in. I'm anxious to try it out.

This gives me an idea. Rather than to go on YouTube or Rumble, why not make a video about this e-bike?

Bet the Big Tech companies don't like you cutting them out of their action. If you learn to code, then you can make your own webpages, and you won't need their services anymore. How nice!

I can be a real a-hole if you get me going. Seems like these Big Tech guys want to get something going. Well, we'll see about that.

 

Best part of the show was this part

A bit of nostalgia about the 70's nostalgia period that produced this show--"Sha na na".