This fall, I started studying for my Master’s degree in Aeronautics at MIT. One of the first things we had to do when we arrived was to take the Technical Writing Exam. I was obviously extremely excited to write two essays on a presumably dry and pointless topic, remembering how much fun the GRE and SAT were. However, the topic turned out to be something very relevant to an incoming class of engineers, and especially the Aeronautics/Astronautics students: the debate between manned and unmanned space exploration, which I touched on in an earlier post.

We read two articles, one for manned space exploration and one against, and had to write a summary of the two articles as well as an analysis of what further questions would need to be answered in order to make an informed choice on the issue. In no time at all, pencils were scribbling away at paper.

While the topic was interesting, it was the structure of the test that made the most impact on me. It was not until halfway through the first essay that I noticed that in my supposedly impartial summary of the two articles I was in fact writing my personal opinions on the subject. I went back and removed my opinions (hopefully), and continued to write while focusing more on trying to be neutral on the subject. It was much harder than I expected.  

The second essay was also trickier than it appeared, forcing you not to argue for or against a chosen position, but to identify and justify the most important issues on both sides of the argument. Afterwards, I realized while talking to my fellow graduate students that many of them did not pick up on this subtlety in the assignment.

Our generation has become inured to the constant barrage of opinions: from the media, Twitter, Facebook and especially the blogosphere. I think that many of us are so used to this that it has become hard to avoid expressing our own opinions in what we write, even when expressly told not to. This is especially troublesome in science and engineering for two reasons.

First, science is based on reason and logic. Inserting personal opinions into a paper or research article lowers credibility and reveals a personal bias. Having a preconceived notion of what a result should be from an experiment can cause a scientist to try to obtain that result, instead of seeing what falls out of a properly conducted experiment.

Second, opinions are more and more becoming the basis that the public judges science on. Space is not the only sector where public opinion helps to drive funding and progress. Climate change and evolution also are often viewed as debatable issues with different, opposing viewpoints instead of as hard science. This lowers the level of discourse and helps to obscure the true costs and benefits of, for example, trying to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Scientists aren’t the only people who should learn how to communicate without biases. The general public is often confused and misled by all the opinions floating around; learning how to pick through them and find the underlying truth is vital for an informed population. When many people think that scientific theories are still up for debate, the world ends up with artificial controversies that muddy the names of all involved.

Science is both the driver and the marker of human progress, but it is dependent on fact, not opinion. The difference between those fact and opinion should be self-evident, but I fear that currently it is far from it.

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Many have called for Haiti to be rebuilt earthquake-proof, and you might as well throw in hurricane and flood-proof as well, since the country sits in such a disaster-prone location. While this will probably be done for municipal buildings and other publicly funded buildings like hospitals, airports, schools and the like, the chances that the slums around Port-au-Prince will be rebuilt to withstand earthquakes are virtually nil. Most of them (most of the buildings in Haiti, probably) weren’t constructed to any building code, or even by an engineer or architect. Once the world’s attention gets distracted by some other crisis, most of the new buildings probably will be just as vulnerable.  

Much of the problem is due to the corruption and poverty endemic in Haiti, but I’ll leave the politics to my much more learned friend, Anthony. I want to ask: What can be realistically done, given Haiti’s current political problems, to reduce the loss of life in a future disaster?

Unfortunately, many of the easy answers, such as not building on high-risk sites such as hillsides or floodplains will not happen because of poverty, overcrowding and lack of government control. However, there could be a lesson to learn from a country that has suffered earthquakes and other natural disasters for millennia: Japan.

Currently, of course, Japan uses some of the most advanced building technology available. However for a long time, Japan embraced the unusual strategy of designing their buildings to fail.

While we usually consider buildings made of brick, concrete or stone to be strong and safe, in an earthquake they are among the weakest structures. While these materials can carry a large vertical load, allowing buildings to be sturdy, they cannot withstand even moderate horizontal forces, as happen in earthquakes. If you ever built towers from blocks when you were a little kid, you would know that it’s easy to make something strong enough to sit on but that nothing could save it if your baby brother gave it a small push.

The Japanese recognized this, and designed their homes from wood and paper. While many of them still fell down when an earthquake happened, they were so simple that they could often be rebuilt in a day. In addition, their lightweight construction meant that those inside had a much higher chance of survival and rescue.

The final irony is that another earthquake will probably not hit Haiti for a while, and that instead of trying to build buildings that can survive Armageddon, Haitians should focus on buildings that can shelter all the displaced during the next hurricane season.

Nevertheless, my (probably naïve) idea is this: provide an IKEA-like kit with instructions and materials (or just instructions) for building a simple, lightweight home that can be built and rebuilt quickly and won’t kill you when it falls down in an earthquake (or hurricane). Perhaps they could be modular or stackable, so that apartment buildings could be made instead of the heavyset concrete ones that collapsed. It will be a while before Haiti will have enough professionals to do construction; this would make life easier and safer for the amateurs.

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We at Tradings 8s wish a very happy holidays to all of you! We hope you enjoyed our countdown, and we apologize for the gaps thereof. For our final countdown post, our resident engineer is back with a post that is both entertaining and educational.    – AWO

Whenever Christmas rolls around, there are inevitably a horde of physics students and teachers eagerly deconstructing Santa Claus. To carry presents for all the children in world and deliver them in one night would result in a massive fiery comet of Christmas cheer flaming across the night sky. Obviously not a good result. However, with the help of a little modern technology, I will endeavor to show you that all hope is not lost.  

Assumptions:

1. Let’s focus on American children.
2. Assume that everyone has a decent-sized, accessible chimney.
3. Santa doesn’t necessarily have to hand-deliver each present. Come on, everyone knows your parents eat the cookies.
4. Santa’s rich (enough to pay off the FAA).
5. Uniform (small) present size. Don’t get greedy.

There are about 74 million children under the age of 18 in the US. Since Christians are 79% of the country, we can assume that 58.5 million celebrate Christmas. We’ll make things a little bit harder for Santa and assume they all believe in him and get presents. At a weight of 1 pound per package (action figures, dolls, lego sets, etc.), that’s 58.5 million pounds of toys to deliver.

The world’s largest plane, the Antonov AN-225 can carry a maximum payload of 550,000 pounds. Santa therefore needs 107 of these monsters (ignoring the fact that there is only 1 operational. Santa’s well-connected.) To please traditionalists, he named each one after a reindeer. (Yes, there are more than eight reindeer. What else is there to do at the North Pole for 364 days of the year?)

To get the presents to each child, I drew on my senior design project. It’s possible to put a GPS chip in a parachute, attach motors, and steer it to a desired destination. If each package has one of these guided parachutes, then all Santa has to do is release the presents from the plane when he is above the appropriate house. The presents could then float down, land in the chimney, and be placed under the tree in time for morning. Unrealistic, yes, but theoretically possible.

Assuming a range of 20 miles for a parachuted present, and the dimensions of the U.S to be 2000 miles north to south and 3000 miles east to west, Santa needs at least 100 (2000 miles / 20 miles) planes flying east to west to cover the land area of the U.S.

Since the range of an AN-225 with maximum payload is 2,500 miles, Santa probably needs a fleet of tankers to refuel them while flying. Obviously, a bit better routing is needed since the population is not evenly distributed across the country, but that should not be extremely difficult to figure out.

Lastly, the cruise speed of the AN-225 is 500 mph, so they can complete their cross-country flight in 6 hours, well before the sun begins to rise.

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If Alex keeps writing this well, he’s going to put me out of my job. Just saying. — AWO

My girlfriend recently had to write a paper on this question: “Can we be sure that our visual experience tells us how things really are?” Everyone struggles with this question at one time or another, usually after watching The Matrix. What can we be sure of in a world where ‘reality’ is constantly being redefined?

As an engineer, I have an overly pragmatic answer: Who cares? If I’m nothing but a computer chip that thinks it’s a brain inside a nutrient vat that believes it is actually a person walking around in some virtual reality, is it any different for me than if my flesh and blood is real? No, until Morpheus slips me a pill in my rum and coke. Since I don’t usually get that lucky at the bar, why fret about it?  

In an example more related to the current season, discovering the secret of Santa Claus didn’t really perturb me. I didn’t let on that I knew, partly because I had younger siblings, partly because I still wanted to get presents (okay, maybe more than partly), but also because I really enjoyed (and still do) the magic of the season. Believing in, or at least, not denouncing, reindeer and elves is slightly naive but harmless. It’s hard to find innocence in today’s Christmas, but it’s one of my favorite parts of the season. Singing carols with gusto, decorating gingerbread houses, and opening presents is just much more fun if you take them as they appear.

It is an interesting dichotomy that a society can be on the one hand almost paranoid that reality isn’t what it seems, and on the other increasingly determined to ignore the reality that we do live in. The recent movie Surrogates, in which humans control robot surrogates that live their lives for them, is only a step beyond games like the Sims. There are several apps for the iPhone promoting “Augmented Reality“, where little bubbles of information dredged from the Internet hover over people, places and things as you move your camera around. An ad for the Motorola Cliq phone boasted that you could carry your entire social life in your pocket.

The manufacturers of all these advancing technologies try to convince you that your eyes are becoming obsolete. There is a whole reality that you will miss out on without this gizmo or that software. But if you take them at their word, you risk missing out on some of the more sublime joys in the world. Being able to read Facebook status updates as you sit in the park is awesome, yes, and being able to see Sally’s latest post above her head as she walks by would be even better. But what about the fox flashing through the woods in the distance or the frisbee sitting in your bag? Is discovering an amazing BYO as you wander through a new neighborhood as exciting as if you had seen the hundreds of positive reviews before you went in?

I sound a little naive and old-fashioned, yes, and I do think that these technologies are fascinating and full of opportunity. But as a Christmas present to yourself, try going out and exploring reality the old fashioned way for a day, and take some things as they appear.

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Several groups of students and others have realized that, while it takes millions upon millions of dollars to build a rocket capable of reaching space, relatively cheap weather balloons filled with helium can fly as high as 20 miles above the Earth, allowing a look at space for anyone willing to make the effort. These MIT students built such a system for only $148! I myself just submitted my senior design project proposal to develop a lab for an engineering course where students would build their own space balloon and try to predict its flight path, the deformation of the balloon, and several other aspects, and then compare their predictions to the actual flight.

Such space balloons are not just the province of low-budget students. The BLAST project (Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope, whose head, Mark Devlin, is a professor here at Penn), attached a large telescope to an even larger balloon in order to get better pictures of space. The lower atmosphere of the Earth blocks and distorts incoming light and energy waves due to pollution, weather, and just the amount of air. By floating the telescope into the upper atmosphere, the researchers in effect created their own version of the Hubble telescope, at a fraction of the cost.

Obviously balloons will never be as widely used as aircraft, rockets, or even blimps. However, they show the potential for old technologies to be turned towards new uses. They are perfectly suited for this small niche, showing that the best options aren’t always the newest or most expensive.

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