Saturday 30 September 2023

Worry Nought

Some times you spend a lot of time dreading when something will happen, you know it is just a matter of time, like seeing old school bullies or ex girlfriends after several decades. You imagine all sorts of things  occurring, the scenes, the threats of violence, the anger, the pain.
 

Then it happens and they don't recognise you and walk straight by.


Saturday 26 August 2023

Blunt Daggers

Nadine Dorries finally got around to resigning. It is a magnificently irrational rant worthy of Trump. The most amazing thing about it is that she can clearly see Sunak for what he is a spiv and chancer deaf to reality but totally fails to see that in Johnson.

In a functioning political system, someone capable of writing this would not been in the House of Commons. If the more preposterous and paranoid conspiracy theory bits are removed and it was from a serious person it would, again in a functioning system, cause serious problems for the PM.

Thatcher was famously brought down by a resignation speech from the mild-mannered Geoffrey Howe. This letter is the roar of a paper tiger, an insubstantial rant by an insignificant person, it signifies nothing and will have no effect other than perhaps be a footnote about petulant impotence.
 
Dear Prime Minister,
It has been the greatest honour and privilege of my life to have served the good people of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP for eighteen years and I count myself blessed to have worked in Westminster for almost a quarter of a century. Despite what some in the media and you yourself have implied, my team of caseworkers and I have continued to work for my constituents faithfully and diligently to this day.
When I arrived in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, I inherited a Conservative majority of 8,000. Over five elections this has increased to almost 25,000, making it one of the safest seats in the country. A legacy I am proud of.
During my time as a Member of Parliament, I have served as a back bencher, a bill Committee Chair, a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State before becoming Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care during the Covid crisis, after which I was appointed as Secretary of State at the department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. The offer to continue in my Cabinet role was extended to me by your predecessor, Liz Truss, and I am grateful for your personal phone call on the morning you appointed your cabinet in October, even if I declined to take the call.
As politicians, one of the greatest things we can do is to empower people to have opportunities to achieve their aspirations and to help them to change their lives for the better. In DHSC I championed meaningful improvements to maternity and neonatal safety. I launched the women's health strategy and pushed forward a national evidence-based trial for Group B Strep testing in pregnant women with the aim to reduce infant deaths. When I resigned as Secretary of State for DCMS I was able to thank the professional, dedicated, and hard-working civil servants for making our department the highest performing in Whitehall. We worked tirelessly to strengthen the Online Safety Bill to protect young people, froze the BBC licence fee, included the sale of Channel 4 into the Media Bill to protect its long-term future and led the world in imposing cultural sanctions when Putin invaded Ukraine.
I worked with and encouraged the tech sector, to search out untaught talents such as creative and critical thinking in deprived communities offering those who faced a life on low unskilled pay or benefits, access to higher paid employment and social mobility. What many of the CEOs I spoke to in the tech sector and business leaders really wanted was meaningful regulatory reform from you as chancellor to enable companies not only to establish in the UK, but to list on the London Stock Exchange rather than New York. You flashed your gleaming smile in your Prada shoes and Savile Row suit from behind a camera, but you just weren't listening. All they received in return were platitudes and a speech illustrating how wonderful life was in California. London is now losing its appeal as more UK-based companies seek better listing opportunities in the U.S. That, Prime Minister, is entirely down to you.
Videos
Long before my resignation announcement, in July 2022, I had advised the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, of my intention to step down. Senior figures in the party, close allies of yours, have continued to this day to implore me to wait until the next general election rather than inflict yet another damaging by-election on the party at a time when we are consistently twenty points behind in the polls.
Having witnessed first-hand, as Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss were taken down, I decided that the British people had a right to know what was happening in their name. Why is it that we have had five Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010, with not one of the previous four having left office as the result of losing a general election? That is a democratic deficit which the mother of parliaments should be deeply ashamed of and which, as you and I know, is the result of the machinations of a small group of individuals embedded deep at the centre of the party and Downing St.
To start with, my investigations focused on the political assassination of Boris Johnson, but as I spoke to more and more people - and I have spoken to a lot of people, from ex-Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers both ex and current through all levels of government and Westminster and even journalists - a dark story emerged which grew ever more disturbing with each person I spoke to.
It became clear to me as I worked that remaining as a back bencher was incompatible with publishing a book which exposes how the democratic process at the heart of our party has been corrupted. As I uncovered this alarming situation I knew, such were the forces ranged against me, that I was grateful to retain my parliamentary privilege until today. And, as you also know Prime Minister, those forces are today the most powerful figures in the land. The onslaught against me even included the bizarre spectacle of the Cabinet Secretary claiming (without evidence) to a select committee that he had reported me to the Whips and Speakers office (not only have neither office been able to confirm this was true, but they have no power to act, as he well knows). It is surely as clear a breach of Civil Service impartiality as you could wish to see.
But worst of all has been the spectacle of a Prime Minister demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy against one of his own MPs. You failed to mention in your public comments that there could be no writ moved for a by-election over summer. And that the earliest any by-election could take place is at the end of September. The clearly orchestrated and almost daily personal attacks demonstrates the pitifully low level your Government has descended to.
It is a modus operandi established by your allies which has targeted Boris Johnson, transferred to Liz Truss and now moved on to me. But I have not been a Prime Minister. I do not have security or protection. Attacks from people, led by you, declared open season on myself and the past weeks have resulted in the police having to visit my home and contact me on a number of occasions due to threats to my person.
Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. What exactly has been done or have you achieved? You hold the office of Prime Minister unelected, without a single vote, not even from your own MPs. You have no mandate from the people and the Government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?
And what a difference it is now since 2019, when Boris Johnson won an eighty-seat majority and a greater percentage of the vote share than Tony Blair in the Labour landslide victory of '97. We were a mere five points behind on the day he was removed from office. Since you became Prime Minister, his manifesto has been completely abandoned. We cannot simply disregard the democratic choice of the electorate, remove both the Prime Minister and the manifesto commitments they voted for and then expect to return to the people in the hope that they will continue to unquestioningly support us. They have agency, they will use it.
Levelling up has been discarded and with it, those deprived communities it sought to serve. Social care, ready to be launched, abandoned along with the hope of all of those who care for the elderly and the vulnerable. The Online Safety Bill has been watered down. BBC funding reform, the clock run down. The Mental Health Act, timed out. Defence spending, reduced. Our commitment to net zero, animal welfare and the green issues so relevant to the planet and voters under 40, squandered. As Lord Goldsmith wrote in his own resignation letter, because you simply do not care about the environment or the natural world. What exactly is it you do stand for?
You have increased Corporation tax to 25 per cent, taking us to the level of the highest tax take since World War two at 75 per cent of GDP, and you have completely failed in reducing illegal immigration or delivering on the benefits of Brexit. The bonfire of EU legislation, swerved. The Windsor framework agreement, a dead duck, brought into existence by shady promises of future preferment with grubby rewards and potential gongs to MPs. Stormont is still not sitting.
Disregarding your own chancellor, last week you took credit for reducing inflation, citing your 'plan'. There has been no budget, no new fiscal measures, no debate, there is no plan. Such statements take the British public for fools. The decline in the price of commodities such as oil and gas, the eased pressure on the supply of wheat and the increase in interest rates by the Bank of England are what has taken the heat out of the economy and reduced inflation. For you to personally claim credit for this was disingenuous at the very least.
Read more politics news:
Asylum seekers moved off barge 'displayed symptoms of Legionnaires' disease', letter claims
PM says Lucy Letby inquiry should be judge-led to 'get answers' for families
It is a fact that there is no affection for Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He does not have the winning X factor qualities of a Thatcher, a Blair, or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, Prime Minister, neither do you. Your actions have left some 200 or more of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the loss of their livelihoods, because in your impatience to become Prime Minister you put your personal ambition above the stability of the country and our economy. Bewildered, we look in vain for the grand political vision for the people of this great country to hold on to, that would make all this disruption and subsequent inertia worthwhile, and we find absolutely nothing.
I shall take some comfort from explaining to people exactly how you and your allies achieved this undemocratic upheaval in my book. I am a proud working-class Conservative which is why the Levelling Up agenda was so important to me. I know personally how effective a strong and helping hand can be to lift someone out of poverty and how vision, hope and opportunity can change lives. You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.
I shall today inform the Chancellor of my intention to take the Chiltern Hundreds, enabling the writ to be moved on September the 4th for the by-election you are so desperately seeking to take place.
Yours sincerely,
Nadine Dorries

 

Friday 16 December 2022

Own Branded Cola Ranked

1. Tesco Xero Cola (50p) has an extra taste I couldn't put my finger on. Reminiscent of Cola flavour sweets. Not at all unpleasant
 

2. Sainsbury's Cola Zero(47p). Not at all unpleasant.
 

3. Aldi Vive zX Cola(47p)
 

4. ASDA Diet Cola (60p)
 

5. Morrisons (79p) for the Low Sugar variety are the most expensive and definitely not the best, but far closer to the best than it is to the worst.
 

6. Lidl Freeway Cola.(47p) Tasteless. If you drink it with your eyes closed,  it tastes like fizzy water. It is only disappointing if you drink it with your eyes open because the mind expects flavour but this is lacking.



 

Wednesday 16 November 2022

Liverpool Echo Control Freaks

The Echo seem to be trying to secure its position as a reliable wall of silence. Not content with taking money from Google to help it destroy independent local magazines, it has apparently now started attacking a local college and threatening to  sever links with it if it continues to have one of its critics as a student.

As part of her journalism course at Liverpool Community College, Helen Wilke was sent to do 2 days of observation at the Echo. The first day passed off uneventfully, however, the 2nd had hardly gotten started when she was called into the office of the editor Maria Breslin and apparently told that she wasn't welcome.

Not content with this when the College tried to find a way around Helen not completing this essential part of the course. They were allegedly told that the Echo would end its association with the college if Helen remained on the course.

Anyway, read the full details in The Post.

Several people claim to have approached various people & parts of  Reach PLC, the Echo's owners and none of the claim to have received a reply. If any company other than the Echo tried this in Liverpool the Echo would be all over the story but not in this case. Neither has the rest of the media said anything, except for the independents.

It looks like the Echo subscription to the Old Boys club is paying off well and the walls of silence in Liverpool are holding up well.

What say you Sally?

Sunday 30 October 2022

AI is good but not at what you think.

One of the problems with AI is that you can never really be sure that it has learnt what you wanted to teach it, the same can be true of animals.
One thing that people have tried to train Dogs and AI to do is to identify tanks so that they can be attacked and destroyed. In 2 cases I'm aware of it has gone wrong and in nearly the same way.
In WW2 the Russians trained dogs to find tanks and hide under them, little did the dogs know that they were carrying bombs with timers on them. The dogs were well trained and back at base they worked flawlessly, unfortunately, the dogs hadn't learnt to ID tanks in general but Russian tanks specifically because that's what they had been trained on.
When they were let loose on the battlefield the dogs sought out the nearest Russian tank, not the nearby German tanks and hide under them. It was already going to be a bad day for the dogs but it was now also a bad day for the Russian tank crew.
In the 70s and 80s, the US trained computer AIs to identify tanks hidden in satellite & aerial pictures, and the AI's got very good at it. However, as the easiest way to get pictures is to take photographs of your own side's tanks so they only really learnt to ID hidden US tanks.
While training a soldier to recognise tanks, in general, could be done, with these pictures, training AI could not because it is very difficult for them to go from a specific case to a general one.
While a human can cope with the idea of a tank as a concept, to a dog or AI it is just a collection of angles and shapes, and each design philosophy tends to have its subset of angles and shapes.
When it comes to people's opinions of architecture similar things happen, each person picks out what they use to identify good and bad architecture. To an aesthete or architect, the lines of a Georgian building are unmistakable, the regular patterns, the window size and the minimal decoration. Producing a pastiche of such thing should be and is easy, Bath is covered in them and the vast majority are disliked.
The reason they are disliked seems to be nothing to do with the architecture because that is virtually the same, the haters must be picking up on something else. Frequently these modern buildings are described as soulless, which is a description levelled at all modern buildings.
However, it doesn't seem that this soul resides in the architecture it resides somewhere else. The algorithm that is being used by some to identify bad architecture is not using the architecture in its deliberation but something else.
Recently I had a nose around Bath and talked to a couple of locals some of the schemes slagged off looked like very good pastiches but I think there were a couple of clues. In modern buildings, the quality of the stone is very good, it might not be genuine stone as it might have been processed to make it more uniform, the older buildings virtually all have flaws in the stone.
A lot of these flaws look like they would have been visible when it was first used whilst others are a product of weathering, exacerbating previously unseen flaws. In the image below the lower parts of the building seems to be far older than the upper parts. Whether this is true I can't say, the building looks to have had a significant rebuild and the contrast is clear.
I don't believe a lot of the people who object to new buildings of any style modernist or not are objecting to the architecture instead they are subconsciously picking up the cues about age and basing their critique on that. This means that no building will ever live up to their standards because they simply aren't compatible with new buildings.
We see a greater acceptance now of brutalist architecture, sure there are still lots of people who slag it off and call any building they don't like Brutalist, but more and more buildings are being seen for themselves rather than their date of birth. I think this is down to weathering and not to a change in taste.
This begs the question is it worth building anything to blend in and I think the answer is very rarely. These Georgian buildings were radical in their day and if we want to keep to their spirit modern building should also be radical and with equal ambition for longevity.


The building below is new, a fine pastiche and hated.


Thursday 11 August 2022

How to make a Quad spool gas turbine

The Garrett ATF3 is one of the most unusual triple spool jet engines there is. In most triple spool engines all 3 shafts are concentric. That is, the high-pressure shaft is inside a hollow intermediate shaft which is inside the low-pressure shaft. In the ATF3 the intermediate is still inside the low, but the high-pressure shaft, while colinear with the other 2 it is behind them.

Below is a fairly typical twin-spool design. Notice how the inner spool is rotating faster than the out. It is this different rotation speed that leads to the increase in efficiency, but it does add weight and complexity which puts up the cost of production and maintenance. A 4 spool of this design would be unlikely to give a sufficient increase in efficiency to offset the costs.


From K. Aainsqatsi

As you can see from the ATF3 below, the front section outlined in green is very similar to the twin-spool engine but where the combustion chamber is the hot gas is piped off to the rear of the engine, turned through 90 degrees and through a centrifugal compressor. Only then does it hit the combustion chambers. From there it flows through the high-pressure turbine before flowing backwards through various turbines, turning 180 degrees and exiting, mixed with the bypass stream.

It is slightly unorthodox here as the turbine driving the low-pressure compressor is actually at a higher pressure than the one driving the high pressure.

The back-to-forward flow helps keep the engine length down and minimises losses from the hot gas. The centrifugal compressor and reverse flow combustion also help keep the length down but make the entire thing rather wide.

The original Whittle engine had a very similar arrangement for very similar reasons, and on small engines, centrifugal compressors are not unheard of.


ATF3 

Base drawing from here

Quad spool and beyond

To make a quad spool all you would need to do is replace the front twin spool with a triple spool or convert the aft section to double. In theory you could get pent or oct spool engines before hitting the 3 concentric spool limit.

I can only assume the benefit still isn't worth the extra weight and complexity.


 

Tuesday 26 July 2022

Hot MUSTARD

Image

The BAC MUSTARD was a novel concept for a reusable space launch vehicle in which three near-identical lifting bodies were joined together for launch. There were links for manifolds connecting all the engine sets so that each vehicle's fuel could be emptied. When empty, each vehicle would separate and glide back to Earth for a runway landing. Only the final body makes it to orbit before returning to a runway landing.

The idea came from English Electric in the early 1960s and finally died in 1970 at BAC, having never left the drawing board in Lancashire, never mind Earth.

This represents the end of such a project that is now 50 years late and has little more than historical interest as part of the UK's decline as a major power and its inability to create international teams for the common good.

Historians have constructed items from the past to learn how to build them. Replicas and Clones of WW2 aircraft are numerous, but no one has ever built a vehicle that did not get beyond the drawing board. There are detailed plans for TSR2 that could, in theory, be dusted off. While BAC claimed that the design was complete in 1964, that is unlikely to mean that each component was designed in detail.

But let us suppose that AI exists to take whatever exists and finish it. How would you build it? Part by part and the assemble or perhaps a whole body slice at a time, switching between multiple materials on each pass?

Hot Mustard

MUSTARD, as conceived, had three identical elements. The technology available meant that they had to be manned, so that is, three cockpits, each of which would be occupied. It also means three payload bays, two of which would be empty, just taking up space and adding mass.

Today manning would be optional, so for just a launcher, the cockpits could go. That leaves the triplicated payload bay. That is not very efficient. In reality, the original MUSTARD is a none starter today.

To reuse something from the concept, we need to avoid redundant triplication. That means the internal payload bay has to go with the payload mounted externally to the orbital vehicle. We could use the attachment points used for the interconnects. Energia used a side load arrangement when launching Polyus. The Shuttle and Buran were also side-mounted and crewed, so a small space plane is viable.

It might be better to have a conformal unit that contains a payload bay or crew area to reduce drag. This way, additional heat shielding is not needed to protect the crew. Though, it might mean rating the units for longer endurance in space.

On the face of it, this seems pointless. However, Falcon Heavy & Delta IV Heavy also use replicated sections. Usually with some modification. A Falcon Heavy booster has been reflown, as the core in a standard Falcon 9.

I have never been a fan of propulsive landings. There is just too little time to recover from any problem. The Dream Chaser uses a lifting body for its recovery. A MUSTARD II would be a fully reusable heavy launcher that uses a similar lifting body system. If anything like MUSTARD ever flies, I imagine it will be a fully recoverable launch vehicle with something like a Dream Chaser strapped to its back!




Friday 29 October 2021

Insulate Britain the idiots' way.

The cost of what Insulate Britain want is £360 and £600 billion according to their numbers. That is between 12 & 20 Hinkley C reactors or to put in another watt 39,120MWe & 65,200 MWe, that even when you allow for £30 billion per plant when the current costs is estimated as between 21 & 22.

 

According to the National grid peak demand up to October 2021 was over a day was 36.01 GW. The installed capacity is 75.8 GW and up to 75% of that has been used in the past that is 56GW. 

Most of the time that can be filled by less than 50% of the installed environmental energy or by using some of the UK's 32 GW of gas-powered generation fuelled by hydrogen or synthetic methane produced during periods of excess. 

If you ordered 12 plants you'd save a lot of cash by allowing some small production runs, the government could have even more if it used its own methods for raising the money.


Of course, currently under development are
Small Modular Reactors(SMR) technologies which should be cheaper.

The UK also has environmental energy at about 11,749 MW, so for the lower estimated cost by Insulate

Britain, we can eliminate all fossil fuels from Electricity and have 11,749 MW leftover for Synthetic gas production and CCU at the top end we can have 37,829 MW left over. That is without allowing for economies of scale, SMR being cheaper or added environmental energy.


Any impression that Insulate Britain are a collection of has been Dark Greens with outmoded thinking is only reinforced by their willingness to shoot themselves in the foot. Of the UK's energy production 30% goes on domestic heating, so were as the nuclear solution could eliminate all fossil electricity production and provide all the electrical power we need and more, insulation still leaves us looking for ways to produce at least 20,000MW.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 




Tuesday 3 August 2021

4 solid walls.

Liverpool is a city built on 4 solid walls, to be precise 4 solid walls of silence. The one you will hear about most of is the general one where people don't help the police doesn't matter how shit the crooks make your life, don't help the police, Brian Ashton is a strong exponent of this.

The second one is in the police, never grass up your colleagues no matter what they have done, by all means, give them nicknames like "The Rapist" and when they get caught pretend they were never really police anyway.

In LCC you also never grass up your colleagu, no matter how badly they treat the public and no matter how much they lie, you can also rely on large numbers of cops to help with this one as you are all in public service. Remember as a council staff member it is your city and you get to call the shots.

The final one is the one in the Echo when you can be called by a journo from the Echo and have all sorts of wild allegations angrily thrown at you. When you point out some of the simple factual errors like your place of birth and schooling they get more hesitant as it becomes clear they have been fed a pack of nonsense by someone. Do they apologise for doing someone's dirty work and help get to the bottom of what has caused this abuse, of course not, they just hang up, but that's all in a days work.
When you complain to the editor one Al Machray, he repeats some other rubbish angrily and surprise surprise can't find any record of your number being called and insist it didn't happen.

You can rely on the likes of the other Al's at the echo, together with the Gow's to bring things up every so often just to keep stirring.

If the people of Liverpool had any sense they'd boycott the Echo as much as they do the Sun.

If there is a roof on this room it's provided by the security guards, eager to please anyone in power who might overlook their dodgy behaviour.


Monday 2 August 2021

Simply the Worst

This route is 5:30 minutes with no WiFi or power and to make matters worse it is on the slowest possible route. Well equal slowest but you have to go via Lincoln to get to the same time

Just to given an idea of how appalling this route is I worked out all the alternatives which turn out to be something like.



or in the real world.

Note the lines in black on the map below, no longer exist but would make the journey quicker. The red bypass under Derby has no passenger services so all timings involve 5 minutes turn around in Derby, there was a bit of track to allow a turn east while passing through Derby north but that has gone.

                                                       

After messing around with the National Rail route planner and discovering it is very buggy and very limited and totally unfriendly I got these timings. These are for the fastest journeys between various points, you cannot make these journeys at this speed now because you'd have long gaps waiting for connections. 

 The UK rail system is now so messed up you cannot do a lot of the routes without multiple tickets. By a strange fluke, the slowest route I could find has exactly the same time as the current direct route and in order to do that, I had to go via Lincoln, at least no reversing at Sheffield. The current route is the slowest possible route. If the route through Bakewell ever reopens that will be physically the shortest but unlikely the fastest.

Another possible route would be Liverpool->Chester->Crewe using the Halton curve. that would add about 35 minutes to the Liverpeel Crewe section.

The British Rail Class 755 would seem ideally suited to the journey, the current trains are British_Rail_Class_158.

CrossCountry would be the ideal operator for this.

Monday 28 December 2020

Food, Fuel and Plastic from pollution

Carbon is used for many things and a lot of that carbon is acquired from oil, it makes a lot of sense to use Carbon obtained from direct air capture to make those products.

Plastics are some of the most common materials over 311 million tonnes are various plastics are produced every year, of that 230 million tonnes is carbon.


It is not a vast  amount as just under 3% of global CO2 output, the equivalent of 33.8 million mature trees. One of the problems is in breaking the CO2 bonds recently a new Technique doubles conversion of CO2 to plastic component.

NASA long had an ambition to turn astronauts CO2  waste into food and a Finnish company has managed the trick see Food from thin air. This flour like product would be a good replacement for soya flour,which is currently decimating the amazon basin. 

There have also been recent improvements in the processes for converting CO2 into long chain hydrocarbons suitable for jet engines and potentially other heavy fuel systems like diesel.

 New Iron-based Catalyst Converts Carbon Dioxide into Jet Fuel


Wednesday 9 December 2020

Freedom from AntiVaxers.

I want the right to refuse to have unvaccinated people with no medical reason in my flat and if I had a shop in my shop.
You want the right not to risk a vaccine, I want the right not to be exposed to your potential mutant infection. Having an endemic infection caused by people who choose not to be vaccinated, not only means that people who cannot be vaccinated are at risk, it means increases the number of mutations, mutations that will inevitably lead to a bypassing of the effectiveness of the vaccine.
As usual, a lot of the anti-vax stuff is from the libertarian right, which wants people to be free to do the things that libertarian right-wingers approve of but not the things other more socially-minded people approve of.
If the owner of any establishment bans those who are voluntarily unvaccinated, what legal recourse do they have if those banned enter? Is it trespass or assault? Being unvaccinated for some will be a choice, a choice that has long term consequences for others, they are seeking to impose themselves but will moan continually about their loss of freedom with no consideration of the freedom of others.
In a free society, everyone must make compromises to allow the freedom of others, the Anti-vaxers will entertain no compromise by them.

Tuesday 1 December 2020

Liverpool International Railway Station

Requirements

One of the questions that come up every so often is "If Liverpool gets an HS2/NPR connection where will the station be?". It is a difficult question to answer, Steve Rotheram and the LCR have effectively ruled out expanding Lime Street, saying it is simply not possible, and I completely agree. This hasn't stopped some people, who seem more interested in the architecture than the practicality of the solution.

It is important to set out the requirements for a proper connection. For me, this is full length 400m GC gauge trains. The LCR has added close proximity to Lime Street and the existing station to that I'd add it needs to be outside the loop for practical reasons.

The space we need is defined by the with of a GC Gauge carriage,  which is 3.29m, the platforms at a minimum of 12m with an extra meter for wiggle room giving a total of 19.58m per 2 line set. For simplicity let's call it 20m.

The absolute minimum number of platforms is 4 this assumes HS2 & NPR, in reality adding some extra platforms for intentional and classic long-distance makes sense, so a more realistic size is 6 or 8 platforms. this would allow for reasonable expansion or transfer of all long-distance express trains to the new station. Leavening regional and semi-fast for Lime street & local for Central station. This means we are looking for a site 60m or 80m wide.

 Location

I do have a site in mind which fore fills all the requirements with perhaps up to 100m available if a small amount of pavement is taken. That site is currently occupied by the Mount Pleasant Car Park and the 051 nightclub, between Mount Pleasant and Brownlow Hill.

Taking 80m line and extending 450m forward takes the end of the platforms to under the cathedral.

Building

The land climbs from the Lime street and is some 10 meters higher by May Street several meters of headspace would be needed for this interface. Having 2 concourses allows the lower concourse at the platform end to be a reasonable size and to be constructed in a pit providing a cliff-like at May Street for the tunnelling to start, meeting the incoming 2 line tunnel.

Constructing an 80m span underground would be challenging.  Leaving supporting walls or building the walls would make the task easier, 3 walls each of 1m would add only 3m to the overall width and arranged as below they would provide fireproof divides between each platform in the underground section. 

Track layout.


 

 

 
Since the King's Cross fire there have been very strict rules for underground stations design to reduce the risks from fire. One of these is for excellent ventilation, to remove fumes, while the upper booking hall would prevent natural vertical ventilation, it could be provided lateral or vertically at the edge.
This would be unlikely to provide sufficient ventilation for the platforms. To accomplish this providing force extraction/insertion via vertical shafts at the end of the platforms could provide the needed throughput for the platforms with the Lower concourse side vents providing the entrance or exit points.
This would leave the area above the concourses free for use as a significant building.

Connections


Providing access to Liverpool's other main stations via travelators could utilise the existent access to central from the basement of Lewis's.

A station of this size would likely mean that other than an expansion of Liverpool central no new station would be needed for 100 years. Providing support for an international connection via the channel tunnel.

Full Connection

I know that currently HS2 plans barely include Liverpool as anything other than a minor adjunct but here are several plans for a dedicated Liverpool line from 20 Miles More to my own far cheaper plan here at Lymm to Lime Street.

 



Wednesday 16 September 2020

Thetford to Norwich in 200 years.

In a fit of boredom, I plotted out a Thetford Norwich canal to bring Norwich into the 18th century and Thetford the 17th. If for some reason you want the KMZ Thetford-Norwich Canal.kmz. 

The high point is just south-east of Wymondham College north-west of London Road. Great Britain topographic map, elevation, relief

If I could find a decent overlay for google earth with contour lines I might be able to find a slightly better route or at least align it better with the rivers. The bits either side of the peak should be smooth as they follow water courses and there are, as far as I know no rapids or wiers on the route.

It is the Thet canalised from Thetford to the north side of the A11 near Besthorpe then a link across for further canalisation to Dyke Beck->To the River Tiffey which feeds into the Yare near Great Melton. In a Kayak your portage might be as little at 1.5 miles.

The Little Ouse Waveney route would look like

In the past there where plans to link Thetford with Bishop Stortford via the Little Ouse or Stor but the railways killed them off.  That would have linked Thetford to London. Another less detailed plan would have linked Thetford to the Waveney, via the little Ouse, this would have brought a connection to Lowestoft.

 
This is the Waveney route, it follows the Little Ouse then the Waveney The lack of a central summit means this has far less rise and if your desire was to connect to the ports this would be the way to go. it also connects to Beccles. The route is 99% the Norfolk Suffolk border.

Today though I think you would go for the Norwich route for a better broads connection it would be more tourist-friendly and would also be a better connection if the inland waterways are brought back to life by robotic traffic by even the standards of the 18th Century the summit at Attleborough is rather low and would require no more than 20 locks over the length of the canal.

If you want the google earth file it is LittleOuse-Waveney.kmz
 

If Thetford was connected to the canal network, though recently the last few miles is not supposed to be navigable, it may well be for small boats. This link would give access from east to west Liverpool & Wales to the Broads.



Monday 7 September 2020

State of The Synthetic Hydrocarbon Art

Some of the first steps in the replacement of fossil hydrocarbons with synthetics and the journey has started in am oil rich country, Norway. From January, jet fuel in Norway must contain 0.5% of biofuel, at the moment the cost is four times the cost of fossil fuel.This fuel must be made of waste fats and vegetable oil, but not palm oil. SAS have a stated aim of powering all it domestic flights by biofuel. Norway plans to increase the required proportion to 30% by 2030.

This is obviously unsustainable for the entire aviation industry. Which means Europe’s first power-to-liquid demo plant in Norway plans renewable aviation fuel production in 2023. makes sense.

This uses the techniques outline in my blog Extinction Rebellion's biggest mistake but chemistry doesn't stand still. In February, Waseda University  in Japan announced.

Scientists developed a new method to convert carbon dioxide to methane with an electric field at low temperatures. In comparison to previous methods, this new method can produce any amount of methane whenever necessary. Because methane is a valuable gas which can be used to generate heat and electricity, this method could be exploited to help reduce the use of fossil fuels and prevent global warming.

The process drops the temperature of the conversion from 300-400°C to 100°C, not only does this use a different catalyst but also adds an electric field. Reducing the temperature required gives a large reduction in the energy required. The conversion to methane is only half of the 2 energy intense processes involves in making methane.

The other energy intense process is the production of hydrogen from water and that is currently an area of intense research as not only does it have bearing on the production of synthetic hydrocarbons but hydrogen is a potential energy in its own right. Only its low density and difficulty in storage make it a less than ideal fuel. The Royal Society gave 4 options given in "Options for producing low-carbon hydrogen at scale".
They are Thermochemical Routes to Hydrogen, Electrolytic Routes to Hydrogen, Biological Routes to Hydrogen and Solar to Fuels Routes to Hydrogen all of which have their niche usage. The ball has begun to move.

There is also artificial photosynthesis a process which looks to perform the complete production in a single device a synthetic leaf.

Sickesair https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en


Sunday 23 August 2020

Ground assets

In the past in posts such as Nimrod Reborn and Vulcan B4, I have inexpertly considered how the RAF might acquire some larger aircraft at a reasonable price. They way any price can be made more reasonable is by getting more for your money, in terms of functionality. If you have something as capable as the aircraft outlined then you want to make maximum use of them, preferably without shortening their useful life with added fatigue.

One of the things the impressed me about the Victor was that the flight engineer could start the engines before getting in the aircraft via a panel on the hatch. This made a lot of sense when the aircraft was on Quick Reaction Alert, every second counted. I did wonder why the hardstanding didn't have a cable to connect the aircraft to the Crew Ready Room and the start up done that bit earlier.

There may be some good reason for it but it could just have been to complicated for the era. Today commercial airliners are supplied with power while they are on the ground from onboard APU for short periods and Ground Power Units for longer. They is considerable pressure to move to Fixed Ground Power, where the aircraft is supplied from mains. This has the advantage of less kit on the apron as well as being potentially greener. So any modern aircraft military or otherwise I would expect to be capable of have an external connection.

The updates for aircraft systems are usually physically delivered to the aircraft vis USB fob or similar, this has some obvious security, similarly flight plans are loaded in the same way. On British Air Ways and perhaps other airlines Quick access recorder use physical means and beyond that wireless means to off load data, as this doesn't have security implications. Rolls Royce use satellites to relay data in near real time, while the engine is flying. This allows early diagnoses and pre-emptive repair. While the level of comms might not be appropriate for a military aircraft on active service, it would useful when not and with onboard data logging could still be provided after the flight.

If we have a power supply to the aircraft on the ground why not a high speed network connection. We can use that to uploaded and downloaded data and monitor the aircraft's systems to enhance availability. We might even go further. 

The modern aircraft is a mass of sensors and computers, being able to utilise them whilst on the ground be potentially useful. Passive IR watching at the sky, RWRs listening. Use of the aircraft's Tactical Data Links  to provide redundant communications. With the right aircraft it self-defence system chaff and flares could also be used.

In today's world of lock after launch it might even be possible to use some of the weapons on the aircraft, the Jaguars over wing pylons would have made that far easier but improved airfield defence is something worth having, not just against aerial targets, When push comes to shove an unflyable helicopter with Brimstone attached and under remote and secure control is a formidable machine.

A system similar to Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing could make use of any spare CPU power, which you can never have to much of. This on top of being able to start the engines remotely in an emergency and in the case of UAVs have them take off.

If only I could think of a way for a landing UAV to plug itself in to power and fuel the you could have a far sleeker ground operation.



At 1:56 there is a missile launch from an overwing pylon.



Thursday 2 July 2020

Zilog on.

While it may surprise some of you not only do Zilog still exists but they still make the Z80 as well as a host of other chips variously based on it. I recently pulled to buts a broken soldering iron only to find a Zilog microcontroller in there. Likely your TV has one. I put tother a few symbols for KiCad for the Z80, Z180, Z380, eZ80 and a few others and stored them as Z80-CPU-for-KiCADon GitHub.
I've done some Z8 but the collection of them is massive so it will be a long time before they are done. If at all, some of the ones I have done are below.


  • Z80
  • Z180 
  • Z280
  • Z380
  • eZ80
  • Z8
  • CIO
  • KIO
  • DART
  • SIO
  • Z16c32
  • Z16c35
  • Z53c80
  • Z8536
  • Z8l382
  • Z85c30
  • Z08530
  • Z08536
  • Z16c30
  • Z80230
  • Z80380

The Z380, an 8-bit chip with 4 gigabytes of memory space, is the best.

L2R Z8, Z80, Z180, Z380 & eZ80
That 16g was an unthinkably large amount of memory about 16,000 times bigger than you average PC at the time(1994), now a single SRAM chip does it all for £110.


Friday 29 May 2020

Journalism v Onanism

News' journalists are getting quite a hard time at the moment and at the top, they do a vital job or should do of holding the powerful to account but that only covers a small percentage of the trade. Below the national organisations like the BBC, CNN and the broadsheet papers we have the greatest mass of journalists working from the Tabloids downward including free news, local papers right down to press release republishers.
Some of the local papers may hold the odd councillor or cop to justice once in a while but their stock in trade is a crime, the more sordid the better, and local scandal, all coloured by a village jingoism. When a local gangster is shot they are a businessman when some low life dies in a gang on gang warfare they are lovely people who loved their mother and everyone got on with and had an infectious smile.
When it comes to the truth then it what they can print without being sued that passes for the truth, this is to some extent true of bigger papers but they are tackling bigger prey which often has access to my learned and very expensive friends. The further down you go the less supervision and the less likely to have access to courts or lawyers demanding a right of reply.
In short, they play to their audience which over the years has retreated to D & E social grade, you find spurious claims of things invented locally or specialities and for a promo, it will not be half price Beaujolais nouveau but Tennets or perhaps Stella. Down here is not the glamours side of journalism but it is by no means the bottom of the barrel.
Down at the bottom are the people who republish press releases with the most minor of changes and if your lucky some checks for accuracy. These are common in a lot of fields often staff by journalists forced out of the marginally more respectable press by the cost-cutting brought about by the likes of Google. The thing that determines publication here is not the fear of libel but they fear of copyright.
The one thing that is most obvious about this transition is as you move further down the more the journalists think of themselves as Woodward or Bernstein, quite often both with a bit of Paul Foot thrown in.
Even at the national level, there are problems, you can watch Piers Morgan defending journalists left,  right and centre, this is a man sacked for faking stories. The prime minister is still considered a journalist after being sacked at least 3 times according to the Independent.
That those 2 could still get jobs as journalists, tells us something about the trade and integrity if journalists want to be take as they want to and act as seriously as we need them to then they need to start being disassociating themselves from the likes of Piers and go.
If a journalist asks you "Are you guilty" do not answer "I am not" because is some papers they will happily truncate it and use the partial quote as justification. Journalists need to be talked to in the same way a solicitor advises people to talk to the police or the way Dominic Cummings reads out statements to journalists.
Journalists if you want to do your job sort out your own house.

Tuesday 28 April 2020

Raspberry PI Hat CAD files

I needed to design a Raspberry PI hat and after looking around it appears there are no official releases. What I've done is take the DXF file for the PI 3 board and moved one edge. The position of the mounts and the connector is from the original. I've uploaded blanks to get hub as PIHat if anyone needs them.



If you want to improve them let me know and I'll make the git hup accessible to you.

Saturday 12 October 2019

Extinction Rebellion's biggest mistake

One of the cries of extinction rebellion has been "Listen to the scientists" but they only want to listen to the diagnosis, when it comes to a cure it does not listen to the scientists. See Jet fuel from thin air: Aviation's hope or hype? 
The solution they offer is the same one that has been offered to every generation by some group or other a return to nature, the solution never varies only the problem changes. It is the same snake oil elixir that been offered by The Romantic Movement, the Hippys, Arts and Crafts movement, Conservatives the world over etc etc



One general law of physics is that if you have enough energy you can do just about anything. We have several potential sources of no carbon energy the environment and nuclear fission with a third nuclear fusion under development. The first part of any solution is going to be based on large amounts of power generation, via these sources, we can start building them now, start developing more systems and move first to more electrically based power.
There are of problems with the energy capacity of battery storage. Highlight by this graphic.
You see that battery storage is down at the bottom left, this is not a good place to be, it means that to store the energy for a long journey or with a heavy load you need a lot of space and mass for the batteries.
Hydrogen, by comparison, is very good at storing energy in terms of mass but very bad in terms of volume only liquid hydrogen, out of the 3 hydrogen storage types,  beats batteries in volume per joule and is way behind diesel, etc. For an aircraft, this creates a problem you have to have big tanks which either add drag or eat into internal space. Liquid hydrogen is also very cold so cold it can freeze liquid oxygen. Liquid methane which can be made from hydrogen via the Sabatier process is not as mass efficient as hydrogen but is better in terms of volume and temperature, both these fuels were tested in the 1980s by the Soviet Union on the Tu-155 and were successful.
We can extract hydrogen from water by electrolysis, it is also produced as a by-product of some chemical reactions, it, of course, takes electricity to perform electrolysis. Hydrogen from sunlight is a relatively new technology that can avoid the electrical stage and shows promise of being more efficient than electrolysis from electricity generated by photovoltaics.
To make Methane from hydrogen, via the Sabatier process,  you can use CO2 captured from the atmosphere but it takes energy to both captures the carbon and to convert it. You can also turn that methane into jet fuel or diesel via the Fischer–Tropsch process. The first was discovered in 1897 the later in the 1920s. Fuel advertised as GTL Fuel ultra-low sulphur diesel such as Shell's GTL is made by the Fischer–Tropsch process suggesting that most of the energy cost is in making the methane, as GTL fuel is readily available.
We could simply capture the carbon as CO2 and pump it underground and take the equivalent amount of natural gas. This would make sense if the energy used to capture and convert the CO2 is greater than the cost of extracting and cleaning the natural gas. To improve the levels of CO2 you might be required to pump more CO2 into the ground than extracted as natural gas.
Rather than go through the Sabatier process, the mixture could be made into syngas for the manufacture of plastics. While there are concerns about single-use plastic items, large amounts of plastic are used in items which benefit from the longevity of plastics. Making plastic from atmospheric carbon will lock that carbon up in the insulation of wires, window frames, and household appliances. It can be recycled via thermal depolymerization but that is another subject.
Crude oil is very complex and contains many chemicals which are used in a wide variety of ways which do not add to global warming but if the switch is made to using atmospheric carbon to make some of these product it might still be sensible to extract some crude oil for the more complex ones, but if atmospheric carbon is pumped underground to replace the fossil carbon at a 1:1 rate this would end up reducing atmospheric carbon as a percentage of the carbon from the oil will never enter the atmosphere. Mandating that a greater amount of carbon is pumped into the ground will ensure faster carbon reduction.
Even where the technology exists to replace hydrocarbons with batteries we would have to build a lot of new infrastructures and retire others before its expiry date. The synthetic fuels burn cleaner than fossil fuel, every litre stored in the supply system is carbon locked up. Replacing that infrastructure has a carbon cost attached to it as the replacement will likely use fossil source energy in the manufacture. It makes sense to consider a move to synthetic fuels and only replace old infrastructure when it is either time expired as that will use the least energy.

Southern Ocean


The transmission of electricity at the moment and likely forever requires cables and with the cables, unless they are superconducting comes losses, this renders some parts of the planet that are rich in environmental energy unexploitable. In the case of the southern ocean, the cables would have to also pass at extreme depth. One possible way of getting around this is to capture the energy via tidal, wave and wind power and convert it into synthetic fuel in situ either on the islands in that ocean or in floating mother ships of a size similar to Prelude FLNG. This could process the electricity into synthetic fuel that can be moved around to were it is needed.
Bar the last idea the import things is electricity generation the first thing that any government interested in reducing climate change should do is invest in electricity product from clean system not just enough to meet current needs but an amount that looks like oversupply then as the other technologies improve we can focus on using that supply to reduce atmospheric carbon by any means possible. Changing the way we live will not solve the problem, biofuels unless made from the waste product will only make the problem worse.

Third best

Some might say this is not the best solution to them I say

If you don't know who Robert Watson-Watt was then you should. The situation and threat we face are worse than the ones he did, the need for a solution is greater.

Stop Press 2013

I have been informed of the existence of this paper, from 2013. Since then Direct Carbon Capture has come a long way.

See Also

State of The Synthetic Hydrocarbon Art