Stephen Gloor

Quote of the Day

             "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"

From Occum's Razor on ABC National that has John Bradshaw a Professor of Neuropsychology at Monash University explaining religion:

"Religion, sport and politics are, sadly, the sources of more acrimonious and divisive debate, violence and even wars than almost any other totem. And religion may be the worst offender, for, as Voltaire said, 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities'."

Perhaps this is an explanation for suicide bombers etc.

More Thoughts on the Shuttle Replacement

I have been thinking more on the debacle that NASA seems to be running trying to maintain a manned space presence.   Read this wrap up on the CEV from the author of the Encyclopedia Astronautica which is pretty damning.

Although each contractor conducted thousands of pages of rigorous trade studies against NASA's proposed requirements, they came to very different conclusions. However there were some common themes identified by more than one contractor:

    * The optimum CEV would have a mass of under 9 tonnes and a crew of four or less.
    * The lowest cost launch solution would be to use existing expendable launch vehicles (Atlas V and Delta IV) or derivative. This would allow launch of the CEV on earth-orbit missions by a single booster existing ELV. Three-booster versions of existing ELV's could orbit elements of lunar or Mars expeditions.
    * The most flexible and logical lunar exploration architecture was to assemble lunar expedition components at the L1 Earth-Moon Lagrangian point. This allowed unconstrained launch and landing schedules, and provided a permanent way station for not only lunar, but Martian exploration.

By the time the final CEV proposals were received, Mike Griffin had been appointed the new NASA Administrator. He saw that the CEV plan would realistically leave NASA with a half-decade gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the commencing of CEV flights. Griffin obtained White House backing to reject all of the contractor's proposals abandon the long, expensive, 'spiral' development process, and plunge ahead using existing technology and NASA's best judgment. On June 13, 2005, NASA announced the down-select of two contractors: Lockheed Martin and the team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing. However the selected contractors would only build a CEV to NASA's own design.

Phase 1 was now accelerated so that a single contractor would be selected without prototyping or flight-test in 2006, so that the spacecraft could be available by 2010 as a shuttle replacement. The crew requirement was increased to six, and CEV launch mass to 30 tonnes, meaning the CEV could only be launched atop a Shuttle-derived, NASA-operated launch vehicle. NASA's CEV configuration, as finally made public in late 2005, was called 'Apollo on steroids'. The CEV would be used initially to provide access to the International Space Station after the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2010. Thereafter it would provide the earth return vehicle for missions to the moon (by 2020) or Mars (by 2030+?).

It looked like the errors of the original Apollo program would be repeated. A three-module spacecraft, as used successfully on Soyuz and Shenzhou, was rejected. Instead the sole crew habitat space would be the re-entry vehicle, which would be a 41% scaled up version of the Apollo command module. This would have over three times the internal volume and double the surface area of the Apollo capsule, but NASA claimed its mass could be limited to only 50% more than the Apollo design. Despite the increase in volume and mass, it would provide accommodation for only four to six crew (versus three to five in Apollo).

The service module was stubbier and lighter than the Apollo CSM, and powered by a liquid oxygen/methane engine. The same propellant combination would be used in the reaction control systems of both the command and service modules, the ascent stage of any later lunar lander, and the ascent stages of any Mars landers. The choice of this untried rocket propellant was driven by NASA plans to - maybe - generate methane from the Martian atmosphere on future manned expeditions. For NASA's lunar landing scenario, the CEV would be required to make only the Trans-Earth injection maneuver to bring the crew home. In the Apollo scenario, the CSM had to brake both the CSM and lunar module into lunar orbit, as well as make Trans-earth injection for the CSM.

The CEV would be launched into earth orbit by the Crew Launch Vehicle, a shuttle-derived two-stage rocket consisting of a single Shuttle RSRM solid booster as the first stage and a new second stage, 5.5 m in diameter, using Lox/LH2 propellants and powered by a single SSME.

By January 2006 NASA still had not released its revised baseline so that the prospective contractors could begin working on their final proposals for the down-select. The contradictions in NASA's homegrown design had become apparent even before the final specification could be released. Reportedly, the liquid oxygen/methane engines would be eliminated, replaced instead by toxic but proven storable propellant engines as used on Apollo and the Shuttle. The CEV's first flight had slipped to 2011 or 2012. NASA had lost one its main political supporters, Tom DeLay.

The selection of an Apollo-type configuration for the re-entry vehicle represented a step back sixty years. The original Apollo design, a NASA in-house concept, was inferior to contractor alternatives. The Soviets selected the Soyuz configuration (identical to the losing General Electric Apollo design) and had a configuration still in production fifty years later - and likely to continue to the middle of the 21st Century in the Chinese Shenzhou. Apollo, by comparison, remained in production only five years. In 2005, Northrop-Grumman again proposed a Soyuz-type design.

Other alternatives for Apollo were a variety of ballistic, lifting-body and winged configurations, any of which would have provided a fine basis for a manned spacecraft that could be recovered with horizontal landings. At least the excuse given in 1961 - that there was no time to pursue development of a winged vehicle and still make the end-of-the-decade lunar landing deadline - may have had some validity. But this made less sense in 2005, when Lockheed proposed a winged design based on forty years of intervening lifting body research and shuttle hypersonic flight experience.

Given that the original submission had been adhered to then the CEV would be launchable by the Atlas 5, Delta 4 or even the Ariane 5.  This would have been the cheapest option.  However to make as much pork as possible the US embarked on a Shuttle component re-use program that is now being completely rolled back in favour of more suitable components.

Consider that in 1966 there was a CLV then called the Saturn 1B that launched a Apollo capsule to orbit.  It was used for the Skylab mission that was launched by the Saturn 5.  Here are some details:

1973 May 14 - 17:30 GMT - Launch Site: Cape Canaveral . Launch Complex: LC39. Launch Pad: LC39A. Launch Vehicle: Saturn V. Model: Saturn V. LV Configuration: Saturn V SA-513.

    * Skylab 1 Nation: USA. Program: Skylab. Payload: Skylab Orbital Workshop. Mass: 74,783 kg. Class: Manned. Type: Space station. Spacecraft: Skylab, Apollo ATM. Agency: NASA MSF. Perigee: 427 km. Apogee: 439 km. Inclination: 50.0 deg. Period: 93.2 min. COSPAR: 1973-027A. USAF Sat Cat: 6633. Decay Date: 11 July 1979.

Note the launch mass - 75 000 kg to LEO.  Note the habitable volume "Volume: 361.00 m3".  This was launched in one go by the Saturn V.  The US had a HLLV and a CLV capsule in 1973 and this is what they want to return to in 2006?  What about the trillions spent on the Shuttle and ISS which is smaller than Skylab?

This to me is a gigantic failure of imagination of NASA.  Burt Rutan etal can fly a small spacecraft capable of holding 3 people to 100km for 20 million.  This is less that the amount spent on the study to determine that the SSME was unsuitable for an expendable launcher.  If they had listened to people (not me as I really know nothing) they could have avoided all the stuffing around.

Here are my predictions:
1.        The CLV, if it does fly and does not end up a hanger queen, will be downsized and fly atop a Atlas 5 or Delta 4.

2.        The Burt Rutan Virgin Galactic spaceplane will be in orbit before the CLV.

The final word belongs to Pausanius

The Incredible Shrinking CEV - 2006-02-02 

NASA is losing its battle against physics and common sense. Latest word is that the CEV has shrunk down to 5 m diameter. The CLV Stick booster configuration has gone from a four-segment SRB + SSME-powered second stage to a five segment SRB + J-2S-powered second stage. So the exhaustive 'draft final report', which provided hundreds of pages of detailed justification why NASA ignored the recommendations of industry in their CEV studies, is 'inoperative'. NASA is inevitably pushed to the same conclusions that everyone else had come to.

The next step will be to dump the CLV and use a Delta IV or Atlas V Medium as the launch vehicle for earth orbit missions. It has to be emphasized that the CLV is not sized to send the CEV toward the ISS. It is, rather, designed to take the CEV plus 9.3 tonnes of propellant into orbit to rendezvous with much larger lunar spacecraft. That 9.3 tonnes of propellant has no other purpose but to send the CEV back from the earth toward the moon at the end of a lunar orbit rendezvous mission. For earth orbit missions, 6.3 tonnes of the propellant carried will have no purpose at all. The NASA CEV design has no means for converting this excess capacity into useful payload that can be delivered to the station. NASA lamely states that it could be used for 'station reboost' - but the propellant necessary for this is one tenth the amount delivered.

So NASA continues its jaw-droppingly proud tradition of putting useless kilograms of mass into orbit at an expense of over $20,000 per kilogram. 117 shuttle missions have sent the shuttle itself, at a mass of up to 120 tonnes, into orbit and back. Net payload on each mission was only 20% of the total. This means that NASA has orbited over 10,000 tonnes of payload (the reusable shuttle) and brought it back to earth. The only purpose for this amazing feat was to recover the engines. These engines have been so un-reusable and so costly that they have cost more than just using expendable J-2 or M-1 engines in their place on each launch. 10,000 tonnes - enough to orbit a cruiser. Imagine the space stations, the lunar bases, the Mars expeditions that tonnage could have translated into!

Let's consider if NASA had not proceeded with the Shuttle, rather a lower-cost Saturn-derived equivalent. That would translate into a Saturn II upper stage powered by two 260-inch SRB's. Or it may have been cheaper and safer to just to keep the two-stage version of the Saturn V in production. Either way, those 113 missions would have cost no more than the same number of shuttle missions, but have delivered four to five times the net payload into orbit. Every one could have beeen accompanied by a nine-crew reusable Big Gemini space capsule. This is not to mention that the money NASA spent developing the shuttle and modifying LC39 would have been saved, translating into even more launches during the 1970's (which would have already established a moon base).

This - of course - is unfair 20-20 hindsight. The evolution of the shuttle from an all-reusable low-cost means of access to space to a misbegotten hardly-reusable high-cost means of access to space has been well documented. But it is clear that if NASA had gotten its all-reusable two-stage shuttle developed, it would have been even more of an economic disaster. For the design would have been cursed with the same really-not-reusable SSME's, the same labor-intense 'recycling' after each mission, not to mention the still-unknown effects of operating aluminium propellant tanks through repeated cycles of cryogenic hydrogen tanking and re-entry heat year after year.

It may be claimed that NASA could not have stayed in the manned spaceflight business without the shuttle. This may have been true from the point of view of lunar spaceflight. In the absence of a Soviet program to go to the moon, there may indeed have been no support for Apollo follow-on missions. But certainly the desire to keep up with the Soviets would have kept America in manned spaceflight. Ever more sophisticated Skylab space stations would have been flown. And if America had retained the Saturn V and Apollo, the Russians would certainly have been motivated to pursue a more aggressive space program, to continue their own lunar base and large space station plans. So not cancelling Apollo paradoxically would have provided the competitive political underpinning for continuing it…

Nuff said I think.

9/11 Pentagon Videos

Like most people I had a look at the videos released of the American Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon.  While it does not look overly suspicious you only really get a view of the planes nose then a fireball.  OK so I looked a bit deeper using ULEAD Studio to go frame by frame.

I first looked at the car in the first part of the video.  Now it moves at timecode 00:01:04.07 then 00:01:05.06 then 1:06.08 then 1:07.08 so it would seem that it is taking pictures about once per second.

So here is a still of time code 00:01:26.08

Next time code 01:26.14

As you can see if you expand the image there is the nose of the plane

Finally timecode 01:27.17

Right now for the second video.  Again the car which moves at 00:00:02.05 then 00:00:04.11 then 05:11 then 06.13 until 08.18.  If you take that the car moved about 8 meters in 6 seconds the this is a speed of 3.6 km/hr which is a bit slow however not majorly so.

Ok here are the stills.  Remember I have taken stills of when the scene changes.

Timecode 00:00:24.17

Nothing there

Timecode 00:00:24.18

The plane can be seen in the right of the picture

Timecode 00:00:25.19

Now another person has done an analysis of the distances involved:

FLIGHT-77: IMPROVED PHOTO ANALYSIS              

      Date: 3/15/02 9:44:49 AM Pacific Standard Time       

      I've completed a more accurate and detailed analysis of the photographs.   My initial estimate was that the tail of the plane was 465' from the impact point. Upon further examination it appears it could have been closer to 450' from the impact point, based on the following photo analysis.       

      The Pentagon measures 921.6 feet along each external face, half of this distance, marked on the diagram between the central corridor and the upper-left corner of the Pentagon (cyan) is 460.8' Take this base measurement as a scale and measure the distance from the rear of the plane in the photo (red dot), along the approximate path of the jet (dark-green line) to the impact point. The distance the tail travelled between frames (heavy red line) is approx.       450', which is just short of the originally estimated 465' or 3 lengths of a 757, which is 155'.       
             

      So, 450 feet traveled in 1/30th of a second = 13500 feet/sec. = 2.55       miles/sec. = 153.4 miles/min. = 9204.54 mph = 7997 kts. = Mach 12.11       

      Even if you alter the path of the jet to a direct (90 degree) impact trajectory, (which introduces other unexplainable issues such as intact light-posts and trees, clearing the embankment, not to mention those anomalous hydro spools) you still end up with a final velocity exceeding Mach 6!       

Upon my analysing these new photos then 1 second elapsed from the first sighting of the plane and the impact.  So it travelled at 450 feet per second which is 493 km/hr or 306 mph - a bit more reasonable. 

However it leaves a dilemma of missing frames. Looking at the car it stays stationary for 30 frames then moves.  If the camera was shooting 1 frame per second then subsequent frames should show movement.  A sequence shot at 1 frame per second played at 30 fps should appear incredibly speeded up however this is not the case.  It is quite possible that in survellience cameras, to save on storage space, a camera shooting at 30fps could have only 1 frame recorded per second.  This is how the car stationary is stationary for 30 frames.  To my mind there are 2 possiblities

1.  The sequence was shot or recorded at 1fps then 29 frames of the same picture have been inserted to give the impression of normal time when viewed at 30fps.  This makes sense as the video of 1fps would not be viewable so frames were inserted to pad it out so it could be watched at a normal 30fps.

2. The sequence was shot at 30fps and all the frames were stored so 29 different frames were removed so that we think the camera is shooting or recording at 1 fps.  This involves a pretty big conspiracy and should be discounted.

However if there was a conspiracy then there is a very good reason for removing frames.  If the camera was recording frames at 30fps then, while the plane was taking 1 sec to travel 147m, there would be at least 30 frames of the plane hitting the building and it would be clearly seen.  For people that think a missile hit the Pentagon then this is exactly what they would expect a cover up to do. The people doing the cover up would not want to show 30 frames of an object 150 metres away because it would be easily positively identified.   As it is we only  have an indistict blob that could be anything.

On the indistinct blob in the view I saw a twin engined jet airliner this morning flying over me landing at Perth Airport which is about 20 km away from my house. Sometimes they fly over while in the landing pattern.  As it went over my head and started to move away from be heading for landing I thought that it was much larger than the indistinct blob in the photo.  Now it was at least 2 or 3 km away from me and I could clearly see the 2 engines and wings from the rear which is similar to the 3/4 front view of the plane in the photo.  As it got went further and further away in merged into an object resembling the blob on the image however by then it was at least 8 or 10km away.

As you can see from the picture from the linked website the plane flew head on at an angle to the camera of about 45 degrees.  So the camera is looking at a plane head on at 45 degrees and if you look at the view of the Pentagon when the picture was taken it was about 960 feet away from the camera.  Wingspan of 757 is 121 feet or 40 metres.  At 292m with a 757 heading straight for you, a 40m wingspan is an angle of 1/2 theta = tan-1(20/292) = 3.91deg approx 8 degrees.  Given that the plane was not heading straight for the camera then is should be still at least 5 or 6 degrees which it clearly is not.  If the blob in the photo is the wings/fuselage and engines of a 757 then it subtends an angle of at most 1 degree.  So it is either a lot further away or the object in the photo is a lot smaller.  It cannot be a 757 further away because it appears and hits in 1 second giving a reasonable speed of 309mph. If it is further away then it flew faster than a 757 can fly.  The plane was not in a dive so 300mph is a reasonable straight and level speed for a jet at low level at full throttle.  Mind you a student pilot holding a 757 at 300mph 10 feet of the deck is quite a feat.

I really do not know what the US has done releasing the videos.  If this was evidence at a trial then it clearly has been altered.  Frames have been inserted unless the trial was shown the unaltered videos in slow motion.  The size of the image of the plane in the photo is just not big enough for the plane to fly the required distance in 1 second.  Why not try it - the next time you are at an airport find a plane that is about 300 meters away from you and see how big it looks.  I am dead sure that it would appear much larger than the blob in the photo.  Releasing these videos has only fuelled the conspiracy theories rather than putting them out.  The camera here shooting at 30fps should have captured a large image of an airliner hitting a building and the airliner should be clearly seen.  If such an image exists then surely it would be in the US Governments best interest to release it and put all the stupid conspracy theories to bed once and for all.  While failure to do so does not imply guilt I would have thought a nice clear image of a 757 hitting the Pentagon MUST have been captured by ONE of the cameras ringing the area.  Releasing such a picture would confirm that the Pentagon was hit by Flight 77 and end all the stories.  For reason best known the themselves the US Government has not done this so it only has itself to blame for the distrust about the event of 9/11 in the minds of the American people.

The Start of the Communications Revolution

In Australia we got connected to the world wide communucation network in 1870.  Recently the Science Show on Radio National featured the connection of the 'Singing Wire'.  This was the telegraph wire from Europe that was connected to Darwin and an overland cable from Darwin was constructed to Adelaide through the harshest of terrain in record time.

Paul Davies: It needed the telegraph but that was not going to be easy to achieve, particularly for someone based in Adelaide, separated from Darwin, the cables likely point of landfall, by two and a half thousand miles of harsh, uncharted wilderness. Laurie Wallace, President of the SA Morsecodian Society describes Todd’s vision.

Laurie Wallace: He would like to have seen the cables that were progressively coming down across Asia to be brought into Australia and he thought, why not at Port Darwin, why not at Palmerston, as it was then called, and then bring the line down through to Adelaide, and then we could radiate out to Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane with the messages. So Adelaide would be the key nerve centre for communications with the world. He wanted this to happen but so did New South Wales, so did Queensland. Speaking to the government he said, ‘What if I can build the line from Adelaide to Darwin. We can do it in two years’. This was early in 1870. They put a proposal to the British Australia Telegraph Company that South Australia would build a telegraph line from Adelaide, Port Augusta to Port Darwin to connect with the undersea cable. They would complete the work in two years and they would do it at their cost. They accepted it; a bill was passed in parliament in Adelaide in June 1870 and work started on the line later that year. Charles Todd was ready to go.

Alice Thompson: I think what was extraordinary about the idea to build a telegraph system across Australia was the fact that Australia hadn’t really been crossed then. It had only been crossed once or twice, so no one really knew what the interior was like; they didn’t know still if there was big lake there, they didn’t know how hilly it was. They assumed there’d be quite a lot of trees, I think, so that they could make telegraph poles as they went along. They didn’t realise that they’d have to import everything into the interior and it was just an extraordinarily bold concept, and they also said they’d do it in a very short period of time. And, you know, if they didn’t do it, then they’d have to start paying penalty clause back and it was a very, very dangerous things to do and I don’t think they quite realised how dangerous it was until they’d started out.

Why I am writing this is that I got the chance last week to visit the Alice Springs Telegraph Station that is preserved as important Australian history.  The photos are new album that I have attached.  It was a real priviledge to see how people lived in that time and imagine how their lives must have been.  As a person on the Internet it is sobering to think that this was the information superhighway of then.  People used to have to wait 3 or 6 months for news.  When the cable was complete news was available as soon as it left England a massive advance that shrank the world.

 

War on Science

Not have read Chris Mooney's book yet "The Republican War on Science" which you can buy on his blog I am thinking more of the overall war on science conducted by special interest groups.  This line of thought was initially started by a thread "The End of the Global Warming Debate" on John Quiggan.  If you can wade down through 490 comments which unfortunately blows the title right out of the water as obviously the debate is not over, you can read an interesting, I thought, debate with Willis Eschenbach about the idea that global warming could increase the spread of malaria.

Now the main person opposed to this idea is Dr Paul Reiter who has published a number of papers on the subject claiming that malaria has always been present in high latitude countries and if global warming ends up increasing average temperatures then this will have no effect on the range of malaria - fair enough.
Here are a few of his papers.  From Shakespeare to Defoe:Malaria in England, Climate Change and Highland Malaria in the Tropics, Endemic Malaria: an 'indoor' disease in northern Europe.

The main problem I have with all this is this paper where the dichotomy exists.

Climatic influences on malaria transmission in the tropics. Climatic factors are important in the tropics. Their influence is complex and varies according to region and the ecology of the vectors concerned.

Temperature. In theory, high temperatures should increase the likelihood of transmission because they reduce the extrinsic incubation period. However, activities such as biting and egg laying are also likely to be accelerated. These are high-risk activities, so survival rate, and thus transmission rate, may also be affected.

In equatorial regions, vectors such as An. gambiae are commonly found as high as 3,000 m above sea level, but endemic malaria disappears above 1,800-2,000 m (102,103). A limiting factor is presumably the temperature required for effective extrinsic incubation, analogous to the temperature limits defined by isotherms at high latitudes.

In theory temperature should increase the range and in practice this seems to be the case.  So what happens the original premise that global warming will not increase to range of malaria?  To me Dr Reiter started with the conclusion that he wanted and then went from there.  However as he seems to be a scientist of integrity he has to include this section above which actually contradicts his original premise.

 

This is sort of where the discussion ended until Dr Mann's work came up and this is what Willis said in an extraordinary attack:

"3. Mann’s analysis has not been “independently corroborated”. It has been repeated by his friends, with the same bad data, and the same errors being repeated, and yielding the same flawed results. This is not corroboration. It’s just making the same mistakes over and over."

Now this seems to be a pretty consistent theme with a lot of articles opposed to the idea of global warming.  Start with the conclusion and cherry pick facts to support what you want.  In Chris Mooney's book he has detailed the warping of science to fit pre-conceived ideas or vested interests.  Willis in this statement has just sort of trashed 200 years of scientific method because the conclusion of the studies do not fit with the notions that he has.  His solution is not to modify ideas but to change or rubbish the science despite this science method working well and delivering the sort of scientific and technical progress that we now take for granted.

This Republican War on Science seem to be being exported into the Liberal War on Science here.  The CSIRO which is an internationally recognised research organisation that has suffered at the hands of the Liberal Government.

There is concern that political interference in the allocation of research funds through the Australian Research Council (which operates on a peer review basis) could damage Australia's international research reputation and destroy the peer review process. Richard Fotherington (executive dean of arts, UofQ) suggested this could result in discouraging research applications and causing academics to self-censor (Illing D 'ARC fear feeds on Nelson's silence', A, 23/11/05).

Here now the minister gets a say in what projects get funded.  This is against the history of the CSIRO where the projects got the nod soley on merit and peer review.

What will be the outcome of all of this? 

Very Last Word on Shuttle Replacement

E-P

Comparing the thrust of the RS-68 and RS-24(SSME) at vacuum is meaningless for this discussion. This proposal uses SSME as first stage motors. Of course the SSME is going to outperform the RS-68 in a vacuum as this is what is was specifically designed for.  The relevant part, which you have overlooked, is the SEA-LEVEL performance.  Quoted below is the entries from the Encyclopedia Astronautica You will see that the SEA-LEVEL Isp of the RS-68 and SSME is 365 and 363 respectively.  At SEA-LEVEL the RS-68 is superior rendering your argument void.  Also slightly misquoted are the SEA-LEVEL thrust figures that I posted.

RS-68 Sea Level Thrust - 2,891 KN
SSME  Sea Level Thrust - 1,668 KN

The difference is closer to 2891/1668 = 1.73 not 1.5 which is a quite significant difference. True it is not over 2 times as I mistakenly quoted, as I cannot divide 2 numbers sometimes, however it is not the 1.5 that you said either.  Also because of this the T/W ratio is not as good either. 

SSME sea level T/W = 1668KN/3177KG = .52 KN/Kg
RS-68 sea level T/W = 2891KN/6597 = .45 KN/Kg

Finally the proper figures for the Delta 4 Heavy are posted below.  You can quite clearly see that the lift capability of the Delta 4 Heavy is 25,800 kg to a 185 km orbit (LEO) which is similar to the Shuttle that can lift 24,400 kg to a 204 km orbit.  You quoted the payload to GTO which is quite different.

The Delta 4 has an upgrade path to over 70t to LEO - true that extensive modifications are needed however these can be evolutionary rather than total redesign.   The design for the HLLV looks more like a complete re-design as the ET was never designed for the loads at the bottom of the tank.  Even if they used RS-68s in place of the SSME then this would be a bit better.   I think that this is all I will say on this as I am not an engineer and I have reached the limit of my incompetence.  I just hope that the time and effort required to make this proposal work with Space Shuttle components will not be just as hard and expensive as staring from a clean sheet with more suitable hardware.

Manufacturer Name: RS-68. Designer: Rocketdyne. Developed in: 1998. Application:  . Propellants: Lox/LH2 Thrust(vac): 337,807 kgf. Thrust(vac): 3,312.00 kN. Isp: 420 sec. Isp (sea level): 365 sec. Mass Engine: 6,597 kg. Chambers: 1. Chamber Pressure: 95.92 bar. Area Ratio: 21.5. Thrust to Weight Ratio: 51.2. Country: USA. Status: In Production.

Manufacturer Name: RS-24. Designer: Rocketdyne. Developed in: 1972. Application:  . Propellants: Lox/LH2 Thrust(vac): 232,301 kgf. Thrust(vac): 2,278.00 kN. Isp: 453 sec. Isp (sea level): 363 sec. Burn time: 480 sec. Mass Engine: 3,177 kg. Diameter: 1.63 m. Length: 4.24 m. Chambers: 1. Chamber Pressure: 204.08 bar. Area Ratio: 77.5. Oxidizer to Fuel Ratio: 6. Thrust to Weight Ratio: 73.1197829645898. Country: USA. Status: In Production. First Flight: 1981. Last Flight: 1998. Flown: 279. References: 225 . Comments: Used in Shuttle Orbiter. Space Shuttle Main Engine. Staged combustion, pump-fed. Originaly specification was vacuum specific impulse of 455, but not achieved in the final design.

Delta 4 Heavy
Manufacturer: Douglas. Launches: 1. Success Rate: 100.00% pct. First Launch Date: 21 December 2004. Last Launch Date: 21 December 2004. LEO Payload: 25,800 kg. to: 185 km Orbit. at: 28.5 degrees. Payload: 10,843 kg. to a: Geosynchronous transfer, 27deg inclination trajectory. Liftoff Thrust: 884,000 kgf. Liftoff Thrust: 8,670.00 kN. Total Mass: 733,400 kg. Core Diameter: 5.00 m. Total Length: 70.70 m. Span: 15.00 m. Development Cost $: 500.00 million. in 2002 average dollars. Launch Price $: 254.00 million. in 2004 price dollars. Cost comments: The originally estimated launch price in 1999 was $170 million. Due to the collapse of the commercial launch market, this was revised by the USAF in November 2004 to $ 254 million.

Shuttle
Manufacturer: NASA. Launches: 116. Failures: 1. Success Rate: 99.14% pct. First Launch Date: 12 April 1981. Last Launch Date: 16 January 2003. Launch data is: continuing. LEO Payload: 24,400 kg. to: 204 km Orbit. at: 28.5 degrees. Payload: 12,500 kg. to a: space station orbit, 407 km, 51.6 deg inclination trajectory. Apogee: 600 km.

Delta 4 upgrade to 35t to LEO
Orbital launch vehicle. Family: Delta. Country: USA. Status: Study 2004.
Upgrade to Delta IV Heavy by adding 4 GEM-60 solid rocket boosters. 6.5 m diameter payload fairing. Introduction would require modifications to existing launch pads.
Manufacturer: Douglas. LEO Payload: 27,000 kg. to: 407 km Orbit. at: 28.5 degrees. Payload: 10,000 kg. to a: earth escape trajectory. Core Diameter: 5.00 m. Total Length: 71.00 m. Span: 15.00 m.

to

Delta 4 Heavy upgrade to 85t
Orbital launch vehicle. Family: Delta. Country: USA. Status: Study 2004.
Upgrade to Delta IV Heavy by clustering seven common booster modules, using a new RS-800K engine in the booster stages, an AUS-60 upper stage powered by 4 MB-60 or RL-60 27 tonne thrust Lox/LH2 engines, and aluminium-lithium lightweight alloy in place of the existing aluminium in all stages. Payload fairings over 6.5 m diameter could be accomodated. Introduction would require new launch pads and booster assembly infrastructure.
Manufacturer: Douglas. LEO Payload: 85,000 kg. to: 407 km Orbit. at: 28.5 degrees. Payload: 32,000 kg. to a: earth escape trajectory. Core Diameter: 5.00 m. Total Length: 67.00 m. Span: 15.00 m.

References
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rs68.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/delheavy.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm

Final Word on the Shuttle Replacement

This will be the last post on this as I think I have said about all I can say.  Anyway the whole thread is here.  I think that I must be talking shit because a lot of people disagree with me.  Perhaps I am.  With most things though time will tell.  I do really believe that this is the wrong path and the right path is being ignored.

Anyway my last post is this:

Mr Engineer Poet.  Thank you for this interesting discussion.  I am sure that you and the managers of this project are wrong however who am I?  I could well be totally wrong and this new direction could be the best thing since sliced bread.  Anyway as a final word from me I would just like you to consider a few points and see if they make sense.  I really do not see your interpretation of Homer quote - I took it to junk the whole lot and start again.  Not change and start again with the same components.  Also the Shuttle-C can only lift 65 000Kg to LEO.  It was extensively studied.  Anything greater than this needs large configuration changes.

Firstly consider the X-33.  This was a technology demonstrator designed to test some of the needed components for the Shuttle replacement the VentureStar.  Chief amongst these components were flat, aerodynamic composite hydrogen tanks and aerospike engines.  Now the XRS-2200 aerospike engine did work OK.  It was needed to overcome the problems with the SSME sea level performance and provide maximum thrust from sea level to orbit, something no conventional bell nozzle rocket motor can do.  The composite hydrogen tank was a failure.  Despite assurances from learned people that a flat composite tank held flat by tension members formed from the substrate would be a piece of cake - it wasn't.  This lead to 2 billion dollars being spent and the project cancelled leaving us in this position of an aging shuttle and no replacement.

Second consider the environment that you are dealing with - hypersonic speeds and high performance rocket motors.  To get an idea of the difficulty of this environment you need go no further than the recent space walk to retrieve a small gap filler from the heat shield of the shuttle.  To you or I, unused to such velocities, a small protuberance is no big deal.  However to people that know this small thing at hypersonic speeds can lead to eddies that lead to local heating that lead to destruction.  So the crew were commanded to remove this by people who know about such things.  Also with the SSME the turbo pump is so highly loaded because of the high chamber pressure that small dents and eddies in the fuel lines can lead to fuel or oxidizer starvation which in milliseconds can lead to the destruction of the turbo pump and motor.

You are right that with due care this can be made to work.  However due care is absolutely critical in this environment where are a protruding screw head can destroy the vehicle.  This level of care does not come cheap. NOTHING in the Shuttle program so far, from conception to retirement, has been easy or cheap.  EVERYTHING has been more expensive and taken longer that at first thought and mistakes have been disastrous.  Please excuse for me for now being deeply suspicious when the same people then say "well we will just re-arrange a few things and put a few bits here and there and it will be easy and cheap"  Nothing in the previous history of the shuttle program gives me any confidence that anything will change and this new direction will also take twice as long and cost twice as much.

Lastly consider that there is a new age dawning in manned space flight and 2 HLLVs are flying today, with much more suitable hardware, and can be found if we look hard enough.  Since Spaceship One took 20 million dollars to go to 100 km everything has changed.  We do not need huge government pork programs to send men and woman to orbit.  It is very difficult to do and a lot of care needs to be taken however there are individuals and companies that can do this with little interference.  Give 2 companies 200 million dollars, because it is at least 10 times more difficult to go to 300Km than 100km, and a promise of a contract in the future for the winner with a target of 4 astronauts safely in LEO and return in 3 years and let them go.  These companies can then lift ANYONE to orbit for a fare as long as NASA is assured of a certain number of seats.  Imagine what this would do for spaceflight.

The HLLVs already exist and are in production.  They are the Atlas V and the Delta 4.  Both programs, because they could not risk failure as this would have been financial ruin for the companies building them, are very conservative designs with huge growth potential.  There is no envelope pushing in these design and in fact they were criticized for being so conservative.  However this means that with incremental and low risk changes they both can be developed over time to 70 to 100t to LEO launchers.  Also as they are modular the launcher can be assembled to fit the payload.  If there is only 50t capability needed you do not have to launch a half full 100t launcher.  Finally because they are clean sheet designs they use far more suitable engines that perform well at sea-level and do not need huge SRBs to overcome this deficiency.

The main problem with the program of using shuttle hardware is that political needs are overriding good engineering.  In trying to re-use shuttle components this is imposing artificial constraints on the design.  Normally when this happens the result is disaster.  Good engineering only occurs when the engineers are free to choose whatever components that fit within the budget are best suited to the job - not to be told what components they have to use and go from there.  If an engineer had to choose a lower stage engine he/she would not choose an SSME as it is totally unsuited by design for this purpose.  This is like using surplus F100 jet engines in the 787 commercial airliner.

My fear is that because this is not good engineering this program, like the X-33, will absorb billions of dollars while the engineers struggle with the problems they will encounter.  This, again like the X-33, will lead to the eventual cancellation of the program with nothing achieved.  I do not think that the American manned space program can survive 2 new directions being cancelled with no result and will founder, taking my dream of man on Mars with it.

More on the Shuttle Replacement

The response to my lengthy reply was that the Engineer-Poet redirected me to the Mars Society where Robert Zubrin basically disagreed with everything I said.  Robert Zubrin is one of the leading lights in the Mars Effort with his Mars direct proposal that I think stands the most chance of success.  His opinion is pertty damning.

However on closer reading I replied to the Engineer-Poet with this.

Mr Engineer Poet I would ask you to do the same that you asked me to do and RTFA.  The article that you referred to only mentions the uprated shuttle in one or two paragraphs.  Now I agree that if you really want to re-use Shuttle components and that is your overiding objective over all the engineering problems then this configuration, called the Shuttle-C would be the easiest.  Because it only replaces forward of the engines with fairing then most of the design parameters would be the same.  Now if you read the article properly he says that:

The fastest route to creating a HLV at this point is by reconfiguring the hardware of the Space Shuttle stack, deleting the Orbiter and replacing it with a fairing and an upper stage. A variety of such Shuttle derived HLVs are possible, with LEO delivery capabilities ranging from 70 to 130 tonnes, with the more capable versions costing more to develop.

Notice that he says that the 70 to 130 t version would cost more to develop.  I agree with this and this is what I have been saying - changing the configuration will cost money.

Now for an engineer that sort of agrees with me.  Homer Hickam, whom you will remember was a Rocket Boy in the film October Skies, has written this article.  In it he says that:

More critical of the shuttle program was Homer Hickam, a retired NASA engineer who in a commentary published in The Wall Street Journal said the shuttle "is still not a reliable vehicle and never will be.

"You simply don't place a fragile bird at the base of a big, quaking nightmare of rocket engines and a massive, debris-shedding fuel tank and get anything but an engineering debacle," Hickam said before recommending the shuttle fleet to the junk heap.

"When your design stinks, Engineering 101 says admit your mistakes and go back to the drawing board," said Hickam, asserting that most of the engineers he knows at NASA "have wanted to retire the shuttle for a very long time and build a reliable spaceship worthy of our country."

So it is my rocket engineer against yours I guess.  In this article written after the Columbia disaster echos some of my own concerns.  I am not sure who wrote it so it is not really an authority however it is an interesting read.

Shuttle Replacement

I know, I know, what is a committed environmentalist talking about space for?  Well I did once have a great interest in space and rocketry and I am going to give you the benefit of my total ignorance anyway.

This post came about after reading this post from ErgoSphere by the Engineer-Poet.  It is written around the article that came out about NASA new direction.  These are my responses.

Using SSMEs is the first critical mistake.  This is like putting a 600hp V10 Formula 1 engine in a Mack Truck and expecting it to be reliable.  The SSME are the highest performing rocket engines ever designed and stretch material and processes to the edge.  You cannot simple bolt them onto a completely different platform and expect them to work.  A far far better route would be the lower performance RD-180 used on the Atlas V.  Additionally it uses LOX/RP7 so the lower stages can be more compact and easier to build.  The Saturn V used LOX/RP7 for the very good reason that LH2/LOX's high specific impulse advantages are lost on lower stages. Trying to re-use shuttle components will doom this path to failure and not save any money or development time.  Really it would be better re-engineering Energia as this launch platform has the engines at the bottom of the tank and is designed for it.  If you want a cut price low risk path to space fund the resurrection of Energia.

The SRBs are man-rated but only over the most strident objections of just about everyone.  Again Apollo did not use solids for the very good reason that once you light the blue touch powder you are riding that booster till the fuel runs out.  The Shuttle is the first and hopefully the last to use them.

The capsule is just a total throwback.  While it is cheap and 'easy' it has no cross range or divert capability.  IT has to be recovered.  A winged re-entry vehicle has the advantage of landing.  Looking to the future do you think mum and dad and the kids will want to go to space in a capsule?  No way - the will want a aircraft like experience.  Spaceship One has shown the way.  in 20years how will NASA seem using capsules from the 60s when Richard Branson can lift passengers to space hotels in an winged aircraft?  NASA should contract the astronaut lifting part to Virgin Galactic.

He said this:

Mr. Gloor, I find you saying more and more absurd things with each post.

"It is not a trivial task to mount SSME's on a completely new platform."
I'm sure that it takes reasonable care, but no more than that; if it did, standard articles like test stands would have been useless in its development.

"The SSME are the highest performing rocket engines ever designed and stretch material and processes to the edge. You cannot simple bolt them onto a completely different platform and expect them to work.... To my mind it would be akin to developing it all over again..."
You're saying that:
1.  Replacing the Orbiter from the thrust-frame forward with a wingless cargo pod would be akin to developing the engines all over again.
2.  Moving the engines from a position beside the fuel tank to directly beneath it would be akin to developing the engines all over again.
To make such a bold yet highly questionable assertion you must have much relevant education or experience, like being one of the SSME designers or test engineers.  Would you care to list it?

"A far far better route would be the lower performance RD-180 used on the Atlas V. Additionally it uses LOX/RP7 so the lower stages can be more compact and easier to build. The Saturn V used LOX/RP7 for the very good reason that LH2/LOX's high specific impulse advantages are lost on lower stages."
The Atlas is typically used in conjunction with the Centaur upper stage.  The Centaur uses the RL-10 engine, which burns LOX/LH2.
RD-180:RL-10::SRB:SSME.  Not only is the RD-180 an inappropriate replacement for the SSME, using them on a Shuttle-derived HLV would mean clustering them, with the greater probabilities of failure.

"The SRBs are man-rated but only over the most strident objections of just about everyone."
So, launching the people-carrier with just one of them instead of two (half the probability of failure), and well behind the passengers instead of alongside them, is a BAD thing?
The design does come from the builder of the SRB.  If I were managing this and there were no pork requirements, I'd ask someone to look at pressure-fed "boilerplate" rockets burning cheap room-temperature liquids.  But I'm not, and there are.

"The capsule is just a total throwback. While it is cheap and 'easy' it has no cross range or divert capability."
The Apollo capsule had considerable lift, and hundreds of miles of cross-range capability.  The proposed capsule is a very flattened cone like Apollo and would have similar aerodynamics.  The Shuttle's cross-range capability was demanded by the military for a mission profile that has never been flown and never will be.
What divert capability do you need when you're trying to hit e.g. Nebraska?

"A winged re-entry vehicle has the advantage of landing like a plane."
In other words, if you can't get properly lined up on a nice, long, paved runway, your vehicle is toast and possibly cargo and crew as well.  A capsule needs an appropriate surface roughly as big as its underside; to a Soyuz, steppe is thousands of square miles of landing pad.
So it's not glamorous.  I rather like flying myself, especially those landings when I can just grease it on, but space is a different mileu and calls for different methods.

"Lastly the main reason that there are no 100t launchers at the moment is that there are no 100t payloads that need to be launched."
Not since Apollo.  In other words, you're ruling out both the Moon and Mars a priori.
Before commenting again, I'd appreciate it if you'd (a) RTFA, and (b) think about what you're saying.

Responses to comments by the Engineer-Poet
No I am saying that developing the system that the SSMEs are a part of even with the small changes that you mention COULD take as much time, effort and money to debug than the intitial development of the SSMEs.  A test stand is a rigid fixed mount with piping put anywhere it runs.  A space vehicle is a compressed volume where fuel lines have to snake around components despite the best efforts of the designers to make them straight.  ANY such changes to layout can result in surges and problems that cannot be foreseen.  The SSME being such a high performance engine is more sensitive to such changes and will be much harder to re-integrate with the new vehicle.  The unmanned cargo shuttle will be less of a problem however moving the engines to the bottom of the ET is a massive change.  There are totally different vibration modes and fuel runs with this configuration that will cause problems that will take time and money to solve.  My knowledge of the SSME is from a detailed article written by one of the team that designed and tested the SSMEs.  Of course I cannot find the article despite tearing my garage apart looking for it - if I ever find it I will email you the title and author. However you will have to trust my flaky memory until then.  Basically he says he crosses his fingers every single flight.  This is why I do not regard the SSME as the best candidate for the new booster.

Now the RD 180 currently used in the Atlas V
Propellants: Lox/Kerosene Thrust(vac): 423,050 kgf. Thrust(vac): 4,152.00 kN. Isp: 338 sec. Isp (sea level): 311 sec. Area Ratio: 36.87

The SSME
Application: . Propellants: Lox/LH2 Thrust(vac): 232,301 kgf. Thrust(vac): 2,278.00 kN. Isp: 453 sec. Isp (sea level): 363 sec. Burn time: 480 sec.  Area Ratio: 77.5.

or even  the RS-68 as used in the Delta 4
 Propellants: Lox/LH2 Thrust(vac): 337,807 kgf. Thrust(vac): 3,312.00 kN. Isp: 420 sec. Isp (sea level): 365 sec. Mass Engine: 6,597 kg. Chambers: 1. Chamber Pressure: 95.92 bar. Area Ratio: 21.5. Thrust to Weight Ratio: 51.2. Country: USA. Status: In Production.

Now you will note that the RD-180 is twice as powerful as the SSME and the RS-68 2/3s more powerful.  Also as the sea level Isp of the the RD-180 is quite close (311 V 363) the advantages of hydrogen propellant is lost when the SSME is used as first stage engine.  This was forced on the shuttle as the same vehicle had to be used for the total ascent.  As they could not use an altitude compensating nozzle like an aerospike or dual bell they were forced to use a vacuum optimised engine (expansion ratio 77.5) at sea level.  This is one reason the SRBs have to be so big.  The SSMEs just do not perform well at sea level. Both the the RD-170 and RS-68 are designed with a lower expansion ratio which means that they give more thrust at sea level.  In fact the RD-180 or RS-68 is a far better choice than the SSME for a first stage of a booster.

Possibly the most damning argument against the SSME is that the 2 most recent Amercan boosters designed after the shuttle NEITHER used the SSME as the main engine.  If what you and the project authors say is true that it is cheaper to use existing hardware why did neither of the design teams for the Delta 4 or Atlas V use the SSME?  Both are of a size that would use an engine of the thrust class of the SSME yet neither did.  The Delta 4 used a totally new engine the RS-68 and the Atlas V uses the RD-170.  The Delta 4 design team preferred to design a brand new engine from scratch rather then use the SSME.   Obviously the SSME's poor sea level performance and high integration costs overshadowed its advantages of light weight and compactness.  At the bottom of a HLLV compactness does not count for much.  It is astounding to me that this team can now suggest that the SSME is a good choice for a HLLV when 2 other teams rejected it.

Your comment about the Centaur upper stage is exactly what I said.  In most cases RP7/LOX is better for lower stages however LH2/LOX is better for upper stages where the high Isp of hydrogen really shines.  That is why von Braun let the hydrogen boys use the J2 in the 3rd stage of the Saturn V but kept the 1st two stages kerosene.  One of the things in the report is that they want to get rid of the foam danger.  The most obvious way to do this is to stop using liquid hydrogen.  This is an example of what seems to be the ideal fuel with a high Isp leading to unforeseen problems later on.  LH2 is a good fuel however it leads to large tanks that are difficult to keep cool.  In the end if the original designers of the shuttle had chosen kerosene there would have been no foam problems and no disaster.  It just reinforces that unforeseen problems can bite you long after the design is done.

I agree that boiler plate liquids instead of the SRBs would be better. However if you use better performing sea level engines then the SRBs could be smaller and safer.

A smaller crew return shuttle could even have a go-around capability.  Because you are not trying to lift freight the weight of jet engines could be justified.  I just think that the capsule is a bad idea.  If Burt Rutan with 20 million dollars can fly a wing to 100km why can't NASA with it billions of dollars do  the same.  Is the capsule going to splash down in the ocean?  What if the parachutes fail?  What if it sinks on landing?  A capsule is not a sure thing.  Just now the shuttle could land in Edwards rather than Florida.  Support ships for a recovery take time to move.  Even if the capsule can land cross range can the recovery team get there in time.  The capsule could have quite limited time to spare.  If a large hurricane shuts down the recovery area where is it going to go?  At least in an extreme emergency a winged lander could conceivably land at a commercial airport of which there are thousands all over the world.

The reason that the Apollo system needed a 300t capability to LEO was the method of landing choice - LOR and the race mentality of the moon landings.  They had neither the time or expertise to assemble a transfer vehicle in orbit from lighter components.

There is no engineering reason why the components of the moon lander have to weigh 100t or why they all have to be all lifted at the same time.  The space station was not lifted all at once.  We are not in a race with the Soviets and can take our time.  The Moon and/or Mars orbital transfer vehicles can stay in orbit and be re-fuelled and re-used if we take our time and do things from a perspective of a long term future in space.  This is what Apollo did not do.  It was a magnificent achievement but it left no long term facilities or capability in space for future operations - it was a dead end.  This is what von Braun feared and why he wanted the Earth Orbit rendezvous method chosen.

You also have to take into account that the 100t booster will have to be developed with no commercial use so it will have to be totally paid for by the government.  Also it will probably have a low launch frequency the facilities that have to be built to launch it will not get used much.  This is a lot of money sitting around doing nothing.

Using a smaller commercial launcher and being smarter about how we go about getting to the Moon and Mars will lower the cost and risk and ensure that we actually do it rather than spending billions of dollars and then it all disappearing into projects that never were feasible in the first place.  You do not have to look any farther than the X-33 to see where this project could go.

BTW I did RTFA and I do think about what I say.

You are not questioning a glaring assumption on the part of the people that are running this project.  They blithely assume that re-using shuttle components will lower costs with no supporting evidence.  It could well turn out that the shuttle components could save money however the chances are higher that the attempt to save money could lead to the exact opposite as unforeseen integration costs outweigh any savings from using existing hardware.  The end result could be exactly the same as starting from scratch with proven lower performance hardware that is in commercial use.

Or why develop a totally new booster at all. From this site the Delta 4 Heavy can now lift 25 000 Kg to LEO and there are already plans to stretch this to 35t by adding SRBs.  With a few more modification this could even be streched to as much as 70 000 Kg.   Lets use this to build a facility in space where Mars and Moon spacecraft modules can be checked out, assembled and re-fuelled.  This could sustain a permanent expansion into space and the solar system rather that what seems to be a pork and politically motivated stunt.  The astronaut lifting could be done by a commercial outfit supported by NASA rather than spending billions to re-invent the wheel.  The spacecraft modules could be lifted by existing commercial launchers.  This would leave billions of dollars being available for exploration instead of financing boosters that we do not need. 

Rather than creating a new booster put the money into evolving the Delta 4 which has a large growth potential right up to 100 000kg to LEO.  Put more money into the Spaceship 1 derivatives for the crew launcher and use the money saved to actually explore the planets rather than supplying pork.

Letter to Harry Thornton about Loius Hissink

I am writing to Henry Thornton about Loius Hissink murdering science

This is what Loius wrote

Geological fact

The earth has a mass of 5.9742 x10^24 Kg while the atmosphere a mass of 5.3 X10^18 Kg. This works out to the earth's mass being 1.12721 x 10^6 heavier than atmosphere, or 1 kg Atmosphere = 1,127,210 Kg Earth.

Using standard physics 101 method of mixtures and assuming here that the specific heat of both the atmosphere and the earth are = 1 we get:

1xTatm=1,127,210xTearth.

To raise the earth's atmosphere 1 deg Celsius the earth would need to be raised now much?

Tearth=1/1,127,210 Deg C = 8.871xe^-7 Deg. C - this temperature rise is immeasurable.

The earth only needs to increase its temperature by this immeasurable amount to raise the temperature of the atmosphere 1 degree Celsius.

That is, the earth's own internal temperature could vary sufficiently to yield the observed atmospheric and ground temperatures, but at levels completely below our ability to detect. Almost as if we did not understand what causes the temperature change.

Gentle reader, inside the earth are many physical processes we can but guess at. From the fact that volcanoes and lava eruptions occur at unpredictable times, it is clear that parts of the earth's interior are heated up to melting. Where does this source of energy come from? We do not know, but the belief that the production of an infinitesimal volume of carbon dioxide can raise the temperature of the atmosphere  while ignoring the gigantic heat source under feet is not bad science, it is a far far worse thing.

This is why anthropogenic global warming is a patent nonesense.

Text of letter

How can you have a writer in science writing this

Using standard physics 101 method of mixtures and assuming here that the specific heat of both the atmosphere and the earth are = 1 we get:

When physics 101 for kindergarten children says this

Not all substances warm and cool at the same rate. A characteristic of the substance, called the specific heat, describes how "efficient" the substance heats and cools. The specific heat of air is lower than that of soil; hence, air heats and cools faster than soil. This fact is important to know in the fields of meteorology and agriculture.

Also 1 what????? 1 banana per cubic hectometer???????

Also the Earth is 60% water which is a fact that seems to have escaped him.

Please get a writer that at lease knows a bit of science.