Boeing 757: A Modern Classic
The airplane Boeing got just right. //

The bigger story here, I think, is the decline of Boeing’s reputation for engineering excellence since its 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas. Since the merger, not one but two new Boeing airliners have been grounded by the FAA, the first such groundings since McDonnell Douglas’ own DC-10 in 1979. The Boeing 787, while a fine design, has suffered many quality- control problems stemming from a complex outsourcing scheme that only an MBA could love, and a union-busting move to South Carolina, bypassing the experienced and costly Seattle workforce. The most serious flaw was a subcontractor’s defective lithium-ion batteries that were prone to thermal runaway and fire, an eventuality that Boeing (and the FAA) failed to predict and mitigate. //

Rather than kick Boeing any more while they’re down, I think it might be instructive to take a look at one of the best airplanes built by the “old” Boeing (or indeed, any manufacturer anywhere), an airplane I’ve come to regard with great respect and affection over the past several years of flying it. I’m speaking, of course, of the venerable Boeing 757. For decades, Boeing’s reputation largely rested on four excellent designs: the 747, 757, 767 and 777. Of these, the 757 has enjoyed the longest success without any significant redesign because Boeing engineers got the plane exactly right on the first go. Even today, as the 757 fleet ages, the airlines haven’t been able to find anything to replace it; there’s still no modern design that performs its mission as well as it does, and so it soldiers on in the fleets of all three U.S. legacy carriers and many overseas airlines as well. //

The 7N7 and 7X7 programs ended up becoming quite enmeshed, as they incorporated the same new technologies, and eventually achieved enough flight deck and systems commonality to be awarded a common pilot type rating despite significant differences in size and handling characteristics. The two designs entered service within months of each other in 1982 as the 757 and 767, respectively. Sales of the 757 were slow at first but took off in the late 1980s and stayed steady through the ’90s before abruptly tapering off after 9/11. Production ended in 2005 with 1,049 aircraft built; nearly 70 percent of the fleet is still in service today, 37 years after the type was first delivered. //

At 240,000 pounds max takeoff weight and 77,000 to 80,000 pounds of thrust depending on the engine option (Pratt & Whitney PW2037 or Rolls-Royce RB211), the 757-200 has the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any airliner except Concorde. //

The plane’s real strength, however, is its ability to make a 2,200 nm transcontinental flight (say, Boston to San Diego) with an alternate a few hundred miles away and ample reserves, haul an absolutely full load of passengers and cargo, and still take off from a 7000-foot runway and climb straight into the mid-30s. Nothing else can do that, neither the A321 nor the 737-900ER, though the airlines have tried. That’s why the 757 is still popular after all these years.

Abstract

Ten polymeric materials including EPDM, Nylon 6,6, Buna-N and other materials marketed* as TFE-Teflon® (PTFE), Kel-F® 81 (PCTFE), Vespel® SP-21, Viton® A, Viton® A-500, Fluorel®, and Neoprene® were systematically evaluated for their oxygen compatibility property. The specific properties examined included: (1) autoignition temperature (AIT), (2) heat of combustion, and (3) liquid-oxygen (LOX) mechanical impact sensitivity. Test methods and procedures employed for the evaluations were in compliance with those prescribed in the ASTM and BSI standards. Additionally, a BOC in-house high-pressure autoigniticn test rig (HP-AIT) was used for a detailed study on the materials' autoignition behavior. This high-pressure vessel is capable of probing the AIT of a material up to 450°C and at oxygen pressure (prior to a thermal excursion) up to 5000 psig (∼34.5 MPa).

According to the test results, fluorinated polymers including TFE®, Kel-F® 81, Viton® A, Viton® A-500 and Fluorel® exhibited superior oxygen compatibility property. Specifically, they possessed relatively high autoignition temperatures and reasonably low heat of combustion values. Among them, TFE® possessed the best property by showing the highest autoignition temperature (>450°C), lowest heat of combustion (1517 cal/g), and qualified (pass) LOX impact sensitivity. Vespel® SP-21 (15% graphite-filled polyimide) exhibited an autoignition temperature higher than fluorinated elastomers like Fluorel® and Viton® A, but lower than Kel-F® 81 as well as TFE®. The variation of oxygen pressure, ranging from 1800 psig (∼12.4 MPa) to 5000 psig (∼34.5 MPa), was found to exert little influence on the autoignition temperature of the polymers.

The autoignition behavior of Kel-F®81, Viton® A, Vespel® SP-21, and Nylon 6,6 was further investigated, using HP-AIT, as a function of sample quantity and surface area at different oxygen pressure. On the one hand, variation of sample quantity exerted a more pronounced effect on the AITs of Viton® A, Nylon 6,6 and Kel-F® 81 at various pressures than on Vespel® SP-21. A higher autoignition temperature was generally observed from samples with smaller quantities. On the other hand, changes in sample surface area had little influence on the autoignition temperature of the materials in 1800 psig (∼12.4 MPa) oxygen.

Recent studies show vaccines for mumps, pertussis, meningococcal disease, and yellow fever also lose their effectiveness faster than official immunization recommendations suggest. Vaccines have been a crucial public health tool for decades, so it may seem strange that their durability isn't well understood. But vaccines are approved and come to market years before it's clear how long protection lasts. Later, fading protection can go unnoticed because a vaccine in wide use has largely eliminated transmission of the microbes it protects against, making "breakthrough" infections rare. Even if viruses or bacteria are still in circulation, people vaccinated against them will sometimes receive natural boosting of their immunity. And declining vaccine immunity is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon: A breakthrough infection often leads to much less severe symptoms of the disease.

Researchers are ramping up efforts to figure out why some vaccines protect for mere weeks but others work for life. "We simply don't know what the rules are to inducing long-lasting immunity," says Plotkin, who began to research vaccines in 1957. "For years, we were making vaccines without a really deep knowledge of immunology. Everything of course depends on immunologic memory, and we have not systematically measured it."

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
-- Anatole France
French novelist (1844 - 1924)

THE NUCLEAR ENERGY OPTION
Professor Emeritus Bernard L. Cohen University of Pittsburgh
Published by Plenum Press, 1990

Forward:

A book of this type must often get into discussions of scientific details. Every effort has been made to keep them as readable as possible for the layperson. The more technical details have been put into Appendixes at the end of the book. These can be ignored by readers with less interest in details. For readers with more interest in these, references are given which can be used as starting points for further reading. Personal inquiries about further information or references are always welcome.

Each chapter is broken up into sections. If a reader is not interested in the subject of a particular section or finds it to be too technical, it can usually be skipped over without loss of continuity.

Byron York
@ByronYork
Takeaways from this NYT story: 1) Trump's leadership on vaccine was vastly better than anyone in Europe. 2) When it came to a vaccine, Britain was smart to leave the EU. 3) On 1 and 2, elite opinion was dreadfully wrong.

The New York Times
@nytimes
The U.S. and Britain have sped ahead of Europe in terms of vaccinations. What went wrong? https://nyti.ms/3vLz5w4 //

The bloc was comparatively slow to negotiate contracts with drugmakers. Its regulators were cautious and deliberative in approving some vaccines. Europe also bet on vaccines that did not pan out or, significantly, had supply disruptions. And national governments snarled local efforts in red tape. //

The United States basically went into business with the drugmakers, spending much more heavily to accelerate vaccine development, testing and production…“They assumed that simply contracting to acquire doses would be enough,” recalled Dr. Slaoui, whom President Donald J. Trump hired to speed the vaccine development. “In fact what was very important was to be a full, active partner in the development and the manufacturing of the vaccine. And to do so very early.” The result in Europe is a stumbling inoculation effort that has led to political fallout, with leaders pointing fingers over why some of the world’s richest countries, home to factories that churn out vast quantities of vaccine, cannot keep pace with other wealthy nations in injecting its people.

The Duane Arnold Energy Center in eastern Iowa, the current site of a now-idle nuclear power plant, will soon host a 690-megawatt solar farm. The new solar farm plus storage will replace the single-unit, 615-megawatt nuclear plant, which powered more than 600,000 homes.

Owner NextEra Energy of Florida will build the solar farm across 3,500 acres at and near Duane Arnold in Palo, Linn County. NextEra also intends to include up to 60 megawatts of AC-coupled batteries for power storage.

The project is expected to bring in a $700 million project investment, $41.6 million in tax revenue, and around 300 construction jobs.

NextEra will negotiate leases with landowners in summer 2021 and begin construction in winter 2022. The company intends to have the solar farm online by the end of 2023. ///

3500 acres solar 8/24h vs. 600 acres nuclear 24/7

The No.5 nuclear power unit in Fuqing, southeast Fujian province. China’s first nuclear power unit using Hualong One technology, a domestically developed third-generation reactor design, was connected to the grid and started to generate electricity in November last year. Photo: Xinhua
Companies

• Success of nuclear reactor Hualong One suggests it can compete with wind and solar to drive China’s decarbonisation
• With the first Hualong reactor delivered on schedule, the costs have come down, says Xiamen University’s Lin Boqiang
• China has a clear advantage over European rivals in the sector //

China’s uninterrupted construction of nuclear plants over the past three decades and its well-established supply chain mean it has a clear advantage over European firms, which have struggled to re-establish their supply chains after a two-decade hiatus from building reactors. //

Despite the safety and cost concerns, nuclear power’s potential as a clean source of energy with high supply consistency should not be underestimated, said Pan Chin, chair professor of nuclear engineering at City University of Hong Kong. “Of course, cost is an issue. But if we can ensure nuclear power’s safety and reduce nuclear wastes through technology improvement, we can broaden the public’s acceptance of nuclear power and then its cost can be reduced,” he said.

Nuclear power offers an abundant supply of low-carbon energy. But what to do with the deadly radioactive waste?
The race is on to develop new strategies for permanently storing some of the most dangerous materials on the planet.

But as a leading indicator, this notion that people are getting out again, traveling, and aggressively living life, is extremely heartening. In fact, it just might be the perfect message for 2021, and one I'd encourage you to think about.

We're not just coming back. We're reclaiming what we lost -- stronger, better, and more robustly than before.

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When Toyota offers an opinion on the car market, it’s probably worth listening to. This week, Toyota reiterated an opinion it has offered before. That opinion is straightforward: The world is not yet ready to support a fully electric auto fleet.

Toyota’s head of energy and environmental research Robert Wimmer testified before the Senate this week, and said: “If we are to make dramatic progress in electrification, it will require overcoming tremendous challenges, including refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability.”

Wimmer’s remarks come on the heels of GM’s announcement that it will phase out all gas internal combustion engines (ICE) by 2035. Other manufacturers, including Mini, have followed suit with similar announcements.

Tellingly, both Toyota and Honda have so far declined to make any such promises. Honda is the world’s largest engine manufacturer when you take its boat, motorcycle, lawnmower, and other engines it makes outside the auto market into account. Honda competes in those markets with Briggs & Stratton and the increased electrification of lawnmowers, weed trimmers, and the like. //

The scale of the switch hasn’t even been introduced into the conversation in any systematic way yet. According to FinancesOnline, there are 289.5 million cars just on U.S. roads as of 2021. About 98 percent of them are gas-powered. Toyota’s RAV4 took the top spot for purchases in the U.S. market in 2019, with Honda’s CR-V in second. GM’s top seller, the Chevy Equinox, comes in at #4 behind the Nissan Rogue. This is in the U.S. market, mind. GM only has one entry in the top 15 in the U.S. Toyota and Honda dominate, with a handful each in the top 15.

Toyota warns that the grid and infrastructure simply aren’t there to support the electrification of the private car fleet. A 2017 U.S. government study found that we would need about 8,500 strategically-placed charge stations to support a fleet of just 7 million electric cars. That’s about six times the current number of electric cars but no one is talking about supporting just 7 million cars. We should be talking about powering about 300 million within the next 20 years, if all manufacturers follow GM and stop making ICE cars.

Jack Posobiec
@JackPosobiec
Opening remarks in Anchorage were agreed to be 2 minutes each

The CCP delegation opened with 20 minutes of blasting Biden's policies, BLM, division under Biden, and said the US is no longer a world leader

And Blinken and Sullivan had little to no response

Disaster
8:56 PM · Mar 18, 2021

Jack Posobiec
@JackPosobiec
CCP delegation came to US soil and told the US government to their face they are weak

Total disaster for unprepared Blinken //

Mike Pompeo
@mikepompeo
Strength deters bad guys. Weakness begets war.
8:18 AM · Mar 19, 2021

I found a trick...
Marni on Jul 08, 2020

My daughter bought the kit for me. I spent a month following the instructions for half the seeds Has small sprouts for 3 types. Decided to put remaining seed in my aero garden grow anything pods. Just left them w/ no light for 2 weeks. Then 3 hrs of light everyday after. I have huge blossoms on all 4 types. Super fast growing & absolutely no work for me!! I may buy more kits & grow some for family/friends it was that easy! No presoaking or scratching of the seeds. Nature’s Blossom should partener w/ Aerogarden!! Trust me so easy & growing so fast!!

uplateagain

The real problem here is..... we have a president not capable of successfully negotiating his way through a three course dinner without help, being controlled by people who are compromised financially and ethically and only really concerned with retaining political power, totally inexperienced at dealing with serious adversaries. This crew can't handle effective governance within our system, and half of them (or better) would just as soon we were under a CCP-like system anyway.

Dig in, folks. This is only the start.

Now, let us look at the “historical rhymes” with respect to Taiwan in 2021:

• Xi Jinping’s Greater China is analogous to Hitler’s Greater Germany
• Xi Jinping is a totalitarian Communist; Hitler was a totalitarian Nazi
• Hong Kong is analogous to 1938 Austria, and the ChiComs continue to tighten the screws as they absorb the former British protectorate into the PRC
• Taiwan is analogous to the Sudetenland – both were/are flashpoints that could trigger a real shooting war //

What will the US, the Quad countries (US, India, Australia, and Japan), and other countries around the world (especially the UK and France) do to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan if the PLA and PLA-N decide the time is right for a cross-strait invasion? And there is no time like the present, given that the Biden regime is compromised in favor of Beijing from top to bottom, as described above. What would Biden do? //

Translation: it is in America’s best interests to let the PLA take Taiwan militarily without any US (or Quad countries) military support provided to the Taiwanese. That’s appeasement worthy of Neville Chamberlain. The author neglects to mention the other end results of his proposed scenario: the Taiwanese semiconductor industry which supplies the world will be taken over by the ChiComs, Xi’s Communist regime will be emboldened on the world stage, and the Quad countries will be demoralized and likely seek accommodations with Beijing because the US will have failed to support Taiwan’s sovereignty (while wondering what the US would do on their behalf when push comes to shove with the ChiComs).

Let us pray that Biden does not take that last bit of advice and blink on Taiwan. If he does, then the last comparison between Taiwan 2021 and Czechoslovakia will come true: Biden will have become Neville Chamberlain. And remember what happened after the 1938 Munich Agreement was signed.

One has the right to ask if a policy that was unjustly and arbitrarily imposed upon the nation at great cost can be casually and arbitrarily changed to something else, then what was the rationale underpinning the decision in the first place? Not much, as it turns out. Here, I’d like to give a shout out to Sean Davis at the Federalist for the inspiration:

Sean Davis
@seanmdav
The New York Times told us last year in a hagiographic profile of a mid-level government bureaucrat that the idea came from a 14-year-old’s science project.

Jeffrey A Tucker
@jeffreyatucker
Wow, NYT, after a full year, admits this. https://nytimes.com/2021/03/16/health/coronavirus-schools-social-distance.html //

The origin of the six-foot distancing recommendation is something of a mystery. “It’s almost like it was pulled out of thin air,” said Linsey Marr, an expert on viral transmission at Virginia Tech University. //

We have undergone severe social and economic dislocation. The only places showing progress are those who decided to get about their lives and treat the sick as needed.

Washington Examiner
@dcexaminer
Gov. @RonDeSantisFL announces Florida's curriculum will "expressly exclude...Critical Race Theory."

“There's no room in our classrooms for things like Critical Race Theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.” //

An unequivocal rejection of this harmful ideology being taught in schools is the right move. Critical race theory is a racist scourge, and Republicans should treat it accordingly. No child should be taught they are lesser than because of a supposed innate, uncontrollable racism within them. Further, no child should be taught to hate someone else because adults tell them that person is a racist simply because of the color of their skin. There is nothing more discriminatory in mainstream America right now than critical race theory and its associated offshoots. That it’s even gained any notoriety is a disgusting indictment of our current culture. //

Republicans have to get in the trenches over this and be willing to pay whatever costs come with waging this war. Nothing is more important than preventing the further ideological manipulation of children. The left is counting on critical race theory being forced upon society to help entrench their political power. That can’t be allowed to happen.

The court ruled that the Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated the Michigan Administrative Procedures Act (APA) when she unilaterally issued changes for how to consider absentee ballots in Michigan.

The judge held that she was required to go through the state legislature that she didn’t have the right to just make unilateral changes on her own.

The issues involved such things as sending absentee ballot applications to all registered voters and then how absentee ballots should be considered. This affected things such as judging whether the signature verification was valid. Michigan requires a signature on the application for the absentee ballot and a signature on the return ballot envelope. Those are then matched against the signature on file. //

But unfortunately, of course, now it’s too late to make any difference in the November election. The suit was filed in October of last year but not decided until this month.