Dave Kean

I’ve made lists before, but this one is celebrating my inner geekness. Many involve great science fiction, others are just for fun, while some would be a wonderful way to learn a little about someone and their view of the world.

Some are a personal wishes, perhaps a little esoteric, others refer to movies that might be a little off the mainstream, but here we go.

1. Have George put Star Wars back to the way it was. We all saw Han shoot first.
2. Walk away while an explosion goes off in the background in slow motion
3. Have a glass of rum with Captain Jack Sparrow
4. Fight zombies with a yell of “Yeah-boy”
5. Tell Captain Picard to “Make it so…”
6. Have Jar Jar Binks meet with a very messy end so we can have no doubt he’s gone
7. Drive the cool Batmobile from Batman Begins
8. Understand Vogon poetry
9. Get a real cone of silence
10. Take the Tardis out for a spin
11. Dinner with Terry Pratchett
12. Find that the Serenity 2 movie is going to happen
13. Walk into a casino wearing a tux and order a Martini “shaken, not stirred”
14. Enjoy slow barbequed Ewok, St Louis style.
15. Have a sonic screwdriver in the tool box
16. Sit and listen to Isaac Asimov and Philip K Dick discuss robotics, replicants and the four laws.
17. Re-read the entire Foundation series in order
18. Look good in an Indiana Jones fedora and learn to crack a whip
19. Complete all levels of Angry Birds with three-stars
20. Visit the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley
21. Shoot an original (Buster Crabb) Flash Gordon blaster
22. Burning man
23. Have a “Law” named after me
24. SXSW Interactive
25. Have the Swedish chef cook dinner
26. Car chase through the hills of San Francisco Bullit style
27. Leia, gold bikini and…
28. Listen to the history of the universe as told by R. Daneel Olivaw
29. Work out what the hell was going on in Lost
30. Don powered armour and into the drop-capsule
31. Learn to wield a lightsaber from Yoda
32. The ultimate dinner party: Josh Whedon, Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen Fry, Stan Lee and finally Gene Roddenberry
33. Visit Westworld and take on Yul Brynner, after all the bugs have been worked out
34. Beat the Kobayashi Maru
35. Partner Logan 7 for a day
36. Tour the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough with Nevil Shute
37. Number-5 in the red dress
38. Sit in a cool chair, wearing a collarless shirt and monocle, while stroking a white cat and utter the classic line “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die”
39. An afternoon on the Holodeck
40. “Beam me up Scotty”
41. Have a Monolith in the front garden
42. Fly through the air firing two guns Hot Fuzz style
43. Watch a live game of Rollerball (“Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan…”)
44. Road trip with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost
45. Have HAL ask me “What are you doing Dave”
46. Hear an Avro Vulcan take off on full reheat one more
47. Watch the Killer rabbit take on the Black knight
48. Go hiking with Bill Bryson
49. Get shot out of a launch tube from Galactica
50. Fit a shock collar to George Lucas that goes off everytime he tries to re-edit one of his movies

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I believe that the best battles in a GP weekend are within the teams. They are the only other driver with the same equipment, same team behind them and whatever resources can be brought to bear in doing the job.

A top team should be able to put two good cars that are close to equal at any GP. The only variables are limited to the driver, the strategy employed and the small group of mechanics and the race engineer who is responsible for making the calls.

So for the three teams I looked at for this were Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull.

The reasons for choosing McLaren and Red Bull are obvious. Each has two very good drivers and both teams are at the sharp end of the drivers and constructors championships.

Mercedes, that’s also simple. Michael Schumacher vs. Nico Rosberg.

It’s no real stats analysis, but a little simplistic fun that threw up some interesting results that actually back up some of what I’ve claimed in the past (mostly).

Here is the average race finish position of the six drivers I’ve been looking at

• Schumacher           8.36
• Rosberg                   5.64
• Vettel                        3.79
• Weber                       3.79
• Hamilton                 3.36
• Button                       3.43

So what do we learn?

• Rosberg is outperforming Schumacher by a significant margin, on average almost 3 places.
• Vettel and Weber have the same average finish position. The reason Weber leads in the championship is he’s picked up points at every race he’s finished. Vettel has one finish out the points. This is how you win championships, consistency.
• Hamilton and Button, again very close. Both have two DNF’s (aginst Red Bulls 1 each) and more finishes outside the points (Button 3, Hamilton 2).

Doing the same for qualifying and it starts to get interesting.

• Schumacher          9.64
• Rosberg                  7.0
• Vettel                       2.21
• Weber                      2.21
• Hamilton                5.21
• Button                      7.43

• Again Rosberg is clearly out qualifying Schumacher and by almost the same average he’s beating him by in the races.
• Vettel and Weber have the same qualifying position on average. Again impressive.
• The McLaren duo on the other hand there is a clear difference. Button is being beat a significant amount on the grid.

This is the important number, the difference between the average qualifying performance and average race position.

• Schumacher           1.29
• Rosberg                   1.36
• Vettel                       -1.57
• Weber                      -1.57
• Hamilton                1.86
• Button                      4.0

The higher this number the better the driver performs in the race. Again it’s simplistic, but lets go with it.

Button improves by an average of 4 positions between his start and finish places in each race. Assuming everyone finishes (unrealistic I know) he passes four cars in each race.

Hamilton has a slightly better average starting position, but does not pass as many cars during the race (just under 2 per race). But that average finishing position means more points in the standings.

The really interesting number is the -1.57 of the two Red Bull drivers. We know the margin between them is razor thin. The numbers all along support that, however this negative number that they are struggling (not in an HRT or Virgin way) executing in the race. That errors or strategy mistakes are costing them points. Their average finish is a position and a half worse than their average grid position.

They go backwards. The team can’t translate it’s qualifying performance into the race.

We know the Red Bull cars are fast, the drivers fast, but errors by the drivers and the team are costing points. This has been my hunch all along, and the stats (as simplistic as they are) seem to support my thoughts.

As for the two Mercedes drivers, Rosberg is doing slightly better in the races than Michael. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s there. But the Red Bull thing, that’s interesting and shows that if they were just even between race and qualifying, they’d be walking away with the championship this year.

I thought this was an interesting exercise with some surprising results.

“BP notes the fall in its share price in US trading last night. The company is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.”

No seriously, that’s what BP had to say today. The press release is here and quite frankly, what are these guys on?

Just six years ago Bush talked about a new wave of space exploration that was designed in part to make NASA relevant in the eyes of the public. It was time to leave Low Earth Orbit, head back to the moon and perhaps onto Mars.

Aerospace companies started setting up for a huge payday, engineers (including me) were excited by doing proper engineering research and the public (who were ultimately footing the bill) got a little excited about it for a while. Then along came huge federal deficits, and public support went onto the next shiny thing (and I don’t blame the public, engineers are not exciting to watch).

The Moon does not make a lot of sense to me, we’ve been there and there is not that much more to prove. The idea of using it as a launch pad for Mars was spurious at best, why launch from Earth (gravity well A), to the Moon (gravity well B) and then onto Mars. Seems easier and more efficient to go from Earth to Mars (actually low earth orbit to Mars), but I’m just a taxpayer.

NASA has had huge success with its unmanned programs. Hubble telescope has been sending back incredible pictures and a lot of very important data for close to 20 years. The two Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are still sending back data after four years on the red planet.

Manned spaceflight is a while different animal. The budget is X dollars and the cost for all that the agency has committed too seems to be way more than X.

NASA is committed to the International Space Station for only another five years. Even though the building phase is complete it’s still a huge budget eater. Politically NASA is committed to walking away from something that’s taken 20 years to build after five years of full operation.

After disposing of the ISS (to partners or bringing it down into the ocean) NASA is supposed to go back to the moon by 2020. The task of going to the moon was given to NASA by the previous administration and not adequately funded. With federal budgets so tight something clearly has to give, it’s too early to call for the end to manned space exploration, even if many scientists question the value.

I think the space program should be about goals, and not places. If the goal is exploration and “going where no man has gone before” then be clear about it, enlist international partners and go do it.

If it’s doing science then lets do it, fund the really exciting unmanned stuff and make ISS useful and doing fundamental research beyond 2015.

Reading industry press it’s claimed by many that the budget as it is today is not enough to do both in a meaningful way. I think doing one or the other properly, and either forgetting the other or doing enough to keep it ticking along. Doing both half-arsed seems a waste of money, time and engineering talent.

The ISS shows international cooperation works. White papers have suggested NASA needs to join with the Russians, Europeans and potentially the Chinese to explore the solar system, including flybys of Mars and the asteroids. I don’t think the US taxpayers would accept plans to include China, a country that is currently subject to a U.S. embargo on space technology. .

Obama will ultimately set the goals and budget. He’s called himself a “space buff”, and needs to lay out the vision for the future of spaceflight, both manned and unmanned. In his State of the Union speech next week he has the chance to clarify the picture, give the goal, produce the funds and then get out the way and let the engineers get on with what they’re good at (blowing budget and running late?).

I was talking with a friend last night about beautiful machines, mechanical things that are more than the collection of their parts. Today we got in the car and visited what is for me “exhibit A” in this argument – Concorde.

We drove to the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field; one of their star exhibits is Concorde G-BOAG. It sits there next to The City of Everett, the first ever 747, an aircraft that really did fulfil it’s promise and change the world in ways that even it’s designers could not fully imagine.

I used to work in London, a few miles from Heathrow and every morning just before 10 we would clearly hear the morning flight to JFK taxi and then take off. We were a little too far away to have the true window-rattling roar that 4 Rolls Royce Olympus are known for. Every morning meetings were disturbed as Speedbird 01 rolled down the runway and headed over the factory on take-off.

Concorde cost billions in public money to develop, the French and British governments sold the 14 production airplanes and all the spares to British Airways and Air France for 1 pound each.

The UK developed the engines and did a majority of the wings, France did most of the work on the airframe and the politicians argued over who was going to pay for what.  As engineering tasks go many engineers as consider Concorde an achievement that is up there with putting men on the moon, in some aspects tougher.

At one point there were orders for 77 from 22 airlines, these included Iran Air, TWA, Air Canada, United, JAL and Pan-Am in addition to the nationally owned airlines of Britain and France. Oil prices and environmental concerns (mostly around the sonic boom) in the early 70′s meant most of these orders were canceled and in production stopped at 14 aircraft.

The story behind the genesis of Concorde is important and worth looking up if you are bored. The short version is that history shows trying to get the French and British to work together on something costing billions is near impossible. Concorde and the Channel Tunnel are probably the only successful examples, and the Channel Tunnel was dug with private money.

Concorde was only built because both sides were tied into it with a no-get-out clause that would have cost billions. It’s not often I say thank you to politician Tony Benn, but here I, and everyone else who appreciates aesthetics and form owe him as he ensured that it was going to happen.

British Airways found a niche market that allowed the to make a tidy profit. Rumour is they started the London-JFK service and had no idea what to charge. They asked some of the wealthy what they thought it was worth, and charged just that. It was possible to London mid morning and be in downtown Manhattan to join your banker friends for a second breakfast. Then be back in your own bed in London after a full days work

On the other side of the channel Air France never really worked out how to make money with the airplane, and reacted with a typical Gallic shrug when it was retired.

After the accident at Le Bourget it’s time was over, Aerospatiale said they were not going to supply parts anymore and it was over just like that. Concorde may be the only machine retired that did not have a better replacement, there is nothing comparable on the drawing boards of aero engineers anywhere.

Walking around the aircraft I’m reminded once again how beautiful it is. Men with slide rules and pencils designed this in the early 60’s. While some military aircraft could routinely break the sound barrier, they could do so for a few minutes before running out of fuel and needing their Avon engines changed. The idea of building an aircraft that would travel at Mach-2 from London to New York, then turn around and be back in London before the nine O’clock news started must have seemed optimistic at best.

I wrote a little about the LCROSS mission that was designed to search for water in the moon and the singing PM. While I’ve still not started composing songs about my projects, the preliminary results have been announced by NASA and there was water in plume, quite a lot of water and more than was expected.

The LCROSS launched a large projectile into a crater at the South pole of the moon that’s been in permanent shadow for billions of years. A second satellite following the first by four minutes analysed the dust plume for water. It’s a very simple experiment and was extremely successful.

The results indicate there may be considerable water, far more than was thought, in the form of ice crystals in areas that never see the sun.

Clearly this would make any manned mission to the moon easier as the crews would potentially not have to re-supplied with water or oxygen, as both could be extracted locally.

Next step is identifying where the water came from, there has been considerable speculation that it’s from comet impacts over the last couple of billion years and could contain some clues about the origin of the universe.

A very positive result for NASA and to celebrate they got their own Googledoodle

LCROSS Google doodle

Last night evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins did a book reading at the University of Washington Hec-ed pavilion. Something over 5000 people turned up to hear him read from his latest book “The greatest show on Earth”.

Dr Dawkins is something of a controversial figure to many people and is sometimes known as “Darwin’s Rottweiler” in the media for his staunch and often eloquent defence of evolution.

During the Q&A session the first statement from someone in the crowd was an apology on behalf of Seattle for the Discovery Institute. Clearly this was not a crowd that was hostile to Dr Dawkins evolutionary/humanist/atheist point of view.

I have read a number of Dr Dawkins books, it started with the “The God Delusion”, a very challenging book. Any book that has so upset fundamentalists that 4 or 5 books were written to point out where the author got it wrong, clearly has something going for it.

I identify with Dr Dawkins athiest/humanist view. I don’t have faith, I don’t believe in a god or benevolent being, omnipotent or other wise. There is as much proof for the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn as there is for any other all seeing deity.

It’s the engineer in me, I need to see some empirical evidence. I am staggered that something like 40% of the population believe in n earth less than 10,000 yeas old, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I am astounded the creationist/evolution debate even exists, let alone command the place it does in mainstream US life.

To be clear, I’m for personal beliefs and actually admire the way the creationist lobby have gained political power in some very specific places to even make this a debate. In the UK, a country with no separation of church and state, there is no creationism in school only Evolution, even a church school.

I grew up in a marginally christian house, my mother went to church semi regularly, we celebrated Christmas and for some reason my brother and I were sent to Church of England school for 4 years. Yet whenever I’ve been to church over the last 24 years for me it’s just never been there and I’ve felt like a fraud sitting there. I’m happy to share in the singing of the hyms, listening to the readings at weddings and funerals. I clearly identify as a cultural Christian, beyond that there is nthing there for me.

This morning there was another cool “Google doodle” (the drawings that celebrate something on the front page of google.com).

On August 25^th 1609 Galileo Galiliei was the head of mathematics at the University of Padua in Italy showed off a telescope of his own design to the senate of what was then the city-state of Venice. His was not the first telescope, credit should be given to Dutch spectacle makers Lippershey, Metius and Janaaen.

However Galileo did greatly improve on what had come before by increasing the magnification, first to 3X, then 10X and by some accounts shortly afterwards to 30X. He was primarily showing the telescope off for military purposes and soon created a successful sideline selling them to seafarers and merchants.

It was a few months before he pointed it to the sky at night and challenged the followers of earth-centric view of the universe with direct observations of the phases of Venus that supported Copernicus’s sun-centric theory.

Among his many discoveries were moons around Jupiter, defined the Milky way as densely packed stars, measured the height of the mountains on the moon and found that the sun rotated. He was confused by the rings of Saturn, thinking they were planets, a year or two later they disappeared when they were edge onto the Earth, and much to his confusion reappeared a few years later.

He was denounced by the pope and found guilty of heresy in 1633. 359 years later Pope John Paul II admitted they may have made an error.

The telescope was one of the instruments at the center of the Scientific Revolution that changed the way the world, and universe beyond was seen. It challenged the way the universe had been thought of since Classical Greece and Aristotle’s theories about the earth being at the center of the universe.

Galileo’s orbital mechanics proved Copernicus’s theory, this work was combined with Johannes Keplers work in planetary motion by Sir Isaac Newton.

From this Newton produced the laws of motion and universal gravitation. These are the foundations of all the fun stuff theoretical physicists spend billions of euros on trying to smash particles together, or search the heavens for dark matter or any manner of big experiments. And I think that stuff is cool.

Incidentally the Doge of Venice was so impressed he gave Galileo a pay raise and tenure for life with the university.

Big day for Galileo. His is a fascinating story, founder of of modern science, mathematician, heretic and today he get’s a well deserved Google doodle.