Testing The Atlas ICBM: A 1958 Time Capsule Video

January 19, 2024 by Maya Posch 11 Comments

The control room during the 1958 Atlas B 4B test. (Source: Convair)

Recently the [Periscope Film] channel on YouTube published a 1960 color documentary featuring the 1958 launch of the Atlas B (SM-65B) ICBM, in its second, Missile 4B iteration. This was the second model of the second prototype, which earned the distinction of being the first truly intercontinental ballistic missile upon its successful test completion, which saw the payload plummeting into its designated part of the Atlantic Ocean. This was a much better result than the previous test of the 3B, which suffered a yaw gyro issue that caused the missile to disintegrate partway into the flight.

In this historic documentary, the Atlas B’s manufacturer – Convair – takes us through all the elements of the test range, including all the downrange stations, their functions and how all the data from the test is captured, recorded (on reel to reel tape) and integrated into one coherent data set. This includes radar data, telemetry received from the missile, as well as the data tape that the ICBM ejects from the payload section shortly before impact.

Although it’s also a promotion piece for Convair Astronautics, this does little to mar the documentary aspect, which is narrated by William Conrad, who manages to both instill a sense of technological wonder and grim foreboding against the scenery of 1950s military high-tech in the midst of a heating up Cold War.

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Predicting The A-Bomb: The Cartmill Affair

January 18, 2024 by Al Williams 18 Comments

The cover of the infamous issue of Astounding, March 1944

There’s an upcoming movie, Argylle, about an author whose spy novels are a little too accurate, and she becomes a target of a real-life spy game. We haven’t seen the movie, but it made us think of a similar espionage caper from 1944 involving science fiction author Cleve Cartmill. The whole thing played out in the pages of Astounding magazine (now Analog) and involved several other science fiction luminaries ranging from John W. Campbell to Isaac Asimov. It is a great story about how science is — well, science — and no amount of secrecy or legislation can hide it.

In 1943, Cartmill queried Campbell about the possibility of a story that would be known as “Deadline.” It wasn’t his first story, nor would it be his last. But it nearly put him in a Federal prison. Why? The story dealt with an atomic bomb.

Nothing New

By itself, that’s probably not a big deal. H.G. Wells wrote “The World Set Free” in 1914, where he predicted nuclear weapons. But in 1914, it wasn’t clear how that would work exactly. Wells mentioned “uranium and thorium” and wrote a reasonable account of the destructive power: Continue reading “Predicting The A-Bomb: The Cartmill Affair” →

Sun On The Run: Diving Into Solar With A Mobile PV System

January 17, 2024 by Dan Maloney 36 Comments

For obvious reasons, there has been a lot of interest in small-scale residential solar power systems lately. Even in my neck of the woods, where the sun doesn’t shine much from October to April, solar arrays are sprouting up on rooftops in a lot of local neighborhoods. And it’s not just here in suburbia; drive a little way out into the country or spend some time looking around in Google maps and it won’t take long to spy a sizable array of PV panels sitting in a field next to someone’s ranch house or barn.

Solar has gotten to the point where the expense of an installation is no longer a serious barrier to entry, at least if you’re willing to put in a little sweat equity and not farm the project out to a contractor. Doing it yourself requires some specialized tools and knowledge, though, over and above your standard suite of DIY skills. So, in the spirit of sharing hard-won knowledge, I decided to take the somewhat unusual step of writing up one of my personal projects, which has been in progress for a couple of years now and resulted in a solar power system that isn’t on a rooftop or a ground-mounted array at all, but rather is completely mobile: my solar trailer.

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Ask Hackaday: Why Are Self-Checkouts Failing?

January 16, 2024 by Al Williams 260 Comments

Most people who read Hackaday have positive feelings about automation. (Notice we said most.) How many times have you been behind someone in a grocery store line waiting for them to find a coupon, or a cashier who can’t make change without reading the screen and thought: “There has to be a better way.” The last few years have seen that better way, but now, companies are deciding the grass isn’t greener after all. The BBC reports that self-checkouts have been a “spectacular failure.” That led us to wonder why that should be true.

As a concept, everyone loves it. Stores can hire fewer cashiers. Customers, generally, like having every line open and having a speedy exit from the store. The problem is, it hasn’t really panned out that way. Self-checkout stations frequently need maintenance, often because it can’t figure out that you put something in the bag. Even when they work flawlessly, a customer might have an issue or not understand what to do. Maybe you’ve scanned something twice and need one of them backed off. Then, there are the age-restricted products that require verification. So now you have to hire a crew of not-cashiers to work at the automated not-register. Sure, you can have one person cover many registers, but when one machine is out of change, another won’t print a receipt, and two people are waiting for you to verify their beer purchase, you are back to waiting. Next thing you know, there’s a line.

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Solar Chimneys: Viable Energy Solution Or A Lot Of Hot Air?

January 15, 2024 by Lewin Day 90 Comments

We think of the power we generate as coming from all these different kinds of sources. Oil, gas, coal, nuclear, wind… so varied! And yet they all fundamentally come down to moving a gas through a turbine to actually spin up a generator and make some juice. Even some solar plants worked this way, using the sun’s energy to heat water into steam to spin some blades and keep the lights on.

A solar updraft tower works along these basic principles, too, but in a rather unique configuration. It’s not since the dawn of the Industrial Age that humanity went around building lots of big chimneys, and if this technology makes good sense, we could be due again. Let’s find out how it works and if it’s worth all the bluster, or if it’s just a bunch of hot air.

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Retrotechtacular: Rebuilding A Fire-Ravaged Telephone Exchange

January 11, 2024 by Dan Maloney 15 Comments

Those who haven’t experienced the destruction of a house fire should consider themselves lucky. The speed with which fire can erase a lifetime of work — or a life, for that matter — is stunning. And the disruption a fire causes for survivors, who often escape the blaze with only the clothes on their backs, is almost unfathomable. To face the task of rebuilding a life with just a few smoke-damaged and waterlogged possessions while wearing only pajamas and slippers is a devastating proposition.

As bad as a residential fire may be, though, its impact is mercifully limited to the occupants. Infrastructure fires are another thing entirely; the disruption they cause is often felt far beyond the building or facility involved. The film below documents a perfect example of this: the 1975 New York Telephone Exchange fire, which swept through the company’s central office facility at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 13th Street in Manhattan and cut off service to 300 blocks of the East Village and Lower East Side neighborhoods.

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Liquid Tin Could Be The Key To Cheap, Plentiful Grid Storage

January 8, 2024 by Lewin Day 142 Comments

Once expensive and difficult to implement, renewable energy solutions like wind and solar are now often the cheapest options available for generating electricity for the grid. However, there are still some issues around the non-continuous supply from these sources, with grid storage becoming a key technology to keep the lights on around the clock.

In the quest for cost-effective grid storage, a new player has entered the arena with a bold claim: a thermal battery technology that’s not only more than 10 times cheaper than lithium-ion batteries, but also a standout in efficiency compared to traditional thermal battery designs. Fourth Power is making waves with its “sun in a box” energy storage technology, and aims to prove its capabilities with an ambitious 1-MWh prototype.

Hot Stuff

Simple heating elements turn electricity into heat, putting it into liquid tin that then heats large graphite blocks. Credit: Fourth Power, Vimeo screenshot

The principle behind Fourth Power’s technology is deceptively simple: when there’s excess renewable energy available, use it to heat something up. The electrical energy is thus converted and stored as heat, with the idea being to convert it back to electricity when needed, such as at night time or when the wind isn’t blowing. This concept isn’t entirely new; other companies have explored doing this with everything from bricks to molten salt. Fourth Power’s approach involves heating large blocks of graphite to extremely high temperatures — as high as 2,500 °C (4,530 °F). Naturally, the hotter you go, the more energy you can store. Where the company’s concept gets interesting is how it plans to recover the heat energy and turn it back into electricity.

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