Cheese Ends, 2023/12/04

We can’t talk about anything in science and technology without talking about the second Starship launch.

 

(Picture from here.)

 

I found this one much more exciting than the last one for a few reasons:

1. The launch pad didn’t disintegrate and toss material around for miles
2. Separation actually happened using a reasonable approach.
3. Both components of the craft more or less performed.

Musk has said that the idea is to move fast and break things, learning in the process. That said, this means the process is entered with at least a nod towards something adequately thought out to be tested. 

 

The first starship launch, in my opinion, didn’t rise to that level.

 

This launch, however, did.

 

Starship is a two-stage enormous space system. It’s the first system that I think is a contender for the role originally held by the Saturn V. (At two billion dollars+/launch, I don’t think the SLS is a real competitor.)

 

The thrust for the first stage is far and away the most built by Americans. Here are some comparison numbers:

• Russia Proton: 2,399 kN
• Space Shuttle: 13,000 kN
• Saturn V: 34,500 kN
• SLS: 39,000 kN
• Starship: 74,000 kN

Starship needs that thrust for its payload capacity:

• Russian Proton: 23,700 kg
• Shuttle: 27,500 kg
• Saturn V: 141,136 kg
• SLS: 131,818 kg
• Starship: 100,000 kg

Although, these numbers are little misleading. The design of the first stage of Starship is to get the second stage where it’s going. The second stage is the actual spacecraft with reentry capabilities. Thus, that 100,000 kg payload is payload in addition to the reentry vehicle. In this manner, Starship is more comparable to the Space Shuttle. In the case of the Saturn V, SLS, and Proton, the payload has to include the reentry vehicle. Thus, the true payload would be whatever is being sent up into space minus the coast of the vehicle to get it there. Starship payload doesn’t need to include that.

 

If Starship is successful, it’s a big change. It doesn’t hurt that Starship is reusable, uses a relatively innocuous chemical process for thrust, and is intended to be a really cheap method to deliver payloads to space. It’s a good example of the economy of scale. Sort of like freight trains: they are already so massive that adding a bit more doesn’t cost all that much.

 

A lot rides on Starship’s success.

 

The launch happened. The stages separated. A few seconds later as the booster was trying to get situated for return, it exploded. The second stage proceeded for a few seconds more. There was some kind of gas cloud that showed up and then Starship, the spacecraft, was no more.

 

What happened is still under investigation. Current hypotheses are: the booster had progressive engine failures causing an explosion. Possibly because it was unable to effectively impart directed thrust so the liquid propellant and oxidizer could be properly pushed into position within the effectively weightless structure. The spacecraft (second stage) aborted possibly due to propellant leaks that would have prevented it from reaching its target.

 

So: work fast and break things. This launch fulfills that goal.

 

The terminations aside: launch was good. Separation was good. Texas had no concrete chunk rain as from the first launch. Basic goals were achieved even if the mission was unsuccessful.

 

Color me cautiously optimistic. I would still like to have an additional option than Starship to launch with. Especially, with someone as volatile as Musk in “charge.”

 

Moving on with more space news.

 

Salt glaciers have been detected on... Mercury?

 

These fall from the same sort of thing discovered in the polar craters of the Moon. There’s evidence of water ice in permanently shielded craters on the poles of Mercury. Not ice ice but glaciers made of salt exposed via meteoric impacts. It’s possible volatiles (read water) might still be there.

 

These are big, too. Several miles deep.

 

More on salt, Ganymede may be covered in salt and organic material. This came from the Juno mission currently orbiting Jupiter. There’s some evidence that Ganymede, like some of the other ice moons, might have a deep ocean. Spectroscopic analysis from a recent Juno flyby has shown hydrated sodium chloride, ammonium chloride, and organic (i.e., containing carbon) material. They might have originated from inside of Ganymede in a similar fashion to spouts seen on Europa.

 

A Chinese AI trained in chemistry has discovered an oxygen catalyst that could be made from meteorites. This catalyst can be used to trigger the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) that delivers oxygen to be used. Best of all, the meteorites in question are on Mars and the OER is against Martian soil.

 

Maybe we can live off the land there.

 

Moving from outer to inner space, there are new studies on microbes found within the earth’s crust.

 

These microbes used to be thought rare but it’s now thought that if we weighed all the microbes in the earth’s crust they would show a greater biomass than all life in the oceans. There’s something alive down there.

 

The study has been examining the strategies used by these microbes to survive. It turns out there are two basic approaches: minimalist, where a microbe survives by eating the same thing all the time. And maximalist, where a microbe is ready to eat anything anytime.

 

The cost/benefit of both approaches is interesting. The minimalist approach doesn’t need to invest in a lot of different biochemical machinery because it’s only eating one thing. Hopefully, it doesn’t run out. That’s the bet that microbe has made.

 

The maximalist approach bets that a lot of different material will show up and it will be ready. But the cost is that it has to keep around a lot of different biochemical machinery to be ready when the food shows up.

 

Once you have life, it gets into everything. One wonders what might be on Mars.

 

There’s no understood mechanism on where these deep microbes came from. It presumes that plate tectonics and the reabsorption of rock under the crust is their source. It is highly unlikely they evolved there.

 

However, (and the however here is mine) there is some new research on prebiotic biochemical pathways. These are biochemical reactions that resemble living systems but don’t require living systems to work. The cited article is describing sugar reactions.

 

There are a number of biochemically active compounds that all have to be in place for life to happen: nucleic acid chains, proto-proteins, and sugars. Specifically, pentoses: sugars that are made up of five carbons. These are everywhere in living systems. Prebiotic pentose reactions are an integral, and often overlooked, area of research. They are eclipsed by their celebrity cousins, proteins and nucleic acids.

 

What I find interesting here is that we always talk about life starting up on the effective surface of earth—sea bottoms are part of the earth’s surface. There’s a lot of problems with that scenario, notably how do we keep proto-life from getting swept away. But if the reactions are captured and brought underground, they are isolated enough that they can’t be diluted.

 

It’s an interesting idea—not likely, you understand. I would expect to see cells or cellular debris coming up from undersea smokers if that were the case. That said, rock is often exposed after it’s been pushed underground. It doesn’t seem unlikely that some of that exposed rock could contain cells.

 

Going on from that, Chinese agricultural scientists have been working to determine of bacteria could make lunar regolith more like soil. Specifically, they were studying if bacteria could free up phosphorous that could then be taken up by plants. They’ve had significant success.

 

Lunar regolith is a big impediment to lunar settlements. It’s electrostatic so it gets into everything. It’s made up of essentially not-so-ground glass. Its compounds are not easily picked up by earth plants. So, since we’re not going to seed the Moon with prairie soil from Kansas, we need to make it work for us. This is a step in the right direction.

 

Finally, we get back on earth with new agribot technology.

 

I’ve been watching this for a while now. We need to get away from chemical-based farming yet we can’t feed billions of people without industrial scale. The idea of killing everything we don’t want so we can eat the survivor isn’t sustainable.

 

Enter Sweden’s Ekobot.

Ekobot is a weeding machine. It weeds. Twelve hours a day. Every day. And, if you weed, one of the major reasons we use herbicides goes away. Ekobot weeds onion, beetroot, carrots, or other vegetable fields. It uses an AI and machine vision to figure out what’s a weed and what isn’t. Then, it uses a little finger to pull out the weeds. It looks like a metal finger—there’s a video at the site.

 

This is smart technology. Using the kill everything and let Monsanto sort it out is dumb technology.

 

Next time.

 

Story Collection Announcement

A new story collection is coming out on 12/26/2023!

 

Pre-order is available.

 

The best way is to go through my website, www.stevenpopkes.com, which has the universal book link. As new venues become available, they will be attached to that link. So, for example, right now on 12/1/2023, the only pre-order available is the ebook on Amazon. However, in the next week or so, other venues (I'm looking at you, Apple) will host it.

 

Might make an interesting present the day after Christmas.

 

Here's an excerpt from the title story:

 

Tom nodded. Dan was sitting close to his right. Tom reached for his glass as if he’d forgotten he’d finished it, made a fist and backhanded Dan with all his strength. Dan fell back off his chair. Tom followed up the blow with a vicious kick to Dan’s groin. Dan doubled up and the breath came out of him in a faint shriek. Tom pulled open Dan’s coat and found the pistol he knew was there and a small glittering knife he didn’t.

 

“Kids.” Tom put the barrel of the pistol against Dan’s throat. “Where do you think Derek is?”

 

“Trolley,” Dan croaked. “A street entrance to the underground.”

 

“Thank you.” 

 

“Tell me,” said Dan as soon as he was able to breathe. “Do you know she’s not your daughter?”

 

“Yes.” Tom hid the pistol in his jacket pocket and left the tavern.

 

Thanksgiving, 2023

I like Thanksgiving. I’m not a fan of turkey but any holiday that encourages excess of food and beverage is all right to me. Besides, I can fall into a tryptophan-induced coma in front of a movie, television show, or football game with the best of them.

 

(Picture from here.)

 

But the idea of a historical Thanksgiving with Indians (that’s what they were called at the time) sitting down in friendly congress with Pilgrims is, at best, a sweet metaphor. At worst, it reflects a rapprochement that is most politely called fiction.

 

There is one character in all of this that, to me, stands out: Tisquantum, often called Squanto. 

 

Tisquantum is portrayed as the Friendly Indian who helped the Pilgrims learn the skills they needed to survive, translated to the surrounding tribes, and pretty much made himself indispensable. This is, in fact, true, as far as it goes. But like so many things, it is a pale, shredded version of the truth.

 

First, in the years before the colonization of Plymouth, the New England coast was a vibrant community. Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand people lived in the area. Fields of maize and squash could be seen from offshore during the summer months. Behind them, were acres of chestnut and hickory trees—there is some evidence many of these were deliberately planted. 

 

In 1605 and 1606, Samuel de Champlain visited Cape Cod with the idea of planting a settlement. He gave up on the idea: too many people were already living there. 

 

What we call Plymouth was occupied by the Patuxet. All accounts of them suggest that they were a very successful agrarian and fishing community. They occupied the seaside during the summer and moved inland when the winter weather approached. Tisquantum was a Patuxet.

 

Some years before the Plymouth colony, Tisquantum met Captain John Smith as part of his sachem’s entourage. The meeting went cordial enough. Smith moved on to Maine leaving Thomas Hunt in charge. Hunt also invited the group on his ship and promptly kidnapped them, murdering those whom he couldn’t manage to stuff down in the hold. From here, Hunt took his prisoners to Málaga, Spain, to sell them as slaves.

 

This wasn’t unusual. A lot of Europeans dropped into the New World to pick up a native or two as if it were some kind of overnight truck stop. 

 

The Roman Catholic priests in Málaga intervened—at that point, the Church opposed brutality towards the natives. Tisquantum was saved from slavery. He persuaded the priests to let him attempt to return home. He made it as far as London where he stayed with a shipbuilder who maintained him as a sort of souvenir. The shipbuilder had interests in Newfoundland and Tisquantum managed to get passage to a fishing camp there. Hey, only a thousand miles from home.

 

He persuaded another of Smith’s cohort, Thomas Dermer, to go down to New England with promises of easy wealth but that went south through positively byzantine circumstances and Dermer started to return to England but met his boss, Ferdinando Gorges, at sea. Dermer promptly turned back to New England. 

 

When Tisquantum was kidnapped, the entire New England coast was alive with interlocking tribes, villages, and fields. He returned to desolation. The coast was empty. Homes were rotted and crumbling. The fields were untilled. Bleached skeletons lay exposed to the elements. As Dermer and Tisquantum sailed south from Maine to Massachusetts, they followed a blighted coast.

 

Tisquantum landed and went inland with Dermer to find his village. Save for him, the Patuxet were all dead. An epidemic had raged up and down the northeastern coast and killed as much as ninety percent of all natives. Disheartened, Tisquantum followed Dermer back to Maine but ended up walking back.

 

Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoag adjacent to the Patuxet was in terrible trouble. His community of twenty-thousand had been reduced to a thousand. His local village to sixty. Worse, his neighbors, the Narragansett, had not been terribly afflicted. Tisquantum was captured and sent to Massasoit. Thereby, Tisquantum tried to persuade Massasoit that the English could be allies.

 

Meanwhile, the Pilgrims—remember them?—landed and tried to make a colony in Plymouth. If there’s a group less prepared for their journey, I haven’t read about them. The Donner Party had nothing on them. Their fishing gear didn’t work in the waters of the bay. They had thought to be agriculturists but their seeds were inappropriate and they didn’t bring livestock. They had little idea what they were doing. And, finally, the Mayflower landed them in Massachusetts on November 21, 1620. This was back when winter was winter—not the easy winters we have up here now. This was snow and frozen ground. In my experience, November begins with a cold, brittle rain and goes from there. 

 

The only way they could survive was by raiding the graves and village remains of—you guessed it, the Patuxet—for food stores. Anything. Half of them died.

 

Meanwhile, Massasoit gets word of these Europeans setting up shop on land he could claim as under his control but without any way of enforcing such control. Tisquantum keeps buzzing his ear about how the English could be useful. The kidnapping, murder, and other attacks by the English tend to make Massasoit skittish. He doesn’t trust Tisquantum so he gets Samoset, who has limited English but at least has something, to talk with these interlopers first. After this first interaction, Samoset returns, this time with Tisquantum who was much more fluent due to his five years abroad. Massasoit wanted to incorporate the Pilgrims into his own political agenda and fend off the Narragansett. 

 

Tisquantum moved in with the Pilgrims. He did help them learn how to grow their own food using native seeds and techniques. He proved invaluable and the next fall, the Pilgrims had a good enough harvest that they could have a harvest feast. Massasoit attended (not necessarily invited but showed up because the celebratory gunfire might be an attack) with about ninety people. Both sides sat down and ate a lot of food. 

 

I have this image where both sides are eating together and on the left side, the holocaust visited upon the natives before the meal, and on the right side, the holocaust visited upon the natives afterward. 

 

Just a grudging bit of peace in the middle: Thanksgiving.

 

Note: a lot of the material for this post came from Charles C. Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. I strongly recommend it. Tisquantum’s story, as presented, is highly abridged. The more detailed version in 1491 is vastly more interesting than this tiny excerpt. Any errors are, of course, my own and not Mister Mann’s. 

 

I haven’t read the sequel, 1493, yet. 

 

If it’s of interest, then I also recommend Wengrow and Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything, which I am currently reading.

State of the Farm: Reckoning 2023

The harvest is done. The experiment for this year is complete.

 

(Picture: our wee carrot harvest. Including rocks.)

 

Now, we decide what it means. 

 

I have a spreadsheet with all of the plants we planted, including the fruit and nut trees. But we will not dwell on that level of detail here. Instead, we’ll hit the highlights by category. 

 

The goal this year was to make a dent in the actual calorie count from the garden, nut, and fruit crops. In some ways, it was a success. In others, a failure. In the remainder, something in between.

 

Fruit

As I mentioned in previous posts, many of the fruit trees didn’t bear at all this year for various reasons. In the case of the peach family and the pawpaws, it was the late frost. The exceptions to this were the persimmons, medlar, and cherries. The medlar is a medieval fruit that vaguely resembles the taste of apple sauce. We have about a dozen or so on the tree but we can’t pick them until after the frost.

 

We had a good apple crop—at least, for us. We have a low fruit/tree ratio we’re trying to improve. We dried them and they are good to eat in the winter.

 

The persimmons did very well. We’ve made wine and persimmon bread. We tried persimmon pie but it didn’t work out so well. The astringency made the pie inedible. Yet another occasion where I miss the chickens. The bread turned out well. Since both were made from the same batch of fruit, we’re scratching our heads on that one. The difference might be the bread had rum in it and the pies did not. Possibly the alcohol mitigated the astringency. 

 

The sour cherries were reasonable this year. We didn’t try all that hard in picking them and so got one pie worth.

 

Non-tree fruit included the melons and the grapes.

 

The melons did poorly this year. We always have trouble with melons. It’s either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry. We’re still experimenting with variety. 

 

The grapes have developed black rot and we have to deal with this. Most of the grapes either didn’t produce well or the grapes withered before harvest. We also had a vacation in the middle of harvest and so we ended up feeding the birds, too. We did get about ten or so pounds of Concords so five gallons of wine are percolating on the counter.

 

The new strawberry patch is too new. 

 

Spices

We have much pesto from the basil. The dill didn’t do well. The fennel was nice—had a nice fennel and cheese dinner last night. But while Wendy can taste the anise flavor, I could not. The flaw might be in the taster, not the taste.

 

The mint came in very well. We have about two pints total of ground-up mint for my tea this winter. That’s a win.

 

Sugar?

Not sure where to put the sugar beets. They’re a vegetable, I suppose, but we’re making sugar from it. We planted an eight-foot row and got about ten pounds worth. It’s reducing to syrup downstairs right now. I’ll be making sugar from it today or later in the week. Significant animal damage in that whole section: carrots, turnips, and beets. Have to think on that next time—if there is a next time.

 

Nuts

We now have three chestnut trees online and this year we got on the order of 30-40 pounds dry weight of chestnuts and we’re still processing them. We use it as flour adding it to bread recipes, and soups. We tried to make pasta from it but failed. We’ll try again. A definite win. 

 

We also got about sixty pounds of black walnuts from a friend as a “gift.” We’re figuring that one out.

 

Vegetable

The biggest category of all. 

 

We did fairly well with most of them. We had problems with carrots depending on location. Starting was an issue everywhere but the full sun carrots ended up giving us about five pounds of good yield. The carrots under the trellis were put in later and ultimately shaded by the beans. They gave us many tiny carrots.

 

Cucumber, eggplant, and peppers were pretty good. The cucumbers gave us many pickles and the eggplant came in strong. The problem with eggplant is it doesn’t store all that well and it’s hard to use up fifteen pounds before it rots. But we managed. The peppers did all right but we also didn’t really work on them. Hot peppers did well.

 

We had some trouble with the cold crops: broccoli, Brussel sprouts, kohlrabi, and the like. We do have some sprouts waiting in the garden until I get to them but it was only four plants. There’s also some bok choi waiting for us. We did plant five cabbages and got five cabbages, so that’s a win. By and large, I’d say the cold crops were a wash. 

 

Turnips were in the same area as the sugar beets. We got three big ones but the others were chewed up.

 

We like to grow celeriac (celery root) because it tastes good in soups. Usually, they sort of pod up like kohlrabi. These didn’t and looked like brittle stars or hairy snakes. Not sure if this is the variety we used or something in the environment. More investigation needed. 

 

Finally got some zucchini. Usually, we’re pulling literal feet of them from the garden but for some reason, they didn’t really get started until mid-August. So, we got a couple of big ones but nothing like the usual crop. Again, more investigation needed.

 

We did well on the beans. About eleven pounds total, which is a pretty terrific return on investment from four packages. Runner beans gave us two pounds. Pole beans gave us nine. We didn’t do so well with the pinto beans. I think that was a location error. No idea regarding the bush beans as we picked them fresh and ate them. I think we did all right but I have no numbers to back that up.

 

Finally, the potatoes. We did very well with the potatoes. Right now we have on the order of forty pounds in storage that we’re working through. 

 

Conclusion

The goal was to aim to make an impact on our calorie consumption from our crops. Between the chestnuts, the beans, and the potatoes, I think that experiment succeeded. That said, two of those crops are starch heavy so they’re good for calories but don’t contribute all that much to protein. The beans are an exception there. 

 

We use beans in stews and soups. I’ve been told that one pound is the equivalent to one preparation and that preparation results in about three meals. That means we have on the order of thirty-plus meals from the beans. If we say two pounds of potatoes/meal (which is fairly generous), that means twenty or so meals there. Presuming this is mostly dinner, that’s fifty meal/days from those two crops. 

 

The chestnut is harder to quantify since we don’t actually use it as a meal. Instead, we add it to other things. Chestnut flour might, for example, end up in one of those soups. 

 

The remaining crops that we’ve stored such as persimmon, carrots, etc., add to a meal but don’t constitute a meal in themselves. They have an impact on the pocketbook but not necessarily on meal/days. 

 

We haven’t yet determined our loss from storage. I’ll know more about that come spring. 

 

Every year we try an experiment. This year was the sugar beets. It looks like I’m going to get about a pint of syrup from ten pounds of beets. This translates into perhaps a half pound of sugar. At this point, it has an interesting and not unpleasant taste. Pulling this into production requires handling the pest problem and figuring out a better way to extract the sugar. According to my research, the most efficient way of getting sugar is also the most efficient way of getting an off, beet flavor. We chose the more inefficient way which gave us about four gallons of “sap.” 

 

We might try the grinding method and then attempt to filter out the bad taste.

 

Next year, I think my experiment will be sorghum. There are a couple of varieties that seem to have high yields and good taste. We will see.

 

That’s it from the farm until next year.