This time Phoenix stays dead…

Where the Phoenix lander is on Mars it’s winter.  Phoenix ran out of power recently.  The 2 rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have to fight for their own survival every Martian winter.  Why?  Because they use solar arrays.  Solar arrays that degrade with time.  Solar arrays that degrade with the deposition of dust.  Solar arrays that don’t produce much power when the Sun isn’t very high in the sky.

Power constraints have hampered interplanetary probes in the past.  The problem is that once a probe gets out near Jupiter there just isn’t enough sun light to do much.  Even large arrays can’t entirely overcome the problem of “not enough light”.

We have $100 million missions that end because of power

We have missions to Mars and Jupiter and beyond.  Some like Cassini use nuclear power.  Others use solar power.  Some missions, like Phoenix, have ended not because of mechanical failure, communications failure, or a lack of good science that still needs doing but because they have too little power.

A lack of power has not stopped the Voyager missions decades after their launch.  A lack of power doesn’t need to kill or maim anymore Mars missions.  A Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) is the answer.

Next post: What is an RTG?

Next Next post: Why people are scared.

I’ve written an article on the wiki on what I call controller fusion.  I refer to it as controller fusion becuase, like Sensor Fusion, I use filters to blend non-ideal outputs from more than 1 transfer function into 1 output which is closer to the desired output.

For a work proposal on a reaction cancellation mechanism I used a proportional controller for fast response and a PI-Lead controller to drive the steady-state error to 0.  In simple sensor fusion the sensor outputs are filtered and then added together to form a better single output.  In this form of controller fusion I use filters on the error signal to adjust the gain of the controller in real-time.  As a result, PI-Lead output is almost turned off for a step command and the proportional controller output is almost turned off when the system is holding a steady-state value.

I have not had the time to bring this idea to full maturity but I thought it was an interesting enough idea to share.

Maybe I’m wrong but here are a few suggestions for making cars better.

Stirling vs. Alternators

In modern automotives the alternator uses energy off the engine to generate electricity to power the radio, A/C, etc.  The alternator sucks horsepower off the engine in order to create this electricity.

What about the Stirling engine?

The Stirling engine is a piston engine driven by an external heat source.  Internal combustion engines have a lot of waste heat that can be captured.  The radiator and exhaust are 2 obvious examples.  Current Stirling designs have reported efficienies of 18%.  Alternators are most likely 90% or more but they require power directly from the engine.

Stirlings have a lower efficiency but convert otherwise wasted energy.  Alternators are robust and realiable.  Stirlings are unproven but can be designed to be small.  Several, possibly more than a dozen, can be placed at convenient places around the engine.  Designed properly they could be swappable such that if one Stirling fails it can be replaced easily and without loss of electricity generation.

Airplane Nozzles vs. Electronic temperature control

The most recent trend in air conditioning and heating in luxury cars is to provide electronic control for each side of the car and in some cases it seems like control is provided for each passenger.  On airplanes each passenger has their own control through a simple nozzle.

So why do we need electronic control that can fail when a simple nozzle would suffice?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is popular search topic on the web.  This is because your natural, or organic, search results – not the paid search ads – are based on your page rank (this is a Google term but something similar applies to the top 3 engines).  These organic results are the best and easiest way to drive traffic to your site.

Whether you are selling stuff, making money from your site through ads or donations, or just want people to read your blog you want traffic.  The more the better.  For years now the “gurus” have told new people to engage in link marketing.  In essence you, as the new site owner, goes to related blogs, forums, and wikis that established and you make meaningful contributions that include a link to your site.  After a while sites starting catching on that these links to other sites were lowering the page rank of the established site.  The result is that established sites started using the NO FOLLOW tag.  The link on an established site can still drive traffic to your site but it won’t improve your page rank so long as the NO FOLLOW tag is there.

Wikipedia started implementing a NO FOLLOW tag sometime back.  This was before I had a site or cared about SEO so I didn’t get too worked up about it.  However, a lot of people on the web made the argument that Wikipedia was the behemoth that it was because so many established sites included links to its articles – without the NO FOLLOW tag.

I started my wiki because I wasn’t happy with the content or organization of Wikipedia or the Wikibooks.  Neither site, in my opinion, was appropriate for advanced topics or examples.  I’ve made quite a few contributions to Wikipedia pages that I thought I could improve without wholesale re-write.  Now I’m having some of my edits backed out because of the external links to my site.  Admittedly these were edits solely to add links to related topics on my site.  However, my site includes exampels and MATLAB code not just the theory.

The Wikipedians argument is that I should just rewrite my content on Wikipedia.  I guess I’m selfish, I see no possibility of an upside for me and plenty of potential for a downside should I accidentally write something on Wikipedia I shouldn’t have – i.e. something my current or future employer doesn’t appreciate.

This reverting of edits by people who never bothered to judge my links in context and certainly are not subject matter experts has just pissed me off.  This on top of the NO FOLLOW tags and articles on the Edge makes me seriously question the utility of Wikipedia.  And the arrogance of many of the users.  Especially for subjects such as Engineering where you really do need subject matter experts and peer review.

I think my contributions to Wikipedia are over.  I will be making my contributions to places such as Knol.

I’m an engineer and ideally I would, should I invent something, benefit from a patent.  However, the USA’s current patent system is showing a number weaknesses.

Patent Weakness #1: The patent office is filled with lawyers not scientists/engineers

The patent office has, for the past decade or so, been giving out patents for genes and software like Amazon’s One Click.

Pharma companies didn’t invent DNA or genes.  They simply discovered the gene for a disease and thereby a possible path to cure.  Why should anyone have to pay royalties for studying said gene or discovering a cure independent of the pharma that identified the gene.

In my opinion Amazon’s One Click patent was the epitomy of the stupidity of the patent office.  The patent clerks kept arguing for prior artwork deomonstrating that someone else had already developed a One Click feature.  This is ludicrous.  The point of software is automate mundane tasks with a minimal amount of information and work by the user.  So what does One Click do fundamentally different than any other button on any other piece of software?

Patent Weakness #2: Patents live way too long…

In an age where software and services change every 6 months on the internet, how does a 20 year patent fit into the equation?  It doesn’t, 20 years for a patent slows down our progress, it does not accelerate it.

The USA gets 1 cell phone version upgrade for every several that are seen in Asia.  Yet companies, like Sony, are still making plenty of cell phones.  Constantly reverse engineering those phones and producing the next cell phone generation.  Hmmm…  But, the whole world economy would just fall apart if we got rid of patents…

Patent Weakness #3: Companies stiffle innovation through intellectual property lawsuits in order to protect their market share

Currently many companies whine about an individual’s right to sue them because they feel abused by frivolous lawsuits.  However, this doesn’t stop big companies from suing little companies frivolously.  They sue over patent infringment.  Everyone in the courtroom knows the suit is frivolous but the big company ties up the little company in court for years.  Draining their resources, preventing the little companies from furthering their technology.  In the end the little guy goes out of biz or is so drained they are hardly competitive anymore.

Great use of the court system and my taxes go towards this crap.  Stiffling innovation is not only an economic issue but a national security issue.  As such, when companies stiffle innovation through the use of patents it hurts the entire country for years to come and when they stiffle innovation just to protect market share they deserve to be severely punished.  Not rewarded.

Time to wake up and heavily revise our patents and intellectual property…

Patents have served their purpose.  It’s time to get rid of them.

I’m watching the Olympics right now.  And at each medal ceremony we see nationalism.

Unsurprisingly I’m an engineer and I like Science Fiction.  I’ve read a number of Arthur C. Clarke’s latest books.  Along the way these stories suggest a number of dramatic changes for the human race driven by events like Climate Change.

More and more the internet is breaking down borders.  My question is, once Google or someone else develops a real time language translator with context, how long will nations last in any recognizable form?