So on my semi-daily mountain biking trip yesterday morning I certainly bought the farm. Too bad no one had a video camera because it would have been one of those classic clips that always get passed around in email attachments. Unfortunately, the textual description is all I’ve got. Just imagine a nice placid forest, wind gently rustling the tops of the trees that brush against the clear blue sky, small animals eagerly await the realization of a sequence of events that was set in motion 45 minutes before. Enter me, stage left, not a care in the world save navigating my bike over some rocks and tree roots. So I roll up on this bridge 50 foot long that crosses over a muddy swamp and by bridge I mean a foot wide plywood plank that is sitting a few feet above the swamp. I’ve made it over this one before with out any trouble, but I wasn’t so lucky today. About half way across, I realize I’m in trouble. There is no way I’m going to be able to make it across (think if ride on curb and then not being able to stay on). Hoping for the best, I attempt to salvage the situation by not hitting the swamp with just my front tire. Should have hoped a bit more as my attempt failed. That tire dug in like 6” into the mud, stopping all my forward motion instantly. Of course that meant I flew ass over teakettle over the handlebars and I landed on my back in the mud. Nice soft landing though. Fortunately, there were witnesses to this debacle, the three I was riding with and someone else who had managed to catch up to us. Good times though. When I came out of the trails all covered in mud I looked like some sort of war hero.

Since the last time we spoke (other then lamenting about the demise of my site), a lot has happened. So I guess I’ll pick up where I left off . . . a 115 degree day in the middle of the damn desert . . .

The balance of Sunday (the 9th) was spent working on my conference paper as well as attending the welcoming reception. On Monday, I attended some talks but again I was still working on the paper and the presentation. Tuesday came and the highlight of the day was this Nuclear Thermal Propulsion session I attended. I feel sorry for those guys, they have some amazing technology that works perfectly but the political climate and unfounded fear of nuclear things has put them in a holding pattern since the sixties. Unfortunately, they take out their frustrations on each other as was evident when I darkened the doorway only to find a few people in the audience about to throw down over the feasibility of using bi-modal reactors. Bi-modal meaning reactors that are used both for traditional electrical energy generation as well as some super scary propulsion technique involving passing hydrogen directly through the reactor core which heats the ever living hell out of it causing it to expand and if you shove it through a nozzle you get thrust. Most of the “discussion” was well over my head, but it was fascinating to watch some of the smartest people on earth speak there mind about a subject they are passionately involved in. Luckily, the moderator was able to keep things civil (despite throwing some jabs in himself) so it all ended well.

So Wednesday was my day to go. I made the unfortunate mistake of hanging out with Brad, his old advisor and a bunch of people I email in industry but never really get to talk to. We had a great time that night, but man was I a hurting unit in the morning. My talk went pretty well despite me getting confused as to which was the business end of the laser pointer I was using. It was pretty well attended as well, I made a quick head count while I was talking and I’d estimate that between 50 and 70 people were there. The audience also asked some great questions and I managed to respond relatively coherently.

Anyway, onto the goods. The first one is the paper that I actually wrote. It covers what has been publicly made available concerning the progress I’ve made on the bismuth Hall thruster.

Massey, D.R., King, L.B., Makela, J.M., “Progress on the Development of a Direct Evaporation Bismuth Hall Thruster”, AIAA-2005-4232, 41st Joint Propulsion Conference, Tucson, AZ. [PDF]

This next one I’m just co-author on mainly because I was present during most of the testing saying such things as . . . “give it more current”, or “I think we need more power”.

Makela, J.M., King, L.B., Massey, D.R., Fossum, E.C., “Development and Testing of a Prototype Bismuth Cathode for Hall Thrusters”, AIAA-2005-4236, 41st Joint Propulsion Conference, Tucson, AZ. [PDF]

Alright . . . after two weeks of being effectively offline, I’ve managed to settle into my new provider. First, I should apologize to the people who know me in real life since with out the internet to whine to, I’ve had little recourse but to complain directly to them. At the same time, I’ve sort of enjoyed the bit of privacy I’ve gained by not being able to spill my guts at any particular instant but I sort of miss the chance to step up to the podium. If you were “lucky” enough to catch the site in static mode then you caught my likening changing hosting services to having a heart transplant with really kick ass anti-rejection drugs: you spend a few weeks recovering after being torn down to your core, but after that the grass is green again and life continues. I’m sort of still in recovery mode I guess, but since I can finally access my DB’s in read/write mode, posts will continue. However, this news arrives a bit to close to bedtime, so I shall retire for the evening.

Well, I made it down to Tucson. It is hot (100+), but everyone was right about the dry heat not making you want to hurt yourself. Since this was just a quick update to avoid working on my paper, I better leave it at that. But let me just say these $2.50 margaritas by the pool are great.

Update: Sunday 7-10
Christie and her husband Ryan drove down from Flagestaff last night to hang out. We had a great time but sleep depervation sort of caught up with all of us so it was an early night.

Well, testing is done and I?m now in paper writing mode. This one is much easier to write then my last one but it is still a pain in the butt. Anyway, while the thruster was cooling down this afternoon I went mountain biking with some friends up at the Tech Trails. For those who didn?t go to MTU, the Tech Trails are contained with in the 550 acre recreational forest on campus. Having biked there today, I now understand why people who go up there sometimes return all mangled and bloody. That being said, I absolutely need to get a brain bucket before I go again. I only hit one tree, but there were plenty of other close calls. Here’s some pics other people have taken out there. Some more here too.

I am totally exhausted though. I kayaked for about 4.5 hours yesterday and then 2 hours on the bike today plus a thruster test . . . I?m going to bed for tomorrow is all about writing and packing.

My comp book (basically my research journal) is notorious for having just random crap written in it so I figured I?d share some of the stuff from the last 24 hours. If you can make out that chicken scratch it tells the sordid tale of experimental work. Ok, who am I kidding, the test failed because of something stupid so rather then restarting at 7pm, I went out and celebrated the fourth. Oh, and I bought a bike too. Yeah, it has been a long couple of days. In the end though, I got exactly what I needed out of the lab test and am now writing my conference paper.

So back to this bike, I?ve been looking to buy one for last few months but I didn?t want a pile of crap that my inner athlete would hate. So last night out of the blue I asked some of the people I was hanging out with and low and behold, someone needed to offload their bike bad. Since I know basically nothing about mountain bikes, I sort of asked around and the general consensus was the fork on the bike was worth what I paid for the whole thing.

Hah hah it worked again (the bismuth hall thruster). This time I ran for about 45 minutes before running out of bismuth. My metal feed tube heater ate it before I even got all the way to vacuum rendering my ?gas tank? a lump of frozen metal, but I had enough in the lines to run for . . . . oh . . . about 45 minutes. In any case, I learned a ton about the operation of this tempest which hopefully tomorrow I put to good use. I suppose you want pictures now. Well, since as of 7:30 this evening I was 0 for 4 for the week so the camera crew (Eric) wasn?t likely to hang around. Plus, since I?m the only one in the lab, I had way too many things to watch to get a decent picture myself. Perhaps tomorrow. The really neat part is that the thruster is so damn hot now, I can?t possibly hope to touch it until mid morning leaving me with a free night. Better yet, Jason is back in town tonight for his final weekend before his permanent move to NH. Dog House / Bleachers here I come!

Update: 11:07pm
Ok, so I wasn?t totally honest. I did take a video of the thruster running only on bismuth. Sorry if it has the Blair Witch Project thing going on, but I didn?t want to leave the controls unattended for long. Anyway, from the annals of the media gallery: Bi Hall Thruster Take II [2.51 MB DivX]

In case you are wondering, that off button is for the xenon anode flow, but as you can see it was already set to zero. But I figured I may as well and turn it off for posterity?s sake. Other crazy things in the video: the discharge power supplies, the in-tank video camera and of course a shot looking through the window. Now if I can only get this stupid grin off my face.