Hah, finally victory yet again!! After a torturous seven or so weeks the thruster finally ran on just on bismuth again. Trouble is though, my flight for Princeton leaves in about 60 hours leaving very little time to get some good numbers. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try though. Anyway, word to the wise: if you are going to be getting something really damn hot, make sure you take a quick look at the work function of what material you’re using because it could have far reaching implications.

I can’t wait until November 6th for that is when I get my life back. It has been a perilous journey these past 5 weeks and despite having learned much, I have little to show other then some self induced guilt when I call it at day and leave the lab early (aka 8pm). Then again, Rome wasn’t built in a day either so I’ll take heart in that sentiment. Tomorrow marks the commencement of the reporting phase of these desperate times I would call hell week, but when it has drawn out as long as it has been, a week passes as quickly as a day seemed to just a few short months ago. Although I told while discussing tank scheduling with Emily that I could taste the blood of burnout in my mouth again. I ran 4 thruster tests during the realm of what could be called “today” None of which resulted in any sort of meaningful forward progress. Just the same usual process dependent failures and oversights resulting in molten metal shooting all over hell. In my own defense though, I sometimes can’t even keep straight what problem I’m trying to fix when I open the tank up because I’ve stood there in the dim light of the vacuum chamber staring at the malfunctioning device too many times to discern what I’m after beyond a course expression of “make it work”. Luckily though, I write stuff down. Where am I headed with this? No idea. I’m not depressed or anything, just sort of frustrated by the fact I had this technology working in July and have been striking out since but not because of some fundamental disconnect but rather because I’m paying the proverbial toll to Murphy’s Law. So I’ll leave you with the only picture that turned out today – and that being a piece of either Boron Nitride or Alumina Silicate ceramic being ejected from the discharge chamber. I haven’t done the math yet, but gauging by how far that managed to move during a single frame, it was certainly hauling ass.

Like most pseudo-emo/hippie people my age, life is sort of defined by a soundtrack (hence the huge proliferation of I-Pods etc). Over the last year I came across a huge variety of music mainly from people I roll with. From this group has arisen an amazing variety of music. Most recently though, I was invited (thanks Dalf and Bunny) to a private “organization” which helps me find some amazing music from sources and countries that were previously inaccessible via mainstream conduits. This organization has about 40,000 members world wide but the roots are primarily across the pond in Europe so I’m totally stoked to be a member now. So much good underground stuff rises out of there that goes un-noticed it is a shame. The only casualties of this endeavor will be the fellow residents of B007C (aka the Oh’ 7 C – the real O C) since all the stuff I get isn’t great. In fact, some of it sucks completely. But there are those few songs, that make it all worth it.

Anyway, the flavor of the night is Modest Mouse: Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset. Which probably applied to me last year when I was hating my life, but I still like it now nonetheles.

Modest Mouse: Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset
Oh noose tied myself in, tied myself too tight
Looking kind of anxious in your cross armed stance
Like a bad tempered prom queen at a homecoming dance
And I claim I’m not excited with my life anymore
So I blame this town, this job, these friends
The truth is it’s myself
And I’m trying to understand myself
And pinpoint where I am
By the time I get things figured out
I’ve change the whole damn plan
Oh noose tied myself in, tied myself too tight
Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that i’ll probably regret soon
I’ve changed my mind so much I can’t even trust it
My mind changed me so much I can’t even trust myself

I hate homework. I really do. I had to put off a string of thruster tests so I can sit down at my desk and use stupid math tricks to do derivations of equations that are best explained verbally since they are too complicated to visualize mathematically (like a derivative inside of a trig function). So that is beyond annoying because my talk in Ann Arbor this weekend will be directly affected by what I learn from now until Friday at about 10 am when we leave. And I’m stuck shuffling the Greek alphabet around.

On a brighter note, I think I did manage to find the smoking gun on the thruster wasn’t working right. I’ll spare you the details but needless to say I won’t be sandblasting things any more since I spent an appreciable amount of time un-sandblasting parts today and yesterday. However, if the math is even semi-correct (some pretty wild estimations in there), then the problem is solved. I’m running tomorrow as soon as I get this damn homework in and get done with my classes.

So I usually don’t like posting pictures of my face much less my body owing to the strange nature of the stalkers on the internet. However, this summer has been good to me, as has the early part of the fall so I’ll make one exception which isn’t too much of a stretch since this is my new facebook picture.

Anyway, in follow up to the last post, I was on the right track, but I’m still coming up short. By the same token though, I have absolutely no problem saying I’m have the most robust research Hall thruster on Earth. I’m certain no on does the terrible things I do to my thruster and gets away with it with a at worst a melted wire. Quote from the lab “Orange? Until it is glowing white, I don’t really care”.

So I actually spent the evening in at home cleaning up my room. It is now pretty well set and that feels great. It actually feels like a human lives here. I’m now directing my at-home efforts to finishing the turret so I can move in there as well. Regrettably though, unless the thruster starts working perfectly or I break something that has a long lead time, my presence at the house will be scarce. Oh well, I’m not harboring any kind of belief that they give those Ph.D. things away.

So this is how it really works . . . I’m now completely drunk and I think I may have found the solution to my thruster problem. I’ve been catching some hell via the Instant Message community for doing this on a Tuesday, but there is a real important aspect that usually goes unnoticed.

Let’s back up for a moment . . . I mean really, who downs a 1/2 liter of vodka while cleaning their room? Well, I do. But not because want to get out of my mind wasted or have my room clean, but rather because I know that is what this is going to take to solve my problem. Earlier today I spend a solid 3 hours estimating how heat flows through the thruster and what that means for what I’m trying to do. After a couple of pages of numbers I opted to search for the ace in the hole; I’m missing something. Actually, I do this when I need to clear the slate of fundamental assumptions I’ve made since apparently they may be wrong. It is quite analogous to the social implications of being wasted; lowered inhibitions, you do stupid things and blah blah blah, but that the same time, when the higher functioning levels of your brain are in a blender, what better time the to think about what you’re really after. And in fact, that is what I was after, an honest look at the situation. Free from whatever I was thinking before and was therefore biasing my opinions. At the end of the game I may have come to some of the same conclusions, but there was some necessary insight gained.. I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes it is necessary to reboot the whole thought process. And when you are balls deep in the fray like I am, a nap isn’t going to help; you need to momentarily suppress your higher functioning. So here’s to hoping that it works.

I sort of took yesterday off from work. I guess I came in at like 6:30 after my bike ride but that was only for like and hour and only to get a handle on today’s work. So I gutted the discharge chamber of the thruster this morning, stuck some more parts in there and bolted it back together. Since most of the set up time in a thruster test is getting it mounted in the tank, I did it all with it still bolted to the thrust stand (which moves). Just imagine a super expensive ceramic doughnut that needed to have metal carefully chipped out of it so it is sort of scary but it knows better then to mess with me at this point. So I pumped down a few hours ago and have been running since. Oh god, I just realized I’m supposed to be in class right now. Oops. Anyway, I don’t know about you guys, but I sort of hate sitting under florescent lights all day. I feel like some critter about to be dissected. So I’ve been running the last few days in low light mode, or as Brad calls it, séance mode. It is much more pleasant and is totally +20 to the sci-fi look.

You can see the nice flat line of the thruster diagnostic program running behind me. Ahhh, smooth sailing . . . now if only it would run on bismuth. Time to really crank up the heat.

Update:2:46am Fuck. I just went 0/5 for thuster tests in the last 24 hours. I suck. Dammit.

Ever wondered what my thruster diagnostic program looks like when a propellent line isolator fails? Wonder no more.

Oh yeah, that was me. In what was clearly recipe for disaster, after submitting the final draft of my conference paper last night, we decided to go out and celebrate the completion of the longest week ever. The only thing missing was a quick evaluation of the situation: between sleep depravation and lack of food, I was in no condition to go out. Should have gone to bed instead. Anyway, fast forward to 4am, we’re back at the house just hanging out and I decide to go outside and hang out on the porch. While perched on the edges of said porch, and epic internal struggle surfaced much to my detriment. My head was like “hey, we should go walk over there and check out the grass” and my feet were all like “naw dude, we’re cool here” but being the thick skulled individual I am, my head decided to proceed without my feet. Yep, I just tipped right over and ate it big time on the side walk. Eyewitnesses said “first your head hit, then your chest, then you just laid there”. There was a lot of blood and stuff but I don’t think my nose is broken and there were no deep cuts or anything. But now I’m just going to sit here and hurt. Oh yeah, the best part is we now have a one week extension now for the paper so I guess hell week isn’t over yet.