Another open letter to Adrienne Loska

Dear Adrienne,
Happy Easter. Christ is risen, etc. (Dunno if you believe in that stuff, but if you believe there's a one mile square ziggurat on the far side of the Moon, you're definitely the gullible type)

re: Your client Mike Bara, author and so-called aeronautical engineer

        Now look, Adrienne dear, this has gone a bit too far. Your client is seriously misinforming his audience. On Dark Matters internet radio, in early March, he reiterated his contention that spinning masses draw in energy from an invisible dimension. As an example, he cited the return trip of Apollo 13 from the Moon. Maintaining trajectory, he explained, required several mid-course corrections, and that was because the CM was powered down and the gyros were not spinning as they normally would be. Hence, you see, an important element of the spacecraft's propulsion was absent. He added:

"I think this was something that Von Braun snuck into the rocket equation back in the 1950s without anyone knowing."

        Dr.Derek Eunson, a working design engineer, has written that this statement is "one of the most ludicrous things I have ever heard." He added some very uncomplimentary epithets about your client the author and ersatz engineer—there's no need to repeat them here.

Your client's proposition is wrong in the following five ways:

1] Drawing in energy from "other dimensions" violates the law of conservation of energy. If that law is wrong, it's extremely hard to understand why the physical world has appeared to obey it ever since it was formulated in the 19th century.

2] It is not true that an unusual number of mid-course corrections were needed to bring Apollo 13 home. There was one at MET 105:18:28, about one third of the way home, and another small one at 137:01:48, just prior to CM/SM separation. That is one fewer than the contingency plan stated in the Press Kit, issued prior to launch (see p.42, Transearth coast)

3] Your client the playboy-engineer is evidently under the mistaken impression that energy needs to be applied continuously to a spacecraft during the transit between Earth and Moon (or vice versa). Perhaps he is thinking—erroneously—that the situation is equivalent to that of a car, a train or an aircraft (the latter of which your client claims to have designed, so he's familiar with the idea even though he has written, mistakenly, that the lift generated by an airfoil is not mathematically understood). It is not the case. A spacecraft is set on its journey by a very precisely timed and aimed impulse from its engines, lasting at most a few minutes, and from then on (with the small exception of the mid-course correction) it is under the influence of gravity only. It's perhaps not surprising that your client the error-prone author should get this wrong. His writings over the years have demonstrated his utter ignorance of the nature of both gravitation and orbital mechanics.

4] The equation normally referred to as "the rocket equation" is not the work of Wernher Von Braun, but that of the Russian scientist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. Here it is, and isn't it a sweetie?

5] It is not possible for anyone—not even Von Braun— to "sneak" terms into a well-known equation without anyone else knowing. Your client the fake engineer reiterated this fiction on Higherside Chats internet radio, and it's a very serious error. While it may be true that transfer orbits are calculated by computer rather than slide-rule now, the algorithms used by those computers are well known to a veritable army of software engineers. Since Von Braun's time two whole generations of rocket scientists have come of age and been trained. Does Mr. Bara think that their instructors would teach equations with "mystery" terms in them?

My plea to you, Adrienne, is that you tell your client to stop this nonsense.

One more thing, Adrienne...
        If your client the joke-engineer ever finishes his book Ancient Aliens on Mars, I wish you would persuade him that recruiting his cronies to write meaningless five-star Amazon reviews is unprofessional. I realize that something similar is a fairly normal feature of book promotion these days, but the way it is done is to persuade people to a) actually read the book, and b) write something coherent and persuasive. A little prevarication has come to be accepted, I guess.

        There is no better example of your client's extravagant abuse of this tactic than a "review" of The Choice posted on 3rd December last year by one "B. Hopper asdf1239". This person wrote as follows:

great value. i like it a lot.

        Amazon did not accept this as a review, since it fell short of the minimum required length. B. Hopper, a loyal buddy of your client the unintentionally comic author, revised it to say:

great value. i like it a lot. adding more words yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes  

        That's his "review." Adrienne, I put it to you that this takes unprofessionalism to new heights.

Regards, expat

New calculations even more fatal to Hoagland's latest crackpot theory (Updated 8/29)

The following post to the "Dark Mission" blog was censored today. Bear in mind that, on his horrible web site, Hoagland seeks to prove that the 600 ft/sec velocity surplus at orbit insertion of Explorer 1 was too great to be explained by over-performance of the solid rocket stages. In the equations, g is the acceleration due to gravity in ft/sec², I_sp is the specific impulse of the stage in seconds, and W_i is the initial mass of the stage plus its fuel and whatever else it is carrying. dV is the increase in velocity provided by the stage.

Somebody with more skill at rocket-science than me has provided an even more ferocious condemnation of Richard Hoagland's faulty mathematics in attempting to calculate the velocity addition of Stages 2,3 and 4 of Explorer 1.

He points out that, using Hoagland's notation, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation is normally written as:

dV = g x I_sp x ln(W_i/W_f)

where W_f is the final mass at burnout (but before discarding the burnt-out stage)

He then points out that it's not permissible to aggregate the stages and evaluate the equation once. You are obliged to take it stage by stage, and this is his result:

STAGE 2
----------
W_i = 1020+280+80
        = 1380
W_f = 1380 - 530 (weight of the burned fuel)
        = 850

dV = 32.2 x 220 x ln(1380/850)
        = 7084 x 0.482
        = 3,414 ft/sec

STAGE 3
------------
W_i = 280+80
        = 360
W_f = 360 - 140 (weight of the burned fuel)
        = 220

dV = 32.2 x 235 x ln(360/220)
        = 7567 x 0.492
        = 3,723 ft/sec

STAGE 4
-----------
W_i = 80
W_f = 80 - 48.5 (weight of the burned fuel)
        = 31.5

dV = 32.2 x 235 x ln(80/31.5)
        = 7567 x 0.932
        = 7,052 ft/sec

TOTAL delta-V
---------------------
3414 + 3723 + 7052 = 14,189 ft/sec

An additional 600 ft/sec represents 4.2% over-performance.

There is no need to resort to an anti-gravity field to account for this. Hoagland's entire thesis is therefore falsified. Cheers.

There's another, possibly simpler, way of looking at this. Since the parameters of the elliptical orbit are precisely known, the orbit velocity can be calculated from a reliable equation. Deduct the burnout velocity of the first stage -- also known, but with less precision -- and what's left is the dV of the solid upper stages. Calculations done this way were offered to the "Dark Mission" blog, but blocked. Hoagland and Bara accept nothing that challenges their ridiculous and misguided ideas.

Richard Hoagland writes that the solid upper stages of the Juno 1 rocket that launched Explorer 1 only contributed 3,520 ft/sec of the total orbital injection velocity. Well, let's see now...

DATA:
Planned orbit 220 x 1,000 miles (352 x 1,600 kM)
Actual orbit 223 x 1,592 miles (357 x 2,547 kM)
Radius of Earth 6,375 kM
Gravitational constant, µ, of Earth 398,660 kM³/s²
Cut-off velocity of Jupiter-C rocket (Juno's liquid first stage) 9,020 mph = 13,229 ft/sec [1]

CALCULATION:
semi-major axis of actual orbit, L_smaj, (357+6375+6375+2547)/2 = 7827 kM
distance from center of Earth to orbit point, R, 6375+357 = 6732 kM

velocity at orbit injection, V_orb = √(µ(2/R - 1/L_smaj)) [2]
2/R - 1/L_smaj = 0.000169
V_orb = √67.493 = 8.215 kM/sec = 27,111 ft/sec (actually only 2.5% greater than planned)
less the velocity achieved by the first stage: 13,229 ft/sec

Ladies and gentlemen, get out your calculators! In about 3 seonds you will falsify Hoagland's entire theory.

[1] http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/jupiter.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_velocity

There's a small discrepancy between the two calculations, to be sure -- due to uncertainty about the velocity at first-stage burnout, perhaps.

Other factors that would be considered in a really accurate calculation:
* Correction to the value of g as the rocket ascends away from Earth -- a small positive vertical increment
* Boost given by rotation of Earth -- separately calculated as 1100 ft/sec horizontal
* Gravity drag -- perhaps negative 1000 ft/sec vertical

However, the discrepancy is nothing to compare with the difference between 14,000 and 3,520.

Hoagland's new crackpot theory defeated by his lousy math

The latest buffoonery from Richard Hoagland is a treatise in three laborious parts on an anti-gravity field allegedly discovered at the launch of Explorer 1 fifty years ago, and then kept secret until now. Mike Bara posted on the topic recently, somewhat lamenting the fact that, in an error-filled four-hour marathon on "Coast to Coast AM", Hoagland had pre-empted their plan to reveal this deep-dark-secret in a future edition of "Dark Mission". My response was censored and not permitted to appear:

>>Oh well. It is truly amazing stuff. You guys' heads will explode.<<

Explode with laughter, possibly. Hardly for Hoagland's logic or for his mathematical skill.

Turning first to his logic, what he alleges happened to the Explorer and Vanguard series must obviously have also happened to any spin-stabilised satellite launch. Now, I don't exactly know how many spin-stabilised satellites have been launched in the last 50 years, but it's a lot. Hoagland wants us to believe that an important factor affecting the final orbit insertion velocity of these satellites remained unknown to the engineers whose responsibility it was to calculate rocket ascent profiles. Unknown because it was declared secret "at the highest levels of government".

I say.... Nonsense.

Now to the math.

The equation Hoagland presents for deriving dV, the velocity added to the rocket by stages 2,3,4, in ft/sec, is as follows:

dV = -g*ISP*ln(1- W_p/W_i)

where

g = accel. due to gravity (ft sec^-2)
ISP = specific impulse (sec)
W_p = weight of propellant burnt (lb)
W_i = initial weight of vehicle (lb)

He then inserts figures to get:

dV = -32.2 x 228 x (662lb/1380lb) = 3520 ft/sec

If I were his mathematics tutor, I'd give him an F for that.
By his own figures, from the Smithsonian, total weight of the three stages = 1020 + 280 + 80 = 1380, correct
Empty weight = 490 + 140 + 31.5 = 661.5
Therefore weight of propellant burnt = 1380 - 661.5 = 718.5, NOT 662.

If we accept his equation, the value of dV is 5389, not 3520. Hoagland appears to have forgotten to derive the natural logarithm.
[calculations re-done correctly in aug 25th post on this blog]

Maybe you guys should think again about using this garbage in a future edition of "Dark Mission".

If Hoagland/Bara do decide to publish this stuff, despite the elementary mathematical errors, it's a safe bet the publisher, Adam Parfrey, won't notice. He doesn't understand simple everyday logic, certainly not complicated stuff like arithmetic.

In his radio appearance Hoagland triumphantly declared victory over his critics, noting that none of them has e-mailed messages along the lines of "Hoagland Blows It Again". Richard, you may now eat them words.