This is a short post, but useful. We had a moaning toilet. This was “our two-mode commode” described previously, but the same thing happens with one-mode commodes too. I cured it. At issue, the toilet moaned or wailed after it was flushed. Either the toilet was possessed by a tormented soul, as sometimes happens, or the moan was caused by a vibration in the fill diaphragm. That was the case here.
It’s usually toilets in social science university buildings that get inhabited by tormented souls, as these are typically social scientists who are forced to come back this way as punishment for passing themselves off as real scientists. Sometimes they show up making the heating pipes rattle and clang. You can cure this by bringing in a plumber or heating professional to encourage the soul to repent. The heating professional then adjusts some things and the soul moves on. In our case, a toilet in a private home, it required no exorcism, just an adjustment of the flow.
In our case, it became clear that the fill valve had become partially blocked resulting in a high flow against the diaphragm. This diaphragm, shown below, is in the valve that gets closed when the float in the toilet tank rises. At high flows the diaphragm begins to vibrate and moan, sounding just like a possessed toilet.
toilet diaphragm
For most toilets, replacing this diaphragm is an easy repair: buy a new diaphragm for about $4, (and typically, also a new flapper — it’s a good idea to change the flapper every 4-6 years), remove the old diaphragm. It’s behind a thumb-nut, typically, and do the necessary exchange. Remember, thumbnuts are better than others. Sorry to say, our toilet has a new-fangled float mechanism where the diaphragm is hidden inside, not easily replaced. A normal thing to do is to replace the float mechanism, but those cost $30 or more, and take a fair amount of work. Instead, I choose to reduce the flow speed of the water by partially closing the inlet valve sending fill water to the commode. It now fills slightly slower than before, but since there is less flow, there is no longer any audible vibration. A quick fix at zero cost.
If that hadn’t worked, I’d have called in the exorcist, an expensive proposition. You have to pay your the exorcist. If you don’t, you get repossessed.
Jeff Bezos’s “Blue Alchemist” program recently got $25M from NASA to develop moon-based solar cell manufacturing on earth. See article here. The idea sort of makes sense to me: instead of transporting solar cells to the moon from earth, why not make them on the moon in bulk. Even light solar cells would weigh about 1kg/kW, making cells on the moon would reduce the effective weight per kW by a factor of 100 it is predicted, see figure. Given a need for megawatts of power, and the high cost to transport things to the moon, $1M/kg currently, this may make sense for the not super-distant future. Moon-made solar cells could reduce the cost per kW on the moon from $1million currently, to a mere $10,000/kW, cheap by moon prices, though super expensive by earth standards.
Elon Musk, perhaps out of envy or long-range vision, wants to go far further. He” recently’s posted’s proposed, at length a plan to launch moon-made solar cells into space along wit moon-made AI chips, with all this done to power AI centers in space, orbiting the earth or moon, see him discuss it here. He notes that “It’s always sunny in space”, so this electricity should be cheap. I don’t consider even moon-solar at $10,000/kW cheap, and power from these moon-launched cells will be pricer yet.
The reason all this makes sense to Musk is that he avoids the disruptions of solar power that come at night-time, and he avoids regulatory boards. He argues that there is no real alternative! given that power on earth is too hard and expensive, and complains that regulators oppose new power plants. I suspect there are some over-regulations, but some regulations are necessary, and I doubt he’ll avoid by going to space. As for the high cost of power, it’s really cheap in China, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran…Just look att he figure below showing the electric cost of bitcoin harvesting around the world. China runs on nuclear power or coal, delivering large-scale electricity at ~ 2¢/kWh. You can make power at a similar cost if you build your own plant, many of the bit-coin folks operate that way. It’s not exactly cheap, but a known technology, and cheaper than space solar amortized to less than 50 years.
AI chip-making is hard to do, even on earth, requiring water, chemicals, equipment and technical attention. Most companies can’t do it; China has barely cracked the technology. Doing it on the moon adds unnecessary difficulties: water and chemicals scarce, skilled servicing labor is hard to find. At some point, the moon and Mars community will want to make AI in space, but before that, they’ll want to make simpler things, like rice cookers. Until we have a fairly large community on the moon, why now make AI chips on earth. If he’s looking for practice, Musk could manufacture in a place that’s inhospitable, but more accessible than the moon: Greenland or Antarctica or the top of Everest. These locations are wam compared to the moon, and they have air and water, and I suspect electricity on Everest is cheaper than on the moon.
Operating AI centers in space is not particularly attractive, by the way. Chips have a tendency to flake-out in space because of cosmic radiation and stronger electromagnetic fields (EM). For this to work at all, chips have to be built specially robust, with correction software that must be particularly active, and you must shield everything from EM to a much greater extent than on earth.
I suspect the reason Musk wants to manufacture AI in space, and to operate there, is to over-shadow Bezos’s solar cell factory, and show off his own (Tesla) technology. Also to have a use for his Starships lifting heavy complicated things. It’s not a plan I would back.
I’ve written a fair amount about sewage over the years, including the benefits of small dams, and problems of combined sewers, but I thought I’d write here about something really fundamental: sewage has two components, poop and rain, and they should be kept separate. The poop and related liquids are known as sanitary sewage. Ideally it is the treated, saved and used as fertilizer. Rain, known as storm sewage, needs to go to the rivers at a controlled speed, unmixed with sanitary sewage. Sorry to say, in many counties, mine included, the two are mixed following every rain, costing us unnecessary money, and making swimming unsafe, and boating (sometimes) unpleasant.
Our system is not quite mixed, but is semi-separate. It only mixes in a “big” rain, more than 1/2″, something that happens once per month, on average. The Pipes are semi-connected as shown below.
Combined sewer system, like in our county, Oakland MI. We use little dams in the pipe system to semi-separate the flows. Here, showing a rain-induced overflow of combined sewage, a CSO.
The pipes of a sanitary sewage system can be relatively small in diameter as this flow is continuous, but never that large. The cost of treatment is high, per gallon though. Some of this cost can be recovered in fertilizer value.
Stormwater flow, by contrast, requires big pipes because the flow, while episodic and be 10,000 more than the sanitary flow. A city can go for weeks without storm flow as there’re is no rain. A storm will then drop more water in an hour than all the sanitary sewage of the last few weeks. You need large diameter stormwater pipes, and you typically want retention basins so that even these pipes are not overwhelmed, and to provide a little settling. The pipes should direct storm water to the nearest river. In our county we mixed the two for historical reasons. This adds tremendously to the cost of sewage treatment, and we find we regularly overwhelm the treatment facility. When this happens, as shown above, sanitary sewage is flushed into the riveras I described ten years ago in a post focussed on pollution from combined sewers. If the rains are really heavy, they back up “sanitary” sewage into basements as well. More commonly, once or twice a month where I live, we just pollute the river. Several cities with combined sewers have separated them recently. Paris, for example, ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
To get an idea of the relative size of the flows in our county, note that Oakland county is a square 30 miles by 30 miles. That’s 900 square miles, or 25.1 billion square feet. In th4e event of a, not uncommon, 2″ rain on this area, we must deal with 4.2 billion cubic feet of water or 33 billion gallons. Some of this absorbs into the ground, but much of it runs goes to pipes heading to the rivers. Ideally we retain some of it above ground for an hour or more because the pipes can’t handle this flow. Even with retention, our rivers rise some 10 feet typically and begin to flow at many miles per hour after a storm. They can be seen carrying trees along, and massively eroding the soil, even in areas that were prepared appropriately.
A home based approach to sewage. Many homes near me have this setup — with internal plumbing and a septic field for sewage treatment. Often, these homes are near a stream that flows at least temporarily.
Sanitary sewage flows are far less voluminous. Our county has roughly 1 million people who flush about 100 million gallons per day, generally sending this to our sanitary sewage treatment plants. That averages a mere 4 million gallons per hour, or 500,000 cubic feet. That’s roughly 8000 times less flow than the storm flow. If any significant fraction of the rainwater goes into our sanitary system, it will quickly overwhelm it and back up into our basements.
Many people try to get out of paying the high price for municipal sewage treatment by making their own small system with a septic tank an a septic field. I think this is a great idea, a benefit for them and the county. I will be happy to direct them to appropriate educational materials so that home waste flows to the septic tank where anaerobic bacteria break things down, it should then flow to a septic field that filters the nutrients and allows aerobic bacteria to break things down further. Nutrients in the sewage helps whatever you plant and, as we say, “the grass is always greenest over the septic tank.” As for the county on the whole, I wish we got real value from the fertilizer, as Milwaukee does, and wish we’d separate the sewers.
Among the products our company sells is a non-toxic chelating agent, EDDS (ethylenediamine-disuccinic acid), typically sold as a purified salt in ammonia solution, see here. The main use of EDDS is to stabilize heavy metal ions in solution. We use it, for example, as an aide in electroless Palladium coating, to stabilize palladium ions, helping us produce a smaller grain, more continuous coat. The structure, shown below, is similar to that of EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid), and the behavior is similar too. EDDS is more stabilizing in the presence of the other ions and we like that it is non-toxic.
Structure of EDDS, it binds metals by way of four OH groups. While each binding is weak, the total is strong.
The popular literature use for chelating agents like this is as a treatment for heavy metal poisoning by lead, arsenic, cadmium, nickel or copper. The TV series “House” featured patients with all these metal-poisoning problems, problems. Chelation treatment was important in Flint Michigan, 2015 when thousands got low-level lead poisoning and legionaries disease after the water department put insufficient phosphate and hypochlorite into the water and lead leached from pipes. Typically, EDTA is used for humans here, while EDDS is used by farmers and ranchers to treat animals. EDDS is less toxic, and removes fewer essential light minerals: magnesium, calcium, and zinc, so I’d think it would be better for humans too.
Effect of 300ppm SX-E in DI water, compared to standard DI water and acid wash. The biggest difference is with copper.
Our EDDS has been used to make cleaning solutions for silicon wafers, Sunsonix SXE, for example. Sunsonix SXE behaves as a soap, removing Fe, Cr, Ni, and Cu from solar cells, see reproduced figures at right. These metals will diffuse into surface of a silicon wafer, forming defects that absorb light and decrease solar cell performance by an average of 0.28%, see below.
Solar cell efficiency improvement with EDDS washing from a baseline of 16%. Occasionally 1.65% improvement was seen, but 0.28% on average
This is, based on a baseline efficiency of 16%. For more details see “Surface Contamination Removal from Si PV Substrates Using a Biodegradable Chelating Agent and Detection of Cleaning Endpoints Using UV/VIS Spectroscopy” ECS Transactions, 41 (5) 295-302 (2011). See also this article in Wikipedia.
This is the normal treatment regime for solar cells
At a different pH, EDDS and EDTH are used in remediation of metal-contaminated soils, see here. This can be done ex-situ, with the soil taken out to an external site and then washed. Alternately, for less contaminated soils, remediation can be done in-situ with the chelating wash applied to the soil. Plants, like vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides) then extract the heavy metals, concentrating them in their leaves. EDDS is more suitable for this as it is biodegradable and shows a high extraction efficiency in mineral rich soils, see here for comparison to EDTA.
Moving to another area of extraction. It seems that EDDS or EDTA solutions can be used to profitably extract rare earth metals, perhaps sending them to plants before final concentration. A standard methods of rare earth extraction uses chlorine and high temperatures. Alternate methods use ion-exchange extraction of liquid-liquid extraction. I suspect that chelation treatment might turn out to be more effective and cheaper. The price of rare earths has risen in recent years as China restricts sales so that the need for a new source has become a national priority.
Donald Trump has announced his intent to build at least two battleships, the first built for our navy since the USS Missouri, 1944. The press has been largely negative on this, claiming that these ships are obsolete already, and will be more-so when they are completed — assuming they are completed. My sense is these are useful, overdue really, and I’d like to explain why.
The George Washington Carrier with nine surface support ships.
The centerpiece of America’s military power lies in our aircraft carrier groups, currently. We have 11 carriers in service: two modern, Ford class, and nine older, Nimitz class. Each of these weighs 100,000 tons, is 1100 feet long, and carries some 6000 men and women, 3200 navy crew, another 2500 in the air wing, and perhaps 300 support staff of doctors, nurses, and marines. Because they are vulnerable, each carrier travels in a group with six to ten other ships carrying an additional 3000 people, see photo. Without the support ships a carrier is deemed to be too vulnerable for use. Even with the support ships, Swedish and French submarines successfully “sank” U.S. carriers during exercises in 2005 and 2015.
The support ships are typically slower than the carrier and difficult to maintain. Many are old with relatively short range. Our carriers can go around the world, 30000 miles, traveling at 30+ knots, but the main support ships, Arleigh Burke destroyers, 9000 tons, 350 crew, have a range of only 4,400 nmi at a slower, 20 knots. They require regular refuelings for any major mission, like patrolling the Caribbean. Still, they’re “cheap,” about $2.5B each, capable, and work relatively well. We have some 75 in service, built since 1991, with more on order.
We also have nuclear missile submarines, but these are blunt instruments of policy, not suited to most navy missions, like keeping open shipping lanes in the Red Sea or stopping ISIS, or for blockading Venezuela. The mostly hold weapons of last resort.
The navy has recognized the need for a larger support ship for better carrier protection and more flexible roles, a cruiser likely, with good range and weapons, and with enough speed to keep up with a carrier crossing the Pacific. We’ve built many cruisers over the years, but these are old. Our latest are the Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruisers built from 1980 onward. They have good speed, 32.5kn, and good range, 6000nm, but are well past their retirement date, and break down a lot. Only 7 are still in service.
The USS Zumwalt at sea. Trump said it was “Ugly as F.”
The supposed replacement, was a cruiser-size, stealth ship, the Zumwalt destroyer, 17,000 tons and 600 feet long. It is reasonably fast, 33.5kn, and carries a small crew, <100. We’ve managed to build three of these since 2008, but have cancelled the project due to operational problems and costs that rose to $8B per ship. Zumwalts have inward-sloped sides that deflect radar, but they become unstable in turns. Its main weapons are expensive, too: Aegis missiles and CPS hypersonics costing $28-$50 million each. That’s uneconomical compared to French Aster missiles, Mach 3, 80 mile range, $1.1 million. Originally, Zumwalt destroyers carried a rail gun, but it required so much power that you could not move the ship and fire at the same time. The rail guns were eventually replaced by conventional 5″ cannon with a 24 mile range. The three Zumwalts we have are hardly used today, and no more are on order. Something cheaper was needed at least for support, and that was supposed to be the Constellation Frigate, approved by Trump in 2017.
A frigate is smaller than a cruiser, in this case about half the weight. The Constellation was a proven Italian design, 492 feet long and only 7,291 tons. It had good speed, 26 kn, good range, 6000 nm at 16kn, and cost only $950 million, at least when built in Europe. The contract was awarded to Fincantieri Marinette Marine (FMM) of Marinette Wisconsin, the US division of the Italian company. What could go wrong? The problem was that the navy kept adding capabilities and weight. As of November 2025, eight years on, the weight had increased by 700 tons, the cost to $9 B for two, and no design has been finalized. The first Constellation frigate is only 12% built! Trump has not quite cancelled the program, but has reduced the order to two from the original eight.
Trump-class battleship, as envisioned, with a rail-gun, lasers and two, conventional 5″ cannon.
And that brings us to the current, Trump class battleship, shown above. It’s long, 840-880 feet, and heavy, 39,000 tons, or 2.5 times the weight of the cruiser-sized, Zumwalt. As was intended for the Zumwalt, the offensive weapons are missiles and a rail gun, 32 MJ, but now there is enough power run the ship and fire the weapon. Japanese versions of the rail gun have launched cheap shells at hypersonic speeds, ~5000 mph (hypersonic) at a distance of over 100 miles and a fire-rate of ~one per second. The shells cost only $85,000 each, a bargain compared to hypersonic missiles.
For defense, these battleships are to carry two, 300kW, Helios lasers, similar to Israel’s “Iron beam,” but 3 times as powerful. They are augmented by smaller lasers, by four, 30 mm chain guns (Gatling guns), and two, 5″ conventional navy guns of 24 mile range. Engines are estimated to be two gas turbines, perhaps 50MW each of for acceleration and to power the weapons, plus ~100 MW in diesel power for cruising at good speed and mpg. I thus estimate a total of ~200 MW, about as much as on a carrier. There is plentiful space for missiles and fuel, so it should provide some resupply of support ships. The crew size is bigger than on the Ticonderoga, 600 to 800, but far less than on a carrier, and the look is impressive. A Trump goal is that it should be an attractive, command ship. Still, there are objections.
A main complaint is vulnerability as discussed here, the claim is these ships are “bomb magnets,” not stealthy, nor as heavily armored as the Iowas. Detractors claim that lasers and chain guns are insufficient for defense from drone swarm attacks. They note that the Bismarck, Yamamoto, and Arizona have been sunk, typically by air attack. What the detractors don’t mention is that it took a lot of bombs and torpedos to sink these battleships nor that these battleships will travel with support ships, while the Bismarck travelled alone.
Detractors also question the rail gun. Can it shoot down an airplane? can it sink a ship? The tests I’ve seen suggest that the rail gun can take out an airplane, but that it can not sink a ship, at least not with one shot. That still needs a missile, but the battleship does have missiles. The gun seems appropriate for shore bombardment too, even against hardened targets, and for dissuading actions by a Chinese navy that is already bigger than ours. As for the defense against drones, the battleship is to have high-powered lasers that have been shown to stop drones and cruise missiles at a cost of only ~$10 per shot. That’s nothing compared to a harpoon missile ($1.4 million each) or Aegis ($28 million). These are great weapons, and I don’t see a smaller ship being able to power them. Also it’s nice to have extra room for expansion — like adding a nuclear reactor.
The time-line is what worries me most. These will take ten years at least. Until then, we will have to rely on our short-range Arleigh Burkes that did not have the firepower to bombard the Houthis effectively on land, nor effectively defend US shipping in the Red Sea. Those ships had to use million-dollar missiles to shoot down $20,000 drones. I expect us to really need the battleships, even if it takes us ten years to get one.
Robert Buxbaum, January 5, 2026. As a totally side issue: some claim this isn’t a battleship. It carries only one gun, admittedly a powerful gun. I half agree, you need at least two big guns to be a battleship, IMHO.
Generally, when you make hydrogen, you make wet hydrogen, hydrogen contaminated with water. Usually you want to dry the hydrogen before you use it or compress it. if you compress the hydrogen for transport or storage without drying it, the water will condense and perhaps freeze, clogging valves and fittings.
Water contamination of hydrogen is also a problem for brazing. Hydrogen is a good, cover gas for brazing because of its high heat transfer properties and its reducing chemistry. When the hydrogen is contaminated with water vapor it is unstable for use with stainless steel and similar metals as it will cause oxidation of the surface, resulting in a grey-green surface, and preventing good brazing. Some other contaminates can be problems, e.g. CO2 but water is the main problem in brazing environments.
One more example where drying hydrogen is important, is for its use in high altitude balloons. At high altitudes, water can condense, changing the lift characteristics, and perhaps freezing and puncturing the balloon. For all these applications, I suggest use of a silicone polymeric membrane operated as dryers, using a counter current flow as shown below. We sell these at REB Research, see here. These membranes also remove CO2, silanes, and H2S.
The dryer shown in the figure above has two extraction modules in series. for small flows, one module will suffice. As shown, wet hydrogen enters at left, typically at a slightly elevated pressure, 2-4 atm. The bleed stream must be at lower pressure. One atm will work for the bleed stream, but for efficient removal of the water and CO2, you will want mild vacuum, perhaps 1/3 atm. A small amount of dry hydrogen should be directed into the sweep stream as shown for efficient impurity removal. The amount directed to the bleed flow is large determined by the ratio of pressures and by the selectivity of the membrane. At a pressure ratio of ten, for example, you can show that you need at least a leaving bleed flow of 10% of the H2 to remove all the water in the hydrogen, leaving it perfectly dry. In practice, you’ll want a larger exit bleed flow, perhaps 15%, suggesting that you want a recycle stream of ~5% of the dry hydrogen. This will be joined by 10% more hydrogen that comes through the membrane modules. The membranes are 30x more selective to water than to hydrogen.
A silicone module of 0.1m2
Our silicone membranes remove CO2 too, but not with as high a selectivity. For mobile use, you might want to power the vacuum pump by a fuel cell that runs on the waste, wet hydrogen of the bleed stream.
For many applications you need to remove all the impurities, including all the nitrogen and CO2. This is true for diamond making, semiconductors, and nuclear fusion. For this, you want a metallic membrane, e.g. palladium-silver. We sell hydrogen purifiers based on palladium-silver membranes for these applications. Palladium-silver membranes remove all impurities, see why here. You still need a bleed flow, but it can be much lower than the pressure ratio because, with metallic membranes, the hydrogen goes through the membrane, and the impurities stay behind. Of course, palladium costs more than plastics. See our products at www.rebresearch.com.
Innovation is the special sauce that propels growth and allows a country to lead and prosper. The current Nobel prize believe that innovation powered the Industrial Revolution, causing England to become rich and powerful, while other nations remained poor, weak, and stagnant. Similarly, Innovation, they believe is why 19th century Japan rose to defeat China, and propelled China’s 21st century rise. But why did they succeed when others did not. What could the leader of a country do to bring power and wealth through innovation. Improved education seems to help; all of the innovation countries have it, but it is not the whole. Some educated countries (Germany, Russia) stagnate. An open economy is nice, but it isn’t sufficient or that necessary: (look at China). That was the topic of this year’s, 2025 Nobel prize in economics to Mokyr, Howitt, and Aghion, with half going to Joel Mokyr for his insights, historical and forward looking, the other half going for economic modeling. I give below my understanding of their insights, more technical than most, but not so mathematical as to be obtuse the normal reader..
The winners hold that innovation, as during the industrial revolution, is a non-continuous contribultion caused by a particular combination of education and market opportunity, of theoretical knowledge, and practical, and that a key aspect is depreciation (destruction) of other suppliers. Let’s start by creating a simple, continuous function model for economic growth where growth = capital growth, that is dK/dt. K, Capital, is understood to be the sum of money, equipment, and labor knowledge, and t is time with dK/dt, the change in K with time modeled as equal to the savings rate, s, times economic activity, Y minus a depreciation factor, δ, times capital, K.
growth = dK/dt = sY − δ K.
Innovation, in the Howett model, is discontinuous and accumulative. It builds on itself.
For the authors, Y = GDP + x, where x is the cost of outside goods used. They then claim that Y is a non-linear function of K, where K is now considered a product of capital goods and labor K = xL and,
dY/dK = AKα + γ where 0< α <1, and where γ is the contribution of innovation and/or depreciation. The power function, as I understand it, is a mathematical way of saying there are economies of scale. The authors assume a set of interacting enterprises (countries0 so that the innovation factor, γ for one country is the depreciation factor for the other. That is, growth and destruction are connected, with growth being a function of monopoly power — control of your innovation.
According to the Nobel winners, γ is built n previous γ as shown in the digram at right. It can not be predicted as such, but requires education and monopolistic power. The inventor-manufacturer of the typewriter has a monopolistic advantage over the makers of fountain pens. Innovation thus causes depreciation, δ K as one new innovation depreciates many old processes and products. If you add enough math, you can derive formulas for GDP and GDP growth, all based on factors like A and α, that are hard to measure.
GDP = α(2α/1−α) (1-α2)A L,
Thus, GDP is proportional to Labor, L and per-capita GDP is mostly an independent function related to economies of scale and the ability to use capital and labor which is related to general country-wide culture.
The above analysis, as I understand it, is in contrast to Kensyan models, where growth is unrelated to innovation, and where destruction is bad. In these Kenysean models, growth can be created by government spending, especial spending to maintain large industries with economies of scale and by spending to promote higher education. The culture preferred here, as I understand is one that rewards risk-taking, monopoly economics, and creative destruction. Howitt, and Aghion, importantly codify all this with formulas, as presented above that (to me) provide little specific. No great guidance to the head of a country. Nor does the math make the models more true, but it makes the statements somewhat clearer. Or perhaps the only real value of the math is to make things sound more scientific see the Tom Lehrer song, Sociology.
This insight from movie script by Grham Green suggests to me that progress may not be the greatest of advantages, perhaps not even worth it.
This work seems more realistic, to me, than the Keynesian models Both models are mathematically consistent, but if Keynes’s were true, Britain might still be on top, and Zambia would be a close competitor among the richest countries on earth. Besides these new fellows seem to agree with the views of Peter Cooper, my hero. See more here.
Writing all this reminds me that the fundamental assumption that progress is good, in not necessarily true. I quote above a line that Orson Wells, as Harry Lime, ad-libbed for the movie, “The Third Man.” Lime points out that innovation goes with suffering, and claims that Switzerland had little innovation because of its stability. Perhaps then, what you really want is the stability and peace of Switzerland, along with the lack of domination and innovation. On the same note, I’ve noticed that engineering innovators often ruin themselves dining in ruin, while the peaceable, stable civil engineers live long pleasant lives of honor.
Robert Buxbaum, November 16, 2025. A note about Switzerland is that was peaceful and stable because of a strong military. As Publius Vegetius wrote, Si vis pachim para bellum (if you wish of peace, prepare for war).
The SS United States is in the process of being towed to its final resting place, on the sea floor near florida, to be a scuba-diving reef. She is the largest ocean liner to be entirely constructed in the United States and was the fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic Ocean in either direction, 36 knots or 41 mph average speed. She won the Blue Riband for this on her first voyage, in 1952, and retained that title till today. There was a faster crossing in June, 1990 by the Hoverspeed Great Britain, 36.6 knots, 42.1 mph average speed, but the Hoverspeed was a 76 meter channel catamaran, not an ocean liner.
The SS United States was half-paid for by the US government. Its purpose was fast passenger transport across the Atlantic. The government contributed because it might be used as a troop ship if needed in times of war. In terms of speed, she handily beat the luxurious British liners, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Ann, but the compromises for speed and military use made the SS United States unsuited for use as a luxury cruise ship.
Designed by William Francis Gibbs, one of the greatest ship designers, the high speed was achieved, in part, by making the ship very light. He used aluminum for the entire superstructure, the stuff above water level, making it the largest aluminum construction when built, 1951. Though larger than the Titanic, the United States is thinner and more pointy. Much lighter than the Queen Elizabeth or Queen Ann, she could go as fast backward as the Titanic could forward. The hull is doubled, with fuel stored between the layers as a protection from collisions and canon; the interior is highly compartmentalized too, to make her fairly unsinkable. This was confirmed when she survived a sea collision shortly after launch. Making the ship light on the top made the SS United States stable in wind and rough seas despite its narrow shape. There were two engine sections, divided into four engine rooms, done to increase the chances that the engines would survive an explosion or torpedo attack.
The interior design was American modern, and fire-proof, with few weighty decorations. Furnishings were fiberglass, steel or aluminum, for the most part, see picture below. The red, white, and blue stacks added to the American look. Both are used (recall that there are two engine rooms), and both have aluminum wings. These shield the deck from any sparks that might come out the stacks.
In the end, it was the crossing speed not the comfort level that doomed the SS United States. Even at a top speed of 44.1 mph, crossing the Atlantic took 3+ days. That could not compete with jet planes that travelled at 500 mph. I’ve argued that long range, “high speed” passenger trains make little sense for the same reason. Even at 100+ mph, few Americans will be willing to spend 36 hours traveling from Chicago to Seattle. Fast boats are useful, I think, but only in smaller size foreshorten trips, similar to the Hoverspeed.
5 blade propeller on display at Throg’s neck. Paired with a 4 blade propeller it reduced vibration and wear at high speed.
Also helping it reach the speeds it did, the SS United States benefitted from innovations in the engines and in the propellers. There were four engines, in two engine sections. These were modern, light weight, compact, steam turbines running at high pressures and temperatures: 975°F and 925 psi. Each turbine delivered 60,000 shaft hp to a variable-speed, geared shaft. The inboard propellers had 5 blades and the outboard (end of ship) had four. This difference in blade number was a secret, design innovation that allowed faster speed, without vibration and cavitation. The 5 blade propeller shown on display at left, accelerated the water, while the 4 blade accelerated it faster. At the time, this was secret technology. We now have some better propellers, though no faster ocean liners. The Hoverspeed uses water jet for propulsion, by the way.
Leaving the Delaware River heading to the Gulf of X
On its way to the bottom of the sea, the ship will first stop at MARS. That is not the planet Mars, but at an engineering firm, “Modern American Recycling Services” in Mobile Alabama, on The Gulf of X. There the MARS folks will prepare the ship to sink in an even way, where its supposed to; a way that works for scuba divers.
Robert Buxbaum, February 28, 2025. My sense is there is still room for steam power. I also think the US government should return to investing in US ship-building, especially for double-use, military and commercial, like this one. A new favorite phrase, from Ovid, Metamorphosis: “Omnia mutantur, nihil interit”. Everything changes, but nothing passes away. RIP, old friend.
We’ve become accustomed to buying cheap products from China: items made of glass, plastic, and metal come to the US by the ship-load, approximately $600 B worth last year, the highest from any country. Labor isn’t cheaper in China, certainly not when compared to Mexico or India, nor are the machines that make the products more advanced. What’s behind China’s ability to produce at their low prices is cheap energy—specifically, coal and nuclear-based electricity. While the US and most western countries have shut down coal plants to stop global warming, and have even shut working nuclear reactors for no obvious reason, China has aggressively expanded coal and nuclear energy production. The result? They are the largest single source of CO2, and have some of the lowest electricity prices in the world, Chinese electricity prices are about 1/4 of European, and 2/3 of U.S.
In recent years, the U.S. and Europe have increasingly relied on renewable energy sources like wind and solar. While these can work in certain areas, they require far more land than nuclear or coal, and expensive infrastructure because the power is intermittent, and generally not located close to the customer. The UK and Germany, countries with long periods of cloudy, windless conditions, have switched to solar and wind, leading to soaring electricity prices and a moribund industrial sector. Germany shut down all of its nuclear plants, 17 of them, largely to rely on electricity imported from its neighbors, and coal-fired sources that are far more polluting and unsafe than the nuclear plants they shut. The UK shut 5 nuclear reactors since 2012.
Meanwhile, China continues to build nuclear and coal plants. China is the largest user of coal power, and is planning to build 100 more coal-fired plants this year. Beyond this, China is building nuclear power rectors, including the world’s first 4th generation reactor (a pebble bed design). China has built 20 nuclear plants since 2016, and has 21 under construction. With this massive energy advantage, China produces things at low price for export: appliances, clothes, furniture, metal and plastic goods, all at a fraction of our cost. By selling us the things we used to make, China imports our jobs and exports pollution from their coal plants.
Many people instinctively understand that outsourcing production to China is harmful to both US employment and world pollution. Yet, until recently, US politicians encouraged this transfer through trade agreements like the TPP. Politicians bow to high-spending importers, and to environmental activists. It seems we prefer cheap goods to employment, and we’re OK with pollution so long as we don’t see the pollution being made. But, by outsourcing production, we’ve also outsourced control over critical industries, we’ve limited out ability to innovate, and we make ourselves dependent on China. Likely, that was part of China’s intent.
Russia has followed a similar path, keeping electricity costs mostly through low through coal, but also nuclear power, exporting their goods mostly to the EU. Before the Ukraine war, Germany in particular, relied on Russian gas, electricity, and fertilizer, products of Russian cheap power. By cutting off those energy, Germany has dealt a severe blow to its economy. Not everyone is happy.
Transfer of electricity, GWh, between European countries, 2023. Energy is most expensive in importer-nations, and GDP growth is slowest.
The incoming Trump administration has decide that, to compete with China’s manufacturing power, we need to develop our own through tariffs, and we need to increase our energy production. Tariffs can help balance the budget, and bring production back home, but without more energy, our industries will struggle to produce. I’m generally in support of this.
US production is more energy efficient than Chinese production, and thus less polluting. Besides, making things here saves on transport, provides jobs, and helps to build US technology for the future. I’m happy to see us start to build more nuclear power reactors, and restart some old plants. Solar and wind is good too, but is suited to only in some areas, windy and sunny ones, and even there, they need battery storage so that the power is available when needed.
Hockey sticks have gotten bendier in recent years, with an extreme example shown below: Alex Ovechkin getting about 3″ of bend using a 100# stiffness stick. Bending the stick allows a player to get more power out of wrist shots by increasing the throw distance of the puck. There is also some speed advantage to the spring energy stored in the stick — quite a lot in Mr Ovechkin’s case.
Alexander Ovechkin takes a wrist shot using a bendy stick.
A 100# stiffness stick takes 100 pounds of force in the middle to get 1″ of bend. That Ovechkin gets 3″ of bend with his 100# stick suggests that he shoots with some 300 lbs of force, an insane amount IMHO. Most players use a lot less force, but even so a bendy stick should help them score goals.
There is something that bothers me about the design of Alex Ovechkin’s stick though, something that I think I could improve. You’ll notice that the upper half of his stick bends as much as the lower half. This upper-bend does not help the shot, and it takes work-energy. The energy in that half of the bend is wasted energy, and its release might even hurt the shooter by putting sudden spring-stress on his wrist. To correct for this, I designed my own stick, shown below, with an aim to have no (or minimal) upper bend. The modification involved starting with a very bendy stick, then covering most of the upper half with fiberglass cloth.
I got ahold of a junior stick, 56″ long with 60# flex, and added a 6″ extension to the top. Doing this made the stick longer, 62″ long (adult length) and even more bendy. One 1″ of flex requires less force on a longer stick. I estimate that, by lengthening the stick, I reduced it to about 44#. Flex is inversely proportional to length cubed. I then sanded the upper part of the stick, and wrapped 6 oz” fiberglass cloth (6 oz) 2-3 wraps around the upper part as shown, holding it tight with tape at top and bottom when I was done. I then applied epoxy squeezing it through the cloth so that the composite was nearly transparent, and so the epoxy filled the holes. This added about 15g, about 1/2 oz to the weight. Transparency suggested that the epoxy had penetrated the cloth and bonded to the stick below, though the lack of total transparency suggests that the bond could have been better with a less viscous epoxy. Once the epoxy had mostly set, I took the tape off, and stripped the excess fiberglass so that the result looked more professional. I left 23″ of fiberglass wrap as shown. The fiberglass looks like hockey tape.
Assuming I did the gluing right, this hockey stick should have almost all of the spring below the shooter’s lower hand. I have not measured the flex, but my target was about 80 lbs, with improved durability and the new lower center of bend. In theory, more energy should get into the puck. It’s a gift for my son, and we’ll see how it works in a month or so.
