The implosive fusion pulse rocket

I woke up today with ToughSF poasting Gradient Field Imploding Liner Fusion Propulsion System. This report is fairly recent, like 2018. I wasn't quite blogging Atomic Rockets content then but, soon.

The "field" here means magnets. The liner is of some metal that can crumple when subjected to the Tesla. This implode-the-liner-with-dekamagnets tech is not new. Here is something from 1976. Also given the heat of the fusion around there, they cannot use superconductors - not 1976 niobium, not 1986 ceramics, nothin' under 125 K. Which puts MR Lapointe at some engineering conundra. For instance he only has 30 Tesla to play with, which he's wrapping externally. 1 T, internal.

Luckily for him and his, "magneto-inertial" designs had been an active, uh, field of research up to 2018. And he doesn' t have to keep the plasma: we're going to spaaace. The drive works by pulse like an Orion; unlike Orion they have to start in space.

This is about where nerds start talking z-pinch (or ζ-). This report is talking θ-pinch.

To load up these interplanetary missions, the 2018 paper suggests a couple of SLS boosts to eject 260 "mt" off our well. "mt" looks like "metric tonnes" so I'd say "T" or "Mg". As of last Friday Elon can sell you a Starship with throwaway booster (supposedly 188 T); he might soon be able to rent you one as well (for 115 T). They'd allow assemblage in orbit, some of those T being sufficient fuel and orbiting Starship to push your fusion rocket out of Earth's hair.

Where we speak of specific-impulse (I_sp) as usual the time-savings ramp up beyond Mars, like this takes 50-100 "mt" to Saturn in 200 days. In this context, 20 mt is a crewed mission. The report requires for the Earth-to-Saturn mission no less than 20000 s of I_sp, which I take as a function of deltaV more than of distance.

I_sp depends on what to use for the crumpling liner. Table 5 lists 32,200 s for Lithium (7.8 kN thrust), 17,145 s for Beryllium (14.45 kN). So lithium is how we, Earthlings and Venereans, get the direct lines to Saturn and beyond. Definitely going to have to construct the former in some anhydrous and anoxic environment like, uh, in space. Table 5 further calculates the energy required, for Mars: lithium to expend 165 MJ.

Asimov-approved beryllium would appear to work best where we don't care about longterm I_sp. A three-month trip to Mars ain't that much better than a six-month. Here we're optimising for thrust and, it seems, for energy (153 MJ). Energy aside that looks better for anything as far as Jupiter; inner-planetary travel or Oberth toward the Sun will give us lots of that energy, as well. With the extra thrust comes more payload and, we must add, more payload affords more options for crew comfort. Like spinning the hab, protection from radiation, all of it.

Also, pipe dream here, if we had stations on Vesta or on Deimos, beryllium could probably hit up Saturn thence (and it might even be mineable on that differentiated silicon). Launch windows will be a bear out there however.

Age of Mangione

Sunnyright, who got linked by Stephen Green, points to a 60 Minutes ep where a company invested $3B to develop a drug, which company now has to recoup its expenses. Commenters, who Deserve treatment, are calling for Luigi. They mean, for an army of DavidsLuigi Mangiones.

Green assumes all these commenters be Left. They are not.

A few days ago Ace of Spades posted this juxtaposition:

I'm just going to say it: I am now ready, willing, and eager to begin inflicting punishments on communists for what I consider wrongthink. If they want to criminalize my thoughts, I am now ready to use state power to criminalize theirs.

Mike Lee wants to defund schools that insanely continue to force students to get vaccinated in contradiction of their religious beliefs.

Ace has been so "ready" for some time longer than just this past week, I suspect. This whole side of X has been sliding into this, yes, fascist direction.

Meanwhile Richard Hanania wonders how come Bill Gates Jr hasn't st[oo]d up for himself and for public health, generally. I might so wonder, too.

The evolution of Classical Biblical Hebrew

In 2022 Yoel Elitzur, or "Joel" in German, laid down a challenge. Google Scholar reveals basically nobody as take this seriously; I consider Joosten's cite as an opportunism (and Joosten knows better). So I'll try :-

Elitzur pinpoints 17 Hebrew words and expressions as appear over the early Biblical corpus, and where they appear. Many cluster in specific sections. Some are quoted later but otherwise don't appear (e.g. the Chronicler quoting Reigns), some change their triconsonantal root so probably pronunciation, some change semantics. From that, Elitzur argues for no need to budge the Masoretic (and, honestly, Septuagintal) order of the historical books from the Pentateuch through Joshua-Judges through Reigns. Nor to budge the historically-understood dates of the Prophets - with the dramatic exception of Isaiah 40+ (I've been arguing 34+). The Psalms don't seem to figure.

The paper admits that some cases be stronger than others. The infamous he who pisseth against the wall is used in the Saul-David cycle and not earlier nor since. You'd think there'd be occasion for an author to bring it up in Judges or in the Ahab-Jezebel sequence, or when the Assyrians arrived, or for one of the more visceral Prophets like Ezekiel. Elitzur concedes the possibility of one author later subsumed into a longer history. But that might even help the paper's case: he's arguing that the later editor, or perhaps Editor, assigned earlier content to their correct place.

The largest tub o' skub develops from the implication of no later major editorial intrusions. He might allow, oh, the tweaks to Joshua against 4QJoshᵃ or the airdropping of Judges 6:7-10. But he doesn't allow for the Documentary Hypothesis in the five books (claimed) before Joshua. They're historical books too and they end with the Testament of Moses which is Deuteronomy.

The now-famous word elón, which (we agree) meant something like the Archaic Greek chora (district/ viable-flatland), exists in Genesis and Deuteronomy, then through to 1 Samuel. Once David takes control we no longer read the word. Why not, if it was Deuteronomic? This argument is stronger than that for the yellowed walls.

"Maidservant" amah and shaptah exist only in quoted dialog, like -na. In each case here, the woman is rendering an appeal. Elitzur here does not read these female words in Pentateuch, even in narrative sections where someone like Rebecca in Genesis 24:18-19, or especially Sarah [in Gen. 18], could have used it but did not. One might also ask after Rahab in Jericho; here, we can contrast that -na which does appear in Genesis. Elitzur here argues this means the usage (amah first) started in the Gibeah episode [of Judges 19] to continue throughout Reigns although maybe dropping off in final 2 Kings. As Joshua precedes all that; so does Torah.

asa for "fire-sacrifice" is of course Levitic. Elitzur however refuses it for P - he overall refuses all P - because it's also in Deuteronomy. Then it recurs in Joshua and even Samuel.

Elitzur brings a fair dataset. I think, however, his cases aren't as strong as he thinks. Just because a bundle with some word exists, that says nothing about the sequence before-and-after.

For "thy [maid]servant", we have outside data: Late Bronze Age texts, wherein Canaani or Ugariti supplicants abase themselves before some Pharaoh as "thy servant". The trope's persistence in the Iron Age would parallel the world of Judges 19-to-Reigns. For Elitzur the trope should be even stronger if Genesis truly was a text of early iron or even bronze.

Now take asa. Since Wellhausen, most understand that even without the "Holiness Code" P came from a central altar. D and D's history was arguing for that central altar. Just because a sacrifice was burned does not mean the law came from P. D would do just as well, in which case P simply developed the theme and drew up a whole ritual around it.

The story Nolan told

I still have no intention of watching Nolan as, I hear, Emily Wilson isn't bothering. I am still checking out the reactions; Benjamin Shapiro seems to have a good one. He argues Nolan has written a Christian story, inasmuch as the theme is Odysseus' sense of that Christian emotion guilt. Nolan might deny this himself.

Rebbe Shapiro has some interest in this era, as he claims descent from those who skipped out of the House of Ra around then. This blog has noted the earlier Libyan attack on the House of Ptaḥ. That pharaoh Merne Ptaḥ noted Israel, in his own time. Israel wasn't around for the great naval run against Ramses III "1177 BC", but the Tribes will have to face the Philistine allophyles. Back to Shapiro, I'll circle, below.

The Romans, who like the Jews are not Greeks, unlike the Jews did inherit the Greek pantheon or something close-enough. So they produced something suitably Roman: the Aeneid. Virgil set out to retell Sack of Troy but from the Trojan point-of-view. Aeneid was so good, at least books 2/4/6 were, that we no longer actually own Sack of Troy. Theodore Nash points out that Virgil had good Greek predecessors for his concern for Troy's victims.

Shapiro's people own their own Aeneid - on land: the Exagog(u)e, in Egyptian Greek. Shapiro himself prefers the Haggadah but I doubt he is ignorant at least of The Prince of Egypt.

You know what Virgil and Ezekiel didn't do? They didn't rewrite Odysseus' story for their own. These shenanigans did sometimes happen then but Virgil and Ezekiel were too good for that. They found or inherited, respectively, their own protagonists. Nolan, I submit, should have written his own fanfic, as Virgil had done. It may be that Nolan can't.

I wonder if Nolan has created here something like Cameron's Avatar. Big money now; big noise now. Low cultural impact.

2 Isaiah did not preach in the wilderness

It is now 10 Ab in my timezone, so to my fellow Semites I hope your fast was easy. Let's talk Shabbat Nachamu.

Pump Up The Volume (mis)cast a twentysomething Christian Slater as highschool student Mark. That is a portentious name; the evangelist we call "Mark" (and this blog holds as authentic) started his "gospel of Christ" with reference to Isaiah 40, in the form of a voice crying out in the wilderness. The Mark in that movie, we learn, is a Yankee lately transported to the "wave of mutilation" which was 1990 suburban Arizona.

R. David Freidenreich in TheTorah is arguing that the movie got it wrong. He admits in all fairness that it's not just a Christian interpretation; the Aggadah of Genesis had elided the same verse by the time of the movie. Although I'll suggest here that this text still depended upon the Christians' base.

That base was the Leontopolitan Isaiah. It was in Onias IV's interest to remove the Prophets from Zion.

2 Isaiah, like the prophet of most Isaiah 1-33, was a man of Zion. The Lord was coming to His Mountain and it was time to prepare His way - and, soon, His House which is the Temple to come. The rabbi here cites Joseph Blenkinsopp, that this passage intended the ceremonial path to the Lord's Advent. (It might further nod to the Persian highways, and to Cyrus II's call for the exiles' return; although Blenkinsopp and the rabbi dismiss both.) Zion was not, itself, a wilderness in God's sight. Either Isaiah would find absurd to build paths to a place that didn't yet exist.

Tell you what was a place of no particular value to the Lord, as of the second century BC: Leontopolis. Where Onias was stuck.

It would make sense to tweak this verse so that, in the "elder" days, the Prophet was calling from the desert that is, not Zion. The Lord is coming where He pleases and we must house Him there.

Psalm 45 as the ode for Solomon

Psalm 45 (MT) might be the Catholic core psalm. Biblical scholars love it too, usually assigning it to Athaliah's wedding upon a base of Ahab-and-Jezebel. Lately however one Yazdan Safaee suggests it is better placed with the Persians - pdf at the link.

The language turns out to be Late Biblical Hebrew, with parallels in 3 Isaiah and Esther. It may even be Templar, paralleling the Hebrew parts of Ezra. As ideology goes the king's throne is God's throne, and for him is the glory which Psalm 104 would reserve to its (sun) God. Even the most promonarchic texts of the Deuteronomist History wouldn't dare that.

Rather, this khwarrah permeates where the Chronicler (in LBH) adjusts its own base in Reigns. We know the Chronicler owned a psalter, parts of which he mainlined into the narrative. Psalm 45, as Safaee would have it, is for Solomon - like the Canticles. The messianist would say: for the new Solomon to come.

Safaee now must explain how this Psalm ended up with the songs of Qoraḥ 42-9, Elohistic redaction. For Safaee, this editor wanted to cap Psalm 44 - a song of exile - with a promise for the better future.

The verses 45:11-16 remain outstanding. I don't know if Safaee explains that as well as he could. I might suggest a "fan fiction" where the gentiles of Lebanon are marrying into Solomon's house. As, perhaps, an irony, this revives Hugo Grotius: who argued for the Psalm as the wedding song of Solomon to an Egyptian princess. Such had been accepted into the Geneva Bible also.

If we are looking at Chronicler fanfic, very little room remains for Ahab or Athaliah theorists (or, indeed, for Grotius). Such would have to argue that this Psalm somehow avoided notice until after 2 Isaiah. Unless... they can find witnesses to this Psalm before the LBH corpus. But given Psalm 104, which is considered late (and Egyptian), that is going to be difficult.

Peter McCullough is a disgrace

I'll say up front I am no biologist - but neither is CatTurd2. It may be pointless to argue with the convinced and especially not with paid partnership. What we can do, is explain Dr. Peter McCullough. The American Board of Internal Medicine last year decertified his ass.

As to why, one reason is he's a liar. Not just in the makes-inaccurate-statements sense; any one can leave sausage in the litterbox. In the, "I speak for Baylor Scott & White Health" sense; which untruth attracted that company's lawyers.

Cloth masks and social distancing - indoors - worked too by the way. Not as well as the vaxx, but enough to slow the spread. UPDATE 7/25: Can we call it fascism yet?