Tag Archives: Donald Trump

How tall could you make a skyscraper?

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Built in 1931, the highest usable floor space of the Empire State building is 1250 feet (381m) above the ground. In 1973, that record was beaten by the World Trade Center building 1, 1,368 feet (417 m, building 2 was eight feet shorter). The Willis Tower followed 1974, and by 2004, the tallest building was the Taipei Tower, 1471 feet. Building heights had grown by 221 feet since 1931, and then the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, 2,426 ft ( 739.44m):. This is over 1000 feet taller than the new freedom tower, and nearly as much taller than the previous record holder. With the Saudi’s beginning work on a building even taller, it’s worthwhile asking how tall you could go, if your only  limitations were ego and materials’ strength.

Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, Concrete + glass structure. Dubai tourism image.

Having written about how long you could make a (steel) suspension bridge, the maximum height of a skyscraper seems like a logical next step. At first glance this would seem like a ridiculously easy calculation based on the math used to calculate the maximum length of a suspension bridge. As with the bridge, we’d make the structure from the strongest normal material: T1, low carbon, vanadium steel, and we’d determine the height by balancing this material’s  yield strength, 100,000 psi (pounds per square inch), against its density, .2833 pounds per cubic inch.

If you balance these numbers, you calculate a height: 353,000 inches, 5.57 miles, but this is the maximum only for a certain structure, a wide flag-pole of T1 steel in the absent of wind. A more realistic height assumes a building where half the volume is empty space, used for living and otherwise, where 40% of the interior space contains vertical columns of T1 steel, and where there’s a significant amount of dead-weight from floors, windows, people, furniture, etc. Assume the dead weight is the equivalent of filling 10% of the volume with T1 steel that provides no structural support. The resulting building has an average density = (1/2 x 0.2833 pound/in3), and the average strength= (0.4 x 100,000 pound/in2). Dividing these numbers we get a maximum height, but only for a cylindrical building with no safety margin, and no allowance for wind.

H’max-cylinder = 0.4 x 100,000 pound/in2/ (.5 x 0.2833 pound/in3) = 282,400 inches = 23,532 ft = 4.46 miles.

This is more than ten times the Burj Khalifa, but it likely underestimates the maximum for a steel building, or even a concrete building because a cylinder is not the optimum shape for maximum height. If the towers were constructed conical or pyramidal, the height could be much greater: three times greater because the volume of a cone and thus its weight is 1/3 that of a cylinder for the same base and height. Using the same materials and assumptions,

The tallest building of Europe is the Shard; it’s a cone. The Eiffel tower, built in the 1800s, is taller.

H’max-cone = 3 H’max-cylinder =  13.37 miles.

A cone is a better shape for a very tall tower, and it is the shape chosen for “the shard”, the second tallest building in Europe, but it’s not the ideal shape. The ideal, as we’ll see, is something like the Eiffel tower.

Before speaking about this shape, I’d like to speak about building materials. At the heights we’re discussing, it becomes fairly ridiculous to talk about a steel and glass building. Tall steel buildings have serious vibration problems. Even at heights far before they are destroyed by wind and vibration , the people at the top will begin to feel quite sea-sick. Because of this, the tallest buildings have been constructed out of concrete and glass. Concrete is not practical for bridges since concrete is poor in tension, but concrete can be quite strong in compression, as I discussed here.  And concrete is fire resistant, sound-deadening, and vibration dampening. It is also far cheaper than steel when you consider the ease of construction. The Trump Tower in New York and Chicago was the first major building here to be made this way. It, and it’s brother building in Chicago were considered aesthetic marvels until Trump became president. Since then, everything he’s done is ridiculed. Like the Trump tower, the Burj Khalifa is concrete and glass, and I’ll assume this construction from here on.

let’s choose to build out of high-silica, low aggregate, UHPC-3, the strongest concrete in normal construction use. It has a compressive strength of 135 MPa (about 19,500 psi). and a density of 2400 kg/m3 or about 0.0866 lb/in3. Its cost is around $600/m3 today (2019); this is about 4 times the cost of normal highway concrete, but it provides about 8 times the compressive strength. As with the steel building above, I will assume that, at every floor, half of the volume is living space; that 40% is support structure, UHPC-3, and that the other 10% is other dead weight, plumbing, glass, stairs, furniture, and people. Calculating in SI units,

H’max-cylinder-concrete = .4 x 135,000,000 Pa/(.5 x 2400 kg/m3 x 9.8 m/s2) = 4591 m = 2.85 miles.

The factor 9.8 m/s2 is necessary when using SI units to account for the acceleration of gravity; it converts convert kg-weights to Newtons. Pascals, by the way, are Newtons divided by square meters, as in this joke. We get the same answer with less difficulty using inches.

H’max-cylinder-concrete = .4 x 19,500 psi/(.5 x.0866  lb/in3) = 180,138″ = 15,012 ft = 2.84 miles

These maximum heights are not as great as for a steel construction, but there are a few advantages; the price per square foot is generally less. Also, you have fewer problems with noise, sway, and fire: all very important for a large building. The maximum height for a conical concrete building is three times that of a cylindrical building of the same design:

H’max–cone-concrete = 3 x H’max-cylinder-concrete = 3 x 2.84 miles = 8.53 miles.

Mount Everest, picture from the Encyclopedia Britannica, a stone cone, 5.5 miles high.

That this is a reasonable number can be seen from the height of Mount Everest. Everest is rough cone , 5.498 miles high. This is not much less than what we calculate above. To reach this height with a building that withstands winds, you have to make the base quite wide, as with Everest. In the absence of wind the base of the cone could be much narrower, but the maximum height would be the same, 8.53 miles, but a cone is not the optimal shape for a very tall building.

I will now calculate the optimal shape for a tall building in the absence of wind. I will start at the top, but I will aim for high rent space. I thus choose to make the top section 31 feet on a side, 1,000 ft2, or 100 m2. As before, I’ll make 50% of this area living space. Thus, each apartment provides 500 ft2 of living space. My reason for choosing this size is the sense that this is the smallest apartment you could sell for a high premium price. Assuming no wind, I can make this part of the building a rectangular cylinder, 2.84 miles tall, but this is just the upper tower. Below this, the building must widen at every floor to withstand the weight of the tower and the floors above. The necessary area increases for every increase in height as follows:

dA/dΗ = 1/σ dW/dH.

Here, A is the cross-sectional area of the building (square inches), H is height (inches), σ is the strength of the building material per area of building (0.4 x 19,500 as above), and dW/dH is the weight of building per inch of height. dW/dH equals  A x (.5 x.0866  lb/in3), and

dA/dΗ = 1/ ( .4 x 19,500 psi) x A x (.5 x.0866  lb/in3).

dA/A = 5.55 x 10-6 dH,

∫dA/A = ∫5.55 x 10-6 dH,

ln (Abase/Atop) = 5.55 x 10-6 ∆H,

Here, (Abase/Atop) = Abase sq feet /1000, and ∆H is the height of the curvy part of the tower, the part between the ground and the 2.84 mile-tall, rectangular tower at the top.

Since there is no real limit to how big the base can be, there is hardly a limit to how tall the tower can be. Still, aesthetics place a limit, even in the absence of wind. It can be shown from the last equation above that stability requires that the area of the curved part of the tower has to double for every 1.98 miles of height: 1.98 miles = ln(2) /5.55 x 10-6 inches, but the rate of area expansion also keeps getting bigger as the tower gets heavier.  I’m going to speculate that, because of artistic ego, no builder will want a tower that slants more than 45° at the ground level (the Eiffel tower slants at 51°). For the building above, it can be shown that this occurs when:

dA/dH = 4√Abase.  But since

dA/dH = A 5.55 x 10-6 , we find that, at the base,

5.55 x 10-6 √Abase = 4.

At the base, the length of a building side is Lbase = √Abase=  4 /5.55 x 10-6 inches = 60060 ft = 11.4  miles. Artistic ego thus limits the area of the building to slightly over 11 miles wide of 129.4 square miles. This is about the area of Detroit. From the above, we calculate the additional height of the tower as

∆H = ln (Abase/Atop)/ 5.55 x 10-6 inches =  15.1/ 5.55 x 10-6 inches = 2,720,400 inches = 226,700 feet = 42.94 miles.

Hmax-concrete =  2.84 miles + ∆H = 45.78 miles. This is eight times the height of Everest, and while air pressure is pretty low at this altitude, it’s not so low that wind could be ignored. One of these days, I plan to show how you redo this calculation without the need for calculus, but with the inclusion of wind. I did the former here, for a bridge, and treated wind here. Anyone wishing to do this calculation for a basic maximum wind speed (100 mph?) will get a mention here.

From the above, it’s clear that our present buildings are nowhere near the maximum achievable, even for construction with normal materials. We should be able to make buildings several times the height of Everest. Such Buildings are worthy of Nimrod (Gen 10:10, etc.) for several reasons. Not only because of the lack of a safety factor, but because the height far exceeds that of the highest mountain. Also, as with Nimrod’s construction, there is a likely social problem. Let’s assume that floors are 16.5 feet apart (1 rod). The first 1.98 miles of tower will have 634 floors with each being about the size of Detroit. Lets then assume the population per floor will be about 1 million; the population of Detroit was about 2 million in 1950 (it’s 0.65 million today, a result of bad government). At this density, the first 1.98 miles will have a population of 634 million, about double that of the United States, and the rest of the tower will have the same population because the tower area contracts by half every 1.98 miles, and 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 … = 1.

Nimrod examining the tower, Peter Breugel

We thus expect the tower to hold 1.28 Billion people. With a population this size, the tower will develop different cultures, and will begin to speak different languages. They may well go to war too — a real problem in a confined space. I assume there is a moral in there somewhere, like that too much unity is not good. For what it’s worth, I even doubt the sanity of having a single government for 1.28 billion, even when spread out (e.g. China).

Robert Buxbaum, June 3, 2019.

A Pastor to Trump’s Soul

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Trump’s religious connection is so different from the norm that most people think it must be fake, but the truth of his connection to Christianity, as best I can determine it, is even more bizarre than the assumption that there is none. From the time that he was six years old, Donald Trump attended a famous church in New York City, The Marble Collegiate Presbyterian Church. He attended along with his grandfather, his parents, his brother, and his sisters. He was married in this church as was his sister. Both his parents funerals were in the sanctuary, and unlike most children in a family church, he seems to have been generally moved by the sermons — moved to change his life.

Trump and NVP

Various scenes of Trump and his family with Dr. Norma Vincent Peale.

The pastor of the church and the author of these sermons was not a standard Christian, though. It was Norman Vincent Peele, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking.” According to President Trump, he loved the sermons almost from the beginning. They went on for an hour or so and as Trump remembers it, the Reverend Peele could have spoken for twice as long at least. Dr. Peale did not talk fo sin, but rather of success and other of the most positive things. Peale claimed that you could do anything you wanted with the help of God and proving you believed in your self and didn’t let anything anyone said interfere. He backed up this take on the bible by a cherry-picked selection from all the positive lines in the Bible — Lines that are really there, but that most pastors avoid because they can make a person arrogant (or seem arrogant). A source for all of president Trumps bizarre self-image ideas can be found in Peele’s “The power of positive thinking,”I  find.presidents-billy-right-960x640BG-Kennedy-960x640

Dwight Eishenhouer

Some other US presidents with Reverend Billy Graham.

Most other American pastors have emphasized self reflection and humility. They would pray for the power to avoid bragging or other forms of puffing one’s self up —  the very opposite approach of Dr. Peale’s. The most popular of the alternates approaches, one embraced by virtually every president from 1952 to today was Billy Graham’s fire humility.

Eisenhower golfed with Graham regularly, as did Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and G. H.W. Bush. Graham was a feature at prayer breakfasts with Johnson and Reagan, and Carter. In time of trouble it was Billy Graham who counseled Carter, Clinton, and Nixon, and it was Graham who got George W. Bush to give up drinking. After a time, one could imagine that Billy Graham’s quiet humility and fiery faith was the real American belief. Or at least that this was the form of American soul that one associated with success.bill graham reagan BG-JOHNSON

After decades of seeing Billy Graham at the White House, one began to believe that his was the image of the believing American. To believe meant to see oneself as a sinner who often made mistakes but was genuinely sorry for these failures. A believing American was genuinely penitent, but not too loudly. Was reborn, but didn’t make too much fuss of it. Thus it’s more than a little shock to find believer in God’s plan who claims to believes that God wants him to have success, money, and power, and who claims, as Trump does, that those who criticize him are “fake news”.

I’ve mentioned before that a strong belief in ones self has a positive side for leaders, but it strikes me that perhaps it’s also good for religion. These lines really do appear in the Bible, Humility is there too, of course, but we could all use a reminder that “God gives to all who believe in Him.”

Robert Buxbaum, September 3, 2018

Trump, tariffs, and the national debt

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My previous post was about US foreign policy, Obama’s and Trumps. This one is about Trump’s domestic policy as I see it. The main thing I see, the pattern is that I think he’s trying to do is pay down the national debt while increasing employment. So far unemployment is down, but borrowing is not. I suspect that a major reason for the low unemployment is that Americans (particularly black Americans) are taking jobs that used to be held by Mexicans. As for US borrowing, it’s still bad. For his first budget, Trump, like all other recent politicians caved to the forces that favor borrow and spend than to pay back. In this century, only Wm. McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, and Coolidge managed to pay down the national debt. But only one man, Andrew Jackson, managed to pay it off completely. Jackson’s picture hangs in the pride of place in the Trump white house, something that I find significant. I suspect that Trump’s tariffs and spats are intended to pay down the debt without raising unemployment, or weakening the military. Andrew Jackson is his idea of “Make America Great Again.”

All recent presidents have raised the national debt. Trump claims he will shrink it.

All recent presidents have raised the national debt. Trump data to April 20, 2018.

As the graph above shows, if Trump plan is to pay down the debt, he is not succeeding. Trump is overspending — at a somewhat slower rate than other recent presidents, but in 1 1/4 year he’s increased the debt by 6.3%, about $1220 B. He’s saved a few billion by reduced payments to the UN, and to the EU for climate studies, and he’s asking NATO to pay more for Europe’s defense, but he’ll have to do a lot more, and the rest of the world is already unhappy with him.

Many US economists — Keynesians – are not happy with him for another reason. They claim that debt is good, and that borrowing increases employment. As proof they note that FDR borrowed and spent heavily though the 1930s,and we got out of the depression. Other economists point out that it took longer in the US to get out of the depression than in many other countries. More recently, under Jimmy Carter, deficit spending created a combination of high inflation and high unemployment, “stagflation,” suggesting that Keynes should be modified to “Neo Keynesians” who claim you can overspend if you don’t outspend the GDP growth rate. Sorry to say, even in these terms, Obama and GW Bush overspent badly, as did Reagan before them (see graph below). Obama raised the debt from 65% of the GDP to its current 105%, and GW Bush raised it from 50% of GDP to 65%. This borrowing did not increase employment, or raise the standard of living for most Americans, though several at the top became fabulously wealthy. As Alan Greenspan noted, “If national borrowing was a path to wealth, Zimbabwe would be the richest country on earth.” I’m more of a hard money man, as Greenspan was, inclined to think that a balanced budget is good, and that tariffs are good too.

Ratio of US government debt to GDP

Ratio of US government debt to GDP

As of June 1, 2018, Trump has imposed ~20% tariffs on five items: wood, steel, aluminum, washing machines, and solar panels. Combined, these items constitute 4.1% of our imports, $130 B/ year. Taxed at 20%, the US will collect $25 B/year. it’s a step, but I suspect that Trump knows that, if tariffs are to wipe out all of our deficit, he’ll have to impose a lot more, about 40% on all of our imports ($3,100 B/year). Trump may yet do this, and may yet cut spending, and put a lot more America to work. My sense is that this is his aim.

The next step in the Trump MAGA plan involves adding another $35B to the list of items being taxed; that’s about 1.1% of US imports (5.2% total). In response, our trade-partners have complained to the press and to the world court, and have imposed their own tariffs — so far on about $100 B of US products, mostly food items, like bourbon and cheese, chosen to hit Republicans in politically – sensitive states: Tennessee and Wisconsin. Canada now taxes US cheese at over 100%. It’s an effort to embarrass Trump and get Democrats elected in 2018. If these tactics don’t work, Trump will impose another round, e.g. on foreign-made cars and motorcycles. I’d also expect him to cut NATO funding unilaterally, too, as a counter-slap to the EU.

US unemployment by race

US unemployment by race, data to May 2018.

Speaking of Keynesian economists, Nobel Laureate economist, Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been predicting severe job losses, and a permanent stock collapse since 2016, and especially following Trump’s election. Virtually every week he announces that the end is near, and every month the economy looks better. But he’s not deterred, and neither are most economists. In a survey of nearly 100 economists by Reuters, 80% said that Trump’s policies will hurt the U.S. economy, and the rest said there would be little or no effect.[1] . So far it looks like they are all wrong. Unemployment is at record lows, particularly for African-Americans (see chart above); we’re adding new jobs at the rate of 200,000 new jobs per month, nearly 0.8% of the population per year. Inflation is a modest 2.3%, GDP growth is excellent, at 3.2% (or an incredible 4.5%). All we need now is a sensible immigration policy plus some healthcare reform, a modified social security tax, and for the economy to stay this way for another 5-10 years. It’s unlikely, but that’s the plan.

Robert Buxbaum, July 5, 2018. I’d hoped to see the employment and deficit numbers for June by now, but it’s not out. I’ve also argued that free trade is half right, as there is a benefit to workers, And there is a certain greatness that comes from paying your bills. Today, the EU offered to lower some auto tariffs if Trump does not move forward.

Wilsonian Obama vs the Trump Doctrine

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As best I see it, Obama’s approach to world peace was a version of Woodrow Wilson’s: he consistently supported left-leaning, popular groups and governments, even when they were anti-American over pro-American kings, generals, and dictators. Obama heaped money and praise on elected leaders of Iran and the Palestinian Authority, while condemning Israel, and encouraging Democrats to walk out of a speech its PM. He then sent a statement to be read on the floor of congress that the Israeli PM  had nothing to say. Similarly, Obama refused to negotiate with Kim Jung Un of North Korea, a dictator in his eyes, but he had no problem with Raul Castro. Leftists, in his view, were for the masses, and thus democratic. Such democrats were on the side of the angels in his view, though Castro’s Cuba was not exactly free.

The co-head of the Democratic Party wears a shirt that reads "I don't believe in borders." It's a Moslem Brotherhood slogan. They do not believe in borders between Gaza and Israel, but do believe in them between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

The co-head of the Democratic Party wears a shirt that reads “I don’t believe in borders.” It’s a globalist slogan, a Moslem Brotherhood slogan. The Trump doctrine requires boundaries between ‘turf.”

One of the most popular, if violent groups on the world stage was (is) the Moslem Brotherhood. A few months after becoming president, he gave his first foreign speech at Cairo University,  making the Wilsonian request to include the Brotherhood here and in all further negotiations. The Moslem Brotherhood was anti-American and left leaning, and they favored elections. On the other hand, they had assassinated Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat and Egyptian prime minister Mohammad Pasha just a few years previous. They had also tried to overthrow the government of Egypt and Jordan by force, and had tried to assassinate Egyptian president Nasser and Jordan’s kings Abdullah and Hussein, unsuccessfully. Including the Brotherhood was symptomatic of a general problem of Wilsonian diplomacy; it provides no good way to tell the good guys from the bad without putting them in power. Some hints: the Brotherhood afforded no rights to women or gays; they had no clear distinctions from Hezbollah, Hamas, or Al Qaeda; and they were anti-American and anti Israel to the extent that they shouted death to both.

Even though the Moslem Brotherhood was Sunni-Moslem, a fair number in the mid-east cane to claim that Obama had included them because he was a Shiite Moslem, and just using them to overthrow more-stable Sunni governments of Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Here’s a bit from an Iraqi MP, and from Saudi TV making this claim. Here too is a joke about Sunni and Shia to help you keep the two groups straight. Whatever his motivation, the outcome was the so-called Arab Spring (2011) uprisings that overthrew pro-American regimes in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Turkey. It also brought the end of a free press in Turkey, and trouble for pro-American regimes in Bahrain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. After the Brotherhood murdered the American ambassador in Libya and his (few) US guards, Obama blamed the death on some Jewish film-makers. My sense is that Obama was unwilling to believe that a fellow leftist of the Brotherhood would lie to him and murder our ambassador just to get at billions of dollars of Libya’s oil.

Trump, his daughter, el Sisi, and the King of Saudi Arabia. No Emir of Qatar.

Trump, Melania, the King of Saudi Arabia, and  el-Sisi of Egypt at a meeting in Riyadh with other friendly leaders; no Emir of Qatar, no Muslim Brotherhood.

Wilson lived to see the Mid-east parts of his 14 points lead to disaster in country after country (those were points V, XI, and XII for the Woody Woo fans). Obama similarly backed Kurdish and Hezbollah “moderates” only to see them turn sides and fight one another, or fight against our ally Turkey, or join together and form ISIS. He backed Palestinians in Gaza too, and saw them murder gays and suspected traitors on TV. He supported “moderate” Turkey, and found his Turkish allies killing his Kurds. Obama fueled a murderous tribal war, like Wilson had done, based on the best of intentions, and an American naiveté about how the world works.

Closer to home, at the very end of Obama’s presidency, he ended the registry of the National Security Entry-Exit System (NSEERS) intended to track terrorists. He closed this border program because it was racist in his view. Most of the illegals caught were Moslems or brown-skinned. Republicans seem to agree that a border-security program like this is problematic, especially where children are involved, but they claim it is better than letting in terrorists, or criminals, or the occasional human trafficker. Lacking anyone with a better answer, they elected Donald Trump, a man who claimed he’d bring peace by building a wall.

Trump made his first mideast speech in Saudi Arabia, but unlike Obama, he invited only pro-American, authoritarian leaders. He left out the Muslim Brotherhood and the rulers of any “republican” government that chanted “Death to America.” Trump announced that the US will not dictate how leaders should run their countries, or how people in these countries should live. Instead, we would be a friend to our friends, and that we would mediate disputes where necessary and helpful. There was also a threat against “bad guys” understood to be the enemies of America.

This “Trump doctrine” seems (to me) to have been borrowed from Charles (Lucky) Luciano, a New York mob boss who kept peace between the various mob families of New York and New Jersey by keeping the territories separate and clear (similar to Trump’s wall). Luciano allowed the various family heads to do what they wanted on their own turf, and offered to mediate disputes (see the similarity?). He also treated to hit those who hit him, and he took no guff. So far, Trump’s version of this seems to be working. The mideast is far calmer than when Obama was president, perhaps because its leaders understand Trump better, and Trump may have negotiated an end to the Korean war. Wilsonian Democrats (Obama) claimed that you can’t negotiate with a murderous thug like Kim Jung Un, but Trump has no problem — they both like walls. Besides, Trump points out that the alternative is nuclear war.

I suspect that Trump is hated by the Europeans is the comparison with Obama. Obama spent our money liberally, on them and on their issues, while Trump does not. A thought: if the Europeans think a president is spending enough, he's spending too much.

Obama spent our money liberally on the Europeans while Trump does not. A thought: if the Europeans think you spend enough, you’re spending too much.

How does Trump hit back? For one, he refuses to serve as free protector for those who can defend themselves. Trump has threatened Germany saying they must pay for their own defense, and has cut funding to the UN Human Rights commission and the Paris climate council, groups he considers pointless or worse. More recently, he ended Obama’s constraints on natural gas exploration and exports. In 2017 US gas exports rose by $4B, a factor of four from 2016, dramatically lowering the price of natural gas on the open market. Several oil nations were hit by this including Qatar the main gas exporter in 2014 (Russia is now) and a main funder of Al Jazeera, and of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Robert Buxbaum, June 26, 2018. I’ve never understood why people expect Marxist leaders to be peaceful. Marx himself claims that the mode of production determines a country’s social, political and intellectual life. A leader hoping to control the latter must control the former with a war-like ferocity if he’s to be a Marxist, and even the most milk-toast Marxists have done so.

Al Jazeera, a multi billion-dollar influence buyer

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Given the hand-wringing over the $300,000 spent by Russia to influence the 2016 US election, I thought it worthwhile to point out that Qatar spent roughly 2.5 billion on influence, mostly through Qatar’s news agency, Al Jazeera. Qatar is a Shiite (Shia) Moslem Emirate solely ruled by a Sunni Emir (king). Here’s a joke to help distinguish Sunni from Shia. It is also the 4th largest exporter of natural gas in the world behind Russia, Norway, and Canada. It’s a solid supporter of leftist political causes from anti-climate change to Hamas and Al Qaeda/ ISIS, and it is the host for the FIFA world cup of soccer, 2022. For more about Qatar and the logic of its behavior, see the American Foreign Policy Analysis. Interesting in general, but I’d like to focus on influence buying.

FILE - In this Aug. 20, 2013 file photo, Al Jazeera America editorial newsroom staff prepare for their first broadcast in New York. Shannon High-Bassalik former head of Al Jazeera America’s documentary unit has sued the news network, claiming it is biased against non-Arabs in stories that it produces and how it treats employees. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

Al Jazeera America prepares for its first broadcast from New York, August, 2013. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews.

The Emir of Qatar is the sole owner of Al Jazeera, a news organization, that he uses as profit-losing, influence machine. It allowed him to support leftist politicians who he believes to be pro-Arab, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, anti-Israel, and anti-American. In Europe he pursues pro-immigration, anti-fracking policies. In conservative, Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran, he’s used Al Jazeera to supported free elections to unseat the king, Shah, or military president. Al Jazeera uniformly portrays Qatar and its emir well, helping it get rights to host the FIFA world cup. No other country gets anywhere near such uniform, positive support.

A bit of history: Al Jazeera began operations in Doha, the capital of Qatar in 1996, as an antidote to Saudi Arabia’s arabic-language news outlet, MBC (Mid-East Broadcast Company, now called Al Arabia). By 2003, Al Jazeera was broadcasting in Europe in various EU languages, and had an english language version broadcast out of London, Al Jazeera-English. It is available in the US via cable TV, Channels 100, 200, and 300. In 2013, the Emir of Qatar expanded Al Jazeera directly to the US, paying 1/2 billion dollars for an Emmy-winning, non-profitable, cable news company “Current TV”, partially owned by Al Gore. “Current TV” operated out of San Francisco with a left-leaning, pro-environment message and a modest audience. Their shows include The War Room with Jennifer Granholm (Jennifer is the ex-governor of Michigan), Talking Liberally, The Stephanie Miller Show, and  Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer. The Emir added a news headquarters in New York and gave it a new name: Al Jazeera America, or AJAM. The old Current TV was retained as AJ+, a video arm. Over the next 5 years the emir spent 2 billion dollars setting up 12 news bureaus in the US with instructions that there was no need for profit, but only for “influence”. It is arguable how much influence he got, but it is clear he didn’t make any profit.

Despite what you might imagine would be the opinions of a petro-monarch, AJAM continues to back Gore’s anti-fracking message. I will speculate this is because he is against US gas because it competes with Qatari gas. AJAM also strongly supports the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and ISIS. Perhaps that’s radical chic (radical sheik?). He’s against any authoritarian ruler that isn’t him.

Trump, his daughter, el Sisi, and the King of Saudi Arabia. No Emir of Qatar.

Trump, his daughter, Ibn-Said (king of Saudi Arabia) and el Sisi, (president of Egypt). Global control with no Emir.

Some notable controversies — I got these from Wikipedia –Ahmed Mansour, a prominent Al Jazeera anchor, is quoted saying that Egyptian president, el-Sisi was “a Jew carrying out an Israeli plot.” Faisal al-Qassim, another Al Jazeera presenter, hosted a segment on whether Syria’s Alawite (Shia) population deserved to be killed en-mass, and in 2014, the channel’s Iraqi affairs editor tweeted approvingly about the Islāmic State killing more than 1,500 air-force cadets in Tikrit, singling out those who were Shia and non-Muslim. Closer to home, they charged a half-dozen athletes with doping, including Peyton Manning, hero of the super bowl. In the end, Shannon High-Bassalik, former head of the documentary unit, also sued claiming bias against non-Arabs in stories and in how it treats employees.

Among Republicans, AJAM became to be known as “The Terror Network”, while they retained some good reputation on left. The Emir bought not only the network, but spent liberally on sympathetic experts, and on academic think tanks. Further, it seems that Al Jazeera writers had no fixed budget or expense limit. The Russians are nowhere near this generous.

In April of 2016, with the world cup coming to Qatar, and American oil reviving, the emir cut AJAM staff by 900 workers. Part of the decision may have been that it looked like he had the 2016 election in the bag. Al Jazeera English remains, still operating out of London, and AJ+, the old Current TV, still operating out of San Francisco. And then Donald Trump was elected 45th US president. AJ / AJ+ was shocked (as was I); and called for protests. Trump, in a publicized meeting with el-Sisi of Egypt (the Jewish Spy), and Salmon al-Saud, (above, 2017) issued a set of 13 demands including that the emir stop to support for Hamas and the Brotherhood, and that he shut Al Jazeera. The emir has not complied, and the world cup is still on for Qatar.

I should mention that the Emir and Putin work together on some things and oppose on others. They both support politicians who oppose oil and gas production while opposing each other on pipeline construction. Qatar backs the pan Arabian pipeline to Turkey, while Russia funds Assad and the PKK (Russia-friendly, Kurdish independents) to block such access. The Emir supports ISS, Hamas, and Turkish Kurds, I suspect, as a way to fight Russia. It’s Byzantine politics in both senses of the word. Given how much Qatar has spent buying influence with Clinton and Gore, I don’t understand why the FBI is so focussed on Trump and Russia.

Robert Buxbaum, May 29, 2018.

The worst president was John Adams

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Every now and again a magazine cites a group of historians to pick the best and worst presidents. And there, at the bottom of the scale, I typically find James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson; Warren Harding, and/or Ulysses Grant, none of whom deserve the dishonor, in my opinion. For Pierce and Buchanan, their high crime was to not solve the slavery /succession problem — as if this was a problem that any PhD historian would have been able to solve in a weekend. It was not so simple; the slavery question bedeviled the founding fathers, tormented Daniel Webster and Henry Clay; George Washington and Thomas Jefferson wrestled with it. None could solve it, and all served when the country had relative levels of good feeling. Now, in the 1850s, Pierce and Buchanan inherit this monster, and we blame them for not resolving the slave issue when the nation was at the boiling point and Kansas was burning. They did the best they could in impossible circumstance, buying us time (Pierce also bought us southern Arizona).

Similarly, with Johnson: our historians’ complaint is that he didn’t manage reconstruction well — as if any one of them could have done better. You can’t blame a person for failing in a hopeless situation. Be happy they filled their terms, avoided war with our neighbors, and left the country richer and more populous than they found it.

Moving on to Grant and Harding, their crime was to be president at a time of scandal. But the very essence of this condemnation is that it presents the scandal, a non-issue in the large sweep of America, as if it were the only issue. Both Harding and Grant drank in the white house, and played cards while members of their cabinets stole money. These are major scandals to blue noses, but not so relevant to normal people. Both presidencies were periods of prosperity, employment, and growth. Both presidents paid down the national debt. Harding paid down $2,000,000 of debt, a good chunk of the debt incurred in WWI. Grant paid down a similarly large chunk of the debts of the civil war. Both oversaw times of peace and both signed peace treaties: Harding from WWI, Grant from the civil war and the Indian wars. Both left office with the nation far more prosperous than when they came in. No, these are not bad presidents except in the eyes of puritans who require purity in everyone else, and care little for the needs of the average American.

The worst president, in my opinion, was John Adams, and I would say he set a standard for bad that’s not likely to be beat. How bad was Adams? He oversaw the worst single law ever in American history, the Sedition act. This act, a partner to the Alien act (almost as bad), was pushed though by Adams a mere 8 years after passage of the bill of rights. The act made it illegal to criticize the government in any way. In this, it made a mockery of free expression. Adams put someone in jail for calling him “his rotundancy” — that is, for calling him fat. The supreme court had to step in and undo this unbelievably horrible law, but this was only one of several horrible acts of president Adams.

Another horrible act of president Adams is his decision to pick a war with France, our ally from the revolution. Adams himself had signed the treaty of Paris guaranteeing that we would never go to war with France. So why did Adams do it? He was a puritan, literally. He didn’t like French immorality and hated French Catholicism. He was insulted that French officials had overthrown their king (not that we had done otherwise) that they wore fancy clothes, and that they wanted bribes. He leaked their request for bribes to the press (the XYZ affair) and presented this as the reason for war. So Adams, pure Adams, got us to war with our oldest ally, a war we could not win, and didn’t.

But Adams didn’t stop there. Having decided to go to war, he also decided to stop paying on US debt to the French. He was too pure to pay debt to a nation that overthrew its king and set up a more-egalitarian state than we had. One where slavery was abolished.

Adams, of course, did nothing to address slavery, though he berated others about it. And it’s not like Adams didn’t pay out bribes, just not to the despised Catholics. At the beginning of Adams’s single term a group of Moslems, the Barbary pirates, captured some American ships. Adams agreed to pay bribe after bribe to the Barbary Pirates for return of these US ships. But the more we paid, the more ships the Barbary pirates captured. So Adams, the idiot, just bribed them more. By the end of Adams’s term, 1/4 of the US budget went to pay these pirates. When Jefferson became president, he ended the war with France by the simple solution of buying Louisiana and he sent the US Marines to deal with the pirates of North Africa. Adams could have done these things but didn’t; Jefferson did, and is ranked barely above Adams as a result. So why is it that no historian calls out Addams as an awful president?.I think it’s because Adams wrote beautifully about all the right sentiments, especially to his wife. Historians like writers of high sentiment. According to 170 scholars, the top ten presidents, not counting those on Mount Rushmore are FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, Obama, and LBJ.

The bottom ten presidents. And there's Trump at the very bottom, with the usual suspects. Harrison was only president for a month.

The bottom ten presidents. And there’s Trump at the very bottom, with the usual suspects. Harrison was only president for a month.

And that brings us to the new poll. It includes William Henry Harrison among the worst. Harrison took office, became sick almost immediately, and died of Typhoid 31 days after taking office. The white house water supply was just down river from the sewage outlet, something you find in Detroit as well. He did nothing to deserve the dishonor except drinking the water after running a great presidential campaign. His campaign song, Tippecanoe and Tyler too is wonderful listening, even today.

And that brings us to the historian’s worst of the worst. The current president, Donald J. Trump. This is remarkable since it’s only a year into Trumps term, and since he’s done a variety of potentially good things: He ended a few trade deals and regulations that most people agree were bad. The result is that the stock market is up, employment is up, people are back at work, and historians are unhappy. What they want is another FDR, someone who’ll tell us: “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” whatever that means. By historian polls FDR is the second or third best president ever.

Robert Buxbaum. April 25, 2018. Semi-irrelevant: here’s a humorous song about Harrison. 

Military heroes, Genghis and confederate

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genghis-khan-statue-complex

This 13 story statue of Genghis Kahn looks over the plains of Mongolia.

All military statues are offensive, as best I can tell. Among the most offensive, is the 131 foot tall monument to Genghis Kahn in central Mongolia. Genghis Kahn is known for near-perfect military success, and for near-total disregard for non-Mongols; he treated them as cattle, to be herded, slaughtered, raped or pillaged. I imagine this statue is offensive to Chinese, Russians, Koreans, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Poles, and Germans — people he slaughtered by the millions. For some Mongols too, I imagine this statue is offensive as a sad reminder that Mongolia no longer rules the eastern world. But the monument is not for the maudlin, nor is it intended to offend. Like other military statues, the Genghis monument is a rally point for soldiers, old and new. It’s a way to inspire Mongols to be great leaders of men, military and not. Such will see, in Genghis, a man who made tough choices, and carried through to great achievements. That he killed and oppressed others will be justified by noting he did it to keep his Mongols from being killed or oppressed. The grand size is chosen to encourage Mongols to think big.

Genghis appears in fictional form as the villain, Shan Yu, in Mulan. There, his motivation is he doesn’t like the wall. Mulan and the Chinese army stop his Mongol attack by burying them at a snow-covered mountain pass. Historically, a Chinese army did meet Genghis and his army at a mountain pass, but the Mongols were not defeated. Instead they bypassed the Chinese and captured their supplies. Genghis then offered the starving Chinese a choice: join or die. Those that joined had to fight those who did not. A few months later, Peking fell, and in a few years, the rest of Asia. Few of the turncoats survived. Given the same choice, Genghis’s men never turned on him.

General Lee planted a maple tree on this spot in Fort Hamilton, New York. in 2017 the plaque is removed as it's considered offensive.

General Lee planted a maple tree on this spot in Fort Hamilton, New York. in 2017 the plaque is removed as offensive.

Genghis’s most famous saying is that one arrow is easily broken, but a bundle will overcome any adversary. Similar to this, he is supposed to have said that, if you treat your soldiers as sons, they will follow you even into death. Such words are nonsense to non-soldiers and professional complainers: those who do not imagine themselves going to war. Those who go to war as generals know this is how to behave; those who go as soldiers hope for a leader who values them as sons, and not as cannon fodder.

In the US we’ve begun removing all monuments to the southern forces of the Civil War. This may be a mistake, but it seems irreversible. We’ve kept our monuments for Northern generals including William Sherman, known for his tactic of total destruction, and for Phillip Sheridan, equally known for total war, and for the saying: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” But we no longer tolerate Confederates. Among the reasons is that we claim to ease the pain of black people — a pain I feel looking at the Genghis Kahn monument. Another reason, we’re told, is that the statues are “dog-whistles” to racists and white supremacists — a particular danger now, evidenced in the election of Donald Trump. A danger, I think, that’s been largely trumped up as a way to keep politicians and newscasters politically relevant.

For these reasons, or politicians have removed every last confederate monument in Florida, the last being a large grave-stone in the Woodlawn cemetery. Virginia’s governor has similarly declared his intention to remove them all from his state. The city of Baltimore removed all four civil-war monuments in the middle of one busy night, August 18, 2017, and the University of Texas did similarly, working at night. New York City removed a plaque remembering Robert E. Lee for planting a tree at Ft. Hamilton, And, last week, an honorary window at the Washington cathedral where Lee had been a deacon.

Statues of Robert E. Lee are a particular target. There are quite a few in Virginia where his family was prominent — it was Richard H. Lee’s motion in the Continental Congress that carried as independence; his home now serves as Arlington Cemetery. While Lee opposed slavery and freed his slaves before the war, he fought for the Confederacy, so clearly he didn’t oppose slavery as totally as we would like. And Lee only freed his wife’s inherited slaves in 1862, fairly late, though Grant still had slaves at that time. Besides, in 1852, Lee caused an escaped slave to be whipped. I imagine he did the same to runaway soldiers. Historians used to praise Lee, but now call him a cruel racist. In hindsight, we imagine we would have done much better.

General Lee statue being removed from University of Texas.

General Lee statue being removed from the University of Texas.

As best I can tell, Virginians still remember Lee fondly, particularly soldiers, veterans, and those who imagine themselves leading men in difficult situations. When I try to put myself in Lee’s position, I find I can’t imagine myself doing better or achieving more. His life involved thousands of divisions and hundreds of inspiring actions. In the choice to fight for Virginia and not for the north, I note that Lee was given the same no-win choice as Genghis’s trapped Chinese: join the Union army and kill your brothers, or be killed by that army. The exchange appears in this movie. I admire Lee’s courage to stand by his brothers; it seems the more honorable of two bad choices. Early in his life, Lee committed himself to only honorable behavior  — according to his conception. This is all I expect from myself, and the most I hope for from any other person.

Another thing is Lee’s surrender. I find it a model of how to end a war so that lasting peace is achieved. It’s remembered in Johnny Cash’s song, “God Bless Robert E. Lee.”  Another song, “The night they drove old Dixie down” calls Lee “the very best.” I would be hard pressed to find a better US general: one who won more or was better loved.

Japanese resettlement.

Japanese resettlement in WWII. Our history is full of painful decisions by people we admire. Let’s try to not repeat our mistakes or pretend we don’t make them.

A killer complaint lodged against Lee, and against all the confederates, is that they were traitors. If so, George Washington and Ben Franklin were traitors too. In England, Benedict Arnold is honored as a patriot with a statue on Trafalgar square, but we do not honor him, rightly I think. He turned on his friends and brothers. I think it’s politics that’s motivated the current spate of removal. Most of the confederate statues stand (stood) in Democrat-leaning cities of five Republican-leaning states: Virginia, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Mississippi. The white, non-college country-folk of these states are being pitted against the darker, college-educated city folk in a fight for their hearts and pocket books.

As for my guess at interpretation of the statues themselves. I’m inclined to suggest that the statues and their inscriptions do not appear racists to me, so much as soldierly. The statues were largely erected between the Spanish-American war and WWII with soldierly (to my eyes) comments. Baltimore monument to Jackson and Lee, reads on one side: “STRAIGHT AS THE NEEDLE TO THE POLE JACKSON ADVANCED TO THE EXECUTION/ OF MY PURPOSE” and on the other side: “SO GREAT IS MY CONFIDENCE IN GENERAL LEE THAT I AM WILLING TO FOLLOW HIM BLINDFOLDED.” Another Baltimore inscription: “THEY FOUGHT AS GENTLEMEN.” To me this latter is a swipe at Sherman and Sheridan, who did not. Removing these statues is a swipe at the honor of southern soldiers. The statues now read “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” a slogan I read as anti-police, anti-Trump, and anti-white.

The remnant of Baltimore's Lee- Jackson statue, showing the old inscription and the new.

The remnant of Baltimore’s Lee – Jackson statue with the old inscription and the new..To me, the old inscription is military, mostly, and not as racist as the new.

The pain of black America is real, but the thing that’s missed is that it is similar to the pain of rural white America. Both have been left behind. I’ve noted that urban black Americans and rural whites have virtually no savings, It could be the two poor cultures don’t realize they have much in common. Or it could be (I think) some folks purposefully fermenting dissension. What is needed, at least is better financial sense, and a recognition that race isn’t racism, but to listen to CNN or read the New York Times, such understandings seem unlikely. The Trump election shocked everyone, I think, those who voted for him and those who didn’t — and perhaps even Trump himself. Hillary, it seems had already bought a house in DC to house her staff. The surprise is not a reason to turn on one’s fellow. I can hope that Trump will prove to be a great president. For now, he is the president, and we are faced by nuclear enemies. It hardly helps to see half of our electorate call the other half racists and deplorables. As with a bundle of arrows, we have strength in union, weakness in disunion. May we all be blessed for a good, sweet year of peace and brotherly love

Robert E. Buxbaum. September 24, 2017. Perhaps my fondness for Lee is because I’m named after him. Here’s my theory for why Mongol arrows flew further.

Detroit 1967 to 2017: unemployment comes down, murder rate doesn’t.

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Almost 50 years ago today, July 23, 1967 white policemen raided an unlicensed, “blind pig” bar in a black neighborhood, the 12th street of Detroit, and the city responded with four days of rioting, 43 killings (33 black, 10 white), 2509 stores looted, and over 1000 fires. In 2017, at last the city is beginning to show signs of recovery. By 2015 the city’s unemployment had gone down from about 20% to 12%, and  in the first six months 2017, the firs six months of the Trump presidency, 2017 it’s gone down again to 7 1/2%. It’s not that 7 1/2% unemployment is good, but it’s better. Per-hour salaries are hardly up, but I take that as better than having a high average salary at very low employment. As a point of reference, the unemployment rate in Detroit in 1967, before the riots was 3.4%. Within weeks, 150,000 jobs were lost, and anyone who could leave the city, did.

Detroit Unemployment rates are way down, but the city still looks like a mess.

Detroit Unemployment rates are way down, but the city still looks like a mess.

Another issue for Detroit is its uncommonly high murder rate. In the mid-80s, Detroit had the highest murder rate in the US, about 55 murders per 100,000 population per year (0.055%/year). As of February 1, 2017, the murder rate was virtually unchanged: 50 per 100,000 or 0.05%/year, but two cities have higher rates yet. At present rates, you have a 3.5% of dying by homicide if you live in Detroit for 70 years — even higher if you’re male. The rate in the rest of the US is about 1/10th this, 0.005%/year, or 5 per 100,000, with a dramatic difference between rural and urban populations.

Murder rate in 50 cities with Detroit highlighted. From The Economist, February 2017.

Murder rate in 50 cities with Detroit highlighted, from The Economist.

One of the causes of the high murder rate in Detroit, and in the US generally, I suspect, is our stiff, minimum-penalties for crime. As sir Thomas Moose pointed out, when crime is punished severely, there is a tendency to murder. If you’re going to spend the next 20 years behind bars, you might as well try any means you can to escape. Another thought — the one favored by social liberals — is that it’s the presence of guns in the US encourages murder. It may, but it also seems to prevent crime by allowing the victim to defend himself or herself. And the effect on murder is not so clear, if you consider suicide as a form of murder. In countries like Canada with few guns, people kill themselves by hanging or by throwing themselves off high buildings. My hope is that Detroit’s murder rate will drop in 2017 to match its improved economic condition, but have no clear reason to think it will.

Robert Buxbaum, July 20, 2017. Here are some suggestions I’ve made over the years.

If the wall with Mexico were covered in solar cells

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As a good estimate, it will take about 130,000 acres of solar cells to deliver the power of a typical nuclear facility, 26 TWhr/year. Since Donald Trump has proposed covering his wall with Mexico with solar cells, I came to wonder how much power these cells would produce, and how much this wall might cost. Here goes.

Lets assume that Trump’s building a double wall on a strip of land one chain (66 feet) wide, with a 2 lane road between. Many US roads are designed in chain widths, and a typical, 2 lane road is 1/2 chain wide, 33 feet, including its shoulders. I imagine that each wall is slanted 50° as is typical with solar cells, and that each is 15 to 18 feet high for a good mix of power and security. Since there are 10 square chains to an acre, and 80 chains to a mile we find that it would take 16,250 miles of this to produce 26 TWhr/year. The proposed wall is only about 1/10 this long, 1,600 miles or so, so the output will be only about 1/10 as much, 2.6 TWhr/year, or 600 MW per average daylight hour. That’s not insignificant power — similar to a good-size coal plant. If we aim for an attractive wall, we might come to use Elon Musk’s silica-coated solar cells. These cost $5/Watt or $3 Billion total. Other cells are cheaper, but don’t look as nice or seem as durable. Obama’s, Ivanpah solar farm, a project with durability problems, covers half this area, is rated at 370 MW, and cost $2.2 Billion. It’s thus rated to produce slightly over half the power of the wall, at a somewhat higher price, $5.95/Watt.

Elon Musk with his silica solar panels.

Elon Musk with his, silica-coated, solar wall panels. They don’t look half bad and should be durable.

It’s possible that the space devoted to the wall will be wider than 66 feet, or that the length will be less than 1600 miles, or that we will use different cells that cost more or less, but the above provides a good estimate of design, price, and electric output. I see nothing here to object to, politically or scientifically. And, if we sell Mexico the electricity at 11¢/kWhr, we’ll be repaid $286 M/year, and after 12 years or so, Republicans will be able to say that Mexico paid for the wall. And the wall is likely to look better than the Ivanpah site, or a 20-year-old wind farm.

As a few more design thoughts, I imagine an 8 foot, chain-link fence on the Mexican side of the wall, and imagine that many of the lower solar shingles will be replaced by glass so drivers will be able to see the scenery. I’ve posited that secure borders make a country. Without them, you’re a tribal hoard. I’ve also argued that there is a pollution advantage to controlling imports, and an economic advantage as well, at least for some. For comparison, recent measurement of the Great Wall of China shows it to be 13,170 miles long, 8 times the length of Trump’s wall with China.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, June 14, 2017.

Future airplane catapults may not be electric

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President Trump got into Hot Water with the Navy this week for his suggestion that they should go “back to god-damn steam” for their airplane catapults as a cure for cost over-runs and delays with the Navy’s aircraft carriers. The Navy had chosen to go to a more modern catapult called EMALS (electromagnetic, aircraft launch system) based on a traveling coil and electromagnetic pulses. This EMAL system has cost $5 Billion in cost over-runs, has added 3 years to the program, and still doesn’t work well. In response to the president’s suggestion (explosion), the Navy did what the rest of Washington has done: blame Trump’s ignorance, e.g. here, in the Navy Times. Still, for what it’s worth, I think Trump’s idea has merit, especially if I can modify it a bit to suggest high pressure air (pneumatics) instead of high pressure steam.


Tests of the navy EMALS, notice that some launches go further than others; the problem is electronics, supposedly.

If you want to launch a 50,000 lb jet fighter at 5 g acceleration, you need to apply 250,000 lbs of force uniformly throughout the launch. For pneumatics, all that takes is 250 psi steam or air, and a 1000 square inch piston, about 3 feet in diameter. This is a very modest pressure and a quite modest size piston. A 50,000 lb object accelerated this way, will reach launch speed (130 mph) in 1.2 seconds. It’s very hard to get such fast or uniform acceleration with an electromagnetic coil since the motion of the coil always produces a back voltage. The electromagnetic pulses can be adjusted to counter this, but it’s not all that easy, as the Navy tests show. You have to know the speed and position of the airplane precisely to get it right, and have to adjust the firing of the pushing coils accordingly. There is no guarantee of smooth acceleration like you get with a piston, and the EMALS control circuit will always be vulnerable to electromagnetic and cyber attack. As things stand, the control system is thought to be the problem.

A piston is invulnerable to EM and cyber attack since, if worse comes to worse, the valves can be operated manually, as was done with steam-catapults throughout WWII. And pistons are very robust — far more robust than solenoid coils — because they are far less complex. As much force as you put on the plane, has to be put on the coil or piston. Thus, for 5 g acceleration, the coil or piston has to experience 250,000 lbs of horizontal force. That’s 3 million Newtons for those who like SI units (here’s a joke about SI units). A solid piston will have no problem withstanding 250,000 lbs for years. Piston steamships from the 50s are still in operation. Coils are far more delicate, and the life-span is likely to be short, at least for current designs. 

The reason I suggest compressed air, pneumatics, instead of steam is that air is not as hot and corrosive as steam. Also an air compressor can be located close to the flight deck, connected to the power center by electric wires. Steam requires long runs of steam pipes, a more difficult proposition. As a possible design, one could use a multi-stage, inter-cooled air compressor connected to a ballast tank, perhaps 5 feet in diameter x 100 feet long to guarantee uniform pressure. The ballast tank would provide the uniform pressure while allowing the use of a relatively small compressor, drawing less power than the EMALS. Those who’ve had freshman physics will be able to show that 5 g acceleration will get the plane to 130 mph in only 125 feet of runway. This is far less runway than the EMALS requires. For lighter planes or greater efficiency, one could shut off the input air before 120 feet and allow the remainder of the air to expand for 200 feet of the piston.

The same pistons could be used for capturing an airplane. It could start at 250 psi, dead-ended to the cylinder top. The captured airplane would push air back into the ballast tank, or the valve could be closed allowing pressure to build. Operated that way, the cylinder could stop the plane in 60 feet. You can’t do that with an EMAL. I should also mention that the efficiency of the piston catapult can be near 100%, but the efficiency of the EMALS will be near zero at the beginning of acceleration. Low efficiency at low speed is a problem found in all electromagnetic actuators: lots of electromagnetic power is needed to get things moving, but the output work,  ∫F dx, is near zero at low velocity. With EM, efficiency is high at only at one speed determined by the size of the moving coil; with pistons it’s high at all speeds. I suggest the Navy keep their EMALS, but only as a secondary system, perhaps used to launch drones until they get sea experience and demonstrate a real advantage over pneumatics.

Robert Buxbaum, May 19, 2017. The USS Princeton was the fanciest ship in the US fleet, with super high-tech cannons. When they mis-fired, it killed most of the cabinet of President Tyler. Slow and steady wins the arms race.