Sunday, December 8, 2024

Back to racing Ultramarathons!

 It's been a long time. The last time I raced an ultramarathon was September 2018, the IAU 100 km world championships in Croatia. I had a pulmonary embolism at the time, and didn't know it, so I basically ran 10:00 pace, had an average heart rate of 180 beats per minute, and after 4.5 hours, called it quits as I was getting lapped on the 10 km circuit. Then in the spring of 2019 I broke my ankle in two places and partially tore two ligaments. While I started to recover from that injury, and did a couple 40 mile trail runs, ultimately my ankle wasn't really healing, and in the winter of 2021-2022 it got to the point I could not run 3-4 miles without ankle pain. I didn't know if I would ever run long distances again. So in April 2022 I had a stem cell procedure where bone marrow was taken out of my hips, centrifuged to get the step cells, and they were injected into my ankle bones and ligaments. The recovery was hard, and it really took about 8 months before I started to feel actually better from it, but I did start to feel better.

2023 I gradually felt better and on a trip to Seattle in September I went for a 12 mile run, the first that long in over a year. It felt good, so when I stumbled into free entry for the Boulderthon half marathon in October 2023, I thought, 'hey, why not go run a half marathon and see what happens?' I ran 1:37, which while not fast by any means, it was a huge improvement from where I had been the past few years. I've never ran the Boston Marathon, and it's one of the things that still motivates me, so I decided to try and go qualify for it. I registered for the Napa Valley Marathon in March, and while I was on 3:00 pace for about 16 miles, I fell off and hit the wall, coming in at like 3:24. So I registered for another marathon, the Revel Rockies downhill marathon in June, and managed to run 3:01:00, getting 4:00 under my qualifying time, however the criteria to get in to Boston in 2025 was to be 6:52 under your qualifying time, so I didn't get into Boston. But it gave me a lot of confidence.

So I registered for the Fat Ox 24 hour USATF national championship in November this year. If I won, and ran 145 miles, I would get entry to the 2025 world championships. The two times I've gone to the world championships, once I had a stress fracture and then had whole body cramps, and the other time I had the pulmonary embolism. I'm a good runner, I have this talent that God gave me, and I don't feel that I've really had the chance to show that on a big stage. 

The Fat Ox 24 went really well! I set a speed limit for myself of 8:30 per mile, and only had a few laps faster than that. I drank a lot of Maurten, gatorade and electrolyte drink, and didn't hit the wall until 110 miles. I did slow down in the heat of the afternoon, and fell off my goal pace of 150 miles, but I was doing well. After my 2:30 AM hitting the wall, I was able to get back out there and keep going to ultimately get 125 miles, and 3rd place for the men, and 6th place overall. While not the top end goal I had for the race, it was really exciting to be back, and run something like that with essentially no pain. Or at least, not the ankle pain that I battled for several years after my skiing accident in 2019. 

What's next? I already put my name in the Leadville 100 lottery, and I'd like to take another crack at making the 2025 24 hour world championship team, but for now I'm still in recovery mode. I went on my first run after the race, 12 days later and only 3 miles, and it went well, but I am clearly still tired. 

Sunday, November 10, 2024

What just happened in November 2024?

It's a few days after the 2024 US presidential election, and I'm distraught. Instead of a well qualified candidate who aimed to make life better for all people by expanding healthcare and fighting climate change, we elected a narcissistic self centered person who will sow chaos and suffering.

Of course, I've read a lot in the last few days, and this particular article stuck out to me: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga

Let's go through the issues...

Deporting 10 million people is logistically incredibly difficult. Simply finding all of those people, physically transporting them to another country, and processing them through the legal system are three very difficult activities that will require a huge amount of money that us US citizens will have to come up with. Mexico is not going to pay us take take a million people into it's country. And who is going to do this work? I do realize that there are a number of younger men that look forward to doing this work, but we're probably talking 100,000 people that need to be active full time participants in this for there to be a remote chance of deporting so many people. Will that be active duty military people going door to door asking to search homes? This is an area where I fully expect the new administration to put a lot of effort, and likely separate many families in the process. Plus, as a downstream effect, this is going to definitely increase grocery prices. First generation immigrants play a big role in food production, and who is going to replace them? See this infographic: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/essential-role-immigrants-us-food-supply-chain

Stopping the wars in Ukraine and the middle east will not happen in 24 hours. I presume that he will take whatever current deal Russia offers, and try to force Ukraine to agree to it, and I'm sure the deal will be so bad that Ukraine won't accept it. In the middle east, I presume that he will simply send Israel more weapons to kill more people, and do nothing to actual sign any peace treaty. Which likely means that Israel will bully it's enemies until one of them strikes back in a show of modest force, and the whole thing will escalate again. Then there is China and Taiwan, I don't think that will be a quiet part of the world for the next four years. Let's not forget the whole continent of Africa, although unfortunately, we will as a country essentially ignore the whole range of challenges they are sure to face the next four years.

He ran on rolling back EPA regulations, and as 2024 is expected to be the hottest year on record, with several hurricanes that wrecked destruction across Florida and North Carolina, I can only expect the next four hurricane seasons to be worse. I expect wild fires to be bad as well. 2020 and 2021 were bad years but the last three were not so bad here in Colorado. I expect that in the next four years there will definitely be some very large very destructive wild fires. Global warming is real. Sea level rise is real. Trying to roll back the already inadequate incentives to mitigate climate change is a recipe for further destruction. A category 5 hurricane is going to hit Miami (and Mar-a-Lago) some day. There will be 20 foot above sea level storm surges, maybe 25 feet or more like we saw with Hurricane Katrina. There will be tornados, crops will die, people will get asthma. Honestly, this issue is becoming what I view as potentially the single most important issue since the most lives and the most money is at stake. No one is really pushing for this, but I think we need to start a Climate Corp. in this country like the Peace Corp or Ameri Corp to do climate change prevention and mitigation actives, as well as go into destroyed areas after natural disasters and help clean up. It's something that we could use a lot of strong people for since it's going to be hard work. 

Women's healthcare is under attack. More mothers will die from sepsis in preventable miscarriage care. Contraception will be under attack, and women will go into poverty raising children, which doesn't help most children to grow up in poverty. Couples that want to use IVF to have children, will not be able to do that in some places. We need to trust women to make the decisions that are best for them. Thinking that a bunch of politicians and business people can make the best decisions for women's health is ridiculous! I used to be a solidly pro-life anti-abortion white male, but I now realize that's ridiculous. I'm still very pro-life, but a law about abortion being illegal doesn't make the world more welcoming for unborn babies, policies that give women all the resources that they need for their health and the health of babies does make the world more welcoming for fetuses. I'll give an example, when a women wants to have a baby, gets pregnant, has a miscarriage, and the doctors don't operate until it's too late and she has to have her uterus removed, she can no longer have a baby. You have just stopped that woman from having the baby she wants.

Tariffs are an interesting one, because we do actually have a number of existing tariffs, mostly started by the President around 2018, which Biden kept during his administration, and contributed to inflation the last few years. In other words, there is actually a small price win here by removing some tariffs, but in all likelihood there will be more tariffs, which will lead to more price increases, one estimate I saw was expected to increase costs for the average household $2,500 per year. But I suppose this is what people voted for, so we'll just get to wait and see what happens.

Taxes are another interesting area, the Tax Cuts and Jobs act of 2017 lowered taxes quite a bit, and they expire in 2025... hahahaha. I'll explain, this seemed to be a change election, people weren't happy with the party in control of the White House or the legislative branch because of prices and perceived safety, so they voted for change. However, when it comes to taxes, the last four years we have actually been living with taxes that I think are already too low that expire soon and revert to their higher levels. So there will be a small battle to simply keep these current taxation levels, and a larger battle to reduce taxes. In other words, I think it's unlikely to see dramatic change where taxes are concerned, and it's possible, although very unlikely that they actually go up if legislation cannot be passed to keep the current taxation levels.

The national deficit and national debt are interesting ones too. One particular campaigner for the winning party seemed to be excited to cut national spending by $2 Trillion a year, and I don't see how that happens without at least touching Social Security. Infographic here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727 In other words, I do think we need to do something to get closer to a balanced budget, and I like taxing the rich as a start, like adding a "high" tax bracket for incomes over $10 million per year of like 49% where there are no deductions or lower tax rates for capital gains. It would apply to a tiny portion of people and generate a fair amount of revenue. Another item to address is Social Security taxes and benefits, and while the fixes are pretty easy actually, I doubt that they will be implemented the next four years, which makes them a little more difficult to implement in 2029 to 2032.

So where does that leave us? In something of a wait and see mode. Will Project 2025 come to fruition? What policies will actually be enacted remain to be seen. Will new higher tariffs, government spending cuts, and mass deportation make the stock market go up? I think it's probably fair to say, 'okay, make America great, here is your chance.' I'll try to have an open mind and hope I am surprised by the shared prosperity that we enjoy in the years to come.

As a Christian I take a lot of comfort in my faith in God, and yet, Christians carried out parts of the Holocaust and owned slaves for centuries. There is no guarantee of an easy life in the Bible, on the contrary, there can be a lot of hardship that is foreshadowed.

Saturday, August 10, 2024

The Orbital Space Launch Industry Waiting Game

I've been working in the space industry now for six years, after a bit of a fight to get into it. The industry has changed in that time, and is in an interesting place, that I feel other commentators have not really addressed it. Six years ago the race was on for new orbital space launch vehicles. Mostly small launch vehicles. However that market has contracted with perceived winners like Virgin Orbit, as well as companies like Vector, going out of business. A large part of the reason for the small launch competitors going out of business is that SpaceX rideshares can cost only $5 million dollars for 800 kg to a 500 km orbit, at a price of $6,250/kg (and that's rounding up from $4.8 million to $5 million). Now, there is a lot of advantage to a rocket taking a spacecraft to exactly the orbit it wants to be in, that's worth a lot, but I don't know that it's worth 3-5 times as much for every customer. Specifically because for those extra million or millions of dollars you can take a propulsion system and extra fuel to get where you want to go.

With all of that being said, the space industry seems to be in a waiting game to see what the next generation of launch vehicles in development can deliver. Those include the Blue Origin New Glenn, Rocket Lab Neutron, United Launch Alliance Vulcan, and of course, the most interesting, first fully reusable orbital rocket, SpaceX Starship. To cut to the chase, my personal opinion is that it will cut the cost to orbit for payloads around half to three quarters. There are predictions of Starship cutting the cost by 90% or even more. Falcon 9 can take 22,800 kg to orbit for roughly $60 million at roughly $2,600/kg, and Starship is predicted to take 100,000 to 150,000 kg to orbit and again be fully reusable.  A recent Payload report suggested that current SpaceX costs for a Falcon 9 are under $20 million for each Starlink launch. 

Some differences, a Falcon 9 has a total of 10 main engines, and a Starship has a total of 39 main engines. Engines are the largest subsystem cost in most launch vehicles. So having four times as many engines means four times as many inspections. Plus, the Merlin engine is very simple as far as rockets go, while the Raptor is a more complicated cycle (a full flow staged combustion versus a fuel rich gas generator). This suggested to me, that the engines are going to need a lot of work. That's not necessarily true, but the Raptor has more moving parts and operates at higher pressures which can create a lot of wear and tear. Additionally, Starship has a large number of thermal tiles on the upper stage for reentry, and at least initially, those are going to need a lot of inspection and likely refurbishment between flights, like the Space Shuttle had. 

To estimate that Falcon 9 $20 million dollar launch cost estimate breakdown on paper here are my estimates:

  • Launch Fees (insurance, FAA fees, etc.) - $1 million
  • Expending upper stage hardware - $5 million
  • Inspections between flights - $1 million
  • Amortized cost of the reusable first stage hardware - $4 million
  • Fuel - $500,000
  • Mission Operations cost (people, ground support equipment, communications, ground transportation, launch pad, etc.) - $3.5 million
  • Research and Development recouped costs to make it possible - $5 million
Of course these could be wildly off. Specifically the mission operations cost, it's probably a lot less than that, but then again, I don't know. I know that for the airlines those operations costs are substantial, and a lot more goes into a rocket launch than an individual commercial flight from Denver to Chicago.

The reason I don't think that Starship will bring down costs 90% from the existing Falcon 9 costs, is that to do that you have to quintuple the payload to orbit, and half the cost to do so. Using the above numbers, I don't think the launch fees, inspections, fuel, or mission operations costs are going to budge, in fact, in the short term for the first 100 flights them are probably going to go up. In the long term, my estimate is they are about the same, which due to inflation will be less than they are today, but a small percentage lower, not half the price. That leaves the $10 million to come out of difference between expending the second stage, the amortized cost of the first stage hardware, and R&D. Taking $4 million out of the second stage cost, halving the cost of the first stage amortization, and halving the cost of the R&D only takes out $8.5 million, and based on the complexity of reusing an orbital vehicle (which we learned on the Space Shuttle program) that is likely a very optimistic estimate for the second stage costs and R&D. 

One glaring oversight in this analysis is that I looked at SpaceX's estimated costs, and not the current estimated customer costs. Which is to say, instead of charging roughly $60 million for 22,800 kg, SpaceX needs to charge roughly $30 million for 110,000 kg to orbit. While that may be possible, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to actually do that when charging $100 million for such a launch would still be a 2/3rds reduction in cost, and leave presumably a large profit margin and get the cost to orbit under $1,000/kg. That would be well under any of the current competitors, and it remains to be seen where that would put it in relation to the next generation of launch vehicles.

So we seem to be in a waiting game as these test flights and engine tests are conducted. The entire industry is waiting to see where the costs end up in 2026, 2028 and beyond because it radically changes how things are designed and what sort of missions make sense. It would be great to send an orbiter to both Uranus and Neptune but with current launch prices it's still very cost prohibitive to do that. Similarly, mining in space will likely become an industry in the future, in particular mining water on the moon, but it's wildly easier at $260/kg than $1,000/kg to orbit, and at current prices around $3,000/kg, the industry doesn't actually exist. NASA struggled to drill a three foot deep hole on Mars just to measure the temperature.

A risk of this whole article is that I basically just talked about one launch company, since they already have the cost per kilogram lead and look to reduce that cost even further. SpaceX has been landing orbital rockets since December 2015 and still no one else has been able to fully replicate that feat. Looking ahead another nine years, I do expect at least two other companies to replicate that feat, and probably more, but then again I would have expected someone else to do it by now. Which is to say again, we're in a waiting game this year and probably all of next year to see where launch costs shake out and what new space missions become economically feasible.

Sunday, July 14, 2024

Learning to Love Trees

I haven't blogged in months and I miss it. I like taking the time to write, to get a bunch of scatter brained thoughts into an organized set of sentences and paragraphs that convey a point. The world is crazy, and I want a rest. As summer ticks by and I feel like I'm spending more time on planes and in cars than under trees running, bicycling and hiking I feel sad. Plus, getting a sickness on vacation that was probably Covid doesn't help.

My wife and I have gotten into trees. There are many dimensions to this, it's not one particular type of tree or one particular place, there are many different trees and tree places that inspire us. 

Pacific Bonsai Museum - Nearly 50 Year Old Forest

Eating Lunch in Front of a Western Red Cedar

Something like 25 years ago I watched the Karate Kid and saw bonsai trees for the first time. I'm not sure why little trees seem to connect with humans, but they do, and this experience isn't limited to just me. So two years ago when we were outfitting my apartment in Oakland with a few plants, my wife decided to buy me a $12 juniper seedling, and I had my first bonsai. Two winters later it's still growing! I'm not even sure exactly how many little bonsai trees my wife and I now own, something like 15, but one looks like it just died when we were on vacation and I bought three more not start on another project or two.

On the other end of the size spectrum, while driving up the northern California coast almost two years ago we went to visit a number of coastal redwood parks, and loved it. Seeing huge trees like that is magical. They are incredibly tall, so thick at the base, and thanks to science fiction movies like Star Wars, feel like we are on a different planet. Since then we've traveled to see giant sequoia trees, huge western red cedars and douglas fir trees all around the west coast of North America. 

It's easy to take trees for granted when you have a lot of them. But as we have gotten more and more into learning about trees and forests we've come to see stumps from clear cuts that are dozens of years, maybe over a hundred years old. We see them in the middle of forests that look healthy as well as in fields without trees. After seeing thousands of stumps it hits home how limited these really big 300+ year old trees are. One take away is how delicate the opportunity to see these trees is. What I mean by that is, you can kill a bonsai by forgetting to water it for two weeks in a heat wave. You can also cut down an 8 foot diameter tree in a matter of hours. Yet that bonsai could be two hundred years old, or that giant tree could be four hundred years old. Decades or even centuries can go into growing a tree and in a matter of even hours that tree's story can be over. 

Life and death for humans and animals is the same, but sometimes that can feel like a really heavy item to address. We are all survivors of the last four years, as the Covid pandemic forever changed the world. With artificial intelligence, social media, and the modern world it can feel like the world is flying by, changing at such a rapid pace that we can't keep up. Then we see a tree. A tree that has lived in the same place for hundreds of years. A tree that has seen droughts, fires and floods, disease and flourishing bumper crops, and is still there. There is a strength and permanence to a 1000+ year old tree that just doesn't feel replicated in anything else I know. 

I'm sharing this today because there is a lot of peace and comfort in trees so if you are looking for some, and can't find it in your usual place, look for a tree.