America’s Iron Giants – The World’s Most Powerful Metalworkers
An evening pause: Heavy tech (literally) that makes everything go, was built with slide-rules and pencils — in feet, inches, ounces, and pounds — and still operates.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
That was fascinating!
Being reminded of such incredible productive achievements, I somberly reflect at what we now take for granted.
I am also reminded of Ayn Rand’s fictional epic, “Atlas Shrugged.”
It is interesting to contrast these mammoth presses with the Giga Presses used by Tesla. These presses are much lighter, although still massive, and are horizontally-oriented.
Rather than stamping out iron parts from billets, they produce castings formed by the rapid injection of molten aluminum, allowing them to produce major auto frame sub-assemblies at a rate on the order of one per minute.
3D printing is now leading another evolution of the same materials science. Pulse power too. So wonderful. Too bad millions oppose the very industries that provide their affluent lives.
The TV show How It’s Made covers, over and over, a full variety of metal forming processes used to make the things of our world, large and small. They go exclusively right into the factory to show the machinery, workers, and robots in action. The segments are all short. I jump ahead to the ones that interest me.
“Atlas Shrugged” does not seem so fictional now.
Not only did they use slide rules and pencils, you can be sure that they made considerable use of the SWAG method in design and development – and it’s amazing how close those initial guesses were.
Some people just have a knack for things.
My Dad, however, would shove me away from anything I worked on—on account of me being a jinx.
He drove my Ford Fairmont to Indiana and back on a visit to his brother’s family.
I drive it five miles the next day—and it strands me.
Same thing with his truck. I walk past a lawnmower—it quits.
My combination locker at school opened for anyone BUT me.
I’m the better idiot that engineers warn about.