Slept Late

Took some naproxen sodium before going to bed last night, because my back was hurting. Don't know if it was that or something else, but my gut subsequently hurt all night. It eased off for a while around 3:00, then started up again until just before 8:00. I slept from then until just after Noon.

Technical Glitch

I don't know whether to blame news agencies or the source, but did anyone else catch the bit in the announcement about Iran's new ballistic missile that its solid fuel makes it more accurate than the liquid fuel in its previous missiles?

For the record, because you can throttle and restart liquid rocket engines, they are inherently more "accurate" than solids, which run until they burn out. Also, rockets use propellants, which are usually a fuel and an oxidizer. A fuel by itself is useless, except for monopropellants, and let's not get into those just now.

People will criticize this post for being "technical." They're right in the last part, and wrong in the first. This is a technical subject, and cannot be properly evaluated without the technical knowledge and terminology appropriate to the topic.

I suspect this technical mistake was a produced by the Iranian propagandists to add to the intimidation factor. Not being technical people, they didn't realize this mistake would make anyone who is a technical person (at least, a technical person familiar with rocketry) treat every other part of their claim with suspicion.

History Repeats

I've been saying for two decades that the 21st Century would have more in common with the 19th than with the 20th. Don't believe me? The Balkans have re-balkanized.