...To The Moon

A Rainy Afternoon We Spent @ SAC Air Museum A Year Ago Today

Test Bubbles

Nebraska Public Power District is going underground. Three thousand feet below ground, to be precise. They're looking closely at some empty salt domes in Deuel County, Nebraska. NPPD is the state's largest electric utility and they plan to spend more than $8 million conducting engineering and geomorphic tests for a Compressed Air Energy Storage project.

The salt domes in this particular Dakota Sandstone formation were mined in the 1950s and 1960's. The same formation was used as a natural gas storage area in the late '90s which means the subsurface 'breathes'. You can get compressed gases in and extract them back out of the formation. On the 'exhale' NPPD would use the compressed air to help power a turbine and generate electricity.

The latest $8 million project offers a series of engineering tests designed to quantify the 'lung capacity' equivalent from the rock formation. Beginning in 2014, NPPD plans to inject 3 billion cubic feet of air into the underground geological formation over a six-month period to develop "test bubbles" and determine whether the formation will hold air stored at 830 to 1,000 pounds per square inch over a long period of time.

The basic idea of CAES involves using power when it's plentiful (and cheap) to drive an air compressor, store air in a geologic formation and draw it back out when prices are high, heat it up, and then supply the compressed air to a modified gas turbine.

NPPD won't make a decision about building or not building a CAES power plant on the site until mid-2015. Construction would start the following year. If approved the turbine would be operational, or on-line, in 2019.

Stress Analysis

Glass Enclosed Display in UNL's Engineering Department

Late Night - Sleepy Morning

After tossing and turning, sometimes, I just give up. I climb out of the crumpled sheets. Slip downstairs.

Otherwise I'd lay in bed and plunk away at my mental calculator, "If I fell asleep right now, I'd get.......five hours of rest. If I fell asleep right ~now~ I'd get..... three hours of rest..."

I can't be too surprised that insomnia strikes this week with finals in one class and my first exam in the second. Wish me luck and coffee...and a little sleep at the end of it. 

XO

11.1-miles Outside

Bison Trail, Pioneers Park

18 Year Defense

I met Jeff McArthur 25 years ago. We were kicking around various Lincoln theater companies and I can tell you that Jeff is a natural storyteller. Recently he focused those talents by publishing a book titled Pro Bono - the 18 Year Defense of Caril Fugate. 

The name Caril Fugate strikes a chord with anyone with parents who grew up in the Midwest. She was tied to a series of eleven murders committed by Charlie Starkweather in 1958. 

The murder spree paralyzed the Midwest. The National Guard was called in by local law enforcement, the schools let out early, whole families slept in the same bedroom hoping to find safety in numbers. No matter who you talk to, what town they lived in the story was the same: there wasn't a cold drink or a shotgun left to buy in town. 

When Starkweather was finally apprehended his 14-year old girlfriend, Caril Fugate, was travelling with him. The killing spree started two days after she had tried to break things off with Charlie.

After he was apprehended one of Starkweather's most famous quotes was to say "When I go to the electric chair, I want Caril Ann Fugate sitting on my lap." 

Pro Bono tackles the legal manuverings to defend Caril Fugate. It's a book that takes on the question of whether she was kidnapped or a willing accomplice. Authored by my friend, Jeff, the grandson of the attorney appointed to the case by the court it's a delicious read. One I recommend whole-heartedly. 

OMA-DEN-SFO

Big Basin Redwood State Park

My California findings:

• This book by Paolo Giordano.
• A quiet hotel in Silicon Valley that offered a delicious, hot breakfast each morning. Every comfy bed had a canopy. Every guest room had a plastic cactus shaped lamp.
• My kid can mass-transit with the best of 'em.
• The Golden Gate Bridge is seventy-five years old this year. 
• Before purchasing your slinky, little blue dress in San Francisco's Chinatown: take a moment to try it on. American dress sizes are not the global standard.
• Skunk patrol among forest rangers is part of the job but it isn't so much living the dream.
• A forest of tall trees is even more magnificent than you'd imagine.
• The only other conversations that tackle the same expanse of time as the redwoods involve rocks and tectonic plates.
• Stop at the mountain-town grocery store. The sign offers liquor, coffee and donuts. In that order. 

14.2-miles Outside

Side-trip through Wilderness along Jamaica Trail North