Karoliina's blogs all-in-1

I am following many people on Twitter etc. and what I am often getting, is all kinds of campaigns for cancers. And they are specifically all for one single type cancer, e.g. breast cancer, prostate cancer etc. most commonly. 

The sad thing on this is that there will be no cure for a single type of cancer. Different types of cancers indeed respond differently to the barbaric treatment used today (e.g. chemotherapy). The sad thing is that people put all their power and thinking on improving cancer prevention and less how to deal with one once it has already happened. And even then, people look at how to treat it, not how to cure it completely.

Even people studying on the field (except some exceptions such as Dr. Akseli Hemminki/Oncos in Finland), seem to be missing the point. They look at treating the patients to prolong their life. They don’t look at curing the patients. And they think about how to improve the treatments, instead of seeking answer how to implement the cure. There will be many steps on this process of course. But only few on the field are actually taking them. Most are studying technologies which will improve the prognosis, but will not be the final answer. 

All cancers happen due to the very same mechanism. There are several safeguards in cells that prevent this to happen normally, but eventually these will go offline and it is inevitable, the longer one lives, the more likely is that a mutation reaches through the “firewall mechanisms”. And then it is thought it is just bad luck. No it is not bad luck. It is inevitable for everybody if they live long enough. 

A real cure for cancer is a such that will repair the cell mutation back. The cure will be found from genetic technology. And the cure will be also a partial answer to combat aging. This should be essential priority on medical field to solve. Only solving this big problem, the cancer will be won. After it is won, aging is also more understood and secret for (much) longer life may be also found. Progress happen on this area all the time, but with very low budget. Angel investors with big amount of money available should go help out the guys and gals which are going to seek out final answer for all cancers from genetic technology. It is sad to see how the only ones who actually work to find out the answer are bound to the limitations of a shoestring budget while big pharmaceutical companies offering only toxins that will not cure, swim in money. 

Since the aerospace technology is changing as the new Internet generation is making their dreams into reality (and space is no longer a program but a place), I am confident that now would be the time to same happen on the medical technology area as well. Finding the answer to this question will be very important for the future of the human race. There will be many things to come that will make preventing cancer harder and harder. We are eating constantly radioactivity, both naturally occurring, and both caused by nuclear tests, nuclear accidents (like Chernobyl and Fukushima) and we are constantly bombarded by particles from space which is unavoidable. And when we travel among the stars, we are at much greater risk for cell mutations when there are no Earth’s huge  magnetic fields giving their protection. To travel in space without dying to cancer young at very high risk (e.g. years long trip to Mars will be lifetime radiation exposure – one way already), a mechanism must be invented to reverse/stop the cellular mutation once it has started. And it does not happen by government programs, it happens by bright individuals working on a goal which is out of the box rather than inside the box, to break the cycle how things always have been done. 

There are many considerations where to put a propellers in a small aircraft or RPV. The common place to put them is at the nose. The biggest reason and driver for this placement is that it is advantageous for CG location. However, from aerodynamic standpoint that is not very optimal. There was discussion at HBA Forums about propeller placement and this document was linked (it studies difference of prop placed in pusher and tractor configuration):

http://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE_CD1998-2010/ICAS2000/PAPERS/ICA0344.PDF

Optimal place is behind the wing, a bit above the wing centerline (only small part of the prop circle goes below the wing). This placement has the typical CG challenges with it. And it will require either pylon on the wing, or a pylon on the fuselage (assuming a single fuselage). There is then the question about the effect of the body to the prop located near the fuselage behind the trailing edge of the wing. There might be unfavorable flow due to the effects of the wing-fuselage joint that this study did not take in account.

According to the article, it was possible to increase quite significantly the Clmax of the wing with the rear placement of the propeller due to the suction effect to the wing. This leads to interesting thought about a line-thruster – multiple small electric motors turning multiple relatively small props behind the trailing edge of the wing, providing suction to the whole wing surface, or at least large part of it. Interesting question then would be that would a varying thrust angle be beneficial, should the pylons be actually mounted on the flaps? Downside of this is that this may lead to flap mechanism that is not very lightweight as the flaps have to take all the torque and push from the motors. Normal flap mechanisms would not like that.

Any comments on this?