Detrainment? What's that? And rocket science, um, 'explained'!

The "Just follow hor/Just follow lor!" affliction among Singaporeans looks incurable. Long ago, someone decreed that "parking lots" meant here what are universally accepted elsewhere as parking spaces or parking spots.

We have been stuck with this absurdity ever since.

But once in a blue moon, we get a bureaucrat wise in the use of officially sanctioned words. He or she understood that "coastal roads" would become laughable in a  rapidly urbanising Singapore that extended concrete to the shoreline and extending it further with reclamation.

So, East Coast Road, West Coast Road and Changi Coast Road were created, and they were good. Even then, I have had to correct reporters who turn in copy with an offending "Changi Coastal Road".

But, alas, the earlier good work was undone, and we now have in the works "Marina Coastal Expressway". You will not find anything rustic about this road system or its surroundings.

More recently, some official tried to foist the word "ponding" on Singaporeans when all could see that there were flash floods, pure and simple. Amid public ridicule, and the minister in charge's intervention (call a spade a spade, he said), "ponding" was quietly drowned.

Were lessons learnt? No, we recently woke up to find there are now "bus hubs" -- a hubristic concoction for what are merely extended roadside bus stops to accommodate up to three or four buses.

And now, get ready for the latest absurdity... Detrainment.

In this TODAY story below (23 April), clearly "just follow hor/just follow lor!" was at work. Some SMRT person issued a statement; the reporter just followed, accepting the nonsensical word invention. Worse, the paper's supervisory checking process must have gone awry, resulting in what's below:

The Light Rail Transit (LRT) service at Bukit Panjang was hit by a disruption yesterday afternoon. The train fault affected services between Bukit Panjang and Senja stations.

The disruption, which took about two and a half hours to remedy, occurred at 4.45pm. All three service lines were affected at different points, with disruptions along Service A and Service C occurring first, while Service B was stopped for nine minutes to facilitate the detrainment of passengers aboard the Service A train.

"One train was in operation when the BPLRT Service A was disrupted and stalled before it entered BP13 Senja (LRT station)," said SMRT, whose staff was on site within five minutes to attend to the 11 passengers on board the affected train... The 11 passengers who were detrained had to walk on a 1.5m wide emergency walkway for about 150m to Senja station.

Passengers on board the other affected train were detrained at Bukit Panjang station so that their train could be used to push out the stalled train.

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So, we can now reinvent some words that start with "de"...

derailed -- in situations when passengers who were detrained had no access to a walkway, they might have to walk along the railway tracks. At the end of that journey, they are "derailed".

debunked -- that happens when too many backpackers fight for a budget hotel's bed bunks. Some have to be pushed off, ie, "debunked".

delighted -- a light bulb that has blown.

detailed -- you wouldn't want to ever consume ox tail's soup again if this word describes the process!

debriefing -- the reporter, back from a job, walks into the newsroom. "Quick, debrief me," commanded the supervisor. Next scene... "@#$%^&, what the hell are you doing! Get away from me," the supervisor could be heard yelling.

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Oh, I had a commentary article published in today's ST (23 April). Here it is:

Rocket science... it's about rocket signs too

Rocket science is actually quite uncomplicated. Seal a long cylinder at the tapered end, fill its insides with some evenly-burning high-thrust chemical and, voila, you have a rocket.

Of course, if a rocket still fails soon after lift-off, you’ll get lots of debris.

That happened to North Korea’s recent bid at a rocket launch. It failed after lift-off and debris fell into the sea. Reports said American and South Korean ships later used undersea probes to try and locate some of the debris to study them, for clues. Let’s say they were looking for rocket signs.

We have been talking rockets so far.

When we turn to the subject of last week’s (April 19) Indian successful test-firing of its long-range missile... hey, did we just say “missile” instead?

Yes. Strictly, they are both self-propelled projectiles. But the boffins like to call such projectiles missiles if these have some kind of “homing” guidance system.

Jumping in, the military guys then purloined the term “missile” and, ever since, missiles are weapons of war.

Ever so greedy, the military will still use the term “rocket” – for those volleys of dumb unguided rockets unleashed at the enemy while hoping for some lucky hits.

A first point of difference then is that to send a satellite – the payload – into orbit, you just need a rocket.

It will have onboard computers and a guidance set-up of course, and the rocket’s trajectory may be adjusted inflight. But the basic flight path is preset.

A missile – again, as used by the military, not in its general usage as when schoolboys throw paper missiles at their teacher – is expected to have a guidance system that “homes in” on a target.

The bigger or the longer range, the missile, the more sophisticated this guidance system is likely to be. The much smaller air-to-air missiles that Top Gun combat aircraft carry typically have infra-red guidance or semi- active radar guidance.

Infra-red guidance is “fire and forget”, that is, once you have the enemy aircraft in your cross-hairs and the beep, beep sounds, you just hit that red button, a la what you see in the movies. The missile is heat-seeking and it goes doggedly for the engines. Wham!

But don’t forget, you are in a dogfight. You may be on someone’s tail but some enemy “bandit” may be on your tail too.

And the enemy, like you, has “counter-measures” – decoy flares that are released away from the dodging aircraft.

Semi-active homing guided missiles use both active and passive radars to target the enemy. Without going into the jargon, these missiles are heavier and tend to be less imprecise, everything being equal.

Different models are used to attack other aircraft or surface targets. Further advances have led to “beyond visual range” (BVR) guided missiles where the pilot does not need to be in a dogfight to engage a fast-moving target.

More sophisticated guidance systems for larger land-launched missiles like the Indian one use gyroscope-based guidance and global positioning, among others.

But to come back to the failed North Korean rocket launch and the successful Indian missile launch, a second difference is the propulsion system, which also determines the projectile’s size. Yes, size matters in rocket science.

“Peaceful-purpose” long-range rocket launches, such as those for lobbing satellites into orbit, typically use a liquid fuel mix. That’s because they provide the most bang for the buck.

A civilian rocket launch – to lift a big space-probe payload – cannot afford the more costly “solid fuel” propulsion.

Hence, if you look carefully at pictures of the North Korean launch, you will see a launch gantry, gasses hissing out, and an array of supporting equipment.

But if you look at pictures of the Indian missile launch, you see just an “erector” on a mobile platform. That’s because the Indian Agni-V missile uses solid fuel.

The advantage? A solid-fuelled long-range missile can be set up quite quickly, and it can be “launched on warning”, that is, if under attack, you may still have time to hit back. Importantly, the system can be made road-mobile, so it’s harder to be “taken out” by an enemy.

A liquid-fuelled rocket or missile takes time to fuel up, which explains why it took the North Koreans so long just to prepare the launch.

Finally, while most large civilian rockets (small ones, such as those for weather balloons, can use solid fuel) are liquid- fuelled, not all missiles are solid-fuelled.

During the Cold War, both the Americans and the Soviets deployed large liquid-fuelled missiles – kept in deep silos to protect them and to prevent detection while they were being discreetly fuelled.

I am not sure if such missiles have all since been phased out of these two powers’ arsenals. The Chinese may still have some liquid-fuelled large missiles.

But you are really only in the world’s top-tier missile club when you have mastered solid-fuel technology for long- range delivery, which the Indians, like the Chinese earlier, have now done.

Oh, there’s also warhead miniaturisation technology, multiple warhead re- entry technology, and other arcane stuff. I lied. Rocket science is complicated.

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PS: Today marks my 500th blog entry!