[Glenn Millam]

OK… Here are the the long awaited, promised reworkings of the main t-shirt design for black t-shirts.

Why the rework? Because the printing process for black t-shirts is different than for light or white t-shirts. CafePress puts a layer of white down before they print the color. If they didn’t, the t-shirt would look like it had an interestingly-shaped coffee stain on it. Because of this white layer, the original design would look like it printed in an ugly white box. So I had to come up with something else made of hard edges. This is what I came up with. In fact, I came up with two variants.

What I did was to take the original design and kind of go back to the original thumbnail that you see in the first page of posts. I kind of made a logo out of the starburst. In the first variant, the streaks all have solid colors, but they use 4 different tints to create variation. In the second variant, I used 4 different radial blends to create a smoother, yet varying, starburst.

The hardest part (after finally coming up with the starburst structure) was the type and reaction diagrams. As you can tell, the starburst is very busy, and the type on top of it wants to get lost. I stroked and shadowed it heavily. Each version has a different take on how I handled the problem. Please comment on what you feel works best.

And please hurry, as we need to get this design a CafePress pronto, so people can order it for the holidays. 🙂

Attached files

[Glenn Millam]

Lerner wrote: Of course you have to dig very long tunnels, so the thing would cost tens of billions to build, much like the highway system. But once the network is built, you would cut way down or even eliminate planes.

Well, we do have the technology, as the Chunnel proves. This would be way bigger than the Chunnel, however. Lots of surveying and planning. Still, if planned right, the project could be quickly made to pay for itself if you build out smaller routes on your way to connecting the coasts. (Think of routes now served by Amtrak’s Acela.) And with focus fusion energy driving even more automated diggers than the Chunnel had, the costs of making it, per km, could be better than the Chunnel’s, which went way over budget.

[Glenn Millam]

Lerner wrote: RAND did a study back 30 years ago showing you could get from NY to LA in 30 minutes with evacuated maglev and the energy costs would be very small, because you would feed energy back into the grid as you decelerated the train electromagnetically and there would be almost no friction.

Now that’s what I am talking about. That would be awesome, and green at the same time. What is the speed we are talking about? 9500 kph? Or over 10,000 in a ramped bell-curved “flight-plan” to reduce G’s? That would be a rush! (Might have to test people for heart conditions prior to riding!)

Building it would be great for the economy, as it wouldn’t be just be for an east coast-west coast route but part of a complete network, and would use materials and technologies domestically and world-wide. The idea of it being underground also works on so many levels. It lowers the impact on the environment, hides the sound, makes riding it more of a spectacle. Focus fusion could be what’s needed to make it a reality. I really feel that focus fusion will be a catalyst for all sorts of new things.

[Glenn Millam]

As for fusion reactors on airplanes, I just wonder about the amount of lead that has to surround a reactor to keep the x-ray from coming out. That is going to be a lot of weight, I would think. Eric would have the answers, but if you look at the schematics for a FF reactor, you have cooling, transformers, all sorts of stuff that have to be accounted for. You could make a lot of stuff from lightweight materials, but… I just can’t see it.

[Glenn Millam]

Check this link out, Jolly.

Maglev rocks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqFkVagJ3cs

[Glenn Millam]

I see FF as being a good technology for MagLev trains, but not airplanes. Take away the small amount of neutrons produced by FF, and you still have a lot of x-rays to shield for, so this makes carrying onboard reactors weight-prohibitive for aircraft. However, with maglev, you don’t have that problem, and using similar technology that nuclear-powered subs use, building a safe reactor is not hard. Which brings up ships. As Appan points out, FF would be ideal for shipping.

I’m a big believer in FF-powered Maglev. There are many problems with airplane-based travel. What people like about it is that you can get from point A to point B fast. The downsides are many. First, jets are one of the main contributors to global dimming. Next, airplanes have to be light, so they will probably always need a conventional chemical-based fuel. Third, there are only so many accommodations and people you can put on a plane. The A380, the 787 Dreamliner and the latest 747’s are an attempt to address this. But what if you could zoom from Baltimore to New York at 600+ kph, have a private office to work in while you were going there, and when you got there, you drove your own (hopefully EEStor-based electric) car away from the station to your meeting? It’s only possible with maglev. A train can be as big or as small as you need it to be, and can carry anything.

[Glenn Millam]

A 5 MW reactor takes about 5 kg of fuel per year. For an experiment, we purchased decaborane for $5 per gram or $5,000/kg. At that price fuel costs would be $25,000/yr or 0.05 cents/kWh. Electricity now costs about 5 cents/kWh.

Actually, these prices are based on the fact that decaborane is sold in very small quantities. It would be much cheaper with mass production. In the 1950

[Glenn Millam]

This is a good question. As to the availability of boron, the US has pretty good supplies from rastorite and tincal in the southwestern United States. What I wonder is the cost per MW/hr of pB11 fuel, namely, decaborane. My quick search on the subject brought up a price of US $500 per gram. If a 5 MW reactor uses 24 pounds of fuel a year, the cost on that fuel is$5,443,108.60. 1 MW production over a year costs $1,088,621.70. 1 MW/hr therefore is $124. Another quick search on the cost of coal per MW/hr derived a number of $11. Is this right? If it is, it makes focus fusion sound really expensive.

I got my price for decaborane from some medical website. This may be excessively inflated, as anyone who ever had a $7 tylenol in a hospital will know. It also may not be the correct form of decaborane, too, using B10 or something.

Here are the links.

http://www.medicalisotopes.com/Product_Details.asp?find=3967

http://www.nucleartourist.com/basics/costs.htm

[Glenn Millam]

Also, here is how to think about printing transparent art on a black t-shirt. Get a black piece of construction paper that is Letter-sized (8.5 x11) and put it in your ink-jet printer. Open up a web page with a big image on it, like a picture of a person in daytime. Print the picture. The results you get is what you’ll have when you set up transparent art on black cloth. It is their process, which is inkjet based I am sure, that causes the problem, because inkjet “inks” are actually thin, translucent dyes.

Silkscreening uses thick, opaque inks that are more like a paint. It is this opacity that doesn’t allow the art to gradate with the cloth to create an effect, or at least you can’t without a lot of hand-holding from the printer. I don’t know if we can submit art to them for review as to how we can make it work. I would assume that “premium” members would get better service, so maybe we can go that route.

[Glenn Millam]

Rezwan wrote: By “they” use an inkjet based process are you referring to Cafepress? Are you sure you can’t have the starburst over transparency (not white) and it will print out OK on black? Like fireworks against a night sky?

Regarding the back design, perhaps you can have that in different colors so that it matches the front. If a person gets the yellow peace symbol T-shirt, the back will have a yellow oval with writing in it, etc.

If you read their instructions on how to prepare art for Black T-shirts, you’ll see how they describe how to delete transparent pixels out of Photoshop artwork. Transparent art will be flattened, and will print as if its opaque, sort of like a GIF file that doesn’t have a “clear” pixel color defined, which shows up on a web page as if it had a white box around it.

What this suggests to me is that they do not use their normal “direct” printing process for black T-shirts. They must use a more conventional one like silkscreening, which must be more expensive. Another thing that suggests it is that, to sell black t-shirts, you must now become a “premium” member. This suggests they want some money before they invest in creating screens and making t-shirts with a multi-pass process like silkscreening. By becoming a “premium” member, you will be driven to sell the kind of volume that lets them recoup their prepress costs.

About the backs, your idea of multiple colors to match the fronts sounds pretty cool. Colors should be darker on light shirts and vice-versa for black shirts. I’ll make some variants and post them here.

[Glenn Millam]

Here is one more Waste on Black. I have muted the Rad Warning, returned the reaction to its original blue, and made the reaction’s drop shadow soft-edged. Looks a bit better, but still busy. What do you think?

Attached files

[Glenn Millam]

Grr.

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[Glenn Millam]

Concept for a black Waste t-shirt. This design is very busy and there isn’t enough contrast between the reaction and the loud Radiation Warning symbol. Is there a better icon we can use for nuclear waste? I thought about two drums with rad warnings on them, but that seemed just asa bad. Any physicists in the audience that would have a cleaner, but less loud substitute? What to spent fuel rods look like?

[Glenn Millam]

Here is a concept for the Peace t-shirt on black cloth, ala Jolly Roger.

Attached files

[Glenn Millam]

I am considering one more design.

Unlimited Energy Without Greenhouse Gases

(Image of an acacia tree on a hill, with the sun shining through it, using the starburst glow)

It’s Closer Than You Think

Any thoughts on it?

[Author]

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