Stoke Space released a promo in the last week showcasing their planned reusable upper stage.
I already wrote about SUSIE which is ESA's concept of a reusable upper stage. I think SUSIE has a lot of potential as an interplanetary "space van". With its combination of heat shields and retropropulsive landing capabilities, SUSIE would be able to land on planetary bodies with or without atmosphere.
The nameless Stoke Space upper stage (which for now I will call "the Stoke") is quite similar to SUSIE, but importantly is not just a concept and is actually being built. If the Stoke is able to fly on existing boosters such as Falcon 9 then this would be a win-win by allowing Stoke to enter service earlier and reducing the wastage of upper stages that booster companies have currently have to expend. I have no clue what boosters the Stoke might be compatible with and whether it will be possible to develop adapters to increase compatibility. About the only stats I'm aware of for the Stoke prototype is it's 19 feet tall without fairing, 13 feet wide and is intended to be able to carry 1.65 metric tons to LEO.
The rocket is 100 feet tall (~30 metres), which would mean an 81 foot (~25 metre) tall first stage.
The interface between the first and upper stages is "non-trivial", implying it would only work with their own booster. This is understandable given the unique integration and layout of the engines and heat shield. If the Stoke upper stage becomes popular enough then it's conceivable rocket-makers will decide to build compatible boosters.
In September, Ariane Group announced the SUSIE spacecraft at the International Astronautical Conference in Paris. You can watch the whole presentation below.
Cue the usual incoherently negative hot-takes - if you believed everything you read on social media then the concept was dead a thousand different ways before the presenters had even left the stage.
I'm going to try and give a more considered view on SUSIE here.
What is SUSIE?
SUSIE stands for "Smart Upper Stage for Innovative Exploration" and is a fully reusable spacecraft. The intention is to create an all-purpose "space truck". Initially SUSIE would carry cargo, but later variants would carry crew. Eventually Ariane wants it to be able to travel across the solar system to land on other planets and moons. Ariane indicated a first launch in 2031.
SUSIE is sitting on top of the rocket in this photo of a scale model.
SUSIE gets into space on top of a rocket. It has been designed to be compatible with Ariane 6 and future Ariane rockets. Once in orbit, SUSIE has its own engines and thrusters to travel and manoeuvre in space. To return to Earth, it points the black heat shield on one side of the nose into the atmosphere to protect itself from heating, and then uses its engines and thrusters to navigate toward its target landing pad and complete a powered landing on its tail.
It's not clear how much refurbishment SUSIE would need before flying again.
To travel further in space, SUSIE is attached to the front of another rocket which provides thrust, power and the other essentials needed for longer trips. Ariane calls this configuration a "space train".
Specifications provided so far
Length: 12m
Diameter at base: 5m
Payload capacity: 7 tonnes and 40 cu m
Future crew capacity: 5
Vehicle weight: 25 tonnes
The initial cargo version has two large doors to open up the entire payload bay and enable space release/capture.
What do I think of SUSIE?
Design
In some ways SUSIE reminds me of the Space Shuttle. The two-door bay. Gliding home on a belly of thermal protection tiles.
Another similarity is its size. SUSIE is only 20% the mass of the Shuttle, but is still much bigger than any other capsules and spaceplanes currently active or under development. However these vehicles are big for very different reasons. Shuttle was designed to deliver and retrieve large, sensitive military payloads in space with minimum scrutiny from rivals, and needed a huge payload bay to achieve this. I think SUSIE is large to make it more viable for longer duration interplanetary travel - crew will need more room to move, and will need to take more supplies and equipment with them.
Then there are the differences with Shuttle.
Firstly, the shape.
SUSIE is a cone that's been pinched into the shape of a four sided pyramid, with the flattened sides providing some lifting body characteristics for easier atmospheric re-entry. I expect the overall symmetry of the vehicle means that aerodynamically it behaves a lot like a pair of payload fairings during launch and atmospheric flight, with little need for special flight programming. This would mean SUSIE could launch on many heavy lift rockets. By contrast, the size and shape of the Shuttle meant there was only one specially designed launch system that could get it to space.
The upcoming Dream Chaser is asymmetric and highly optimised as a lifting body for Earth re-entry. A future crewed variant could not be enclosed in fairings at launch because this would prevent operation of a launch escape system, and therefore the rocket will experience aerodynamic challenges at launch due to the shape of the Dream Chaser. I'm not suggesting these challenges would be insurmountable since Shuttle and Buran have already demonstrated the viability of asymmetric launch systems, but this could increase costs and reduce the versatility of Dream Chaser.
Secondly, propulsive landing.
Instead of being optimised solely for Earth re-entry, SUSIE is also able to land on planets or moons with little to no atmosphere. It may even be able to launch by itself from bodies with sufficiently low gravity.
Summary and comparison to other reusable spacecraft
Overall I think the design is well considered given the stated objectives for the vehicle. The goal is not just to fly a single mission type or win a specific contract, but to create a versatile reusable spacecraft that can fulfil a wide range of purposes for a long time into the future. Rocket Lab claims their upcoming Neutron rocket is designed for 2050. SUSIE also appears to be designed for a similar timeframe.
SUSIE is quite different to other capsules and spaceplanes. Crew Dragon, Starliner, Dream Chaser and Space Rider are not designed to go beyond Earth orbit. Orion is designed to leave Earth orbit, but it won't be capable of landing on other planetary bodies.
To me Starship is the closest in concept, being capable of interplanetary travel and landing.
If successful, Starship is very likely going to occupy a dominant role of "space semi-trailer" or "space widebody aircraft". It's likely to be our apex vehicle until spacecraft start being manufactured in space, at which point we will start seeing "space container ships" and "space cruise liners".
However from our experience on Earth we know that such a large vehicle is not always the most appropriate for a particular trip or load. I can see SUSIE being successful as a "space van" for the many situations where Starship would be overkill.
Both Starship and SUSIE are all-terrain vehicles and will be effective in a solar system with little or no space infrastructure. Eventually we can expect space infrastructure such as space ports and fuel depots to be built out over time which will gradually shrink the role of ATVs and shift the advantage to vehicles that are optimised for (and only operate within) their specific regimes. But this may take a very long time - there's a lot of solar system out there!
Feasibility
A lot of the online critiques went straight to things like the weight of the vehicle being greater than what Ariane can currently lift. I'm not going to get too worked up about that. I expect some of these numbers are indicative and subject to change.
I'm more concerned about the following.
Funding. This is going to be expensive to develop. European space agency budgets are dwarfed by NASA and unlike their American counterparts, European companies and billionaires seem happy to sit on their hands instead of splurging cash on megaprojects like this.
Flight heritage. SUSIE would be ambitious for even the most adept and experienced in the field. For a space agency that has only reached the experimental stage for reusable spacecraft and has never performed a crewed launch, this is the stretch goal of a lifetime.
Track record of product development. ESA previously tried to develop their own version of the Dream Chaser called Hermes, and that project was ultimately cancelled after significant expenditure. Will SUSIE follow the same path of failure, or will it be successful like the Ariane rocket series? One potentially promising sign is Space Rider which is similar to SUSIE but much smaller. It is currently under development with a planned launch date of 2023, and would validate a lot of the theory applied in designing SUSIE.
Just weeks ago Sauron the Dark Lord of Mordor ordered the invasion of Gondor, ostensibly to demilitarise and "de-Numenorify" Gondor, and preserve the freedoms of ethnic Goblins in the Morgulian east.
Condemnation was swift from the nations of western Middle-Earth, but they had little appetite to engage Mordor directly. Rohan initially refused to send troops, and the Eagles were unwilling to risk escalation by entering the conflict zone.
After early territorial gains - particularly on the coast - the Mordorian advance slowed as the Gondorians held their ground and inflicted high casualties. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the defenders have the home advantage with strong popular support from the people of Gondor. The Gondorian armed forces are battle-hardened from years of fighting in the contested territories around the occupied city formerly known as Minas Ithil, and have benefited from significant military aid including large numbers of magically imbued anti-Oliphaunt and anti-Fellbeast arrows.
As the conflict has turned into a stalemate and Mordorian losses have mounted, the Mordor army has resorted to siege tactics. The city of Minas Tirith has been subjected to a heavy incendiary bombardment, creating a humanitarian (and possibly also halflingitarian and istaritarian) crisis.
Observers have been surprised at Sauron's lack of success in the war given his army's overwhelming numerical and resource advantage. In recent days, Gondorian counteroffensives have even succeeded in retaking territory around Belfalas and East Osgiliath. However the outcome on the ground is by no means certain. The Dark Lord still retains massive mobilisation potential, and Mordor possesses (and has already used) exotic capabilities such as hypersonic Nazgul screams and "Dawnless Day" aerial obscurement.
Gondor's best chance to win the war may actually be off the battlefield. Mordor's strength is inextricably linked to Ring power, and it has recently come to light that a historic multiparty agreement has been reached to deprive Sauron of this technology. Analysts believe this could be the key to crippling the Mordorian war machine and ending the conflict. However some western leaders have expressed reluctance at cutting themselves off from Ring power, so it remains to be seen whether the consensus will hold.
The Wellington
Phoenix Women's team management have expressed their disappointment at not
being able to secure a sponsor. However this difficulty is not unexpected for a
couple of reasons:
Short notice
The new team was
only announced at the start of September, only 2 months before the start of the
season. Sponsors tend to view sports sponsorships in terms of multi-year
relationships - one year would be the absolute minimum. Signing deals of this
duration isn't typically a quick process. Also, companies don't usually have a
lot of spare marketing budget sloshing around to spend on short-notice
opportunities like this.
Audience Appeal
A sports team has to
appeal to viewing audience, and WPW is a New Zealand team playing
in an Australian competition which immediately narrows their sponsorship
attractiveness. According to an extremely accurate and fully verifiable survey,
78% of Aussie A-League fans used the #NixOut hashtag at least once. This means
Australian companies won't be interested, and New Zealand companies doing
business in Australia won't want to draw attention to their Kiwiness.
Possibilities
Oppo as a global
consumer brand is a great sponsor for the WP Men since they just want to raise
their profile and aren't interested in parochialism. However it's unlikely a
similar brand like Xiaomi can sponsor the WPW without damaging the WP
relationship with Oppo. Maybe a global consumer brand from another category?
Amazon and Ikea are planning to expand into New Zealand...
By sponsoring the
WPM, Spark is both bolstering their Spark Sport brand and diluting the Sky NZ brand (I would love the Sky commentators to have to say "The Spark Wellington Phoenix"). But Spark is also signalling it
has no intention whatsoever of expanding into Australia and is only interested
in the New Zealand market. There may be other NZ-only businesses in a similar position
who want to associate themselves with football - maybe Stirling Sports?
KPMG was last year's
WPM sponsor. I'm not sold on B2B sponsorship in terms of actual marketing
value, but for the WPW it does open the door to being sponsored by a wealthy
but boring business that wants to be associated with something more exciting. In these Great Resignation times this type of sponsorship could help with recruitment and retention of young female staff.
Another possibility
is a local Wellington business that didn't have deep enough pockets to sponsor
the WPM and may be interested in a cheaper option. I don't know who that might be.
Personally what I
would like to see are sponsors that say "We're Kiwi and we're
awesome". A double bill of Rocket Lab and Weta Workshop would get it right up
'em.
I think club
competitions are important because of their ability to generate sustained
grassroots support. Sports associations that rely too heavily on national and
federational teams tend to be "hollowed out" and have difficulty
maintaining a lasting following.
In a covid-free
parallel universe, 2022 was set to be a big step in the right direction for football with an
expanded 24-team Club World Cup. Unfortunately it has been postponed to at
least 2023. In the meantime, the competition will follow the same format as in
previous years - a knockout of the six confederation champions.
I'm totally
supportive of an expanded competition. Why? Some reasons follow.
A true global club
champion
France is genuinely
considered the world champion based on its performances in the 2018 World Cup.
Don't we want to know which club is the world's greatest, too?
We do have a Club World Cup already, but unfortunately it's not a prestigious competition. The
2020 edition pitted Bayern Munich (the UEFA Champions League champion and
unofficial world #1) against the five other confederation champions, including
clubs such as Auckland City (#136) and Al-Duhail (#114). For Bayern the
competition was merely an exercise in bucket list completion and proved nothing
in terms of accomplishment.
A 24-team
competition would represent a far more serious challenge that would be
reflected in the prestige conferred on the winner.
Based on recent results the lineup for a 2022 Club World Cup
might have been:
Ulsan Hyundai,
Persepolis, Vissel Kobe, Al-Ahly, Kaizer Chiefs, Wydad AC, UANL, Los Angeles
FC, America, Palmeiras, Santos, River Plate, Boca Juniors, Racing, Gremio,
Chelsea, Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund, Porto, Bayern Munich, Paris
Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Liverpool and a club from the host nation.
Opportunities for
talent from lowly ranked countries
Ryan Giggs had a
storied career with Manchester United, earning medals for every club
competition he participated in. However he never played in the World Cup. Why?
Because he's from Wales - a football minnow that only ever qualified for the
World Cup once, back in 1958. For players like Giggs who were unlucky enough to
be born in the wrong country to parents of the wrong nationality, there is no
path to global achievement and recognition. Frankly, there should be.
Giggs actually won a
Club World Cup medal with Manchester United in 2008, but it was almost
meaningless as an achievement. In the final they defeated LDU Quito (unofficial
world ranking of #163).
For the women too
please!
Women's club
competitions are still immature in many parts of the world. Currently there is
no women's Club World Cup at all. About the closest it gets is invitational
tournaments like the SheBelieves Cup which are little more than exhibitions.
But the pieces are starting to fall into place. In 2021 CAF joined UEFA,
CONMEBOL and AFC in holding women's Champions League competitions, and CONCACAF
intends starting their own tournament after the 2023 World Cup. Only the OFC
has not yet announced any plans.
Hypothetically if
everything had been in place this year, a 2022 Womens Club World Cup might
have featured:
Tokyo Verdy Beleza,
Jiangsu Suning, Incheon Red Angels, Mamelodi Sundowns, Hasaacas Ladies, Malabo
Kings, Washington Spirits, Chicago Red Stars, Tigres, Chivas, Corinthians,
Santa Fe, Ferroviara, Nacional, Kindermann, Eastern Suburbs, Barcelona,
Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Lyon, Manchester City, Wolfsburg
and one club from the host nation.
To me the obvious
way to give womens sport a “hand up, not a hand out” is to host mixed gender
competitions – particularly at the highest level. It worked a treat in tennis
where women and men compete in parallel at the same Grand Slam tournaments. The
resultant organic growth in fan following for women’s tennis has been the
starting point for media attention, viable sporting career paths (not just for
players but also coaching, administration, fitness, media etc), large committed
player base and everything else needed for a sustainable professional sport
ecosystem. Sure, some young women may initially wilt under the sudden spotlight
of massive media attention, but others will seize their opportunity and take flight.
A mixed gender FIFA
World Cup would rapidly and dramatically raise the profile of women’s football.
Cost and logistics have been thrown up as obstacles, but how significant are
they really? FIFA is already planning sprawling, continent-wide World Cups for
the future (and seems intent on diluting the elite status of the competition in
the process by adding ever more men’s teams). The real obstacles are
conservatism and short-term greed.
Like many first
world males, my view on gender equality was that we aren’t quite there yet but
we’re generally going in the right direction apart from some occasional
backsliding. This view was utterly shattered when my daughter started showing
signs of enjoying and having an aptitude for sport. It didn’t take much
research to find that of the wide range of sports providing men with
financially self-sustaining careers, only tennis and golf were reliably viable
options for women. I’m embarrassed to admit that somehow this yawning gulf of
gender disparity eluded my notice until there was a possibility it would affect
a member of my family.
From there it didn’t
take long to become aware of online commentary to the effect that women’s sport
is a joke, they don’t have the physique to compete and nobody’s interested
because of the low level of performance and skill on display. Often online seems
to be a place where everyone’s trying to be a shock jock, but you have to
assume that at least some of that sentiment is genuine and worth responding to.
So here goes:
It’s true that most
of the records for physical feats are held by men (ultramarathon and freediving
among the few exceptions). For some, this is what sport is all about – running
the fastest, jumping the highest, throwing the furthest – and those people can
get everything they need from the Guinness Book of Records and track & field
(which ironically is a big promoter of women’s sport thanks to its joint
competitions). But for the rest of us, record breaking is of relatively
fleeting interest compared to oppositional sports where humans compete with all
the resources they can bring to bear – physicality, skill, instinct,
determination, adaptability, deception and brainpower. Two committed opponents
contesting a finely balanced game is one of the most reliably entertaining
forms of reality TV in existence. Doesn’t male domination of sport make this a
more one-dimensional experience for everyone?
Balance is crucial
to the drama of sport. In balanced sports we often see an entertaining “arms
race” where teams and players continually strive to find new and improved ways
to counter each other. Balance is also why elite level women and men don’t generally
participate together in highly physical sports – there is little entertainment
in lopsided competition. But there is no reason why women-only competitions
should be any less competitive and entertaining, and they can actually be more
interesting than men’s sport. Some male tennis players have excessively
powerful serves that cause an imbalance between attack and defence, with a
large percentage of points only involving one hit of the ball. Female tennis
players generally aren’t as able to dominate with the serve, resulting in a
more engrossing contest.
Sport can give us
many gifts – goals and direction, building of character, camaraderie, health,
and maybe even income. But the greatest gift of all is the chance to live life
with heightened meaning through high-stakes competition in front of large, passionate
audiences. Are there really any worthwhile reasons to deny women the
opportunity to share in these experiences?
Edit 26 Nov: well that theory was shot to sh** in super quick time. Lisa de Vanna just signed with Perth Glory.
I did a brute force search of all available forwards with ALW experience yet to re-sign and came up with 9 as follows:
Rosie Sutton, Sharn Freier, Nickoletta Flannery, Sasha Grove, Gabe Marzano, Evelyn Chronis, Marianna Tabain, Katarina Jukic, Leena Khamis
Khamis has the most impressive resume with 10+ professional seasons and 25 appearances for the Matildas including 5 goals.
Also with 10+ professional seasons but limited international experience are Sutton, Tabain and Jukic.
Marzano and Flannery have 5+ seasons each.
Freier, Grove and Chronis don't have the experience the WPW will be looking for
Sooo...probably Khamis then?
Edit 24 Nov: I am soooo suspicious.
Gemma Lewis is turning out to be a very sneaky coach. She's been extremely cautious about showing her hand in pre-season warmup games, and now she's waiting until the last moment to announce her final Aussie selection.
I'm now leaning toward Lisa de Vanna. Her Wikipedia entry says "In September 2021, De Vanna retired from football", which effectively meant she was not re-signing to Melbourne Victory. The new WPW team was also announced in September, so I find the timing of events extremely interesting.
De Vanna was dropped from the Matildas squad in June, meaning she missed out on the Olympics. This was a big call - despite being 36 at the time and theoretically in the twilight of her career, she was still in great form. The Victory took the W-League 2020-21 title with her help and she earned individual recognition for Goal of the Season and inclusion in Team of the Year. De Vanna has been pretty vocal about her disappointment at being dropped. She also went public with accusations of historic abuse in the W-League and has been unhappy with the lack of support from Football Australia.
So I'm really hoping she wants to send the national organisation a big f*** you by kicking some Aussie ass for the WPW in the ALW. A Phoenix-like rebirth indeed! It's exactly the kind of move you would expect from de Vanna who has a track record of relishing challenges, having played for over 20 different clubs in her career and taken leadership roles in young, unproven squads.
With 19 signings so far, the roster for the very first season of the Wellington Phoenix Women is almost complete. They need one more player to comply with the FFA eligibility requirements.
Who will it be? How close can I get
to the name with just guesswork and google? Without even watching anyone play?
WPW need a forward,
must choose an Aussie, want experience and don't have a hope of poaching
internationally or from the other ALW sides at this late hour. All that's left
are former ALW players, ideally recently demoted to the state leagues and not
yet totally out of touch with the big time. The pool is small - in the past 2
years, out of 21 players dropped there were only 5 forwards.
Meleri Mullan
already got herself back up by re-signing with Adelaide United.
Madelyn Whittall has
ghosted the football world for the past year, I'm guessing she's retired.
Liana Cook only got
on the field 4 times for the Glory - probably not the level of experience WPW
is looking for.
Adriana Jones has
played both ALW and overseas, was top scorer for her side this season and is
giving back to the game by participating in a global FIFPRO player mental
health initiative. Doesn't she sound like an awesome caring wise head for our
team of mostly debutantes? On the other hand...New Lambton also came dead last
in the Northern NSW Premier League, and Jones was quoted as saying pro football
is brutal and she doesn't want to uproot herself from her beloved Newcastle
community any more. What a head case...(joking, don't cancel me!!) Wollongong
is only just down the road if she changed her mind and wanted to give it
another crack.
But my virtual money
is on Abbey Lloyd who had two seasons with the Roar going back to
2017 and was also a lynchpin this season for the Western Pride in the Queensland state league.
I wrote back in March that for the 2021 season NZ Football has restructured the domestic competition into three regional winter leagues feeding into a summer "Champions League" competition. The previous summer format was a federation franchise system with no promotion and relegation, so this is the first time since 2003 that clubs have been able to access the full competition pyramid available to New Zealand.
With the conclusion of the Southern League today, the clubs joining the Wellington Phoenix Reserves in the National League were finalised as follows: Auckland City, Auckland United, Eastern Suburbs, Birkenhead United, Wellington Olympic, Miramar Rangers, Western Suburbs, Cashmere Technical and Selwyn United. As expected most of these clubs are regional powerhouses, but one stands out as a huge surprise.
To get a feel for the odds the "Stallions" aka Selwyn United has overcome to play in the National League, let's review their timeline as follows:
2013 Selwyn United is formed from a merger of Rolleston and Ellesmere Football Clubs to better provide for the large influx of players into the area following the Christchurch earthquakes.
2017 Selwyn United is promoted to the Football South Championship for the first time.
2018-2020 Football South Championship: Selwyn United comes second to last every year. They got as close as 3 points away from a last place finish and relegation.
2021 Football South Championship: the top 5 gain promotion to the new South Island Football Championship. Selwyn started the final day in sixth place, playing their fifth place rival Nomads United who had an advantage of 3 points and 1 goal difference. To qualify Selwyn needed to win by 2 goals - which they did with a goal in each half, and even saved a penalty in the last 10 minutes. See the final day report for more details.
2021 South Island Football Championship: the top 2 qualify for the National League. By the final weekend Cashmere Technical had already won the league and qualification, while Selwyn started Saturday in fourth place in a race with 4 other teams for the second place spot. Otago University were 2nd, but had played their final match on Thursday and could do nothing but watch events unfold. Coastal Spirit was 1 point behind Selwyn but was expected to overtake on Sunday, with their final game expected to be a romp against wooden spooners Green Island. Christchurch United had an advantage over Selwyn of 1 point and 5 goal difference, and with a 2-0 lead over South City Royals they were on a canter to qualification until the Royals came back to win 3-4, leapfrogging into 2nd with a 2 point lead on Selwyn. On completion of this match, Selwyn dropped to 5th place.
Selwyn's match was against Nelson Suburbs, a dangerous spoiler who were out of the running for the season but had consistently been in the top 2 of the Mainland Premier League in recent years. Selwyn went behind 1-0 in the first half, equalised in the second and were looking like a 4th place finish until they scored a winner in extra time to leap up to 2nd place and qualification. Again, see the final day report for more.
Will the fairytale continue? Will Selwyn scrape into the top 2 of the National League on the final weekend? Will they snaffle the National Grand Final with a goal in extra time? Will they somehow sneak through to win OFC Champions League final? And finally, will they find a way to pip a footballing juggernaut like Bayern Munich on penalties in the final of the Club World Cup to win the $US6million prize?
Most would say it's unlikely. But it was unlikely for them to even have gotten this far. Do we dare bet against them? I'll certainly be following their progress closely.
Footnote: National Womens League
With suspension of the Northern Premier Womens League due to covid restrictions, the current top four teams will qualify for the National Womens League as follows: Eastern Suburbs, Western Springs, Northern Rovers and Hamilton Wanderers.
Wanderers are the only club from outside the three major centres to qualify for the National League across both men and women. More provincial representation would be great, and the retention of Central and Southern franchise teams may make sense from a logistical perspective but is disappointing because it prevents clubs with a good pedigree from qualifying such as South City Royals (nee Dunedin Technical), Coastal Spirit and Wellington United.
And now that the Wellington Phoenix will have a W-League team, they'll need to give their reserves some competitive matches too. It seems obvious they'll mirror the men by playing for Upper Hutt City in the winter league and fielding a Phoenix team in the National League. But maybe not this season given the recency of the announcement.
Looking further ahead, the women should have the same "stairway to heaven" as the men with a confederation club competition like the OFC Champions League, and a Women's Club World Cup with a crazy payday.
I want to video the big-field outdoor ball sports my family members participate in. But I also want to get enjoyment out of watching them play. I don't want to spend the games having to focus on being a full time cameraman.
So I got excited when I saw the Veo sport camera. If you haven't heard of it before, it's a giant fisheye action camera on top of a long pole that videos the entire field. You set it up on the sideline and hit record. At the end of the game you upload the recording to Veo for processing, and in a few hours an AI-generated video is available with the fisheye perspective corrected that follows the ball with a good level of zoom and has great depth of field because of the height of the camera.
The Veo software has plenty of cool options for sharing video, creating your own highlights and even focusing on off-the-ball activity.
The only problem is the price - it starts at $US1450 for the camera and stand, and an additional $US35/month for the subscription that generates and stores the watchable videos. I might consider it if my family members were treating sport as a career and doing things like aiming for sport scholarships, but they just aren't. I could try to persuade schools, sports clubs or teams to fund one collectively - but that's starting to sound like effort. I already said I didn't want to be a full time cameraman, so you can probably guess I don't want to be a part-time committee worker either.
OK so how about an object tracking camera that sits there and rotates around to follow the action? The cheapest one I could find that made confident claims about being able to track a soccer ball reliably on a big field was the Soloshot 3, but this costs nearly $US1000. The much cheaper Zhiyun or DJI also have object tracking, but reviews weren't great for even quite simple scenarios. I wasn't going to go with them unless I found someone who had successfully used one of these for sports.
I tried attaching an action camera to my head using a head mount strap. This was actually not too bad for pointing in the right direction, as the camera obviously turned in whatever direction my head was facing. The image was pretty shaky, but I used the Animotica software to stabilize it adequately. The biggest problems were the lack of zoom - players on the far side of the field looked like ants - and swaying horizon. I never realized it, but my head leans as I turn it side to side which creates a nauseating ship-in-a-storm effect in the video. I haven't found any free software that fixes swaying horizons.
Then I came to the realization that my run-of-the-mill smartphone is actually better than my action camera in most of the respects I care about - it's not fisheye, it has higher resolution and more digital zoom, and has way longer battery life. My action camera has better built-in image stabilization, but I still had to fix it up with software so there was no advantage there.
To avoid the swaying horizon I bought a Momax Selfie Stable which is a selfie stick with built-in gimbal. If you're not aware of gimbals, they're devices to keep things level. Possibly the most famous would be a Segway which keeps itself upright via motors, gyroscopes and software. Gimbals have really come down in size and price recently - to the point that you can now get them as part of a relatively cheap selfie stick.
So for my next experiment I mounted my phone on the stick and held the stick in my hand. As expected the video quality was better with the digital zoom helping a lot, and the gimbal kept the horizon perfectly level. The footage was shakier than with the action camera, but Animotica dealt with it. One problem was the recording would keep stopping because of maximum file size. Unlike with the action camera, there is no looping recording capability and I had to manually start recording again - annoying but not a showstopper for me. I have not found a smartphone setting or app equivalent to the action camera recording mode.
However the biggest problem I had was continuously ensuring the camera was pointing in the right direction. I had to keep checking the screen to make sure the right things were in frame, and when I got lost in the game the camera would be pointing in the wrong direction for a while before I realized and corrected. The footage despite being annoying was watchable, so as a lazy amateur cameraman I think I did better than expected.
But I decided I had to solve the orientation problem by reincorporating the head mount concept from my original experiment. The problem is, there is no head mount kit for the Stable. The action camera head mount strap isn't designed to support something as heavy as the Stable, so I was going to have to jerry-rig my own head mount. I settled on a bicycle helmet because it's cheap and rigid, and I used some of the straps from my action camera accessories kit to fix the Stable to the helmet.
The major decision to make was what orientation to mount the Stable in. A typical action camera with head mount strap rests on your forehead, and to monitor and control it you use a smartphone app to get the positioning right and start/stop the recording. A phone doesn't have an app to stream to another phone, so I needed to be able to see the screen. I ended up mounting it like this:
Pros: hands free, access to controls, ability to check the framing, ability to restart the recording when the max file size is reached
Cons: tired neck from all the offset weight of the stick and phone, furrowed brow from pressure at the front of the helmet, strange and arguably dorky appearance (but people said that about Youtubers and selfie sticks back in the day and now they're kinda mainstream so...maybe I'm just a trailblazer?)
If I had just put the Stable on the helmet like this straight out of the box, the detachable bluetooth remote would have been pressed up against the helmet and inaccessible. Luckily the hinge on the Stable is detachable, so I was able to unscrew and reverse it so the remote would be on top of the stick.
I'm satisfied with the quality I have been able to achieve with this setup. All up it cost less than $US100 which is nothing compared to Veo. And if I want better quality, I can just buy and mount a better phone or camera.
My next challenge is to video from a greater height to improve depth of field. But I really think this is going to be by standing on something instead of mounting some telescopic rod on my helmet, so it's not going to be very interesting for a blog.
If you dip in and
out of NZ domestic soccerfootball like I do and have tuned in for the first
round of the 2021 season, you may be wondering what the heck is going on. New club
names have appeared (West Coast Rangers, Northern Rovers) and familiar names
are showing up in unexpected places (Auckland City - now in the Northern
Premier League!)
Restructure
This year NZ Football
(NZF) decided to shake up the top level domestic competitions. The way the system has worked up to 2020 is clubs played in their regional leagues during the winter
season, and following this there was a shorter national competition in the
summer with regional federation teams formed from players in each federation's
network of feeder clubs.
For 2021 the format of the competitions isn't going to change much,
but qualification will change to a Champions League style process with the top clubs in each region qualifying for an inter-regional competition.
Mens league
The new National League will also be expanded from 8 to 10 teams including 4 Northern, 3 Central and 2 Southern clubs. Yes that doesn't add up - read on to find out why.
With the
disestablishment of the old NZ Football Championship (NZFC), the 8 existing federation teams were set to vanish unless they found new places in the system. So what happened?
Team Wellington, Canterbury
United and Hawkes Bay United did indeed cease to exist. We will see some
new names in the National League as clubs from the central and southern
regions qualify.
Auckland City was always
closely linked to Central United and the two have now formally merged
under the Auckland City name.
Waitakere United has merged
with regional club Norwest United to form West Coast Rangers.
Eastern Suburbs and Hamilton Wanderers always had
regional club representation, so nothing needed to change for them.
The Wellington Phoenix
reserves are an exception, they used to play in the NZFC and will continue to participate in the National League as the 10th team. Apparently it's a condition of the Phoenix's A-league licence that
their reserves play in a national level competition. I imagine the Phoenix
saves a lot of money by fielding their reserves domestically instead of
flying them to Australia with the first squad.
So this year there will be a minimum of one name (Phoenix) from the old NZFC, and a maximum of four (add Auckland City, Eastern Suburbs and Hamilton Wanderers if they qualify).
2021 is a transitional year for the Southern League. Unlike Northern and Central, its catchment covers two existing premier leagues - Mainland and South - and it was considered too disruptive to suddenly merge these into a single league for this year. Instead the existing leagues will run a shortened season to July, after which the top clubs from each league (5 from Mainland, 3 from South) will contest a shortened Southern League from which the top 2 will go qualify for the National League.
There is a lot at stake for the 16 premier South Island clubs in the first half of 2021. 8 will qualify for the new Southern League, while the rest will remain in their regional competitions. From 2022 onwards clubs would have to win their regional leagues to gain promotion to the Southern League.
Womens league
The Womens National League has undergone a similar overhaul but club strength is not considered high enough outside the north, so it will be 4 qualifying northern clubs vs 4 federations covering the rest of the country (the existing Southern United, Canterbury Pride, Capital Football and Central Football will remain). Since previously there were only 3 northern federations (Auckland Football, Northern Lights and Waikato-Bay of Plenty), more northern players will get to play in the National League.
The qualifying odds are also good for the northern teams as the Northern Premier Womens League only has six clubs in this first year of the new structure. Why only six teams? There were eight last year. Claudelands Rovers is one absentee - they were in the NPWL last year but are not fielding a team this year, and I don't know why. They came last, but I thought there was no promotion-relegation last year due to Covid. You can read on to find out what happened with the second missing club.
Why the change?
OK, so why is all this restructure even happening? Maybe if we take a look at why the NZFC was established in the first place. For the decades prior, there had been a persistent problem: clubs struggled to fund the expenses associated with national level teams. The number of clubs that could participate kept changing, sometimes dropping out in the middle of a season. In 2004 the federation system was put into place to provide some continuity at the national level.
But recently both NZF and the clubs seem to be much better resourced than they used to be, with some clubs clamouring to be allowed to play at the national level. It seems club-based promotion-relegation is now viable.
Also NZF has stressed that they want development pathways
for younger players coming through, but the federation teams have stacked their
teams with experienced old hands and imports instead of giving youngsters enough
opportunities. Clubs concern themselves with a range of player ages and can
take a longer view on development. In theory federations should care about player development too, but in practice it appears that regional rivalry and prestige ultimately mattered a lot more to them.
NZF has gone further with this by also setting minimum
quotas of younger players for the clubs' first teams. You may be
scratching your head as to why NZF is insisting on this. English Football wouldn't
demand that Premier League clubs must have under-20 players in their squads.
The difference is elite football is not fully professional in NZ; at best it's
a stepping stone to a professional career elsewhere in the world. But the pathway is difficult if the top domestic competition has no space for promising talent and
is filled with journeymen and tourists. NZ's football star of the moment is
Sarpreet Singh who is now at Bayern Munich. Arguably his career progression
would have been much harder without the youth programme at the
Onehunga Sports club and Wellington Phoenix's emphasis on player
development. NZF wants to continue to foster these
talents because they will inevitably pay back in the form of international
appearances, publicity and later on, coaching. The long game is to lift our national level which will increase the popularity of the game in NZ. NZers are notoriously fickle fair-weather supporters, so success is a prerequisite for crowds.
Overall I think the restructure is a good thing - as long as the clubs are strong enough to sustain their participation, and NZF stops tinkering for a long long time. Continuity and longevity are the hallmarks of successful sporting leagues, and pop-up federation teams offered little in this regard.
And finally
And what about
Northern Rovers? Sorry, that was a red herring. Forest Hill-Milford United and
Glenfield Rovers have indeed merged to form a new amalgamated club, but
neither was ever a federation team.
However you could say the merger
was an indirect consequence of the restructure, as suddenly there is a lot more
at stake. Every club playing in their top regional league now has the chance to
go all the way to the Club World Cup and earn a minimum six figure payday -
which is a lot for NZ football! So all the regional clubs will be looking at
what they can do to make themselves more competitive.
For Northern Rovers a
merger was part of the plan. Both clubs were in the women's top flight, and their merger has actually shrunk the NPWL. So that's the second "missing" club.
South City Royals is another new club this year in the Football South Mens league with Caversham and Dunedin Technical merging to maximise their chances of qualifying for the Southern League. I salute their avoidance of boring merger names like Dunedin United or South Dunedin. Some of the quirkier club names are out of the running for the National League this year and will have to gain promotion - FC Twenty11, Stop Out.
Last year it was a similar story for Auckland United.
Onehunga Sports and Three Kings United decided to merge to position
themselves better to bid for a federation team under the old system. By luck of
timing Auckland United is now well set up to compete for that big Club World
Cup prize.
When I bought a Vivo Y11s I didn't find any reviews at all which made it a leap into the unknown. I thought I should write up my experience so far in case it helps others.
What I was looking for when I bought it: I used to buy flagship phones but I got fed up with paying for the broken promises of unproven new features that didn't turn out to actually work properly. So I downgraded to a well-reviewed but boring midrange device with a Snapdragon 630 that cost only a third of what I had paid in the past. But over time as I gradually used my midrange for ever bigger workloads, I hit a point where it was sometimes struggling to keep up. Then a junior family member's phone failed and they needed a replacement, and I took the opportunity to give my current phone to them and find something more powerful. However I have my eye on a sexy new upcoming flagship so I only wanted a stopgap device to tide me over in the meantime (yes I know, will I ever learn...).
The Y11s leapt out at me because it has a Snapdragon 460 - by far the highest benchmarking cpu in
its price range. It's a significant jump from the older Y11 which only had the much slower Snapdragon 439. Also there was a 10% off deal at the time which left it completely unchallenged. If I wanted to take a further step up in benchmark, I would have had to spend 30% more (on an Oppo A5). The similarly-priced also-rans were the Samsung A02s,
Xiaomi Redmi 9A, Moto E6s and Moto G8 Power Lite. They could compete with a Y11, but not the new Y11s. The mysterious Vodafone Smart V11 is in the same price bracket but I have
not been able to confirm its cpu anywhere online; to me this is a bad sign and a reason to avoid.
Unboxing photos
I think these are self-explanatory.
My impressions
Hardware
I hate filler in reviews. You can look up full details such as form factor, weight, materials etc easily enough.
The Y11s looks ok and not too cheap in glacier blue. Some people went "oooh" when they saw the iridescent back. The whole device is glossy surfaces, so fingerprints show up everywhere. It doesn't feel plasticky to hold - partly due to the weight - but I'm
probably going to put a reasonably hefty case on it because I doubt it's going to be all that robust in a drop.
The fingerprint sensor on the power button is a much better placement than on the back on my previous phone which was annoying to reach in many situations - sitting on the desk, in a car holder, etc.
Micro-usb is a backward step for me and charging is definitely slower than Usb-c. However this hasn't bothered me so far because the combination of battery size and power consumption hasn't produced any battery life anxiety at all as yet. I had a day where I only used the phone for maybe half an hour all up and by the end it was still on 96%.
The Y11s is also listed as supporting reverse charging to charge smaller devices. This could be good for my wireless earbuds but I'll need to get an OTG cable to try it out.
Headphone jack on the bottom is not what I'm used to. I use wired earbuds occasionally on public transport when my wireless earbuds have gone flat. It's a little strange to put the phone upside down in my pants or shirt pocket, but not anywhere close to being a dealbreaker.
The bare minimum accessories are included - power adaptor and micro-usb cable. I have no complaints at this price point.
The Y11s supports dual sims. I don't use the second slot. I assume it works the same way most dual sims do.
Software
Even though FuntouchOS11 is supposed to be built on Android 11, it feels more like going 2 versions back. I don't really mind - the Q buttons and gestures didn't feel like a meaningful improvement to me. I'm thrilled to be able to remove the Google search bar from the home screen again.
I was worried there would be a lot of bloatware to deal with, but it's not too bad. And from reading online it appears Vivos used to be a lot worse. I haven't delved into the full list of executables, but on the app menu I see iManager, Vivo and own-brand Clock, Calculator & Compass apps. The official site says there should be a Weather app too but I don't have it.
Some FuntouchOS features aren't available on the Y11s:
Always On Display and Live Always On Halo. Vivo only supports these for Super AMOLED, and this device only has an IPS LCD screen.
Jovi smart assistant
Features I have confirmed are there:
S-capture. I don't see what's so amazing to deserve a big mention on the website.
Ultra Game Mode. I haven't tried it. I have no games installed.
Someone asked me if the Google Play Store is accessible with these phones or if it's subject to the same restrictions as Huawei. I have experienced no such restrictions.
Speedwise the SD460 lives up to my expectations. 3GB RAM appears to be sufficient. The specific thing I want is for MS Outlook and Teams to run smoothly with multiple accounts, most of which are subject to MDM. This seems to be hard as people I know with similar needs have similar performance problems even with flagship phones. From time to time a message list or body takes a little while to load, but it's much better than my previous phone.
The phone also supports face wake but I'm not a fan so I haven't tried it out.
Camera and Audio
I find it hard to get excited about either of these categories. If I can take a photo or video quickly in a range of light conditions and it isn't fuzzy and I can make out what's being shot then I'm satisfied. If I can hear audio clearly, the speaker phone works and the person at the other end can hear me then that's great. If I can make out the lyrics that are supposed to be made out on Spotify then that's plenty good enough for me. By these criteria I have had nothing to complain about with the Y11s.
I couldn't find the AI Image Matting feature for photos in the Y11s camera app, but the other AI features listed for FuntouchOS appear to be there - AI Editor for video, photo object eraser, etc.
When I get round to it I might put some photos up here.
I stumbled onto Biathlon a few weeks ago, and I'm completely hooked. If you haven't heard of it before, it's a ski race where you have to periodically stop and shoot 5 targets, and for each miss you either get a time penalty or have to ski additional distance on "penalty loops".
I just described Biathlon in one sentence so it's a very simple concept. Why am I so excited? Biathlon actually has exquisite depths.
Internal conflict. Ski too fast and your heart rate goes up, bouncing your sight up and down and making it near impossible to hit your shots. Ski too slowly and you risk being left behind. A person could be simultaneously the world's greatest skiier and shooter, and they could still lose to someone who excels at judging and finding the balance between the two activities. This makes for many possible combinations of tactics with wildly different outcomes. Unpredictability and competitors trying to second-guess each other is exciting.
Momentum shifts. When I started following Biathlon, I thought I was going to become a full-on winter sports fan (I hadn't been paying much attention to winter sports up until then). But I quickly found that Biathlon has a level of excitement many other winter sports don't have. For instance, Skiathlon appears superficially similar to Biathlon, but is actually a "maximum exertion" sport where the person with the best speed, stamina and technique will usually get to the front and eventually win. By contrast, the Biathlon shoot is a moment of high drama. Clear all 5 and you have a golden chance to leave your competitors behind, but miss any targets and you'll find yourself plummeting down the order. Biathletes can't help but show their emotions at these critical moments which is also exciting.
Badassness. There's something about women in lycra racing around and shooting guns that's extremely watchable. It's the closest sport gets to a real life first person shooter video game. Actually I'm surprised there isn't already a Biathlon themed fps. OK must be time to go self-flagellate to atone for my crimes of objectification.
So thank you Biathlon26, Biathlon24, Biathlon999 and all the Youtube channels in between - defunct or yet to be - for raising my awareness. The British Eurosport coverage is great and the soundtrack gets me hype - so much so that I did my own version in chrome music maker
