No complaints - I just liked today’s column a lot.
I wish more people asked completely insane questions with just a grain of truth behind them, because it makes for a very entertaining 700 words.
Me too - I was really surprised at the answer to this one. When I read the question I was thinking that there’s no way any manufacturer would ever use whale oil. I thought petroleum would have always been more practical and economical (or at least since gasoline powered cars became popular since they were pumping oil out of the ground anyway)
I am amazed that it wasn’t until the 70’s that whale lubricants were phased out.
I was hoping Cecil would address the “Hubble telescope is lubricated with whale oil!” controversy. I’ve spent a little time googling this and not found anything besides the assertion.
To some extent, it’s the other way around: One of the reasons gasoline became so popular as an automotive fuel was that folks were already pumping oil out of the ground anyway for other reasons. Gasoline was actually considered a waste product, and disposed of.
Cecil spent a LONG time searching for the origin of this claim, as far back as more than a year ago or so, and neither he nor I (who was helping him and who have a couple of connections in the space industry) have ever been able to absolutely confirm or deny it. I did find a casual mention of whale oil being considered a “possible” strategic asset in one source, which was horribly mis-quoted in another source (which referenced the first one) that whale oil was used in Russian ICBMs. I found lots of electronic and hardcopy papers about the lubircation of various components in Hubble, and the only lubricants really referred to were molydenum-based ones, silicon-based ones, and others - no whale oil or cetaceous fats.
Cecil decided since it still can’t be proven one way or another, to keep looking into it for the future.
Thanks Una, that in itself is well worth knowing.
You’re welcome.
My opinion is that either it was used in some incidental way in some product which may have lubricated one specific item and no one bothered to keep track of it very well (there seems to be an amazing dearth of original documentation available to the public on Hubble, even when I’ve had my research librarian pay for papers), or else was not used at all. I have read a lot of blogs and opinion pieces where people claim that Nasa doesn’t want to say anything one way or another because they’re afraid of alienating Democrats and liberals who would object so much to minuscule amounts of whale oil being used that they would kill off Nasa in Congress. My opinion is given the protests against radioactive thermo isotope generators and the fact no one has killed those off, who gives a shit about a few ml of whale oil in a joint? Set aside the fact that there are very few applications, if any, nowadays for which there are not better fully synthetic lubricants.
I know Cecil will look out of it and he told me to keep my eyes open as well, so maybe someday we’ll get some hard proof on it.
Where did this come from?
I don’t remember where I first saw it, it’s one of those “amazing facts!” that drifts around the internet. It’s not something that came through PETA or anything, at least that’s not how it was framed. And it happened to come up in regard to something I’m writing so I was extra-curious.
I would be surprised if whale oil was suitable for an application where it would be exposed to extremes of heat and cold as the HST orbited in and out of the Earth’s shadow, as well as outgassing into vacuum. You would want some product which would exhibit stable properties in the full range of expected conditions.
I just saw this on a program on the history Channel, *America: The Story of Us. *In the part about whaling, they mentioned that “the Hubble Space Telescope runs on it.” [whale oil]
That’s even less clear than just a lubricant, suggesting it is some kind of fuel. I seriously doubt the Hubble is powered by whale oil like some kind of astronomical hurricane lamp, but somebody heard some bit of information that got distorted into the quote above.
If Cecil is interested, it was Episode Four, “Division”
As a TV producer, I concur. There is every likelihood that some researcher found a “fact” onthe internet and that non-fact got distorted even further in the writing.
Has anybody ever tried to synthesis whale oil? What synthetics out there would be considered equivalent? And what about the hub-bub with jojoba oil. Seemed like the up and coming thing in hyper-marketing–and remains to this day.
I’ve read several studies comparing jojoba oil and spermaceti which show jojoba oil is either about the same, or almost as good as spermaceti. It’s possible (I speculate) that since we aren’t currently producing spermaceti in any quantity that the opportunities for further comparison and experimentation are few.
Am I allowed say “Whale oil beef hooked”?
Damn! Beaten to it! I thought I was the only one around here who knew that quaint Irish phrase.