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Swedish Carbon-Fiber Stealth Ship Runs NT
tiled_rainbows writes "The Guardian has an article today about the Swedish navy's new stealth warship, which they claim is the largest carbon-fiber vessel ever built. Slashdotters will be interested to learn that the ship runs Windows NT. The article says 'While the point-and-click system is popular with conscripts, the ship was fitted with a wooden ship's wheel at the insistence of senior officers. If Windows goes down, they will still be able to steer.' Which raises the question: where can I get a USB-compatible wooden ship's wheel for my computer?"
I realize you were being cutesy, but making a USB ships wheel sounds about like a one-weekend take-it-apart-and-put-it-together project, starting with a shaft-encoded driving-game controller.
The hardest part would surely be building the binnacle.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Corvette: A small, fast warship with light armament often used for anti-submarine warfare.
Funky lookin' ship pics
It's not actually the carbon fibres that burn it's usually the stuff that holds it together. Have if you aply enough current to a piece of carbon you can make a cool ark.
Taipei Times Picture of the Visby.
Detailed Article including Construction Information and many pictures.
January 1, 2005 - Beginning on this date, Pay-per-incident and Premier support will no longer be available. This includes security hotfixes.
January 1, 2005
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The boat is named Visby and pics of it can be found here and here /Björn
As someone who worked in a carbon fiber development lab in the eighties, I will agree that carbon fiber can burn.
But as the MSDS for carbon fiber points out:
Flammability classification: Not classified.
Flash Point/Method: Not known, but very high!
Auto-Ignition Temperature: Not determined
Flammable Limits: Lower: Not applicable
Upper: Not applicable
Carbon Fiber MSDS link
Remain lost in hidden worlds where I reign. Head engine and caboose in my toy train...
You joke, but the USS Yorktown didn't think it was so funny. :-P
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
But the Yorktown went down due to expirimental software they were screwing with, ie; it was the userland stuff that THEY WROTE that crashed. They were testing some new code, and it didnt work. Read your own link, as biased as Wired is they can't hide that fact.
"The Smart Ship program is still in development, and officials said glitches are to be expected, but in this case the problem appeared to be more political than technical. Using Microsoft's Windows NT operating system in such a critical environment, some engineers said, was a bad move."
See, shit like that is stretching to blame someone else, common practice in government contracts. But MSFT didn't write the "Smart Ship" program. Who are the "some engineers"? I bet "some other engineers" said it probably didn't matter what OS was running.
The rest of the article tries to go into the awesomeness of unix, as though it would have made everything magically OK, but the problem is clearly defined here:
"They rushed this stuff on the ship, there was no real prototype, and then they tried to make things work as they went along"
Thats a simple recipe for disaster no matter what OS you choose.
Of course, this is slashdot so its got to be MSFT's fault.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Emergency repair isn't an impossible situation to handle. There are plenty of epoxy resin systems that have short (15min) cure times. While I can't imagine that they'd have time to properly vacuum bag it in an emergency, it's not the end of the world if a patch is a bit resin-rich. A simpler and more likly alternative is the use of a room temprature curing pre-preg patch. While it would require refrigerated storage, it's a simple peel and stick solution. These are commonly used in auto racing marketed under the "RhinoPatch" brand name. they gel in 30 seconds and cure in under a minute.
Unless they try to print to a network printer that's not available. That very thing caused my currently patched XP Pro box to blue screen in a repeatable way (which is supposed to be impossible). I've had a similar problem printing a PDF (on an available network printer) with Windows 2000.
Not exactly the type of thing that we want taking a war ship down....
Besides, Penguins and water go together!!
Part of it is the relative quiet in that part of the world. It's one of the reasons that, since 1991, there has been political pressure in the US to move forces from Germany to somewhere else where they'd be more useful. Any power there willing to try to build up forces for offensive operations would likely be unable to hide significant portions of it, and would thus provide time and reason for surrounding nations to match a buildup. Everyone knows it, and Europe is mostly united in its desire to aquire more money instead of more bullets, so there's little reason for anyone to go on the offensive.
:)
Barring a revival of the Russian bear, there's really not a lot to worry about, and besides, you've got the Finns there to sacrifice themselves for your safety (as has happened on several occasions in the past, IIRC).
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Your example of HMS Sheffield is in any case incorrect and is covered in the sci.military.navy FAQ:
There are many misconceptions and incorrect stories regarding the use of aluminum in warship construction.
One common story is that HMS Sheffield, a destroyer sunk during the 1982 Falkland War, was lost because her alleged aluminum superstructure made her more vulnerable to damage. This story is completely untrue, because Sheffield's superstructure was not aluminum. Like all ships of her class, her hull and superstructure were entirely steel. Aluminum played no role in her loss.
Two Royal Navy warships lost during the Falklands War did have aluminum superstructures, and their loss is incorrectly attributed to this feature. Ardent was hit by seven 500- and 1000-pound bombs, plus at least two more bombs which failed to detonate, and sank some six hours after the attack. Any warship of her size, regardless of aluminum or steel construction, would likely be sunk by this many bombs, so aluminum cannot be blamed here. Antelope, another aluminum-superstructure ship, was struck by two bombs, which lodged in the ship but failed to explode. Later, while one of the bombs was being defused, it exploded, blowing a major hole in the hull and starting a large fire. The fire eventually reached the magazines, causing these to explode. Again, an aluminum superstructure appears to have little connection to the ship's loss, which was caused by the explosion of the bomb and the magazines.
A related story claims the US Navy and Royal Navy abanonded aluminum superstructures, in favor of steel, as a result of the Falklands war. Since aluminum superstructures played little or no role in the Falkands losses, this story is obviously untrue. The Royal Navy's switch to steel appears to be a result of a 1977 fire in the frigate Amazon. In the US Navy, the switch from aluminum to steel superstructures was a result of the 1975 collision between the carrier John F. Kennedy and the cruiser Belknap. The collision caused major fires aboard the cruiser, and her aluminum superstructure essentially melted; she was reduced to a badly burnt hulk. This incident lead to a decision to adopt steel superstructures in the next new warship class, the Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) class destroyers. This decision had been made prior to the Falkands War.
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