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British Rail's Flying Saucer
Dynamoo writes "The Register is carrying a story about a patent for a fusion powered spacecraft filed by British Rail in the 1970s. While the concept may seem silly for a public railway, it seems that the British Rail Research Division employed a large number of aircraft engineers who presumably had some spare time between projects such as the Advanced Passenger Train."
Unfortunately, the Fluxcapacitor has already been patented (Fig. 1 & 2).
My work here is dung.
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This design was made in 1965.
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Is this the same British Rail that can't even keep a train running on time? What chance have they got with a flying saucer?
"British Rail would like to announce that the 17.34 UFO to Mars has been delayed due to a slight wind and a few leaves blowing in the air..."
"The thermonuclear fusion will take place in a series of pulses, each pulse being triggered by laser energy, and/or energetic particles reflected from a previous pulse. The system will be arranged so that the fusion process will decay after each pulse so that the stability of the system is maintained."
Pulsed inertial confinement fusion is just a fancy version of Orion, and is what the British Interplanetary Society used in their Daedalus spacecraft concept. Given the 1973 date, the same year as the start of Project Daedalus, I imagine the 'inventor' was a member of the Society.
The fusion powered spacecraft is delayed due to a signal failure at Camden Town. Passengers are advided to board the next fusion power spacecraft and change at Saturn.
"The thermonuclear fusion will take place in a series of pulses, each pulse being triggered by laser energy, and/or energetic particles reflected from a previous pulse. The system will be arranged so that the fusion process will decay after each pulse so that the stability of the system is maintained."
After using the saucer, you are so full of radiation that you will begin to glow green.
This is helpful when trying to reproduce all aspects of 'alien' saucer lore, as well as to scare the crap out of your neighbours.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Lets just take a small rail network like the london underground. It is hideously expensive to build and maintain. There are only two ways to operate it.
See it as a commercial company. Nice idea but doesn't work. Why? Because commercial companies A got to earn their costs, their future investments and a bit extra. But how can you do this when you run a company that has to maintain loss making lines?
What?
Well it is simple, it is very easy to make money on the mainlines during peak times. Then the trains are packed and you can easily get your money even with reasonable ticket prices. But how many people would use those mainlines at peak times if there werent any feeder lines at non-peak times?
Simply put, to get on the mainline I need to take a bus from my house that is half empty. No way that bus makes a profit BUT if it wasn't running I would have no use for the mainline.
Think of it like this, a supermarket that only sells butter and cheese and jam and peanut butter but NOT bread wouldn't be much use now would it?
A rail network, or public transport in general will always be spending the money it makes on those non-profit lines. The moment you try to cut money by getting rid of unprofitable lines you gut the service meaning fewer people can use it.
This practice of cutting unprofitable lines and thereby cutting off whole parts of the country from public transport started long ago. The more it happens the less people can rely on public transport, the less they will use it, the more unprofitable lines you will have, and so on.
Only in those countries where public transport is seen as an vital part of the infrastructure still have a working system. Spending billions on keeping it all running year in and year out however is very difficult and it is very tempting for a goverment to just cut the budget for a term and hope it will all keep to gether and next term there will be money for the back maintenance. Off course that never happens and so the system is neglected for decades until people die.
Nothing new, the dutch railnetwork is going through similar problems, our politicians asure us that the we won't have the same problems as the brits and the fact that recently we have had a whole series of accidents is just coincendence.
Who is to blaim? People that believe in tax cuts. A goverment tax cut is like your landlord saying he will charge you 100 less. Just now you got to pay the elec bill of 200 yourselve. I never seen a tax cut that wasn't offset by an increase somewhere else.
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