Would you rather they say 60t buoyant force when submerged in seawater? Then OMG people would actually have to gasp think of what that means. I'd bet that they list that so you know how big a damn boat you need to haul that thing out to where ever you need to use it.
I second that. A few years back I was unhappy with my situation in life and getting kinda desperate to change something. I looked into joining the USN (family history of Navy, my grandfather flew old fighters, aunts and uncles were in, and my father was with the seabees and a mustang - went in enlisted and retired from medical as LtCd, my mother was a navy nurse). All the folks that I talked to basically said that they couldn't see it doing me anything other than good. I'm an Eagle Scout, so I'd have already started out one hop up on the pay scale, but c'mon... even with room and board ~$14K/yr isn't too great. I was interested in going as a way to pay for college, like my folks did. Well... the catch with that is that sure... they pay for classes while on duty, but it's for some community college in Arizona or something, and none of the 'real' colleges accepted the courses for full credit.
So even knowing that so far, I went ahead and took a weekend with my recruiter to go down to Maryland to take the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery - the test you take to see what 'jobs' you qualify for) and I was amazed at what I saw. There were a handful of older folks down there, but the place was crawling with 17yr olds... 17!... they were lining them up so that the moment they were 18, they could ship out. Being that my father was a mechanical engineer for the navy, I thought that hey, it probably isn't that bad and it's not like I'm gonna get shot on a ship. Reality hit when I said that to my dad and he corrected me. There were plenty of navy personnel giving support to the other crews closer to combat, and that combined with the somewhat recent attack on the USS Cole also had an impact on my thoughts. Luckily I scored high enough to give it serious second thoughts, and went to college by other means.
Later on, I realized that although the USN would have made my getting out of my situation quite a bit easier, it would have meant that I would still need to go to school four (or more... they can extend your contract indefinitely without prior notice - read the fine print) years later, I'd be that much farther behind my peers in the search for employment.
The funny thing is that now I realize that if I want to have any kind of technological impact on the tools our military forces use to kill other people, I'd need to be part of a civilian contractor. If I remember the quote correctly, the Army Corp of Engineers is one of the largest civvy contractors around. Then if you factor in the clientèle for the big guys like GE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, etc. that's not only where the money is made, it's where the tech changes are made.
Furthermore, you will only be able to move up to officer after you get your degree.
Now that I think about it, the only thing that I could think of that would significantly reduce the power to weight ratio would be all the changed emissions equipment. If you figure that these days everyone can't seem to do without power steering, air conditioning, and an automatic, and that equipment would add about 120-150 lbs of weight. The abs controller is what, ~15 lbs and doubles as traction control. Airbags are probably about 5 lbs ea for the bigger ones. The older style of manufacture made a sturdier car, but it was heavier.. with modern construction, you'd probably have a weight savings even with the addition of crash safety. The crash safety solutions I've heard of involve the car absorbing the energy by deformation... that's why it's easier to total a newer car - it does what it's supposed to do - it deforms to suck up the energy that would have other wise gone into deforming you.
On the other hand, regarding exhaust - I don't have any thing I can directly quote, but if you're familiar with how emissions requirements have changed the output of SI engines, CI engines couldn't have fared much better. Their exhaust is much harder to clean up too, but the addition of a turbo helps by halting exhaust reactions due to the drop in temps after the turbo, and by boosting torque (and power = torque * rpm) output for a given engine. Most of the improvements in diesel exhaust composition is apparently from better fuels than were available in the past.
Then again... meh... what do I really know? I'm still a student.
For years, my father drove an '81 Rabbit diesel. He averaged 55 miles to the gallon, and that was a mix of both city and highway driving. If I remember correctly, that engine had ~45 Hp and ~90 ftlbf of torque. So how is an additional couple of miles per gallon all that great when you have to include in all the weight and complexity of the hybrid stuff?
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Would you rather they say 60t buoyant force when submerged in seawater? Then OMG people would actually have to gasp think of what that means. I'd bet that they list that so you know how big a damn boat you need to haul that thing out to where ever you need to use it.
I second that. A few years back I was unhappy with my situation in life and getting kinda desperate to change something. I looked into joining the USN (family history of Navy, my grandfather flew old fighters, aunts and uncles were in, and my father was with the seabees and a mustang - went in enlisted and retired from medical as LtCd, my mother was a navy nurse). All the folks that I talked to basically said that they couldn't see it doing me anything other than good. I'm an Eagle Scout, so I'd have already started out one hop up on the pay scale, but c'mon... even with room and board ~$14K/yr isn't too great. I was interested in going as a way to pay for college, like my folks did. Well... the catch with that is that sure... they pay for classes while on duty, but it's for some community college in Arizona or something, and none of the 'real' colleges accepted the courses for full credit.
... they were lining them up so that the moment they were 18, they could ship out. Being that my father was a mechanical engineer for the navy, I thought that hey, it probably isn't that bad and it's not like I'm gonna get shot on a ship. Reality hit when I said that to my dad and he corrected me. There were plenty of navy personnel giving support to the other crews closer to combat, and that combined with the somewhat recent attack on the USS Cole also had an impact on my thoughts. Luckily I scored high enough to give it serious second thoughts, and went to college by other means.
So even knowing that so far, I went ahead and took a weekend with my recruiter to go down to Maryland to take the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery - the test you take to see what 'jobs' you qualify for) and I was amazed at what I saw. There were a handful of older folks down there, but the place was crawling with 17yr olds... 17!
Later on, I realized that although the USN would have made my getting out of my situation quite a bit easier, it would have meant that I would still need to go to school four (or more... they can extend your contract indefinitely without prior notice - read the fine print) years later, I'd be that much farther behind my peers in the search for employment.
The funny thing is that now I realize that if I want to have any kind of technological impact on the tools our military forces use to kill other people, I'd need to be part of a civilian contractor. If I remember the quote correctly, the Army Corp of Engineers is one of the largest civvy contractors around. Then if you factor in the clientèle for the big guys like GE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, etc. that's not only where the money is made, it's where the tech changes are made.
Furthermore, you will only be able to move up to officer after you get your degree.
The short one with the bad hairpiece, and the tall one with the dark, flinty eyes.
Well... it works with and without javascript enabled... in two different browsers... your call.
I hate multi-page splits for more ad space. http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&pagename=/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&site=software
Or do I have that confused with the recording of trying to drown a cat?
Now that I think about it, the only thing that I could think of that would significantly reduce the power to weight ratio would be all the changed emissions equipment. If you figure that these days everyone can't seem to do without power steering, air conditioning, and an automatic, and that equipment would add about 120-150 lbs of weight. The abs controller is what, ~15 lbs and doubles as traction control. Airbags are probably about 5 lbs ea for the bigger ones. The older style of manufacture made a sturdier car, but it was heavier.. with modern construction, you'd probably have a weight savings even with the addition of crash safety. The crash safety solutions I've heard of involve the car absorbing the energy by deformation... that's why it's easier to total a newer car - it does what it's supposed to do - it deforms to suck up the energy that would have other wise gone into deforming you.
On the other hand, regarding exhaust - I don't have any thing I can directly quote, but if you're familiar with how emissions requirements have changed the output of SI engines, CI engines couldn't have fared much better. Their exhaust is much harder to clean up too, but the addition of a turbo helps by halting exhaust reactions due to the drop in temps after the turbo, and by boosting torque (and power = torque * rpm) output for a given engine. Most of the improvements in diesel exhaust composition is apparently from better fuels than were available in the past.
Then again... meh... what do I really know? I'm still a student.
For years, my father drove an '81 Rabbit diesel. He averaged 55 miles to the gallon, and that was a mix of both city and highway driving. If I remember correctly, that engine had ~45 Hp and ~90 ftlbf of torque. So how is an additional couple of miles per gallon all that great when you have to include in all the weight and complexity of the hybrid stuff?
...for ONE MILLION DOLLARS MWUHAHAHAHA... -That's like saying a billion zillion dollars...-
Why not just use VLC?