For high risk flights, sure. But going by current models, we're better off taking all the people that would be the second marshal on most flights and have them work on the ground investigations for terrorist plots.
Going by world events, Bus stations, restraunts/cafes, clubs, and government offices are more frequent terrorist targets than planes.
The single biggest problem I see with your idea is simple - the larger the propeller/fan, the more efficient it is at moving air. By the same token, the fewer blades the more efficient.
Secondary, even Lithium type batteries store a couple orders of magnitude less energy than hydrocarbons.
Personally, I'd like to see cross-country high speed passanger(and cargo) rail.
given that the GP specified a 'rifle', I'd figure around 1 km/sec at most. 300X that is unlikely.
Like I said, you're unlikely to be able to hit the earth, but you would be able create a pretty elliptical orbit, one going fairly deep into the atmosphere. This will slow the projectile down, causing it to drop sooner. Earth orbits are around 8km/sec. So we're looking at around 12% of the orbital velocity being altered.
So, you'd eventually hit the earth, it'd just take a while;)
Point is, people survived, more or less fine, in environments with literally thousands of times the levels of lead we're exposed to today because we've gotten it out of the dangerous products like gas, water pipes*, and paint.
I honestly figure we're going to see a spike in various illnesses as the baby boomers age due to their exposure to dangerous chemicals; often thousands that of what we're worrying about today.
By the same token, that doesn't mean that I don't think that we should take precautions, especially in factories and such. It wasn't people in buildings laced with asbestos getting cancer; it was the workers installing and otherwise manipulating it day in and day out that got the vast majority of the cancers.
*Though some east coast cities apparently are still using some old lead pipes, deciding it's 'too expensive' to replace them
You do realize that the generals in charge of obtaining aircraft also tend to be pilots, right? A plane that's too prone to crashes is going to be rejected.
And I'm unaware of any current AF plane that had even a sixth the crashes you mention during testing.
Cars get into accidents, planes crash occasionally. Especially when you have a fleet as large and as old as the USAF.
We could make some sort of trigger lock that has to be opened before the gun can fire.
I mentioned one - a retention holster. Police use them all the time. They use a number of 'retention' IE 'you can't pull it out if you don't know what you're doing'. Fingerprint or RFID would be a new twist. but eh.
As for time, we can easily leave it on a dead-man's switch. Make the gun free to use, as long as it hasn't been removed from contact with the sky marshal. You can open the lock without a fingerprint if the lock has remained within a foot of an RFID worn on his waist or one worn on his wrist.
Now you're getting into territory of 'solution looking for a problem' than 'problem looking for a solution'. Aside from an Air Marshal that deserves to be fired for leaving her weapon in the bathroom twice, retention hasn't been a problem. It's not normally a problem for police or CCW holders.
Frankly speaking, your gun is the best defense against having your gun taken away and used on yourself or somebody else. Making it harder to use initially is only asking for trouble.
And a ten minute time limit would easily allow me to shoot through all the ready magazines an officer is normally going to carry (one in the gun, two to four reloads).
And, just as relevantly, you don't put the sky marshal out where people could wander by and grab his gun.
Don't ID the marshal to everyone, don't have the marshal have his gun out where everybody can see it, train him on retention. Far cheaper and more effective than a RFID ring or bracelet that can be taken, or a biometric scanner prone to false negatives and plain taking too much time. Cheap trick - a reseting grip safety. You release the grip, the safety pops on.
I think that it's telling that in every state that's proposed 'smart' guns that won't fire except for an ID'd user the police lobbied long and hard to win exemptions to the very same rules. Yet more police are killed by their own gun than civilians(discounting 'joint' guns and suicide).
As for bailiffs - I hate to say it, but the last rampage committed against a bailiff that I've heard about was done to one old enough to draw social security. I've known some tough old guys, but this guy wasn't.
As for getting money, we're talking about a pilot with an income south of $100k up against a plane worth millions. There are limits to what they can charge you for. It's just not worth it unless they want to punish him for it, and that doesn't happen often, because the standard is they have to prove almost deliberate negligence - not just a mistake.
Pilots don't like to lose their rides, and an ejection seat isn't as nice as a roller coaster. Limbs are often broken, and the pilot knows this. That's part of why the guy flew the fighter in while missing half a wing.
I'd say 'to the workers it represents' rather than companies. It's equivalent of a class action lawsuit vs an individual lawsuit.
Unions provide services to it's workers in exchange for dues Workers provide services to the businesses that they work for Businesses provide services/goods to their customers.
I also feel that companies have the right to say "sorry your demands have passed the point of logic and reason and so we're going to temporarily close and find entirely new labour who is reasonable".
Yep. I detest 'closed shops' where only union workers can work. Especially if said workers have virtually no power over the union.
Just because the current workers decide to form a union doesn't mean that I, as the business, can't fire the lot of them and hire new. I just have to be wary of the Circuit City problem* - Workers that are cheap on an hourly scale may not be as cheap once you consider productivity.
*Where some executive at CC had the bright idea to cut wage costs by firing all the highest paid sales reps - who were getting paid that much because they were selling the most stuff!
DNA: Do we even have a test that takes less than an hour in a lab? Fingerprint: Have you used a fingerprint scanner? It normally takes me two tries to unlock my computer via the scanner. I sure as heck wouldn't want to be fiddling trying to activate my gun during a hijacking attempt.
Don't forget that a gun is a very stressful piece of equipment for computer controls - it experiences large shocks whenever it's fired. Probably better to make a retention holster that utilizes the technology.
It wouldn't cost a million dollars a gun - but even at a million per gun, it still wouldn't be reliable enough for my tastes. In any case, it's likely to be bypassable with relatively little effort.
The idea is that you check out marshals more thoroughly, both background and psychologically. Thus, the chances of one being a terrorist is very, very low. Much like actual airline pilots.
Still let's look at some numbers - In August(2008), U.S. airlines operated 897,800 scheduled domestic and international flights, down 5.7 percent from the number of flights operated in August 2007 (Table 1). The number of domestic flights decreased 6.0 percent in August from a year earlier while international flights were down 2.4 percent (Tables 7, 13).
Call it 29k flights a day, 203k flights a week. Figure an AM does 2 flights a day, 5 days a week, 10 total. That'd mean that you'd need 20k air marshals to cover every flight. Probably closer to 22k, with leave, training and such. 14k if you figure on planning smart enough that the marshals average 15 flights a week. Looking further - in 2006 there were 599 airports 'certificated to serve commercial air carrier aircraft with nine or more seats'.
Now, my local airport probably employes around a dozen TSA workers - that'd be a minimun of 7.2k. Obviously large airports will have hundreds. However, I've seen some links saying things like 45k TSOs. Even assuming we PAY the marshals more, they'd have to earn far more than double(remember benefits!) to cost more.
Meanwhile we'd increase travel as we stop harrassing travelers and a few guns are far cheaper than x-ray machines.
In this case volume means hardly anything. It's all about the surface area to mass ratio. A solid ball made of metal will stay in orbit longer than one of the same size made out of styrofoam.
The resulting orbit would be quite elliptical, so I figure it'd 'hit', but take at least a few years before the atmospheric braking during the near point slows the bullet down enough for a capture.
There's some difference between 'useful' and 'economical'.
Electric cars are very useful in most cases; they just aren't economical.
My point still stands - if it makes a class 3 area produce as well as a class 4 today, you go from just under half of North Dakota to just under all of it.
For example, my area is considered 'fair'. It'd be relatively easy to put a turbine up in our town. Granted, we don't have many homes, but by the same token you'd drop the number of amps going across the feeder line leading to our area. Fewer amps = less line loss = increased economy. Heck, it might provide a surplus and help feed the surrounding area/farms as well.
Still, I don't think the maps show the whole story - how constant the wind is is important as well.
I think I remember pneumatics. Regardless, some sort of planetary gearing should solve the rotation issue, placing the hyrdolic/pneumatic elements into the tower section.
I think this is kind of like the system that traditional windmills used.
unless the place is not very good for windmills in the first place.
substitute 'sub-optimal' for 'not very good' and you're looking at the difference between economical and uneconomical for millions of acres of land.
As is, from the maps I've seen, less than 1% of the area of the USA could be considered 'optimal' areas for turbines. Not really scattered either, mostly in a few spots. Right now you need very steady winds, within ~10mph to be really efficient. If the wind is too fast you have to shut down the turbine, same with too slow.
US wind map. Going by this, you can see that there's a very limited amount of area, mostly offshore, rated 'Superb'. If this turbine makes the red outstanding areas equivalent to superb, that more than triples the area. If it makes 'good' viable, that enables large chunks of the midwest.
Perhaps most importantly, it'll help reduce the low production periods.
I have never seen an Acer laptop for sale anywhere (including Wal-Mart) that didn't look exactly the same as Acer laptops sold everywhere else.
Well, that's the thing. It looks the same. Can you tell whether they used solid state or electrolitic caps? 800mhz memory or 600mhz? A CPU fan that cost them $1.99 or $.99?
Long story short, my Acer laptop died after 18 months. The power connector broke, physically broke. Around the same time, the lid cracked at the hinge.
That's worse than my e-machine.;) The plastic's cracked around the hinge, but that's merely cosmetic. Otherwise it's still solid. Had loads of problems with the HP machine that preceded it - actually ended up opening it to resolder the power connector.
The moral of the story is that Acer laptops are cheap pieces of shit.
I'll take your word on it. I guess 'You get what you pay for' applies here. Always got to be careful because companies WILL sell you at any price you're willing to pay, without any increase in quality as well.
BTW, those of you complaining about batteries that have half the life after a couple years - degredation of the battery is because of the chemistry. LiIon loses capacity over time & charging, not just primarily charging. Always try to get a freshly manufactured cell. Some newer chemistries experience this less; but hold less power initially. They're looking to put them into hybrid cars more than laptops. The whole 3 year average lifespan vs 5-10 years for a car.
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Might want to check your post, it's a bit disjointed.
The minerals in tap water are indeed useful, if not critical. Most distilled water intended for drinking has 'minerals and salts added for taste'. ;)
As your post notes, water intoxication is indeed a valid issue - on average it takes out a couple of military people in basic training a year.
Don't forget the sanitizing UV light...
I remember instructions on how to make something like this in the scouts - it involved a sheet of plastic and some rocks.
And you don't know much about military helicopters, do you?
1: There's a reason I specified USAF and PLANE.
2: I'm willing to bet I know a lot more than you think.
For high risk flights, sure. But going by current models, we're better off taking all the people that would be the second marshal on most flights and have them work on the ground investigations for terrorist plots.
Going by world events, Bus stations, restraunts/cafes, clubs, and government offices are more frequent terrorist targets than planes.
The single biggest problem I see with your idea is simple - the larger the propeller/fan, the more efficient it is at moving air. By the same token, the fewer blades the more efficient.
Secondary, even Lithium type batteries store a couple orders of magnitude less energy than hydrocarbons.
Personally, I'd like to see cross-country high speed passanger(and cargo) rail.
given that the GP specified a 'rifle', I'd figure around 1 km/sec at most. 300X that is unlikely.
Like I said, you're unlikely to be able to hit the earth, but you would be able create a pretty elliptical orbit, one going fairly deep into the atmosphere. This will slow the projectile down, causing it to drop sooner. Earth orbits are around 8km/sec. So we're looking at around 12% of the orbital velocity being altered.
So, you'd eventually hit the earth, it'd just take a while ;)
but I kill them because I don't want bugs in my house.
And, as you note, you end up with MORE bugs in your house, because the spider isn't batting cleanup anymore.
Unless it's a hazardous spider I generally leave it alone.
Good point. I forgot about leaded gasoline.
Point is, people survived, more or less fine, in environments with literally thousands of times the levels of lead we're exposed to today because we've gotten it out of the dangerous products like gas, water pipes*, and paint.
I honestly figure we're going to see a spike in various illnesses as the baby boomers age due to their exposure to dangerous chemicals; often thousands that of what we're worrying about today.
By the same token, that doesn't mean that I don't think that we should take precautions, especially in factories and such. It wasn't people in buildings laced with asbestos getting cancer; it was the workers installing and otherwise manipulating it day in and day out that got the vast majority of the cancers.
*Though some east coast cities apparently are still using some old lead pipes, deciding it's 'too expensive' to replace them
Not to mention that as long as you keep it out of piping and digestive tracts, your levels aren't going to go up enough to matter.
Lead's also so easy to recycle people do it in their own garages.
You do realize that the generals in charge of obtaining aircraft also tend to be pilots, right? A plane that's too prone to crashes is going to be rejected.
And I'm unaware of any current AF plane that had even a sixth the crashes you mention during testing.
Cars get into accidents, planes crash occasionally. Especially when you have a fleet as large and as old as the USAF.
We could make some sort of trigger lock that has to be opened before the gun can fire.
I mentioned one - a retention holster. Police use them all the time. They use a number of 'retention' IE 'you can't pull it out if you don't know what you're doing'. Fingerprint or RFID would be a new twist. but eh.
As for time, we can easily leave it on a dead-man's switch. Make the gun free to use, as long as it hasn't been removed from contact with the sky marshal. You can open the lock without a fingerprint if the lock has remained within a foot of an RFID worn on his waist or one worn on his wrist.
Now you're getting into territory of 'solution looking for a problem' than 'problem looking for a solution'. Aside from an Air Marshal that deserves to be fired for leaving her weapon in the bathroom twice, retention hasn't been a problem. It's not normally a problem for police or CCW holders.
Frankly speaking, your gun is the best defense against having your gun taken away and used on yourself or somebody else. Making it harder to use initially is only asking for trouble.
And a ten minute time limit would easily allow me to shoot through all the ready magazines an officer is normally going to carry (one in the gun, two to four reloads).
And, just as relevantly, you don't put the sky marshal out where people could wander by and grab his gun.
Don't ID the marshal to everyone, don't have the marshal have his gun out where everybody can see it, train him on retention. Far cheaper and more effective than a RFID ring or bracelet that can be taken, or a biometric scanner prone to false negatives and plain taking too much time. Cheap trick - a reseting grip safety. You release the grip, the safety pops on.
I think that it's telling that in every state that's proposed 'smart' guns that won't fire except for an ID'd user the police lobbied long and hard to win exemptions to the very same rules. Yet more police are killed by their own gun than civilians(discounting 'joint' guns and suicide).
As for bailiffs - I hate to say it, but the last rampage committed against a bailiff that I've heard about was done to one old enough to draw social security. I've known some tough old guys, but this guy wasn't.
Uhhh... That's where the 'years' comes in.
Uh, it's not acceptable unless they order you to.
Depending on how bad it is, yes it is acceptable.
As for getting money, we're talking about a pilot with an income south of $100k up against a plane worth millions. There are limits to what they can charge you for. It's just not worth it unless they want to punish him for it, and that doesn't happen often, because the standard is they have to prove almost deliberate negligence - not just a mistake.
Pilots don't like to lose their rides, and an ejection seat isn't as nice as a roller coaster. Limbs are often broken, and the pilot knows this. That's part of why the guy flew the fighter in while missing half a wing.
A union provides a service to the companies.
I'd say 'to the workers it represents' rather than companies. It's equivalent of a class action lawsuit vs an individual lawsuit.
Unions provide services to it's workers in exchange for dues
Workers provide services to the businesses that they work for
Businesses provide services/goods to their customers.
I also feel that companies have the right to say "sorry your demands have passed the point of logic and reason and so we're going to temporarily close and find entirely new labour who is reasonable".
Yep. I detest 'closed shops' where only union workers can work. Especially if said workers have virtually no power over the union.
Just because the current workers decide to form a union doesn't mean that I, as the business, can't fire the lot of them and hire new. I just have to be wary of the Circuit City problem* - Workers that are cheap on an hourly scale may not be as cheap once you consider productivity.
*Where some executive at CC had the bright idea to cut wage costs by firing all the highest paid sales reps - who were getting paid that much because they were selling the most stuff!
bailing out of a malfunctioning billion dollar jet is just not acceptable
Yeah right. They've bailed out of B1's before.
Heck, a pilot got busted for not bailing out of his fighter when he was ordered to ditch it.
coercion is evil, sometimes necessary.
Power - well, it takes power to do things. Lots of power for everyone!
Bear in mind it wuldn't actually need to move that fast so it would be fired with the velocity of a bullet.
A rubber band crossbow thingy would provide enough power. A rare earth magnet for locking on to pull it back.
And yes, strap yourself down.
DNA: Do we even have a test that takes less than an hour in a lab?
Fingerprint: Have you used a fingerprint scanner? It normally takes me two tries to unlock my computer via the scanner. I sure as heck wouldn't want to be fiddling trying to activate my gun during a hijacking attempt.
Don't forget that a gun is a very stressful piece of equipment for computer controls - it experiences large shocks whenever it's fired. Probably better to make a retention holster that utilizes the technology.
It wouldn't cost a million dollars a gun - but even at a million per gun, it still wouldn't be reliable enough for my tastes. In any case, it's likely to be bypassable with relatively little effort.
The idea is that you check out marshals more thoroughly, both background and psychologically. Thus, the chances of one being a terrorist is very, very low. Much like actual airline pilots.
Still let's look at some numbers -
In August(2008), U.S. airlines operated 897,800 scheduled domestic and international flights, down 5.7 percent from the number of flights operated in August 2007 (Table 1). The number of domestic flights decreased 6.0 percent in August from a year earlier while international flights were down 2.4 percent (Tables 7, 13).
Call it 29k flights a day, 203k flights a week. Figure an AM does 2 flights a day, 5 days a week, 10 total. That'd mean that you'd need 20k air marshals to cover every flight. Probably closer to 22k, with leave, training and such. 14k if you figure on planning smart enough that the marshals average 15 flights a week. Looking further - in 2006 there were 599 airports 'certificated to serve commercial air carrier aircraft with nine or more seats'.
Now, my local airport probably employes around a dozen TSA workers - that'd be a minimun of 7.2k. Obviously large airports will have hundreds. However, I've seen some links saying things like 45k TSOs. Even assuming we PAY the marshals more, they'd have to earn far more than double(remember benefits!) to cost more.
Meanwhile we'd increase travel as we stop harrassing travelers and a few guns are far cheaper than x-ray machines.
In this case volume means hardly anything. It's all about the surface area to mass ratio. A solid ball made of metal will stay in orbit longer than one of the same size made out of styrofoam.
The resulting orbit would be quite elliptical, so I figure it'd 'hit', but take at least a few years before the atmospheric braking during the near point slows the bullet down enough for a capture.
There's some difference between 'useful' and 'economical'.
Electric cars are very useful in most cases; they just aren't economical.
My point still stands - if it makes a class 3 area produce as well as a class 4 today, you go from just under half of North Dakota to just under all of it.
For example, my area is considered 'fair'. It'd be relatively easy to put a turbine up in our town. Granted, we don't have many homes, but by the same token you'd drop the number of amps going across the feeder line leading to our area. Fewer amps = less line loss = increased economy. Heck, it might provide a surplus and help feed the surrounding area/farms as well.
Still, I don't think the maps show the whole story - how constant the wind is is important as well.
I think I remember pneumatics. Regardless, some sort of planetary gearing should solve the rotation issue, placing the hyrdolic/pneumatic elements into the tower section.
I think this is kind of like the system that traditional windmills used.
unless the place is not very good for windmills in the first place.
substitute 'sub-optimal' for 'not very good' and you're looking at the difference between economical and uneconomical for millions of acres of land.
As is, from the maps I've seen, less than 1% of the area of the USA could be considered 'optimal' areas for turbines. Not really scattered either, mostly in a few spots. Right now you need very steady winds, within ~10mph to be really efficient. If the wind is too fast you have to shut down the turbine, same with too slow.
US wind map. Going by this, you can see that there's a very limited amount of area, mostly offshore, rated 'Superb'. If this turbine makes the red outstanding areas equivalent to superb, that more than triples the area. If it makes 'good' viable, that enables large chunks of the midwest.
Perhaps most importantly, it'll help reduce the low production periods.
I have never seen an Acer laptop for sale anywhere (including Wal-Mart) that didn't look exactly the same as Acer laptops sold everywhere else.
Well, that's the thing. It looks the same. Can you tell whether they used solid state or electrolitic caps? 800mhz memory or 600mhz? A CPU fan that cost them $1.99 or $.99?
Long story short, my Acer laptop died after 18 months. The power connector broke, physically broke. Around the same time, the lid cracked at the hinge.
That's worse than my e-machine. ;) The plastic's cracked around the hinge, but that's merely cosmetic. Otherwise it's still solid. Had loads of problems with the HP machine that preceded it - actually ended up opening it to resolder the power connector.
The moral of the story is that Acer laptops are cheap pieces of shit.
I'll take your word on it. I guess 'You get what you pay for' applies here. Always got to be careful because companies WILL sell you at any price you're willing to pay, without any increase in quality as well.
BTW, those of you complaining about batteries that have half the life after a couple years - degredation of the battery is because of the chemistry. LiIon loses capacity over time & charging, not just primarily charging. Always try to get a freshly manufactured cell. Some newer chemistries experience this less; but hold less power initially. They're looking to put them into hybrid cars more than laptops. The whole 3 year average lifespan vs 5-10 years for a car.