...
Three shall be the number of buttons thou shalt have, and the number of the buttons shall be three.
Four shalt thou not have, neither have thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.
Five is right out. ...
Anyone used to doing things remotely probably could. I know I actually have trouble remembering to use the mouse after I've been coding on a text terminal long enough. I've found myself trying to change between windows using C-x b, and trying to close windows with C-x k. But as for the button argument, 3 is definitely the proper number of buttons for anything other than FPS's.
Isn't that discrimatory towards the members of the population who look like ICMB's? Just imagine: You're walking down the street 5,000 feet above Iraq, and suddenly you get your ass burned off! Just because you're 70 feet tall, 10 feet around, and have a tremendous plume of burning gas behind you (the result of an unrelated gastrointestinal disorder, I'm sure) you get indiscriminately attacked by psychotic targeting computers! We have to stop this thing right away, or pretty soon anybody who looks like any type of missile will be at risk!
Seeing as how the only US vessels equipped with 16-inchers were the WWII Iowa-class battleships, I would expect a fairly old targeting system. They must have been upgraded a bit in the 80's when the Reagan administration pulled them out of the mothballs and put Tomahawk launchers on them, but I imagine the actual fire control hardware would have been an absolute bitch to replace.
As for new rounds for the 16" guns, forget it. The last Iowa-class was permanently decommissioned in 1995, because the things were too damn expensive to keep running. The 16" guns were hardly ever used anyway, and there are plenty of other (cheaper) ways to launch a Tomahawk. It's kind of a shame, though. Those big-ass guns were just plain cool.
Ballistic missiles don't "cruise," as such (as mentioned in the previous comment). They follow a roughly parabolic arc, most of which is far above the operational ceiling of any armed aircraft. The laser has to hit the missile during the boost phase, though. Does anybody know how high a missile typically gets before its propellant is expended?
The nose-mounted turret has a range of +/-120 degrees, which is pretty damn good. I think the pilots are expected to know the approximate direction to expect a launch in, so a 240 degree arc should be sufficient.
Wargames was a movie?! You mean that NORAD isn't controlled by some poorly-programmed computer with serious paranoid delusions and a bad voice synthesizer? And the code to launch all of our nukes isn't CPE1704TKS? And here I thought I was 31337. Shit.
Re:Cool but a BFT (Big FUCKING Target)
on
Laser-equipped 747
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· Score: 1
>1.You're assuming missiles would be shot at the 747. Most fighters have a backup cannon which could easily be used to take out a wing or two from a 747.
Cannon?! Just how close do you think you're gonna get to this thing? I somehow doubt that any escort fighters will let you get within the mile or so you need for those cannon rounds to reach their target.
>2.In the article, it reads that each shot for the laser takes several minutes, much longer than it takes for an AA missile to reach its target.
Where did you get the "several minutes" part? They only said that they thought they could get 7 minutes of total fire time out of the on-board laser fuel. They also said that they should get 20 or 30 shots out of that. 7 minutes/20 shots=21 seconds per shot, maximum.
>3.Airplanes are not the only anti-air weapons. A flak gun against a 747 would be almost too easy. I
very much would like to see a 747 try and dodge anti-air shells. Rockets could also be used, but
would be much less effective.
AA guns, even the really heavy caliber ones, have a maximum altitude of far less than 10,000 feet. Seeing as how the operating altitude for the plane in question is better than 30,000 feet, it would be kinda funny watching you try to shoot it down with an AA gun. Rockets (assuming guided) would be quite effective, unless the plane had some kind of electronic countermeasure system (ALL large military planes have kickass ECM systems).
>4.The laser system is designed to shoot down ICBMs, not airplanes, nor AA missiles, nor rockets.
You finally have a good point. A SAM is a very difficult thing to hit. Even more so since they have this annoying habit of approaching from behind, outside the laser's field of fire.
Solution: Wild Weasel. Air defense suppresion is a very important mission these days. Just look at some statistics from Desert Storm:
Number of big, slow planes flying over hostile ground: a hell of a lot
Number of said planes shot down: 0 (+/- 5%)
Number of SAM sites on said hostile ground: a hell of a lot
Number of SAM sites destroyed before the big planes were allowed to fly there: a hell of a lot
Re:Computers already decide when to fire
on
Laser-equipped 747
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· Score: 1
Ageis(sp?) is not only the name of the class of ships but also the detection/targeting/fire-control system the ships are equipped with. Phalanx is an older system employed on many types of ships (mostly the big ones) which lacks enough range to shoot down a commercial aircraft. Either way, the decision to fire was made by a human. Any computers involved just told the missile where the target was.
I have a feeling that chroming your missiles won't work too well. Even if you could reflect enough light to avoid damage, the surface has to be perfectly clean to work well. When a missile is launched from a silo, as most are, all the exhaust gasses are blasting and burning everywhere. If the slightest amount of soot collects on the skin of the missile, the laser will heat the skin up to the faliure point that much faster.
I do like the spin idea, though it won't work if the pulse is very short.
Atmospheric refraction really shouldn't be a problem. All you have to do is look at the target in the same wavelength that your laser emits. Any refraction the laser beam will suffer will also happen to the light reflecting off of or being emitted by the target, so you just fire where the image is.
As for scattering, I think I remember reading (quite some time ago, could have been in Popular Science) that the chemical laser emits in the near-infra-red range, circa 1000nm. At that wavelength, water does very little scattering.
As for the ionization and mirror alignment problems, they must have convinced Congress they were solved. What that really means is anyone's guess.
Re:...but will it keep up with the upgrades?
on
Laser-equipped 747
·
· Score: 2
Here's an idea for avoiding thermal detection that's been bouncing around my head for a while:
What happens if you include a tank of, say, liquid nitrogen, on the missile? For the first few seconds, during which thermal launch detection probably takes place, blast the liquid nitrogen into the exhaust stream, afterburner-style. It would cool off the exhaust gasses and reduce the thermal signature, and also provide a significant boost in thrust (help offset the weight cost). If you can carry enough on the missile, you could really screw up launch detection systems. Also, by spraying some into the exhaust now and then later in flight, you might be able to break a target lock by temporarily eliminating the thermal signature.
The only obvious problems I see are weight and thermal stress on the exhaust nozzle.
//begin sarcastic rant
We kin build a anti-missile thingy cuz we's the best damn country in da world and all them treeties don't mean shit. We can't never trust them damn forners. That "stability" bullshit is just a trick so the Reds and the A-rabs can get us all comfterble-like and then launch their nucyuler missiles at us. George Dubya knows that we needs them lazers and sheeit so we kin protect ourselves from all them other countries that wanna kill us. And all that whinin about schools and healthcare is just the kind of commie bullshit we's trying to stop. //end sarcastic rant
It won't help with vortex formation. But it has the potential to nearly eliminate the turbulent boundary layer at the wing's surface. The boundary layer isn't the main part of drag, but rather the main obstacle to efficient lift. So a super-smooth coating will allow more lift on a smaller wing. Reducing the surface area should help drag quite a bit.
As for stability, drag is only required when the craft is not pointing straight ahead. The idea is that as the craft drifts from a proper orientation, the back end begins to experience more drag than the front, pulling the craft back to where it belongs. The drag at the back is produced not by friction, but by a surface (rudder, elevators) which is not oriented parallel to the airflow. So covering the whole thing with super-teflon will not produce any big problems.
But there's a pretty good chance that a few species of Mars bacteria (assuming Martian biodiversity is anything like Earth's) could survive your hothead's aerosol and adapt to life in a somewhat-Earth-like environment. By the time that anybody gets around to colonizing the planet, the new bacteria have formed their own ecoligical niche, and so their population is significant.
When Mr. Hothead finally lands on the surface in person, he meets up with some new bacterium which his immune system was never designed to counter. He dies a slow, painful death, and all those Science Johnnys and tree-huggers laugh their asses off.
Reading that post, I'm becoming somewhat suspicious that you didn't read Science's statement about the terms of downloading data from Celera's research. Small quantities are completely unrestricted. Larger quantities simply require a credible signature stating that the data will not redistributed or used for commercial purposes. All the data is free for scientific use! If some company does want to use the data for commercial purposes, they need to sign a contract with the people who put up the cash to collect the data.
An earlier poster already observed that this has some elements of the GPL's philosophy in it. You can have the data for free, as long as you don't make any money off of it.
I agree that making scientific data available to only those who can pay for it would be complete bullshit, but that simply isn't what's going on here. There is something of a grey area in that drug companies, for example, will have to pay more do develop a drug based on this research than they would if it was completely public. However, some research would not have been done, or would not have been done as quickly, if not for the promise of some profit. There are potential problems, some serious, but they have to be balanced by the potential scientific gain. The specific weighting of risk vs. gain is a whole flame war in itself, so I'll stay the hell out of that.
Devil's advocate? I'm pretty sure that viewpoint was presented to point out the stupidity of making scientific information available only to the highest bidder, and the threat it poses to the integrity of the scientific community. I'm also pretty sure that's what the moderator saw in the post.
This whole jolt-populsion thing has been done so many times before. Just see what happens when you drink half a case of Jolt. Pretty soon, you're spontaneously moving! Now, I just need to throw together some bullshit article about how I can't remember the equations any dubmass learns in a first semester physics class, and I can get Slashdotted. Cool.
Sorry, I know it sounds like I dismissed the article's claims immediately. I did read the article, I did look at what was observed, and I still can't believe this shit made it any further in the scientific community than some kid who thinks he can fly if he pulls really hard on his shoelaces.
Wrong. Newton's equations of motion are simply the limiting case of quantum mechanics. Plug macroscopic masses and distances into Schrodinger's equation and look at the expectation values of observables. What do you find?
Quantum: Mass times second time derivative of position is equal to -1 times the gradient of a position-dependand potential.
Newton: F=ma.
Quantum: first time derivative of position is equal to momentum over twice the mass.
Newton: v=p/m.
The quantum definition of energy is always p^2/2m+V, exactly as Newtonian physics defines total energy as kinetic + potential.
Slashdot Mirror
>a man who just gave birth.
Strangely enough, don't see any goatse.cx links in the comments for this article yet. But I'm sure the local trolls will fix that real soon.
>I do not believe I will be returning to this Web-site.
Oh, if only it were true...
Slashdot, science, and $2 crack sure produce interesting results when mixed. Throw in some superstition and nihilism, and things just get wierd.
Three shall be the number of buttons thou shalt have, and the number of the buttons shall be three.
Four shalt thou not have, neither have thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.
Five is right out.
Anyone used to doing things remotely probably could. I know I actually have trouble remembering to use the mouse after I've been coding on a text terminal long enough. I've found myself trying to change between windows using C-x b, and trying to close windows with C-x k. But as for the button argument, 3 is definitely the proper number of buttons for anything other than FPS's.
Of course you can't drown witches; they float. That's why they weigh the same as a duck, remember?
And they probably would have kept the doomsday device a secret, and we all know where that lead, what with the mine-shaft gap at the time.
Isn't that discrimatory towards the members of the population who look like ICMB's? Just imagine: You're walking down the street 5,000 feet above Iraq, and suddenly you get your ass burned off! Just because you're 70 feet tall, 10 feet around, and have a tremendous plume of burning gas behind you (the result of an unrelated gastrointestinal disorder, I'm sure) you get indiscriminately attacked by psychotic targeting computers! We have to stop this thing right away, or pretty soon anybody who looks like any type of missile will be at risk!
As for new rounds for the 16" guns, forget it. The last Iowa-class was permanently decommissioned in 1995, because the things were too damn expensive to keep running. The 16" guns were hardly ever used anyway, and there are plenty of other (cheaper) ways to launch a Tomahawk. It's kind of a shame, though. Those big-ass guns were just plain cool.
The nose-mounted turret has a range of +/-120 degrees, which is pretty damn good. I think the pilots are expected to know the approximate direction to expect a launch in, so a 240 degree arc should be sufficient.
Wargames was a movie?! You mean that NORAD isn't controlled by some poorly-programmed computer with serious paranoid delusions and a bad voice synthesizer? And the code to launch all of our nukes isn't CPE1704TKS? And here I thought I was 31337. Shit.
Cannon?! Just how close do you think you're gonna get to this thing? I somehow doubt that any escort fighters will let you get within the mile or so you need for those cannon rounds to reach their target.
>2.In the article, it reads that each shot for the laser takes several minutes, much longer than it takes for an AA missile to reach its target.
Where did you get the "several minutes" part? They only said that they thought they could get 7 minutes of total fire time out of the on-board laser fuel. They also said that they should get 20 or 30 shots out of that. 7 minutes/20 shots=21 seconds per shot, maximum.
>3.Airplanes are not the only anti-air weapons. A flak gun against a 747 would be almost too easy. I very much would like to see a 747 try and dodge anti-air shells. Rockets could also be used, but would be much less effective.
AA guns, even the really heavy caliber ones, have a maximum altitude of far less than 10,000 feet. Seeing as how the operating altitude for the plane in question is better than 30,000 feet, it would be kinda funny watching you try to shoot it down with an AA gun. Rockets (assuming guided) would be quite effective, unless the plane had some kind of electronic countermeasure system (ALL large military planes have kickass ECM systems).
>4.The laser system is designed to shoot down ICBMs, not airplanes, nor AA missiles, nor rockets.
You finally have a good point. A SAM is a very difficult thing to hit. Even more so since they have this annoying habit of approaching from behind, outside the laser's field of fire.
Solution: Wild Weasel. Air defense suppresion is a very important mission these days. Just look at some statistics from Desert Storm:
Number of big, slow planes flying over hostile ground: a hell of a lot
Number of said planes shot down: 0 (+/- 5%)
Number of SAM sites on said hostile ground: a hell of a lot
Number of SAM sites destroyed before the big planes were allowed to fly there: a hell of a lot
Ageis(sp?) is not only the name of the class of ships but also the detection/targeting/fire-control system the ships are equipped with. Phalanx is an older system employed on many types of ships (mostly the big ones) which lacks enough range to shoot down a commercial aircraft. Either way, the decision to fire was made by a human. Any computers involved just told the missile where the target was.
I do like the spin idea, though it won't work if the pulse is very short.
As for scattering, I think I remember reading (quite some time ago, could have been in Popular Science) that the chemical laser emits in the near-infra-red range, circa 1000nm. At that wavelength, water does very little scattering.
As for the ionization and mirror alignment problems, they must have convinced Congress they were solved. What that really means is anyone's guess.
What happens if you include a tank of, say, liquid nitrogen, on the missile? For the first few seconds, during which thermal launch detection probably takes place, blast the liquid nitrogen into the exhaust stream, afterburner-style. It would cool off the exhaust gasses and reduce the thermal signature, and also provide a significant boost in thrust (help offset the weight cost). If you can carry enough on the missile, you could really screw up launch detection systems. Also, by spraying some into the exhaust now and then later in flight, you might be able to break a target lock by temporarily eliminating the thermal signature.
The only obvious problems I see are weight and thermal stress on the exhaust nozzle.
Never mind the fact that the aiming optics occupy a 20-foot sphere stuck on the plane's nose. Nah, that wouldn't make it conspicuous. Not at all.
//begin sarcastic rant
//end sarcastic rant
We kin build a anti-missile thingy cuz we's the best damn country in da world and all them treeties don't mean shit. We can't never trust them damn forners. That "stability" bullshit is just a trick so the Reds and the A-rabs can get us all comfterble-like and then launch their nucyuler missiles at us. George Dubya knows that we needs them lazers and sheeit so we kin protect ourselves from all them other countries that wanna kill us. And all that whinin about schools and healthcare is just the kind of commie bullshit we's trying to stop.
I'm getting a new one every time I load the page:
...
HASH(0x1511df4)
HASH(0x11f5624)
HASH(0x1311844)
As for stability, drag is only required when the craft is not pointing straight ahead. The idea is that as the craft drifts from a proper orientation, the back end begins to experience more drag than the front, pulling the craft back to where it belongs. The drag at the back is produced not by friction, but by a surface (rudder, elevators) which is not oriented parallel to the airflow. So covering the whole thing with super-teflon will not produce any big problems.
When Mr. Hothead finally lands on the surface in person, he meets up with some new bacterium which his immune system was never designed to counter. He dies a slow, painful death, and all those Science Johnnys and tree-huggers laugh their asses off.
Sorry.
An earlier poster already observed that this has some elements of the GPL's philosophy in it. You can have the data for free, as long as you don't make any money off of it.
I agree that making scientific data available to only those who can pay for it would be complete bullshit, but that simply isn't what's going on here. There is something of a grey area in that drug companies, for example, will have to pay more do develop a drug based on this research than they would if it was completely public. However, some research would not have been done, or would not have been done as quickly, if not for the promise of some profit. There are potential problems, some serious, but they have to be balanced by the potential scientific gain. The specific weighting of risk vs. gain is a whole flame war in itself, so I'll stay the hell out of that.
Devil's advocate? I'm pretty sure that viewpoint was presented to point out the stupidity of making scientific information available only to the highest bidder, and the threat it poses to the integrity of the scientific community. I'm also pretty sure that's what the moderator saw in the post.
Sorry, I know it sounds like I dismissed the article's claims immediately. I did read the article, I did look at what was observed, and I still can't believe this shit made it any further in the scientific community than some kid who thinks he can fly if he pulls really hard on his shoelaces.
Quantum: Mass times second time derivative of position is equal to -1 times the gradient of a position-dependand potential.
Newton: F=ma.
Quantum: first time derivative of position is equal to momentum over twice the mass.
Newton: v=p/m.
The quantum definition of energy is always p^2/2m+V, exactly as Newtonian physics defines total energy as kinetic + potential.
"Back off man, I'm a scientist." - Ghostbusters