Okay, now I REALLY want to see this show! I mean, where else could I see people getting into fist fights about Lorentz forces and compression geometry? Dude, that would ROCK!:-P
You're correct about Ukraine. It was Kahzakstan that the loan was obtained from in exchange for the shuttle.
Neither US, nor any other country pumped any significant $$$ into Russia.
Nonsense. Ever heard of Boeing Sealaunch? (Zenit 3SL boosters.) How about Proton launch services provided by Lockheed? Not to mention all the Progress and Proton flights that the US has paid for in the construction of the ISS.
There is PLENTY of US money being shunted into Russian space ventures.
This is far less of a problem than it may seem. Previous rocket projects needed massive increases in NASA funding. This project works mostly from the existing NASA budget with a few minor increases. Congress would have a hard time justifying a significant decrease in NASA's normal funding in order to underfund this project.
You know what we really need to get people excited about the CEV? An "American NASA" show. We get to watch every week as the scientists get pissy with each other as deadlines move closer and the pressure gets screwed on tight. Will they finish the chopper^H spacecraft in time, or will they kill each other first? Who stays, who gets fired?
Of course. But the upside is that this craft is going to be much lighter than the Saturn V of old. For example, the reused ET design should lower the weight of this craft by at least a few dozen tonnes. The use of superalloys instead of sheet metal should also help reduce the weight by a significant percentge. So in the end, carrying the fuel tanks shouldn't matter much. Proper staging would simply add more complications, and potentially a lot more mass in the form of interlinks and redundant components.
Re:Back to where they begun?
on
NASA's New Shuttle
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
No offsense, but the Russians were stupid to build the Buran in the first place. The only reason why they built it was that Reagan had them convinced of the need for "technological parity". They bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
The Buran never flew again, because Russia went bankrupt and experienced a coup. There was no money left to fly the Buran (or much else until the US starting pumping $$$ into it), and the orbiter and facilities were all pawned to the Ukrainian government for a loan.
There are no stages in this design. ALL engines fire.
In the Saturn V, the engines were inlined and timed to fire after a previous stage fell away. Which meant that the 5 F-1 engines would fire, fall away, then the three J-2 engines would fire and fall away.
In this configuration, you fire 5 SSMEs and 2 SRBs simultaneously, then let the SRBs fall away as the SSMEs carry you to orbit. The advantage to this design is that the SSMEs firing in the first stage help improve the overall efficiency (Isp) of the rocket.
I did hear about this, but the last thing I heard was that the J-2S plan was scrapped. Since the J-2 is no longer in production, it would be costly to rebuild and recertify it. So costly that it seems easier for NASA to modify the SSMEs, of which they have a great deal of experience.
On the big launcher, there has been talk of using the RS-68 engines from the Delta IV instead of the SSMEs. Supposedly that would increase the payload capability of the craft. No idea if that's going to go anywhere.
The video and other information make several things quite clear:
There will be two boosters, a Heavy Lifter Vehicle (HLV) and a smaller "man rated" booster for the crew capsule.
Both rockets will be based on Space Shuttle technology.
The CEV rocket appears to be a three stage deal. First stage is an SRB booster. Second stage is a single SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine). Third stage is a smaller booster for navigation. (It's unclear from what I've seen what type of rocket this will be and what type of fuel it will use.) The ET (external tank) will be inline in the stack. i.e. From bottom to top: SRB, SSME, ET, Nav Booster, Crew Capsule.
There appears to be an Apollo age escape tower on the crew capsule. This doubles as a docking port.
The HLV is five (!) SSMEs fueled by a large ET directly above. The cargo area is inlined above this, with a protective shell and nav rocket. Two SRBs are attached to the side of the rocket. Now the SRBs replace the F-1 engines used in the Saturn V first stage. The SSMEs replace the J-2 engines used in the Saturn V second and third stages. The modern engines are each twice as powerful as their S-V counterparts. One big change from the Sat-V is that ALL engines fire on launch. This gives a total thrust (using the numbers from the Space Shuttle) of (2x3,300,00lbf) + (5x400,000lbf) = 8,600,000 pounds of force! In comparison, the first stage of the Sat-V put out 7,500,000. However, this rocket will continue to put out 2,000,000 pounds of force until orbit is reached. In comparison, the second stage of the S-V put out exactly half that! In other words, this rocket will likely be significantly more powerful than the Saturn V.
The mission plan given is basically the same one used on Apollo. We use big booster to light up millions of tonnes of mass, then bring back a mere 20 or so tonnes from the moon. The only difference is that the crew capsule and the lunar lander will be launched separately. Kind of pathetic, but we need to walk before we can run. And the HLV NASA is building is the PERFECT tool for getting space tugs and moon bases in place.
The crew capsule will do its job of getting people up, but far less expensive than today.
I'm a bit disappointed in the crew capsule. With all the experience we have with winged craft, I was hoping they'd take up Lockheed's capsule design and fit it with a full carbon-carbon heat shield that would never have to be replaced.
The inline configuration of the small rocket ensures that debris from the rocket (such as foam) could never strike any heat shielding on the CEV.
Screw the ISS. With this HLV booster, we could put a brand new space station whereever the hell we want it in just two to three launches! ROCK!:-D
Overall, this looks like good technology to me. Anyone who thinks NASA is taking a step back (except for the capsule configuration, I agree with you there) needs to pull his head out of his rear. This design will be inexpensive (NASA is merely redirecting the shuttle buget plus a little extra), reuse existing components/industry, will be more powerful than any rocket ever designed, and will finally give us back the ability to put USEFUL stuff into space. Good job, NASA!
P.S. On the capsule (again), I'm surprised they didn't even consider the Big Gemini design. The BG would have been a very large capsule (more crew than the Shuttle!) with a parawing for smooth touchdowns on Earth.
Although you will find a lot of people who are both musicians and programmers.
It comes down to structure. Programming is all about elegence in structure. The more structured your code is, the better it is. The more you look for elegent solutions rather than sloppy hacks, the nicer your code looks. (And gets Ooos and Ahhs of approval from your cow-orkers.)
The visual arts have a lot to do with blasting emotion onto the canvas in a fluid way. Programmers don't do "fluid", they do structure. Thus a programmer will tend to give you something utterly sterile like Motif or Java Look and Feel. The only one who will appreciate it is a programmer. Yet an artist will create something like Quartz with rounded edges, flowing colors, and other aestehtics designed to communicate something on a more primal level.
Now when you get to music, structure again begins to rule. There are very specific models for producing music, and many a structured thinker tends to find a way to unconciously communicate through that structure. If you fail to maintain certain structures, it will no longer sound like music. Rather, it will sound like a bad jam session done in somebody's garage.
While sterotypes are always dangerous, I think you'll find that the stronger artists have a talent or strong appreciation for poetry. Poetry may offer them an outlet to express their emotions with only a minimum of structure standing in their way. And the best part about poetic structure is that new structures can be formed based on what sounds good to the ear. You aren't constrained to a few choices in meter, note length, or any other structures imposed on music. It's all optional.
I'm not saying that it's not useful. I'm saying that:
1. It's not really "email redefined", it's "email with calendaring bundled".
2. It's so stupidly simple, I don't understand why no one at least copies it. Hell, it wouldn't be that hard to come up with something with more powerful features. (e.g. Better email searching, searchable address book, labels vs. folders, smart calendar that can helpfully generate reports to help you plan your day, etc.)
It just amazes me that Microsoft has managed to get a strangehold on the email market with a fairly straight-forward produce, and the only industry response is a new version of Lotus Notes. Am I missing something here?
"And you can't truly say that Outlook is an e-mail program. They actually redefined the market."
They are right. After all, they managed to integrate a calendar and address book into an email application. It's no longer just email, it's email and calendaring! See the difference? (No, I don't either.)
Microsoft Exchange/Outlook is useful only because it centralizes more than just the email. Scheduling and the ability to look up people in your company are both important features. The thing I don't understand is, where the heck is the competition? I mean, you're looking at a few special folders that Outlook interprets as "Calendar" and "Address Book" in an IMAP-type interface. Why can't anyone else do this? Always kind of boggled my mind.
And no, Lotus Notes doesn't count. LN isn't email, it's an automatic, self-corrupting database that happens to support email. A bit like EMACS is a complete LISP environment that happens to support text editing.;-)
Parent is not a troll. He's correct. You should always attempt to utilize people as best as possible. Now you can send your developers to design school and *hope* they pick up some natural talent for artistry, or you can have your art team and your development team work together, hand in hand at what they're both best at.
Sure, it's more difficult to manage a team as opposed to a few key developers, but consider the fact that a developer is still only one person. If he has to handle every phase of the implementation by himself, he's never going to get the project done. The name of the game is divide and conquer. What better way than to divide along the lines of competence?
I honestly don't understand this industry practice of thinking management is irrelevent just because we have technology. A well managed project will keep the team members close together and the project on schedule. A poorly managed project will fall apart as team members throw blame at each other because no one knows what to do, or everyone is vieing for a leadership position.
Want your project to succeed? Manage it, and manage it well.
I'm still waiting for the "Evil villian, his protege with glowing green hand, his cheerleader arch nemisis, and her goofy sidekick all get pulled into a television reality where the protege learns the word 'froopy', the villian has to escape Mr. Sitdown, the hero cheerleader ends up on Star Trek with a red shirt, and the goofy sidekick is running from monkeys," genre. I could make millions!
Wait. What's that? It's been done before? Damn. Guess I'll have to try for the "Turtles turned into mutagenic superheros who fight a bad guy named after a kitchen appliance" genre.:-P
How he is considered qualified to talk about the LSB when it doesn't have much of anything to do with Glibc, I don't know.
AFAIK, GLIBC is one of the components required for LSB compliance.
And he's right, the LSB was a poorly thought out attempt to make all distributions compatible with RedHat rather than an attempt to come up with a common groud for all distros. For example, why oh why is RPM support required for LSB compliance? It doesn't affect the execution of software on the system, and only serves to create a mess for distros that use another packaging system.
Far more frustrating than that, however, is the fact that LSB only covers the very core of the system. The APIs that 90% of programs rely on are not even mentioned in the LSB spec. Rather, the spec simply states that a few very basic libraries must exist, then goes on to detail the signatures of the function libraries. Not particularly useful unless you're Sun Microsystems looking for a way to convince people that you're compatible with Linux.
Assuming this guy's invention produces even a 15% gain (which I'm profoundly skeptical of given a lack of comprehensive 3rd-party, scientific proof)
I have heard of these things before, and supposedly some people have gotten good results from them. Nothing that would set off a red flag, but something like 10-15 mpg increases.
That may seem like a rather large increase for a hydrogen/gasoline hybrid fuel, but it is actually consistent. Gasoline burns fairly slowly, resulting in poor compression ratios in comparison to fuels like ethanol and hydrogen. By adding hydrogen to the fuel, the compression ratios go up, thus increasing the efficiency of the engine. This is why older engines have to be manually retuned to handle the hydrogen generator. (Newer engines have computer software that automatically adjusts the timing, so it may not be an issue in those vehicles.)
There's just one little snag here. By increasing the compression ratios through faster burning fuels, you also increase the temperature inside the cylinder. By increasing the temperature inside the cylinder, you also increase the wear on the engine parts that were never intended to take such extremes. As a result, you're bound to get better gas mileage at the expense of engine life. The money you save now may cost you more later.
There's one other reason why hydrogen may produce better mileage. Apparently, car manufacturers poison the intakes to get lower temperature combustion. This decreases fuel efficiency, but also decreases NOx emissions. The increased temperature probably helps for more complete combustion, but also may increase the NOx emissions making the car pollute more.
It still lists the payload (which I interpret as the cargo being carried) as 47 tons to the moon. That is still higher than is claimed for the shuttle.
The Shuttle is incapable of making lunar insertions. The reason is that the amount of weight carried in the form of the orbiter itself exceeds the weight that the engines could place in a lunar orbit using a Hohmann transfer. If the Shuttle system was stripped down to the engines, it could easily put cargo anywhere the Saturn V could.
I have always read that the Saturn V outperformed the shuttle in raw lifting capacity. Is there something I am missing here?
Actually, the Saturn V outperformed the shuttle in cargo, not in lifting capacity. The Space Shuttle is more powerful in every way than the Saturn V. The difference is that the Saturn V was a generic rocket. Thus it could be fitted with a spacecraft, a space station, or with pure cargo. It really didn't matter as long as the cargo fit on top of the stack.
Now consider this. Without the main engines, the Space Shuttle Orbiter weighs approximately 100 metric tonnes. Now imagine if we strapped the orbiter to the Saturn V. The shuttle would be about 53 metric tons too heavy for the Saturn V to take to the moon. However, it could deliver the Space Shuttle into Low Earth Orbit. Given that the maximum LEO capacity for the Saturn V was 118 metric tonnes, our fictional Saturn V Space Shuttle could carry another 18 metric tonnes in its cargo bay.
Now compare that to the Shuttle stack we fly today. Not only is the Space Shuttle and its engines flown into Low Earth Orbit (weighing 109 metric tonnes together), but the space shuttle can also carry 28.8 metric tonnes of cargo to LEO.
So in comparison:
Saturn V + Shuttle = 100 tonnes + 18 tonnes cargo = 118 tonnes to LEO Space Shuttle Stack = 109 tonnes + 28.8 tonnes cargo = 137.8 tonnes to LEO ------------ Difference = 9 tonnes shuttle + 10.8 tonnes cargo = 19.8 tonnes to LEO
Does that help you understand?
What this means is that a craft built on Shuttle technology but without the orbiter itself, could easily outperform the Saturn V.:-)
Apology accepted. Sorry for coming down on you hard, but it can be a bit difficult to remain objective in the face of a heated argument.:-)
Aeolipile != technology to manage power production. This is the crux of my argument.
No, it's technology to produce power, not manage it. Power management is handled on aeolipiles by managing the fire underneath. Hotter flame == more power conversion into rotational energy. When I said, "Not even the Romans managed power production," I meant that they didn't produce power creating devices. As in, "he didn't quite manage to get the basketball in the hoop.":-)
The smaller aeolipiles probably only produced a watt or two of power, which isn't useful for very many tasks. But it was still producing power. Scale it up to a larger size, and the power output could range anywhere from hundreds of watts all the way up to a kilowatt or so.
Of course, the size to weight ratio wouldn't have been so great, and a larger aeolipile would have been rather dangerous with steam shooting everywhere. Had they followed that path, it's likely they would have reached the apex of aeolipile technology rather quickly, and learned to build closed systems. It wouldn't have been long after that they would have figured out how to use steam compression to drive rotation instead of direct thrust.:-)
You must have done some HS class report on the industrial revolution, and use WikiPedia as your source.
Nope. I actually paid attention, unlike yourself.:-)
except the slight discrepency where they talk about how the industrial revolution was/STARTED/ with the steam engine
The power producing phase of technology DID start with the Steam Engine. Prior to that, the only power available was a) humans, b) horses, c) water wheels, d) windmills.
but was not possible without "machine tools"
Couple of things:
1. Note that machined tools started after the steam engine took off. It was actually the invention of the steam engine that spurred the need for more precise metal working.
2. The Romans had advanced metal works. They worked with Iron, crude forms of steel (particularly wrought iron), brass, and lead. Their lead works were particularly impressive, with lead drainage pipes bearing the seal of the Roman Caesar still being used in Rome today!
3. The Romans had other fine crafts work such as impressive glass work. In particular, their cage-cup glass is something that has confounded modern glass makers despite the fact that we make glass today in much the same way the Romans did.
4. The ancient Romans understood the concepts of power transfer as demonstrated by their invention of the overshot water wheel for milling, and their little-known attempts at analog computing.
See, I know exactly where you were mislead. It's the first part of 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Engine'.
That particular point of "combining rail and steam" is a bit of a stretch considering the low power output of an aeolipile. The actual article on Aeolipiles makes the point much more clearly. All you had to do was click through!
See, I don't pretend to know any more than the average Joe about such things
Really? Then we wouldn't be having this argument, would we? I find it ironic that you argue that I have failed to do my research when it is you yourself who have failed to do so.
I mean seriously, man. Compare the description of what's necessairy to make http://www.pr.afrl.af.mil/aeolipile.html vs. a steam engine. That's more than the length of the Roman civilization was capable of.
Do you have *any* idea what you're talking about? For example, have you ever paid attention to the construction of the Roman baths? We're talking thousands of gallons of heated, running water and steamed rooms. All made possible by a Roman invention known as the hypocaust. The hypocaust was an advanced system of thermal transfer that cleverly directed the thermal energy of a furnace into heating the pools as the water cycled. Its widespread usage (in baths as large as today's Olympic swimming pools, no less!) shows that the Romans had a working understanding of the thermodynamics of heat transfer. If you ever get your hands on a diagram of a hypocaust, you may find that it looks a bit similar to the early aero-steam engines. The primary difference was the lack of a pressure vessel in the Roman design. (And what did the aeolipile have that the baths didn't?)
The aeolipile could have been initially used for early power generation experiments. As I said, a vacuum pump could have been attached, or something equally useful at lower power production levels. The problem was NOT that the Romans couldn't have advanced from the aeolipile to the steam engine in the remaining span of their empire. They had the engineering capabilities, the necessary iron works, the experience with steam generation, and everything else that was required. The problem was that the Ro
Whoops. Sorry about that. Try going through this link first. I didn't realize that news providers are looking at the referer when deciding whether they should show the article or not. I just thought the Google links were "special" somehow.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, now I REALLY want to see this show! I mean, where else could I see people getting into fist fights about Lorentz forces and compression geometry? Dude, that would ROCK! :-P
You're correct about Ukraine. It was Kahzakstan that the loan was obtained from in exchange for the shuttle.
Neither US, nor any other country pumped any significant $$$ into Russia.
Nonsense. Ever heard of Boeing Sealaunch? (Zenit 3SL boosters.) How about Proton launch services provided by Lockheed? Not to mention all the Progress and Proton flights that the US has paid for in the construction of the ISS.
There is PLENTY of US money being shunted into Russian space ventures.
This is far less of a problem than it may seem. Previous rocket projects needed massive increases in NASA funding. This project works mostly from the existing NASA budget with a few minor increases. Congress would have a hard time justifying a significant decrease in NASA's normal funding in order to underfund this project.
You know what we really need to get people excited about the CEV? An "American NASA" show. We get to watch every week as the scientists get pissy with each other as deadlines move closer and the pressure gets screwed on tight. Will they finish the chopper^H spacecraft in time, or will they kill each other first? Who stays, who gets fired?
;-P)
Only on Discovery Channel.
(Hey, I'd watch it.
Watch the video. (See the post at the top of this thread.) :-)
Don't we lose the ability to return large cargo?
1. A return system could be devised if it was needed.
2. Name one thing that the Shuttle has brought down that it didn't bring up with it. (i.e. SpaceLab)
Of course. But the upside is that this craft is going to be much lighter than the Saturn V of old. For example, the reused ET design should lower the weight of this craft by at least a few dozen tonnes. The use of superalloys instead of sheet metal should also help reduce the weight by a significant percentge. So in the end, carrying the fuel tanks shouldn't matter much. Proper staging would simply add more complications, and potentially a lot more mass in the form of interlinks and redundant components.
No offsense, but the Russians were stupid to build the Buran in the first place. The only reason why they built it was that Reagan had them convinced of the need for "technological parity". They bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
The Buran never flew again, because Russia went bankrupt and experienced a coup. There was no money left to fly the Buran (or much else until the US starting pumping $$$ into it), and the orbiter and facilities were all pawned to the Ukrainian government for a loan.
There are no stages in this design. ALL engines fire.
In the Saturn V, the engines were inlined and timed to fire after a previous stage fell away. Which meant that the 5 F-1 engines would fire, fall away, then the three J-2 engines would fire and fall away.
In this configuration, you fire 5 SSMEs and 2 SRBs simultaneously, then let the SRBs fall away as the SSMEs carry you to orbit. The advantage to this design is that the SSMEs firing in the first stage help improve the overall efficiency (Isp) of the rocket.
I did hear about this, but the last thing I heard was that the J-2S plan was scrapped. Since the J-2 is no longer in production, it would be costly to rebuild and recertify it. So costly that it seems easier for NASA to modify the SSMEs, of which they have a great deal of experience.
On the big launcher, there has been talk of using the RS-68 engines from the Delta IV instead of the SSMEs. Supposedly that would increase the payload capability of the craft. No idea if that's going to go anywhere.
The video and other information make several things quite clear:
Overall, this looks like good technology to me. Anyone who thinks NASA is taking a step back (except for the capsule configuration, I agree with you there) needs to pull his head out of his rear. This design will be inexpensive (NASA is merely redirecting the shuttle buget plus a little extra), reuse existing components/industry, will be more powerful than any rocket ever designed, and will finally give us back the ability to put USEFUL stuff into space. Good job, NASA!
P.S. On the capsule (again), I'm surprised they didn't even consider the Big Gemini design. The BG would have been a very large capsule (more crew than the Shuttle!) with a parawing for smooth touchdowns on Earth.
Meh. It's late. s/elegent/elegant/g
There's probably more, but I'm not staying up to find them.
Although you will find a lot of people who are both musicians and programmers.
:-)
It comes down to structure. Programming is all about elegence in structure. The more structured your code is, the better it is. The more you look for elegent solutions rather than sloppy hacks, the nicer your code looks. (And gets Ooos and Ahhs of approval from your cow-orkers.)
The visual arts have a lot to do with blasting emotion onto the canvas in a fluid way. Programmers don't do "fluid", they do structure. Thus a programmer will tend to give you something utterly sterile like Motif or Java Look and Feel. The only one who will appreciate it is a programmer. Yet an artist will create something like Quartz with rounded edges, flowing colors, and other aestehtics designed to communicate something on a more primal level.
Now when you get to music, structure again begins to rule. There are very specific models for producing music, and many a structured thinker tends to find a way to unconciously communicate through that structure. If you fail to maintain certain structures, it will no longer sound like music. Rather, it will sound like a bad jam session done in somebody's garage.
While sterotypes are always dangerous, I think you'll find that the stronger artists have a talent or strong appreciation for poetry. Poetry may offer them an outlet to express their emotions with only a minimum of structure standing in their way. And the best part about poetic structure is that new structures can be formed based on what sounds good to the ear. You aren't constrained to a few choices in meter, note length, or any other structures imposed on music. It's all optional.
That's my opinion, anyway.
I'm not saying that it's not useful. I'm saying that:
1. It's not really "email redefined", it's "email with calendaring bundled".
2. It's so stupidly simple, I don't understand why no one at least copies it. Hell, it wouldn't be that hard to come up with something with more powerful features. (e.g. Better email searching, searchable address book, labels vs. folders, smart calendar that can helpfully generate reports to help you plan your day, etc.)
It just amazes me that Microsoft has managed to get a strangehold on the email market with a fairly straight-forward produce, and the only industry response is a new version of Lotus Notes. Am I missing something here?
"And you can't truly say that Outlook is an e-mail program. They actually redefined the market."
;-)
They are right. After all, they managed to integrate a calendar and address book into an email application. It's no longer just email, it's email and calendaring! See the difference? (No, I don't either.)
Microsoft Exchange/Outlook is useful only because it centralizes more than just the email. Scheduling and the ability to look up people in your company are both important features. The thing I don't understand is, where the heck is the competition? I mean, you're looking at a few special folders that Outlook interprets as "Calendar" and "Address Book" in an IMAP-type interface. Why can't anyone else do this? Always kind of boggled my mind.
And no, Lotus Notes doesn't count. LN isn't email, it's an automatic, self-corrupting database that happens to support email. A bit like EMACS is a complete LISP environment that happens to support text editing.
Parent is not a troll. He's correct. You should always attempt to utilize people as best as possible. Now you can send your developers to design school and *hope* they pick up some natural talent for artistry, or you can have your art team and your development team work together, hand in hand at what they're both best at.
Sure, it's more difficult to manage a team as opposed to a few key developers, but consider the fact that a developer is still only one person. If he has to handle every phase of the implementation by himself, he's never going to get the project done. The name of the game is divide and conquer. What better way than to divide along the lines of competence?
I honestly don't understand this industry practice of thinking management is irrelevent just because we have technology. A well managed project will keep the team members close together and the project on schedule. A poorly managed project will fall apart as team members throw blame at each other because no one knows what to do, or everyone is vieing for a leadership position.
Want your project to succeed? Manage it, and manage it well.
Just run EMACS in VI mode and watch everyone's heads explode.
I'm still waiting for the "Evil villian, his protege with glowing green hand, his cheerleader arch nemisis, and her goofy sidekick all get pulled into a television reality where the protege learns the word 'froopy', the villian has to escape Mr. Sitdown, the hero cheerleader ends up on Star Trek with a red shirt, and the goofy sidekick is running from monkeys," genre. I could make millions!
:-P
Wait. What's that? It's been done before? Damn. Guess I'll have to try for the "Turtles turned into mutagenic superheros who fight a bad guy named after a kitchen appliance" genre.
High Moon Studios chose the relatively untapped genre of the vampire cowboy for their latest offering, Darkwatch.
;-)
Gee, I wonder why that might be?
How he is considered qualified to talk about the LSB when it doesn't have much of anything to do with Glibc, I don't know.
AFAIK, GLIBC is one of the components required for LSB compliance.
And he's right, the LSB was a poorly thought out attempt to make all distributions compatible with RedHat rather than an attempt to come up with a common groud for all distros. For example, why oh why is RPM support required for LSB compliance? It doesn't affect the execution of software on the system, and only serves to create a mess for distros that use another packaging system.
Far more frustrating than that, however, is the fact that LSB only covers the very core of the system. The APIs that 90% of programs rely on are not even mentioned in the LSB spec. Rather, the spec simply states that a few very basic libraries must exist, then goes on to detail the signatures of the function libraries. Not particularly useful unless you're Sun Microsystems looking for a way to convince people that you're compatible with Linux.
Assuming this guy's invention produces even a 15% gain (which I'm profoundly skeptical of given a lack of comprehensive 3rd-party, scientific proof)
I have heard of these things before, and supposedly some people have gotten good results from them. Nothing that would set off a red flag, but something like 10-15 mpg increases.
That may seem like a rather large increase for a hydrogen/gasoline hybrid fuel, but it is actually consistent. Gasoline burns fairly slowly, resulting in poor compression ratios in comparison to fuels like ethanol and hydrogen. By adding hydrogen to the fuel, the compression ratios go up, thus increasing the efficiency of the engine. This is why older engines have to be manually retuned to handle the hydrogen generator. (Newer engines have computer software that automatically adjusts the timing, so it may not be an issue in those vehicles.)
There's just one little snag here. By increasing the compression ratios through faster burning fuels, you also increase the temperature inside the cylinder. By increasing the temperature inside the cylinder, you also increase the wear on the engine parts that were never intended to take such extremes. As a result, you're bound to get better gas mileage at the expense of engine life. The money you save now may cost you more later.
There's one other reason why hydrogen may produce better mileage. Apparently, car manufacturers poison the intakes to get lower temperature combustion. This decreases fuel efficiency, but also decreases NOx emissions. The increased temperature probably helps for more complete combustion, but also may increase the NOx emissions making the car pollute more.
The Shuttle is incapable of making lunar insertions. The reason is that the amount of weight carried in the form of the orbiter itself exceeds the weight that the engines could place in a lunar orbit using a Hohmann transfer. If the Shuttle system was stripped down to the engines, it could easily put cargo anywhere the Saturn V could.
I have always read that the Saturn V outperformed the shuttle in raw lifting capacity. Is there something I am missing here?
Actually, the Saturn V outperformed the shuttle in cargo, not in lifting capacity. The Space Shuttle is more powerful in every way than the Saturn V. The difference is that the Saturn V was a generic rocket. Thus it could be fitted with a spacecraft, a space station, or with pure cargo. It really didn't matter as long as the cargo fit on top of the stack.
Now consider this. Without the main engines, the Space Shuttle Orbiter weighs approximately 100 metric tonnes. Now imagine if we strapped the orbiter to the Saturn V. The shuttle would be about 53 metric tons too heavy for the Saturn V to take to the moon. However, it could deliver the Space Shuttle into Low Earth Orbit. Given that the maximum LEO capacity for the Saturn V was 118 metric tonnes, our fictional Saturn V Space Shuttle could carry another 18 metric tonnes in its cargo bay.
Now compare that to the Shuttle stack we fly today. Not only is the Space Shuttle and its engines flown into Low Earth Orbit (weighing 109 metric tonnes together), but the space shuttle can also carry 28.8 metric tonnes of cargo to LEO.
So in comparison:Does that help you understand?
What this means is that a craft built on Shuttle technology but without the orbiter itself, could easily outperform the Saturn V.
Apology accepted. Sorry for coming down on you hard, but it can be a bit difficult to remain objective in the face of a heated argument. :-)
:-)
:-)
Aeolipile != technology to manage power production. This is the crux of my argument.
No, it's technology to produce power, not manage it. Power management is handled on aeolipiles by managing the fire underneath. Hotter flame == more power conversion into rotational energy. When I said, "Not even the Romans managed power production," I meant that they didn't produce power creating devices. As in, "he didn't quite manage to get the basketball in the hoop."
The smaller aeolipiles probably only produced a watt or two of power, which isn't useful for very many tasks. But it was still producing power. Scale it up to a larger size, and the power output could range anywhere from hundreds of watts all the way up to a kilowatt or so.
Of course, the size to weight ratio wouldn't have been so great, and a larger aeolipile would have been rather dangerous with steam shooting everywhere. Had they followed that path, it's likely they would have reached the apex of aeolipile technology rather quickly, and learned to build closed systems. It wouldn't have been long after that they would have figured out how to use steam compression to drive rotation instead of direct thrust.
You must have done some HS class report on the industrial revolution, and use WikiPedia as your source.
:-)
/STARTED/ with the steam engine
Nope. I actually paid attention, unlike yourself.
except the slight discrepency where they talk about how the industrial revolution was
The power producing phase of technology DID start with the Steam Engine. Prior to that, the only power available was a) humans, b) horses, c) water wheels, d) windmills.
but was not possible without "machine tools"
Couple of things:
1. Note that machined tools started after the steam engine took off. It was actually the invention of the steam engine that spurred the need for more precise metal working.
2. The Romans had advanced metal works. They worked with Iron, crude forms of steel (particularly wrought iron), brass, and lead. Their lead works were particularly impressive, with lead drainage pipes bearing the seal of the Roman Caesar still being used in Rome today!
3. The Romans had other fine crafts work such as impressive glass work. In particular, their cage-cup glass is something that has confounded modern glass makers despite the fact that we make glass today in much the same way the Romans did.
4. The ancient Romans understood the concepts of power transfer as demonstrated by their invention of the overshot water wheel for milling, and their little-known attempts at analog computing.
See, I know exactly where you were mislead. It's the first part of 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Engine'.
That particular point of "combining rail and steam" is a bit of a stretch considering the low power output of an aeolipile. The actual article on Aeolipiles makes the point much more clearly. All you had to do was click through!
See, I don't pretend to know any more than the average Joe about such things
Really? Then we wouldn't be having this argument, would we? I find it ironic that you argue that I have failed to do my research when it is you yourself who have failed to do so.
I mean seriously, man. Compare the description of what's necessairy to make http://www.pr.afrl.af.mil/aeolipile.html vs. a steam engine. That's more than the length of the Roman civilization was capable of.
Do you have *any* idea what you're talking about? For example, have you ever paid attention to the construction of the Roman baths? We're talking thousands of gallons of heated, running water and steamed rooms. All made possible by a Roman invention known as the hypocaust. The hypocaust was an advanced system of thermal transfer that cleverly directed the thermal energy of a furnace into heating the pools as the water cycled. Its widespread usage (in baths as large as today's Olympic swimming pools, no less!) shows that the Romans had a working understanding of the thermodynamics of heat transfer. If you ever get your hands on a diagram of a hypocaust, you may find that it looks a bit similar to the early aero-steam engines. The primary difference was the lack of a pressure vessel in the Roman design. (And what did the aeolipile have that the baths didn't?)
The aeolipile could have been initially used for early power generation experiments. As I said, a vacuum pump could have been attached, or something equally useful at lower power production levels. The problem was NOT that the Romans couldn't have advanced from the aeolipile to the steam engine in the remaining span of their empire. They had the engineering capabilities, the necessary iron works, the experience with steam generation, and everything else that was required. The problem was that the Ro
Whoops. Sorry about that. Try going through this link first. I didn't realize that news providers are looking at the referer when deciding whether they should show the article or not. I just thought the Google links were "special" somehow. :-)