I think the second one can actually be fixed, and Nintendo is doing a great job of it in Mario Kart. First they don't let you talk to other players (which has benefits and drawbacks), and second they have a rating system, so when you log in the game automatically pairs you with people close to your level. This is great because you don't need to be awesome at the game to have a chance to win (and lets face it, human opponents are much more interesting than computer opponents), and all the cheaters move to the top ratings: which means the average player doesn't have to deal with cheaters.
Separating people by skill is a good idea, but it has it's own issues. Halo 2 had a similar system but, aside from issues tracking skill across game types, it also suffered from people gaming the system. Some more skilled players would create new accounts or perform actions to de-skill their account so that they would be matched against newer or less skilled players for the purpose of griefing them.
Now its possible that not implementing any voice communication would take some of the fun of that away since they'd know they would be unable to taunt their opponents, but a skill based matching system can work to avoid accidental mismatches, but there's not much it can do against people dedicated to griefing.
Again, solid state lasers, which are the topic of the article have their waste and ammunition limited only by their power source. Seeing as these are being tested for naval deployment, it's a pretty sure bet the power source for these in any significant deployment is going to be a nuclear reactor. That means the "ammunition" supply cycle for the ships lasers will by measured in years, so yes, that is as good as unlimited.
Since the only Naval ships which are, currently, nuclear powered are aircraft carriers and submarines I think it's a safe to say that most naval laser weapons will be getting electricity from a non-nuclear power source.
So their ammunition will only be measured in days, or possibly weeks, not years. But that's still far better than the ammo situation of the existing Phalanx, which has ammo for less than a minute of continuous firing.
Invisible walls suck ass. Even the "Indestructible, unclimable chain-link fence" mecanism works better and i hate that. For me that's the #1 immersion breaker.
Sure chain link fences are better, but they can still suck like Rainbow 6: Vegas 2 where they act as one way bullet shields. (I'm looking at you casino assault level where you start on the helipad)
The enemies can shoot through them but your bullets always get stopped. (Even with a sniper rifle when you can see that you're shooting through the opening, the bullet still fails to go through).
If they stopped all bullets it would be weird but understandable, but sheltering enemies who can fire with impunity is just bad design. But I guess at least you can see where you can and can't go.
Operation Flashpoint is also full of moments where you end up doing whatever works instead of doing what was intended. When your job is to sneak into an enemy base and blow up some tanks, you can often get away with just stealing a tank and shooting the base into piece with that. Or in some missions you can try to shoot helicopters from the sky with an LAW, its not what the weapons was designed for and most of the time you will simply miss, but if you hit, it is simply great.
I had a couple moments like that in Halo. There's one section where if you hit the enemies just right you can steal a plane (banshee) use it to wipe out everyone, including one of their heavy tanks, and then skip an entire section by flying down from the elevated bridge you started on rather than fighting through a base to reach the lower door.
On the beach assult level there a scripted section where all the AI marines get killed while you're underground. Except you can find hiding places for them where they will survive. Also in that there's a cutscene, letting you know you unlocked a door across the island, where you see a sword equiped enemy step out. One time I left a jeep next to it and discovered it wasn't exactly a cut scene. You could see the sword guy taking fire from the jeep's gun.
Or when you have to fight your way back through one section, I like to take a ghost vehicle, run all the way to the end of the level, ignoring the enemies, steal a plane, and fly up to the elevated bridge that's suppose to be part of a different level. From there snipe and rocket the enemy until I get bored, and switch to ground attack runs with the plane.
It's those level breaking moments that have the best memories.
Umm, weren't Q-ships used precisely because of Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare? Chicken or the egg?
Not really. They were used initially to counter submarines that were actually stopping merchant ships, demanding they surrender and abandon ship, and only then sinking them (usually by gunfire - to save torpedoes for military targets).
Q-ships work well for that because the sub surfaces to demand the surrender of the "merchant" ship and the Q-ship drops its disguise and opens fire on the surfaced sub.
Q-ships work poorly for countering unrestricted warfare because they get torpedoed without warning and most of their weapons only work on a surfaced sub. If the sub stays submerged there's not a lot a Q-ship can do.
It might also have to do with the difficulty of ensuring that the thermal shield was still perfect after the gear cycled. If operating the gear in orbit is likely to (at least partially) compromise your thermal protection (because you can't be sure it will close perfectly without gaps and without damaging the thermal tiles on the cover) why build in that ability?
>>But the X-15 was over three times as powerful and went over twice as fast, giving a much higher thermal load.
Features which SpaceShipTwo doesn't need. This is one of the efficiencies of a private approach.
I agree the SS2 doesn't need those feature; but that's because the two vehicles have different goals. As such it's kind of deceptive to claim that SS2 shows the efficiency of a private approach when it's got a different purpose that the X-15.
The X-15 was designed to test out materials and handling at very high speeds (with a possible eye to follow on vehicles that increased those speed towards attaining orbital flight). It was the culmination of a line of experimental aircraft all designed to test the limits of man's ability to fly quickly. (unfortunately it was the end of the true x-plane era)
Claiming that the SS2 is more efficient is silly unless you unilaterally decide that the X-15's goal should have been maximum altitude minimum energy sub-orbital parabolic flights (the SS1 and SS2 flight profile) and judge it accordingly.
Similarly, a comparison of SpaceShipTwo with the X-15 program yields costs that are an order of magnitude lower. And it's worth noting that NASA never bothered to follow up on an X-15 successor. That was left to Scaled Composites to do almost forty years later.
I'm not sure how you can really bill the SpaceShipTwo as a X-15 successor. Yes they are both air launched manned rocket vehicles with wings that can reach an altitude of over 100 km. But the X-15 was over three times as powerful and went over twice as fast, giving a much higher thermal load. (X-15: 250 kN thrust - Mach 6.72, SpaceShipOne 74 kN - Mach 3.09 [I haven't seen any claims that SS2 is designed to go much faster])
The X-15 was an experimental rocket plane designed to go fast and also to go high. SpaceShipTwo is designed to take tourists high at as low a speed as practical to reduce thermal load.
Also, while you didn't provide numbers for the cost of the SpaceShipTwo program nor the X-15 program, I'd note that the X-15 program included 199 flights, so maybe we shouldn't be comparing costs after SS2's been in service for a while.
No argument though that NASA failed to build a successor to the X-15.
They do, put the car in nuetral and kill the engine. Turn the key or hold the start button down. I hate automatics, but even I know you can toss one in neutral just like a proper transmission.
Note that on cars with automatics that support paddle shifting and/or semi-manual modes where they let you select gear up/gear down there may not be any mechanical linkage between the gearshift and the transmission. This is partly to protect against operator error by downshifting into too low a gear and over-revving the engine, and some designs also protect against excessive time spend near redline and will upshift in that event even in manual mode.
But this means that placing the gear selector in neutral is simply a request to the computer controlling the actual gear movement to place the automatic into neutral. If doing so at this time violates any control laws or if this computer has become nonresponsive it might be impossible to place the vehicle into neutral. (Imagine a control law designed to protect against over-revving that decides that placing the car in neutral while the engine is under load and the throttle is wide open is unacceptable. Yes that would cause the revs to spike quickly, OTOH if the throttle input is unintended that's exactly the scenario of a runaway acceleration.)
This hardware is advertised as superduper AES data encryption, but the hardware does not actually bother to use your password to encrypt the data.
FIPS 140-2 actually forbids modules from using a password as a key or from using a password as input into a key generation/derivation scheme. (There are a few caveats and workarounds, but by and large that's the case)
That restriction makes more sense in situations where the endpoint is trusted and you're worried about the encrypted data in transit, since password derived keys are theoretically much weaker than random keys.
Still, even with that requirement this type of device would be significantly more secure if the password verification to access the key happened on the USB hardware, not in the software running on the host CPU.
The original starships were named after aircraft carriers: Potemkin, Yorktown, Farragut, Hood, Exeter, etc.
Eh, 1 out of 5's not bad. (For ship names that were reused I'll give the benifit of the doubt if any were a carrier, then go with best known, or failing that settle for an example or two from around WW-II, since most seemed to come from that time period)
Potemkin: Battleship, Russian. Yorktown: Aircraft Carrier(s), US. CV-5, CV-10 Farragut (Fanfic Starship): Destroyer(s), US. DD-348 Hood: Battlecruiser, British. HMS Hood (51) Exeter: Heavy Cruiser, British. HMS Exeter (68)
and from the etc. group Constitution: Heavy Frigate (sail), US Constellation: Aircraft Carrier, US. CV-64 (best known: Frigate (sail), US) Defiant: Warship (sail, fictional), British Enterprise: Aircraft Carrier(s), US. CV-6, CVN-65 Excalibur: Submarine (experimental), British Intrepid: Aircraft Carrier, US. CV-11
Even if you go with the ships you skipped it's only 4 out of 11 (and for one of those 4 the carrier isn't the most historic ship of the name)
The carpet bombing and artillery shelling of WWII had two effects. First it did reduce the ability to wage war through the destruction of industrial facilities. Also, since we were bombing the living crap (killing) civilians in their homes, it broke the will to fight of the civilian population. We tend not to do that anymore, so we are ignoring a major component of how wars are won due to us wishing it wasn't true.
The US Strategic Bombing Survey and the post war interrogations of Germans disagree with you. Carpet bombing of city centers was a largely ineffective method of disrupting German industry. (Even Dresden, which was one of the most destructive attacks of the war, only put it's rail yards out of business for less than a week).
In fact, the survey identified repeated attacks to continually disrupt oil, transport, electrical, and high performance engine additives as the biggest overlooked opportunities to shorten the war through the destruction of the German economy, and "city-busting" as the least effective bombing strategy used.
Microsoft already addresses this issue by allowing you to Download your gamertag to only one Xbox 360 at a time. So if you go to your friends house you can DL your gamertag and all of your "Xbox live arcade games" can now be played on your friends xbox. Of course your home Xbox will now not be able to play them until you redownload your gamertag to your Xbox 360.
Sort of. Microsoft ties a download to both your gamertag and your specific xbox.
Log in as your gamertag and you can play the game from any console, like you said. But on the game's "home" console any gamertag can play it, even if your gamertag isn't there. (And once a year Microsoft will let you adjust the "home" console for your downloads; or they'll do it automatically for an RMA replacement console)
Turbo-electric drives were put into US Battleship more because of the US's inability to manufacture acceptable turbine reducing gears, and the turbo-electric drives were much more efficient that direct drive turbines. I'm unsure how the operating efficiencies of reduced drive turbines stacked up against turbo-electric drive, but the geared system did take less space.
The turbo-electric did have some interesting advantages, such as being able to apply full power in reverse and being able to switch very quickly from ahead full to astern full. Which could be useful in avoiding torpedoes.
I believe that the vulnerability of the turbo-electric to shocks has been overstated based on the single incident with the USS Saratoga (CV-3). Several other turbo-electric drive ships took torpedo hits without reports of losing propulsive power. * At Coral Sea, USS Lexington (CV-2) (Saratoga's sister ship) took 2 torpedoes and 3 dive bombs and could still make 25 knots (until a later explosion caused the ship to be scuttled) * Off Okinawa the USS New Mexico (BB-40) was hit by a kamikaze and a bomb. * Off Saipan the USS Tennessee (BB-43) was hit by a 4.7 inch shell and off Okinawa was hit by bomb carrying kamikaze. * In the Philippines the USS California (BB-44) was hit by a kamikaze. * In the Philippines the USS Colorado (BB-45) was hit by two kamikazes. * Off Saipan the USS Maryland (BB-46) was hit by a torpedo, and in the Philippines was twice hit by kamikazes, and off Okinawa was hit by a bomb carrying kamikaze. * Off Okinawa the USS West Virginia (BB-48) was hit by bomb carrying kamikaze. (And I'm ignoring damage from the Pearl Harbor attack since it is unclear if the engines were even online)
So all of the turbo-electric drive ships took battle damage while underway, 3 of them from torpedoes, and only 1 lost power.
Re:1000 mph speed, 100 gallons per mile efficiency
on
1000-mph Car Planned
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· Score: 1
"transportation of people"... plural... which, unless you know of any kind of land vehicle with two primary driver positions, incontrovertibly means at least one passenger
Some longer articulated fire engines have a secondary (but not backup) rear driving position (well, steering position) so the back end can be steered. That allows the rear end to be swung wide going through a corner so the vehicle can get around a tighter corner. (Otherwise the rear end would clip the corner)
It's not a 2nd primary driver, but that's more than just a passenger. (And also completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand)
As a kid, I always wondered - light moves so fast that it's (for all intents and purposes) not really affected by gravity at all. It would seem like this means that things 50-100 miles away from a battlefield could be hit by all of the missed laser shots before the earth curved away enough that they passed into space. And as they left orbit, what sorts of guarantees do we have that they wouldn't hit planes or low-orbit satellites? Since light moves very quickly, nobody would be able to see or dodge the laser before it hit them.
Well the atmosphere rapidly degrades a laser's power, so while they are very fast it is all that we can do to create a laser of sufficient power to destroy targeted objects at relatively short distances.
At the moment only the YAL-1 Airborne Laser is going to have the power to have a serious concern about damage from overshooting the target. (And that's partly because its being used at higher altitude where it isn't going to be quite as impaired by the atmosphere).
I seem to recall reading that the targeting computer for the YAL-1 is programmed with satellite orbits so as to minimize the danger of accidental satellite damage from any 'overs'.
Want substantially higher efficiency in a modern airliner using a jet engine? With all the reliability?
Easy. Turboprop.
Your P&W, GE and RR makes big ones every day, primarily for military transports. But the Airline Industry doesn't want 'em - despite the substantial fuel savings. After all, the military choses them for good reason - low fuel cost, high power, and very high reliability.
Commercial transports use available aircraft designs. Only turbofan designs are available due to the substantial demand for them by the passenger-ferrying airlines.
That must be why, of the 4 common transport planes the US Air Force operates (all custom designs, no COTS there), only 1 is a turbo-prop? Incidentally to shortest ranged and lowest capacity one?
The Air Force operates the C-130, C-141, C-17, and C-5. Only the C-130 is a turbo-prop. Now the Navy does use (but is in the process of replacing) the P-3 Orion (turbo-prop) for sub hunting, but that's becase props are more efficient at low altitude, where they fly to hunt subs. Airliners spend as much time as possible at high altitude where their jet engines are efficient.
From James Doohan's wikipedia article: "This article contains information regarding a deceased person who has recently been involved in a launch failure."
That's a new one....
It's gone now, but it gets better. Because of some oddity of how wikipedia is handling the infobox, the information that his remains were involved in a August 1st, 2008 rocket explosion appears in the page history as far back as the June 8, 2008 version of his page (when the infobox, about his ashes being scheduled to launch, was added).
Oh, and the test site is located at an old weapons test site. There are all these weird looking bunkers peppering the surrounding countryside.
I'm pretty sure that it is actually the site of a (long demolished) WW-II era munitions plant, and the "weird looking bunkers" were for the storage of the completed bombs while they await transport. So an old weapons factory rather than an old weapons test site.
(The USSR didn't have much aluminum - or any way to import it - in WW2.)
And don't forget the MiG-25. Due to the high design speeds and expected thermal loads it couldn't be built of normal aircraft aluminum, so the Soviets built it largely of nickel-steel. (Unlike the American high-speed planes the SR-71 and XB-70 which primarily used lighter titanium)
A truncated teardrop with a flat back (like the Prius or the Insight) is actually more aerodynamic than the teardrop. It's called a Kammback, and it's named for the gentleman who noticed that if you chop off the back of the teardrop, the air keeps flowing the same way, except without the drag of sliding along the surface of the parts of the teardrop you just chopped off.
So, kind of like a transom stern on a ship. Chopping the stern off flat causes the water acts like there is an ideally fine stern extending off the back of the trasom.
No, my calculator is my telephone, before that, it was my solar calculator, before that, it was my calculator-watch, before that, it was my battery calculator (Who really googles (424+26)/78 to get the answer?).
Well, I just did:) But only because 450/78 doesn't exactly divide evenly.
But slightly more seriously, the google calculator available from the google search bar of my browser. So if I want to do a bit of math while browsing the web (say, to include in a post) it's faster to let google calculate it than it is to open the calculator app. (Not to mention that the google calculator understands units, and the windows calculator doesn't)
The two cited sources actually contradict each other. One says, like the slashdot headline, that the Titanic search was a cover-up. However, the other source directly quotes the searcher and makes it clear that it was not at all a cover-up, but rather the opposite - something that accidentally drew attention when it unexpectedly succeeded. There was concern that the attention might also raise other questions.
First, "cover story" not "cover up". There's a difference. Cover story in a preemptive misdirection to provide a plausible, but wrong / misleading explanation for why an event is happening. Cover-up is an attempt to hide evidence of wrong doing.
And Ballard's search for the Titanic could quite easily have been both a cover story and a problem.
See, an unsuccessful search for the Titanic is pretty good as a cover story explaining why there is a Woods Hole ship puttering around not far from some known sub wreck. Especially since it's lowering a bunch of robots over the side. Civilians search for shipwrecks all the time, and Titanic is probably the most famous shipwreck of them all. Great reason for the boat to be poking around, and it keeps anyone from wondering if they might be looking at the US Navy's subs.
It became a problem after they actually found the Titanic. Because while an unsuccessful search is almost a non-event, unless someone is wondering why the boat is out there, a successful find of that magnitude triggered a media circus and got a bunch of people looking at the expedition and the area.
Slashdot Mirror
Separating people by skill is a good idea, but it has it's own issues. Halo 2 had a similar system but, aside from issues tracking skill across game types, it also suffered from people gaming the system. Some more skilled players would create new accounts or perform actions to de-skill their account so that they would be matched against newer or less skilled players for the purpose of griefing them.
Now its possible that not implementing any voice communication would take some of the fun of that away since they'd know they would be unable to taunt their opponents, but a skill based matching system can work to avoid accidental mismatches, but there's not much it can do against people dedicated to griefing.
Since the only Naval ships which are, currently, nuclear powered are aircraft carriers and submarines I think it's a safe to say that most naval laser weapons will be getting electricity from a non-nuclear power source.
So their ammunition will only be measured in days, or possibly weeks, not years. But that's still far better than the ammo situation of the existing Phalanx, which has ammo for less than a minute of continuous firing.
Sure chain link fences are better, but they can still suck like Rainbow 6: Vegas 2 where they act as one way bullet shields. (I'm looking at you casino assault level where you start on the helipad)
The enemies can shoot through them but your bullets always get stopped. (Even with a sniper rifle when you can see that you're shooting through the opening, the bullet still fails to go through).
If they stopped all bullets it would be weird but understandable, but sheltering enemies who can fire with impunity is just bad design. But I guess at least you can see where you can and can't go.
I had a couple moments like that in Halo.
There's one section where if you hit the enemies just right you can steal a plane (banshee) use it to wipe out everyone, including one of their heavy tanks, and then skip an entire section by flying down from the elevated bridge you started on rather than fighting through a base to reach the lower door.
On the beach assult level there a scripted section where all the AI marines get killed while you're underground. Except you can find hiding places for them where they will survive. Also in that there's a cutscene, letting you know you unlocked a door across the island, where you see a sword equiped enemy step out. One time I left a jeep next to it and discovered it wasn't exactly a cut scene. You could see the sword guy taking fire from the jeep's gun.
Or when you have to fight your way back through one section, I like to take a ghost vehicle, run all the way to the end of the level, ignoring the enemies, steal a plane, and fly up to the elevated bridge that's suppose to be part of a different level. From there snipe and rocket the enemy until I get bored, and switch to ground attack runs with the plane.
It's those level breaking moments that have the best memories.
Not really. They were used initially to counter submarines that were actually stopping merchant ships, demanding they surrender and abandon ship, and only then sinking them (usually by gunfire - to save torpedoes for military targets).
Q-ships work well for that because the sub surfaces to demand the surrender of the "merchant" ship and the Q-ship drops its disguise and opens fire on the surfaced sub.
Q-ships work poorly for countering unrestricted warfare because they get torpedoed without warning and most of their weapons only work on a surfaced sub. If the sub stays submerged there's not a lot a Q-ship can do.
It might also have to do with the difficulty of ensuring that the thermal shield was still perfect after the gear cycled. If operating the gear in orbit is likely to (at least partially) compromise your thermal protection (because you can't be sure it will close perfectly without gaps and without damaging the thermal tiles on the cover) why build in that ability?
I agree the SS2 doesn't need those feature; but that's because the two vehicles have different goals. As such it's kind of deceptive to claim that SS2 shows the efficiency of a private approach when it's got a different purpose that the X-15.
The X-15 was designed to test out materials and handling at very high speeds (with a possible eye to follow on vehicles that increased those speed towards attaining orbital flight). It was the culmination of a line of experimental aircraft all designed to test the limits of man's ability to fly quickly. (unfortunately it was the end of the true x-plane era)
Claiming that the SS2 is more efficient is silly unless you unilaterally decide that the X-15's goal should have been maximum altitude minimum energy sub-orbital parabolic flights (the SS1 and SS2 flight profile) and judge it accordingly.
I'm not sure how you can really bill the SpaceShipTwo as a X-15 successor. Yes they are both air launched manned rocket vehicles with wings that can reach an altitude of over 100 km. But the X-15 was over three times as powerful and went over twice as fast, giving a much higher thermal load.
(X-15: 250 kN thrust - Mach 6.72, SpaceShipOne 74 kN - Mach 3.09 [I haven't seen any claims that SS2 is designed to go much faster])
The X-15 was an experimental rocket plane designed to go fast and also to go high. SpaceShipTwo is designed to take tourists high at as low a speed as practical to reduce thermal load.
Also, while you didn't provide numbers for the cost of the SpaceShipTwo program nor the X-15 program, I'd note that the X-15 program included 199 flights, so maybe we shouldn't be comparing costs after SS2's been in service for a while.
No argument though that NASA failed to build a successor to the X-15.
Note that on cars with automatics that support paddle shifting and/or semi-manual modes where they let you select gear up/gear down there may not be any mechanical linkage between the gearshift and the transmission. This is partly to protect against operator error by downshifting into too low a gear and over-revving the engine, and some designs also protect against excessive time spend near redline and will upshift in that event even in manual mode.
But this means that placing the gear selector in neutral is simply a request to the computer controlling the actual gear movement to place the automatic into neutral. If doing so at this time violates any control laws or if this computer has become nonresponsive it might be impossible to place the vehicle into neutral. (Imagine a control law designed to protect against over-revving that decides that placing the car in neutral while the engine is under load and the throttle is wide open is unacceptable. Yes that would cause the revs to spike quickly, OTOH if the throttle input is unintended that's exactly the scenario of a runaway acceleration.)
Eh, 1 out of 5's not bad.
(For ship names that were reused I'll give the benifit of the doubt if any were a carrier, then go with best known, or failing that settle for an example or two from around WW-II, since most seemed to come from that time period)
Potemkin: Battleship, Russian.
Yorktown: Aircraft Carrier(s), US. CV-5, CV-10
Farragut (Fanfic Starship): Destroyer(s), US. DD-348
Hood: Battlecruiser, British. HMS Hood (51)
Exeter: Heavy Cruiser, British. HMS Exeter (68)
and from the etc. group
Constitution: Heavy Frigate (sail), US
Constellation: Aircraft Carrier, US. CV-64 (best known: Frigate (sail), US)
Defiant: Warship (sail, fictional), British
Enterprise: Aircraft Carrier(s), US. CV-6, CVN-65
Excalibur: Submarine (experimental), British
Intrepid: Aircraft Carrier, US. CV-11
Even if you go with the ships you skipped it's only 4 out of 11 (and for one of those 4 the carrier isn't the most historic ship of the name)
The US Strategic Bombing Survey and the post war interrogations of Germans disagree with you. Carpet bombing of city centers was a largely ineffective method of disrupting German industry. (Even Dresden, which was one of the most destructive attacks of the war, only put it's rail yards out of business for less than a week).
In fact, the survey identified repeated attacks to continually disrupt oil, transport, electrical, and high performance engine additives as the biggest overlooked opportunities to shorten the war through the destruction of the German economy, and "city-busting" as the least effective bombing strategy used.
So you're saying that nobody who uses SSL or TLS is in their right mind?
(The SSL and TLS specifications require the use of both MD5 and SHA-1 during key derivation)
Sort of. Microsoft ties a download to both your gamertag and your specific xbox.
Log in as your gamertag and you can play the game from any console, like you said.
But on the game's "home" console any gamertag can play it, even if your gamertag isn't there. (And once a year Microsoft will let you adjust the "home" console for your downloads; or they'll do it automatically for an RMA replacement console)
Turbo-electric drives were put into US Battleship more because of the US's inability to manufacture acceptable turbine reducing gears, and the turbo-electric drives were much more efficient that direct drive turbines. I'm unsure how the operating efficiencies of reduced drive turbines stacked up against turbo-electric drive, but the geared system did take less space.
The turbo-electric did have some interesting advantages, such as being able to apply full power in reverse and being able to switch very quickly from ahead full to astern full. Which could be useful in avoiding torpedoes.
I believe that the vulnerability of the turbo-electric to shocks has been overstated based on the single incident with the USS Saratoga (CV-3). Several other turbo-electric drive ships took torpedo hits without reports of losing propulsive power.
* At Coral Sea, USS Lexington (CV-2) (Saratoga's sister ship) took 2 torpedoes and 3 dive bombs and could still make 25 knots (until a later explosion caused the ship to be scuttled)
* Off Okinawa the USS New Mexico (BB-40) was hit by a kamikaze and a bomb.
* Off Saipan the USS Tennessee (BB-43) was hit by a 4.7 inch shell and off Okinawa was hit by bomb carrying kamikaze.
* In the Philippines the USS California (BB-44) was hit by a kamikaze.
* In the Philippines the USS Colorado (BB-45) was hit by two kamikazes.
* Off Saipan the USS Maryland (BB-46) was hit by a torpedo, and in the Philippines was twice hit by kamikazes, and off Okinawa was hit by a bomb carrying kamikaze.
* Off Okinawa the USS West Virginia (BB-48) was hit by bomb carrying kamikaze.
(And I'm ignoring damage from the Pearl Harbor attack since it is unclear if the engines were even online)
So all of the turbo-electric drive ships took battle damage while underway, 3 of them from torpedoes, and only 1 lost power.
Some longer articulated fire engines have a secondary (but not backup) rear driving position (well, steering position) so the back end can be steered. That allows the rear end to be swung wide going through a corner so the vehicle can get around a tighter corner. (Otherwise the rear end would clip the corner)
It's not a 2nd primary driver, but that's more than just a passenger. (And also completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand)
Well the atmosphere rapidly degrades a laser's power, so while they are very fast it is all that we can do to create a laser of sufficient power to destroy targeted objects at relatively short distances.
At the moment only the YAL-1 Airborne Laser is going to have the power to have a serious concern about damage from overshooting the target. (And that's partly because its being used at higher altitude where it isn't going to be quite as impaired by the atmosphere).
I seem to recall reading that the targeting computer for the YAL-1 is programmed with satellite orbits so as to minimize the danger of accidental satellite damage from any 'overs'.
That must be why, of the 4 common transport planes the US Air Force operates (all custom designs, no COTS there), only 1 is a turbo-prop? Incidentally to shortest ranged and lowest capacity one?
The Air Force operates the C-130, C-141, C-17, and C-5. Only the C-130 is a turbo-prop.
Now the Navy does use (but is in the process of replacing) the P-3 Orion (turbo-prop) for sub hunting, but that's becase props are more efficient at low altitude, where they fly to hunt subs. Airliners spend as much time as possible at high altitude where their jet engines are efficient.
I don't know why you're bothering, that renaming isn't for another 612 years.
It's gone now, but it gets better.
Because of some oddity of how wikipedia is handling the infobox, the information that his remains were involved in a August 1st, 2008 rocket explosion appears in the page history as far back as the June 8, 2008 version of his page (when the infobox, about his ashes being scheduled to launch, was added).
Now wikipedia predicts the future.
I'm pretty sure that it is actually the site of a (long demolished) WW-II era munitions plant, and the "weird looking bunkers" were for the storage of the completed bombs while they await transport. So an old weapons factory rather than an old weapons test site.
And don't forget the MiG-25. Due to the high design speeds and expected thermal loads it couldn't be built of normal aircraft aluminum, so the Soviets built it largely of nickel-steel.
(Unlike the American high-speed planes the SR-71 and XB-70 which primarily used lighter titanium)
Chopping the stern off flat causes the water acts like there is an ideally fine stern extending off the back of the trasom.
But only because 450/78 doesn't exactly divide evenly.
But slightly more seriously, the google calculator available from the google search bar of my browser. So if I want to do a bit of math while browsing the web (say, to include in a post) it's faster to let google calculate it than it is to open the calculator app.
(Not to mention that the google calculator understands units, and the windows calculator doesn't)
Cover story in a preemptive misdirection to provide a plausible, but wrong / misleading explanation for why an event is happening. Cover-up is an attempt to hide evidence of wrong doing.
And Ballard's search for the Titanic could quite easily have been both a cover story and a problem.
See, an unsuccessful search for the Titanic is pretty good as a cover story explaining why there is a Woods Hole ship puttering around not far from some known sub wreck. Especially since it's lowering a bunch of robots over the side.
Civilians search for shipwrecks all the time, and Titanic is probably the most famous shipwreck of them all. Great reason for the boat to be poking around, and it keeps anyone from wondering if they might be looking at the US Navy's subs.
It became a problem after they actually found the Titanic. Because while an unsuccessful search is almost a non-event, unless someone is wondering why the boat is out there, a successful find of that magnitude triggered a media circus and got a bunch of people looking at the expedition and the area.