Yet, despite your bleating, houses in the US survive hurricanes, and blizzards, and earthquakes. So, either you're talking out of your nether regions, or you don't know what you're talking about. (Same thing really.)
If it was a Super Hornet (media reports concerning aviation are always suspect), then it has the extra ability to refuel other aircraft in flight, which means they could probably dump fuel pretty quickly.
The Super Hornet can only refuel other aircraft when it's carrying the centerline buddy store - and no, they can't dump fuel via that route. (The valve at the end of the drogue is operated by the probe of the receiving aircraft. It cannot be operated remotely.)
Yet, looking at the problem, I can see how to approach it. Modern control theory is good enough. Machine learning and vision processing are good enough.
That's fine for the software... what about the hardware? Do we have actuators (hydraulic, pneumatic, whatever) that are good enough? And most important, do we have a power supply that's good enough?
How do I know that? By having a basic understanding of the physics and chemistry and how much energy it takes to heat something to nearly 2k degrees and maintain it there while constantly pumping cool materials in and removing heat via the output products.
This isn't some magical process or out at the edge of understanding concept - it's very basic chemistry and engineering. You may be clueless about basic chemistry and engineering, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are.
And you accuse me of pulling numbers out of my ass when they've just released it, while you're insisting that it *can* be scaled down based on the same press release? Don't get on me for thinking things through from basic principles while you're making shit up based on absolutely nothing at all. Grow the fuck up and get over yourself.
It's a materials handling issue. Dewatering a sludge, drying a dewatered sludge, and, if necessary, calcining the zinc hydroxide separately from forming the zinc metal, all involve some technically complicated additional steps.
It's not just a materials handling issue - it's an energy and economic issue as well. Does this generator produce enough hydrogen to convert to electricity to power the processes above while still producing enough excess hydrogen for automobile fuel at an economical price? (I.E. the hydrogen sold as fuel must pay the whole cost of the process.)
If not, then it's neither green nor self sustaining.
Well, scaled really small, it just works slower to fill your H2 tanks. Photo-voltaic panels ---> Electricity--> heat small continuous flow reactor chamber (maybe no bigger than your thumb). Maybe the whole package sits beside your house in a package the size of an air conditioning compressor, while the panels are on the roof. We got a boat load of roofs in this country.
For an average size house, you're talking a reaction chamber the size of the end of your thumb - and taking months to fill your car's tank.
It sucks so much that if you manage to get from one place to another without a *major* fiasco, you keep your mouth shut.
Translation: I not only don't have an argument, my mind is already made up and I'm not interested in hearing anything that fails to meet my preconceived notions.
We have a technology that could potentially lead to self-organizing micro-particles capable of rapidly forming complex shapes, and your first thought is "What if someone uses this technology to create a club and then clobbers someone over the head with it?"
You must be new here. This is Slashdot, where rampant paranoia is the order of the day and extreme edge cases as treated as if they were hourly occurrences.
Oh, and tinfoil manufacturers monitor this site daily to predict future demand.
How precision is "precision"? What do model builders need, and what for?
Model railroad cars work best when all the cars have a certain specified mass. Too light and the odds of derailing increase, too heavy and the engine can't pull them. I'm too lazy to look up the "standard mass for a N scale boxcar" but someone motivated could probably google for it.
The "standard mass", as quoted by the NMRA, is expressed in fractions of an ounce - the smallest amount noted is.15 oz (4.25 grams) per scale foot. I.E. not very precise at all, and well within the capability of a kitchen scale of modest precision and cost.
"need" is not relevant to model building.
Correct. But despite that and all of your handwaving, anyone weighing to an accuracy of more than.1 gram (.003 oz) or so is out at the end of the bell curve.
I note in passing that you don't appear to have actually done most of the things you talk about, or at least haven't done them recently enough that.1 gram resolution scales weren't incredibly expensive and unusual.
The problem isn't visibility, the problem is carrying an antenna of sufficient sensitivity and angular precision.
But the thing you really need to know to navigate a spacecraft isn't position - it's velocity, as you're position is changing every second. While you can determine velocity from a series of positions, any errors in position will propagate into an error in velocity.
Keep in mind that the Navy has decades of experience in designing and operating complex machinery that must be ready to operate on a moments notice on a ship moving in a seaway... Consider that even SpaceX requires a few days to get one of their modestly complex rockets ready and launched - while the Navy can ripple off 24 missiles in less than half an hour from the order to fire to the last missile away... The first generation certainly won't be that fast, but the times will improve with each subsequent generation. Or consider the complexity of a carriers power plant, with two reactors, four turbines, gearboxes, and shafts (and all of the latter must be maintained in rigid alignment) and miles of water, pneumatic, and hydraulic piping. The Navy has the experience and the chops.
The big advantage of a laser over a chain gun is that a laser doesn't have to be reloaded and the ship doesn't have to carry explosive ammunition.
While I'm not familiar with the details of laser technology, I am with military and missile technology. (10 years in the Navy as a ballistic missile fire control operator, 30+ studying military and weapons technology.)
If the attacking boat has a corner cube reflector there is a good chance of blinding people on the defending ship. Since the system needs to be ready for use without warning, the crew would need to always wear laser goggles.
Assuming the corner cube reflector is a front surface mirror, and has no dirt or dust or scratches or flaws - yes. Otherwise, the mirror is going to get smoked. Equally, it takes about thirty seconds or less for the crew to get under cover or to at least look away... so, no need for the crew to ever wear laser goggles except for the handful that must look in the direction of the target. (And you can cut the time down even further if you just want them to look away.)
You can protect a missile with an ablative shield - the sort used for re-entry vehicles. This doesn't need to be high tech - wood works surprisingly well (used by the Chinese for spacecraft years ago).
Put an ablative shield around the missile - and you've taken a good chunk out of it's range and payload as the shield now occupies weight and volume formerly dedicated to those things. That, or you've increased the impact on the launching platform as the missile is now larger and heavier. (As well as somewhat more expensive.) Keep in mind the wooden heatshields used by the Chinese were impregnated with (modestly high tech) epoxy, they weren't bare wood as the char has almost no strength.
The is also the question of whether a complex device like an FEL can be kept always ready to fire within a second. The light is much faster, but its not clear that when you include the time to ready and aim the weapon that the time to hit the target is faster than for a high speed gun.
No need for a second, ten to fifteen will do. (And I'll note that the claim that it needs to be a second is yours, not TFA's or the Navy's.)
(tl;dr version: Once again, the world doesn't work like most Slashdotters think it does, and Slashdotters haven't thought of something that actual knowledgeable people missed.)
But that here is a practical use of that engine that works better then anything else we are currently using.
Sure, it "works better" in that it uses less fuel... but it doesn't "work better: in the sense that it now takes weeks to transport a millionth of the mass that more conventional methods can.
As I've said before, capabilities matter. A motor scooter that can't top 35mph gets much higher fuel mileage than a semi... but only a fool would confuse the two.
I'm actually surprised nobody has taken this "showroom" concept to the OBVIOUS next level:
I'm not. Anyone with any actual business knowledge can see that given a) the high cost of commercial real estate, and b) the extraordinarily low income to be gleaned from essentially being an Amazon affiliate, this is a sure-fire route to bankruptcy.
How horrible that they now have to come up with their own ideas rather than outright copy what is someone else's. The horror!
This.
Plus I've never understood the self-entitlement mentality that believes that authors, producers, and other stakeholders/owners are obligated to either a) keep feeding the voracious maw that is fandom, or b) give up their legal rights so that fandom can feed itself. Not to mention that if CBS itself was to release a series based in the now forty plus year old setting and characters - those same fans would be up in arms about them being "derivative" and just "making the same old crap" rather than coming up with something new.
Why is this news? Someone wants to directly copy material from a large corporation's profitable franchise, and the franchise says no. I think a big "Duh?" is in order.
Because this is Slashdot - where perfectly ordinary and understandable occurrences are [faux] news because it draws eyeballs (ad revenue), and provides the daily Two Minutes Hate.
When I was in the Navy, back in the 1980's, that was already old news and a popular way for Filipino's to gain US citizenship. I think the program goes back at least as far as WWII.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet, despite your bleating, houses in the US survive hurricanes, and blizzards, and earthquakes. So, either you're talking out of your nether regions, or you don't know what you're talking about. (Same thing really.)
The Super Hornet can only refuel other aircraft when it's carrying the centerline buddy store - and no, they can't dump fuel via that route. (The valve at the end of the drogue is operated by the probe of the receiving aircraft. It cannot be operated remotely.)
That's fine for the software... what about the hardware? Do we have actuators (hydraulic, pneumatic, whatever) that are good enough? And most important, do we have a power supply that's good enough?
How do I know that? By having a basic understanding of the physics and chemistry and how much energy it takes to heat something to nearly 2k degrees and maintain it there while constantly pumping cool materials in and removing heat via the output products.
This isn't some magical process or out at the edge of understanding concept - it's very basic chemistry and engineering. You may be clueless about basic chemistry and engineering, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are.
And you accuse me of pulling numbers out of my ass when they've just released it, while you're insisting that it *can* be scaled down based on the same press release? Don't get on me for thinking things through from basic principles while you're making shit up based on absolutely nothing at all. Grow the fuck up and get over yourself.
It's not just a materials handling issue - it's an energy and economic issue as well. Does this generator produce enough hydrogen to convert to electricity to power the processes above while still producing enough excess hydrogen for automobile fuel at an economical price? (I.E. the hydrogen sold as fuel must pay the whole cost of the process.)
If not, then it's neither green nor self sustaining.
For an average size house, you're talking a reaction chamber the size of the end of your thumb - and taking months to fill your car's tank.
Some things just don't scale down well.
That has to be some of the most tortured logic I've ever seen - why don't you try proving black is white next? Or squaring the circle.
And what, exactly, is wrong with that? (Aside from no longer being a source of nerd porn.)
Yes.
Translation: I not only don't have an argument, my mind is already made up and I'm not interested in hearing anything that fails to meet my preconceived notions.
You must be new here. This is Slashdot, where rampant paranoia is the order of the day and extreme edge cases as treated as if they were hourly occurrences.
Oh, and tinfoil manufacturers monitor this site daily to predict future demand.
And, we get out of high school and grow and learn the world really isn't as simple as we learned in school.
You have a car than can fly - but it's not real because it doesn't match *fiction*? The scary part is that think you actually believe this.
*yawn*. The standard anti-goverment rant. How droll. And boring.
[[citation needed]]
The "standard mass", as quoted by the NMRA, is expressed in fractions of an ounce - the smallest amount noted is .15 oz (4.25 grams) per scale foot. I.E. not very precise at all, and well within the capability of a kitchen scale of modest precision and cost.
Correct. But despite that and all of your handwaving, anyone weighing to an accuracy of more than .1 gram (.003 oz) or so is out at the end of the bell curve.
.1 gram resolution scales weren't incredibly expensive and unusual.
I note in passing that you don't appear to have actually done most of the things you talk about, or at least haven't done them recently enough that
No, there's no reason to assume it will remain consistent.
The problem isn't visibility, the problem is carrying an antenna of sufficient sensitivity and angular precision.
But the thing you really need to know to navigate a spacecraft isn't position - it's velocity, as you're position is changing every second. While you can determine velocity from a series of positions, any errors in position will propagate into an error in velocity.
Keep in mind that the Navy has decades of experience in designing and operating complex machinery that must be ready to operate on a moments notice on a ship moving in a seaway... Consider that even SpaceX requires a few days to get one of their modestly complex rockets ready and launched - while the Navy can ripple off 24 missiles in less than half an hour from the order to fire to the last missile away... The first generation certainly won't be that fast, but the times will improve with each subsequent generation. Or consider the complexity of a carriers power plant, with two reactors, four turbines, gearboxes, and shafts (and all of the latter must be maintained in rigid alignment) and miles of water, pneumatic, and hydraulic piping. The Navy has the experience and the chops.
The big advantage of a laser over a chain gun is that a laser doesn't have to be reloaded and the ship doesn't have to carry explosive ammunition.
While I'm not familiar with the details of laser technology, I am with military and missile technology. (10 years in the Navy as a ballistic missile fire control operator, 30+ studying military and weapons technology.)
Assuming the corner cube reflector is a front surface mirror, and has no dirt or dust or scratches or flaws - yes. Otherwise, the mirror is going to get smoked. Equally, it takes about thirty seconds or less for the crew to get under cover or to at least look away... so, no need for the crew to ever wear laser goggles except for the handful that must look in the direction of the target. (And you can cut the time down even further if you just want them to look away.)
Put an ablative shield around the missile - and you've taken a good chunk out of it's range and payload as the shield now occupies weight and volume formerly dedicated to those things. That, or you've increased the impact on the launching platform as the missile is now larger and heavier. (As well as somewhat more expensive.) Keep in mind the wooden heatshields used by the Chinese were impregnated with (modestly high tech) epoxy, they weren't bare wood as the char has almost no strength.
No need for a second, ten to fifteen will do. (And I'll note that the claim that it needs to be a second is yours, not TFA's or the Navy's.)
(tl;dr version: Once again, the world doesn't work like most Slashdotters think it does, and Slashdotters haven't thought of something that actual knowledgeable people missed.)
Sure, it "works better" in that it uses less fuel... but it doesn't "work better: in the sense that it now takes weeks to transport a millionth of the mass that more conventional methods can.
As I've said before, capabilities matter. A motor scooter that can't top 35mph gets much higher fuel mileage than a semi... but only a fool would confuse the two.
I'm not. Anyone with any actual business knowledge can see that given a) the high cost of commercial real estate, and b) the extraordinarily low income to be gleaned from essentially being an Amazon affiliate, this is a sure-fire route to bankruptcy.
This.
Plus I've never understood the self-entitlement mentality that believes that authors, producers, and other stakeholders/owners are obligated to either a) keep feeding the voracious maw that is fandom, or b) give up their legal rights so that fandom can feed itself. Not to mention that if CBS itself was to release a series based in the now forty plus year old setting and characters - those same fans would be up in arms about them being "derivative" and just "making the same old crap" rather than coming up with something new.
Because this is Slashdot - where perfectly ordinary and understandable occurrences are [faux] news because it draws eyeballs (ad revenue), and provides the daily Two Minutes Hate.
When I was in the Navy, back in the 1980's, that was already old news and a popular way for Filipino's to gain US citizenship. I think the program goes back at least as far as WWII.
If you mean religious right, then say religious right. And what, in your vast ignorance, makes you think I'm not American?