I always wanted to get or write a nuclear war game. I don't mean something like Missile Command. I mean a strategy game. Start the game at the beginning of the nuclear arms race, with the player being the leader of one of the nations (like in Civ). He would get to make decisions about how much money to spend on weapons, training, R&D, espionage, civil defense, missile defense, etc. He could make decisions about things like signing treaties, research priorities, picking targeting strategies, picking civil defense strategies, swapping or giving away tech, etc. He could change readiness states, evacuate cities, order recon flights, attempt espionage or sabotage, launch attacks (of course), etc. Along the way different problems would arise depending on how wisely the player spent his money and the "world situation." A player who didn't invest much in training and who didn't develop good weapon control procedures would have a higher chance that one of his units would unexpectedly "release" their weapons during high states of alert. Too strict of weapons control would slow down response time and might encourage The Enemy to think they could succeed in a decapitating first strike. A war might stay "cold" for decades, and then suddenly heat up when one side gets enough strategic advantage that they think they can win a nuclear exchange. A well played game might never go "hot."
'Things are going well and tensions are declining, and all of a sudden the game drops into "real time mode" the alarms go off. The Enemy calls up on the hotline (you did develop and implement The Hotline didn't you?) and says that one of their units has gone rogue (maybe you should have given or leaked Advanced Weapons Control Methods to them) and launched a nuclear tipped ICBM at one of your cities, "It isn't a deliberate attack, please, PLEASE, don't retaliate against our innocent civilians for the crimes of one madman." What do you do? Or everything looks fine, tensions are low, although sunspot activity is running high. Then your Air Defense Command reports a sudden first strike. Only some of the sensors are giving confusing or conflicting data. It could be a computer or sensor glitch; The Enemy has no reason to launch now. If you don't launch before the RVs hit (perhaps you should have invested in Mobile Launchers) then most of your ICBMs will be wiped out in their silos. What do you do?'
To get a really good sim of nuclear brinksmanship you'd need to have other countries that could have alliances, critical resources, their own nukes (of course), etc. 'Tensions are running high between you and Nuclear Power A, when all of a sudden atomic explosions start lighting up your cities (Suitcase Nukes? Stealth?) and sabotage takes out several of your units. Nuclear Power A is the obvious culprit... except that it could also be Nuclear Power B that is trying to use current tensions to get you and A to wipe ea. other out. Do you launch against A, against B, against everybody*?'
You'd also want to simulate some basic level of internal economics and politics so that nations could change attitude and power, The Senate could overrule your decisions if your position wasn't "secure" enough, or leaders could get deposed without a shot being fired (the ultimate victory... or loss). That would mean adding non-state actors (like terrorists, revolutionaries, legitimate and "faked" protest groups) and some level of psychological warfare. "Are you sure you want to order all the major cities evacuated, Mr. President? That could hurt your approval rating and our economy considerably. If you are wrong..."
Oh, and to make the most of it you'd want to add non-nuclear weapons, so you could have Chemical, Biological, and Conventional, arms races and wars along with Nuclear. Although non-nuclear "hot" wars would need great simplification in order to keep the interface manageable. 'You are losing a very important conventional war involving several major allies with critical resources and bases. Releasing the use of tactical nuclear weapons would turn the tide. Doing so could also escalate to a strategic nuclear exchange. Without your allies resources you will not be able to maintain your current weapon parity with The Enemy. What do you do?'
If done properly and OBJECTIVELY then it could also be a useful teaching tool on Grand Strategy, Games Theory, and The Cold War. Maybe you could even have it so you could alter physics or human nature or add "exotic" weapons to the game to experiment with hypothetical scenarios. A player could try to emulate Stalin or Kennedy, they could try arms reduction talks (trust but verify) with peaceful co-existence or sneak attacks, they could wage "limited" wars or test out that Nuclear Winter theory (something else that might could be customized). Of course, you'd want a multiplayer version. You can see why I have never even bothered to write it... it is a HUGE project. Quite beyond my abilities and free time.
But, perhaps The Bazaar could do it. I have put the idea in the public domain, is anyone willing and capable of pursuing it?
"Besides, it's pretty obvious that World War III has started when NORAD picks up 500+ separate launches in the space of a few minutes."
Except when it is a training tape put in the computer accidentally. This is something that supposedly has happened in both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Notice that civilization still exists, which suggests that both countries were not so "hair trigger" that they can't deal with such glitches. From what I hear, though, the Ruskies came close. (Geekoid, I don't suppose you have any info and can discuss our "close call"?)
That is why you don't necessarily want to "launch on warning". That is why the Ruskies would target our missile silos even when they KNOW that we could empty them by the time their missiles impact... it doesn't necessarily mean that we would do so. Launch on warning is more accident prone than "launch on verification." Twenty to Thirty minutes still isn't a long time to decide whether to destroy civilization or not when there are unknowns that have to be tracked down (like in the aforementioned "training accident" problem). You can't call back those ICBMs if you find out that the launch was a mistake a few seconds after they leave the silos. In theory the first strike attacker could hope that the defending nation would mistakenly conclude the attack wasn't real, or would at least not be sure enough that it was real that they would be willing to authorize ending society as we know it. The fact that we did not accidentally incinerate ourselves during the Cold War suggests that we were not on such a "hair trigger" and that this first strike theory did have a chance of working. Fortunately the Soviets never felt it had a good enough chance to pull it off and they were willing to collapse as a society before they were willing to "roll the dice and take their chances."* But then again, we did have a triad of deterence instead of one system.
Targeting "empty silos" also forces the attacked nation to "use them or lose them" in the first strike. RVs in the first strike have a better chance of fratriciding ea. other due to all the nukes going off in a short period of time. Such ICBMs also will not be available (because they were either launched or destroyed) for "cleaning up" targets that might have been missed in the 1st strike and needed to be attacked again, forcing the use of less survivable or less accurate delivery systems like bombers or boomers.
Yeah, they targeted our silos. Yeah, we could have emptied them before their RVs hit. Yeah, they presumably knew that. It was still a descent targeting strategy anyway. What scares me is the recent revelations that they also planned to finish off our population centers with smallpox laden RVs as well. You should never underestimate those Commies.
* Which means that the rest of us owe Geekoid and the other people who were at SAC a word of thanks that we arrived at the 21st century neither dead or Red (unless you live in Cuba or the PRC... sorry guys, we'll free you when we can). Thanks.
That's ok. Odds are it is not amphible asbestos, the only type known to be hazardous. Unfortunately in the rush to ban asbestos, non one bothered to try and differentiate between the different types, and chrysotile (a.k.a. soft white) asbestos which was used for over 95% of asbestos applications was banned along with the more hazardous amphible types. For those of you in San Fransisco, there are supposedly extensive outcroppings of chrysotile around the Bay area; so if you live in SF, you're probably already exposed.
PCBs and dioxin aren't as safe, but neither is it as bad as most people think. In 1976 an explosion scattered huge amounts of PCBs over Seveso, Italy. No fatalities or cancer cases are known to have come from this incident. A NIOSH study of U.S. workers exposed to high (a couple of orders of magnitude higher than the U.S. exposure maximum exposure) quantities of dioxin showed no increase in cancer or other fatal conditions. Unfortunately it is not harmless. In high quantities it does cause a severe skin rash called chloracne. If you value your complextion you will want to avoid large amouonts of PCBs and dioxin.
On the other hand, if you are a techie from San Fransisco with acne, then you probably don't have much to lose... Just kidding. Even if you don't get killed by the contamination you may still be responsible for its clean up costs. Congratulations, you just bought a Superfund site.
I hate to break this to the programming community, but you did not invent the philosophy of "open source" or the "bazaar vs. the cathedral."
Science has had an "open source" component for pretty much as long as there has been modern science. Everybody works on some little bit of the problem (figuring out how the universe works), and when they have something they think is reasonable they publish it for everyone else to critique. Such publications may not technically be free, because you have to subscribe to the journals, but in reality if you go to any science library you can get free access to them. Really, the philosophy of finding mistakes by releasing code as "open source" so that a lot of other people can look at it and tinker with it is the same old philosophy behind peer-review and publication of scientific papers. The "open source aircraft design movement" exists; it is called "Journal of Aircraft" and is delivered to my home every couple of months.
This may get me modded down, but I think that "open source" is just Computer Scientists figuring out something that the other branches of science have already known for a very long time. Getting new developments into the public domain and letting other researchers bang around on them will yield even newer and better developments. One team of people locked away in isolation is not nearly as likely to develop a workable product (which for science would pretty much be a model of everything in the universe.)
That said, I don't think the idea of developing aircraft the same way that you develop programs is a good idea, because they are NOT the same sort of things. I'm sure you all know the joke about if Airplane development went like Computer development then we'd already have hypersonic transport aircraft with world spanning range that the average person could afford to own and operate... and they would explode once every week or two killing everyone on board. Aircraft Theory and Aircraft Conceptual Design and Aerodynamic Behavior and other such things are generally done as public science and/or published in journals and presented at conferences (i.e. "open source"). When it gets time to actually design the aircraft, this is done with a relatively small, closed team of people. There is a good reason for this. Airplane and rocket crashes kill people. Pick up a copy of The Right Stuff and read the first chapter. Such things ARE tested regularly. They are tested methodically and often. In wind tunnels and CFD code and on the ground and finally in the air. They are tested with methods and in progressions that were proven to work with VERY costly (in dollars and lives) prior experience. You could call it "extreme programming" for aircraft. Aircraft design is also complex. Simply moving the battery from the front to the back of a plane this size can invalidate all previous flight test data, so it is with good reason that the development is done by people who know the whole picture intimately (a difficult thing for a hobbyist to do). And, many aircraft design groups don't want their detail designs and their "tricks of the trade" to be open source because they are proprietary or classified. Yes, other sciences have "Closed Source" projects, too; but unlike in computer science, they tend to usually be offshoots and niche developments with the bulk of science being "open source" (to use CS lingo). Even big, private company laboratories in other scientific fields publish a lot of "open source" scientific material. Not only do they realize the value of having it reviewed and verified by other scientists "for free," but they also understand the importance of such publication in maintaining their organization's prestige in their industry and in recruiting the best new talent.
Aerospace has had "open source" for almost 100 years now. Physics has had it since the days of Newton and Galileo. Computer scientists, welcome to the club. Just don't think the rest of us haven't known about this for a long time... and stop tacking the phrase "open source" on everything. Try terms like "peer review" and "in the public domain" on for size; maybe you'll sound less socialist and the public will take it more seriously.
http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/lvs/rockoo n. htm
They were invented by Dr. Van Allen and some of his associates. They were only for sounding rockets, which explore the upper atmosphere but don't go into orbit. If you want to go into orbit, you still need a lot of horizontal velocity so the rockoon is not as handy for that.
I suggest that instead of replacing jet fuel with hydrogen to make airplane crashes safer, we concentrate on doing away with the fuel altogether. The aircraft could be made to fly using only the atmosphere it travels in as the fuel source. Of course, this would be a monumental technical challenge. In order to reduce its diffuclty to a manageble level, our initial airliner design could focus on just eliminating the fuel used during cruise, and could still carry a small amount of fuel for climb-to-altitude and descent-to-landing. This will mean that there is still a slight fuel danger on the aircraft, but it would be much reduced over current designs.
With the problem reduced to merely eliminating the fuel used during cruise, the problem becomes easier. The proposed airliner could be designed to cruise in the Ozone Layer. Once in the Ozone Layer, the use of conventional engines could be stopped and the aircraft could cruise on engines powered by the catalyitic decay of ozone. Ozone is only a meta-stable arrangement, and its decay into normal oxygen releases energy. The proposed airliner's engines could contain a catalytic bed that would greatly accellerate the decomposition of ozone. The heat released in this process could be used to replace the heat normally gained by burning fuel. An added benifit of such an ozone burning airliner would be that it could have effectively unlimited range, as long is it remained in the Ozone Layer.
"Of course there are better methods (eg putting in water supply) but just a thought."
Due to a combination of dilution and the effect of clorine, attempting biowarfare attacks against a water supply is not very effective.
But you are right, there are better methods. They tend to involve generating aeresols, usually with a moving or area source. That is the reason for the worry over cropdusters.
There are a lot of people on Slashdot that know a little bit about the science and technology outside their area of expertise.
What amazes me is the belief by so many people that the experts and specialists who work in these fields must be idiots who cannot see the obvious solutions that seem to occur to the "brilliant" outsiders that reside here at Slashdot.
A little hint people. If it is a completely obvious solution, then at least one of the "experts" has probably also thought of and analyzed it. If a completely obvious solution has not been implimented then it is probably because there is some subtle problem with it that is beyond your ability to forsee.
If you really wanted an airplane that did not have any explosive or flammable fuel on board, there are two options.
One, of course, is physical energy instead of chemical energy. I am, of course, refering to a big rubber band. I had a small model airplane that worked on the same principle when I was young. Of course this is not practical, since range would be incredibly short.
The second solution would be to use nuclear energy. A small atomic pile could provide power for the engines. A heat exchanger could take heat from the reactor and input it into the engine in place of the normal fuel combustor. Considerable research was done on this concept during the 1950s and 1960s and the theory is sound. I am sure that some people are going to immediately complain that this design replaces the danger of fire with the danger of a release of radioactive material in the event of a crash. I am happy to report that as part of the Nuclear Aircraft research previously mentioned a reactor design was developed that could survive a high-speed, worst-case-scenario crash without releasing any radioactivity. The technology was demonstrated by slamming a prototype into a hardened concrete target at the aircraft's top speed. Given the current advances in materials and nuclear technology since the Nuclear Aircraft program, surely even greater safety could be achieved with present designs.
I do not expect either of these solutions to be implimented, but then I don't expect to see Hydrogen airliners either (or at least until oil gets a LOT more expensive).
Hydrazine is used in the manuvering thrusters on the Space Shuttle. Hydrazine is a monopropellant and would not require an oxidizer.
The Space Shuttle Main Engines do use, as you put it, "pure liquid Hydrogen" and that is the fuel in the External Tank (along with liquid oxygen as an oxidizer).
"Well, this was discussed as well on the NPR show. The cost of refitting is a few hundred thousand dollars per plane... in other words, peanuts compared to the cost of the plane in the first place, and a small added cost over the lifetime of the airframe if the cost could be stretched out. One of the reasons it would be relatively inexpensive is that you take the entire plane apart every few months for inspections anyway, and things like fuel tanks get replaced every few years during overhauls. Or so they said. "
I don't suppose they mentioned that if an existing aircraft was retrofitted for hydrogen that it would require placing some of the cryogenic hydrogen in the fuselage. This would cut down on the number of seats the in the plane and increase the danger in the event of an accident (currently fuel is only stored in the wings). Also, since current aircraft are not optimized for hydrogen, the most of the benifits hydrogen gives would NOT be realized, which means the planes would not be cheaper to operate and might be more expensive. Certainly they would be more expensive per seat mile once about 60 ft. of the seats are ripped out to add more fuel tankage.
"but there are already widespread distribution mechanisms for refrigerated, compressed gasses; that is, this is a well understood, solved problem, not a show stopper."
Just because the technology exists doesn't mean that it won't be very expensive to junk current fuel transport and refueling equipment and replace it with the already developed (but NOT already manufuctured) cryogenic equipment. Also, there isn't enough current hydrgoen fuel production in the world to accomodate this switch. That means constructing a lot of new fuel production facilities (H2 production cannot be done in present refineries). All that won't be cheap.
"This isn't basic scientific research stuff, it is well understood, applied engineering research at this point."
No it isn't. It is conceptual studies. The drawing of the Hydrogen L-1011 cargo liner on the Pheonix Program's website is from an old Lockheed study done in the 1970s. It is all theory. It is good theory, but it still needs to be tested. The guys from Lockheed thought that the best way to do that would be to do a pilot program with some modified P-3s. The added loiter time they thought they could get out of the P-3 would help offset the program costs. That would give real world data to support or disprove the conceptual studies. But the program was never done. The 1st step will have to be some form of all up testing on large H2 aircraft. After that, then we can have "well understood" designs. Not to say the current ideas are bad. They just wouldn't be optimized, and they might overlook minor problems that would be uncovered in a testing program.
Sure, I like the dream of a H2 economy as much as the next engineer. But we can't sweep the huge capital costs associated with the change under the rug. Plus the fact that current fuel technology is well understood and is very mature. A hydrogen fuel economy still has a lot of unknowns and would require larger factors of safety during the early stages of the switch. And, of course, refitting existing engines and vehicles for hydrogen will result in reduced efficiency because they are not optimized for that fuel. All this means more cost. And lets not forget that money is merely a symbol for resources. So until current fuel costs skyrocket or something requires us to junk all our current infrastructure and vehicles, then switching to a hydrogen economy (even partially) will consume more resources than it will free up.
There safety of hydrogen as a fuel source depends on how it is stored in the aircraft.
One method of storing this is just to store it as a compressed gas. This is not a very efficient way to store it, and it will have considerable negative impact on the range and or cargo capacity of the aircraft. In other words, air travel would get a lot more expensive and more rare. Not likely to happen. This method would also be dangerous because a rupture of a compressed hydrogen storage tank would release a lot of energy just from the bursting of the pressurized tank. The hydrogen would then be mixed with the surrounding air in a potentially VERY explosive combination, much like an FAE bomb. It is unlikely that a large portion of the hydrogen cloud would have the right fuel/air mixture to explode, but even a small percentage would be a big explosion. In an open area a large portion of the hydrogen might escape without burning, but in an enclosed area like the WTC, a large portion of it would probably still have burned. No benefit to using this method, and a lot of negatives.
The Hydrogen could be stored in a metal hydride. Basically the hydrogen is "soaked up" into metal like water soaking up into a sponge. Amazingly you can get quite high hydrogen storage densities with this method, even higher than storing it as a compressed gas. It will be much less of a fire hazard than conventional jet fuel. The hydrogen will not come out of the metal-hydride "sponge" all at once; so even if there is a fire it will be a small but long fire instead of a big, quick one. This method will be even safer because of the fact that the planes will never leave the ground. Metal-hydride may give good storage densities for automobiles, but the fuel tanks would be way too heavy to use on an aircraft.
The third method is cryogenic storage, as either liquid or slush hydrogen. This method gets the best storage densities as hydrogen storage goes; but it is still a lot less dense than normal jet fuel. That means you still need much bigger fuel tanks to get the same range. This might not be more expensive (and might even be cheaper) because of possible engine improvements. But you have the problem of handling a cryogenic fuel, which adds to costs (and the possibility of a ground crew injury). Then you have the problem of where to put the fuel. There isn't enough room in the wings to put all the fuel there, like is done with normal jet fuel. One possibility is to put it in the fuselage, but that is VERY dangerous because you now have the double threat in a crash of killing the passengers with cryogenic hydrogen before they have a chance to be killed in the resulting fire. Putting the extra tanks out on the wings makes sense from a structures point of view because you have shorter load paths, and would get the cryogenic fuel somewhat further away from the passengers; but it still would not eliminate the fuel as a risk. Yes a puddle of liquid hydrogen WILL burn. As the liquid boils it mixes with the air, creating a flammable mixture. As the mixture over the puddle burns the heat increases the rate of boiling of the puddle. This is actually not too different from what happens when a puddle of non-cryogenic fuel burns. Will it be less of a fire hazard? Maybe. A hydrogen fire will not emit as much thermal radiation, which seems safer; but for the same reason it is invisible and therefore harder to fight (a problem that might be solved with trace impurities). In an open area a hydrogen fire will dissipate more quickly and cover less area, but that doesn't apply to the WTC case because it wasn't in an open area and hydrogen might have actually been worse because of the possibility of explosion instead of just fire. I also wonder what that high a volume of cryogenic hydrogen would have done to the steel structure upon impact; the huge temperature swings from ambient temperature to cryogenic to a hydrogen flame might have caused the collapse to happen sooner. In a normal crash that happens in an open area hydrogen is theoretically safer, but modern jet fuel is not as explosive as most people believe, thanks to evolutionary refinements in its composition and I have not seen any full up aircraft tests (such as have been performed with modern jet fuel) that assesses the added hazard of storing large volumes of cryogenic fuel in a passenger aircraft.
On the plus side, hydrogen powered aircraft could have smaller (possibly cheaper and more quiet) engines. They would not pollute as much (though they still generate NOx). Despite the extra tankage, the aircraft might even be lighter and cheaper. It is possible, therefore, that a fleet of hydrogen-powered airliners might be cheaper to buy and operate than a fleet of normal ones. Or at least it would be if you didn't have to factor in the capital cost of rebuilding the entire fuel production, fuel transport, and refueling infrastructure. But of course you do. If something (a huge terrorist campaign or a sudden shortage of oil) were to wipe out our current fuel infrastructure and we had to rebuild it from scratch, then we might want to look at hydrogen again. Until then it will take a revolution in fuel storage density, hydrogen production and transport technology, or some new super hydrogen-only super engine to justify junking a fuel infrastructure we have already paid for.
This is not a new idea. Hydrogen has been considered as an alternate fuel in airliners since at least the 1970s. There are good reasons why it has not been adopted.
Bottom line, for now liquid or slush hydrogen is the only practical storage method for large aircraft. Even then, the storage densities of Hydrogen suck. Fire hazards are safer, but it almost certainly would not have prevented the WTC collapse (it might even have hastened it). The added hazards of cryogenic fuel (especially if stored in the fuselage) may more than make up for the reduced fire hazard. Like so many other technologies, it offers the tantalizing potential for reduced costs; if only we didn't have an already-paid-for infrastructure that supports the current technology of choice... but we do. If you are building a scramjet then it is probably worth the effort to put up with the extra tankage and the cryogenics and the custom fuel infrastructure. If you are building a passenger jet, then you are just asking for more cost with only incremental benefits that have yet to be demonstrated in full up testing. If the gov't wants to help this along, they could have an X-plane program to demonstrate full up development of a hydrogen cargo plane or bomber (the engineering would be similar enough to a civilian airliner for lessons to carry over), then slam one of the planes into the ground in a simulated crash when the program is over to get data on the actual safety of large hydrogen powered aircraft. Until then, the technology will (rightly) lie dormant until something makes it more economically attractive (i.e. a more efficient use of resources).
"And I can show you a bunch of people who work harder than 99% of America, and are STILL barely getting by, barely able to feed and clothe their kids.
"
Ok, I'm not part of this argument, but I'll bite anyway. Give specifics, not just vague "possible situations." I'll even let you get away with "harder than 90% of America", since 99% is very hard work indeed.
I am very interested because I have managed people at the low end of the social ladder occasionally. The people that the temp agency would scrape together and send to us to do basic manual labor. Most of them won't pay attention to training and look for every excuse to goof off. Most of them. But a small percentage don't: they listen to training, they aren't afraid of hard work, some will try to figure out better or easier ways to do the work. I don't know how this small percentage wound up on the bottom of the labor pool, but I can promise you that at my plant they didn't stay there very long. It is too rare to find someone who is really willing to put in hard work to just waste them away in a low value job. Did they suddenly become rich? No, of course not... but they are allowed to climb to the next ladder of the labor pool, and if they can handle the more complex or difficult work, then they go even higher. It is always nice when such people are also good learners, but even "simpletons" who you know will carry at task through to completion without goofing off as soon as a supervisor isn't looking got snatched up into full time work and a higher pay grade so that they wouldn't be lost.
I think it is possible that a thinking person who will work hard could find himself or herself on the bottom of the economic ladder. I don't believe that they would stay there very long. Even someone who is a slow learner, but is honest and willing to work "harder than 99% of Americans" can find plenty of places that will be happy to employ them and, while they might never get rich, could rise out of poverty.
Of course, as long as we keep defining poverty as a percentage of the average income, then we will always have it.
I admit that you could possibly prove me wrong with the phrase "barely able to feed and clothe their kids" because if someone really tried, they could have A LOT of kids. Is that what you mean, that you know someone with like twenty-four kids below age 18?
Or is it your definition of "barely able to feed and clothe." I have known some spoiled brats that would consider not having the latest $150+ Nike shoes "barely clothed" even though I played just fine with pair of Chuck Taylor All Stars. Perhaps there might be someone who is a workaholic who is so additcted to the consumer and name-brand culture that they don't budget properly for the essentials. I mean, we don't all have to be Amish, but we don't have to turn brand loyalty into a religion either.
So give us the specifics. You can use fake names to protect the subjects if you like, but use real people... if you really know them. Are these people just a victim of a very temporary setback? Are they baby factories? Do they lack budgeting skills? If it is just "the man" keeping them down, then I suggest that you give them the phone number of a good temp agency that supplies industrial labor pools; if they really work that hard, then it shouldn't take them long to find an employer that sees their value and brings them on full time.
"Open on my desk is a copy of "Project Sherwood - The U.S. Program in Controlled Fusion", published in 1958 - I believe as a part of a huge nuclear energy conference "
That is great! lol.
Where can I get a copy of that, DTIC doesn't seem to have it. Is it classified?
Hot fusion occurs when you get the fusing atoms (usually an isotope of Hydrogen) to be very energetic and they slam into each other with enough energy overcome the electrostatic repulsion between their nuclei and fuse together. Since "very energetic" also translates into "very hot" this is called Hot Fusion. Hot on the order of 100,000,000 degrees Kelvin. Since Hot Fusion is the standard method of fusion research this is usually just shortened to Fusion.
Cold fusion is an attempt to coax atomic nuclei together at much lower energy states. "Much lower energy states" translates in English to "lower temperatures." Lower temperatures on the order of 300 degrees Kelvin. Hence the name "Cold Fusion." Respectable researchers tend to try to coax these nuclei into fusing at lower temperatures by doing things like replacing the electrons in the atom with muons to alter the atom's properties and allow it to overcome the nuclei's electrostatic repulsion easier. These sort of researchers don't get a lot of press. Another group of cold fusion researchers tries to accomplish the same thing by failing to stir the water in their calorimeters, then claiming the "anomalous heat gain" as fusion. They then get a lot of press and write scathing papers about how much cooler chemists are than physicists. This latter bunch doesn't get the press they used to and now seems to spend their time writing in obscure "alternative" periodicals and complaining about "the establishment."
We could have a fusion power plant operating within a year or two if it were really important. We have had the technology to do so for DECADES. You think I'm kidding?
Here is how it is done. You need two deep wells and a geothermal style power plant. And it all needs to be in someone else's back yard. You lower a handy Hydrogen Bomb (which is fusion powered) into one of the wells and detonate it. The heat from the H-Bomb's fusion reaction turns groundwater around the well into steam, which is turned into power by your nearby geothermal-style power plant. For continous power production, you need at least two wells so that while one is being prepared for a detonation, you can get power from the other one.
Everything is proven technology. We have H-bombs. We have even detonated them underground, so we know how do do that. We also have working geothermal power plants. So what is the hold up? Well, first you have the whole problem of just whose back yard do you put this monster in. Then you have the problem of commercially available H-bombs for "power plant fuel" would make a horrible nuclear proliferation problem. And, of course, the energy industry does everything by cost and since no one has ever done one of these power plants and it contains a LOT of costs that could potentially get very large... no body wants to try it. I can't say I blame them. But it is technically possible. We could have a fusion power plant in the immediate future. But it wouldn't be a fusion power plant anyone would actually want to have.
I've heard that "fusion is ten years away" myth for as long as I can remember. It is right up there with "flat screen TVs" and "the Space Station" for being the most often cited "we almost have it figured out" technology.
Wait a minute...
We finally did get the flat screen TVs and the Space Station. Maybe it is the year 2001 after all. Maybe they will be right about fusion too. On the other hand, I don't have my flying car yet...
I had a very interesting history professor back in college*. She taught History of Science, yet she had no idea how a scientist thought. She was a perfect example of an "artsie craftsie" and was also clearly a closet socialist. Still, she was well-spoken and fun to talk to. She also seemed to like me (as a student), I guess because I actually wanted to learn the material and not just make a good grade.
I ran into this professor several years later and she asked how my engineering career was going. I explained that I had started doing environmental and energy engineering (probably the opposite of what she thought) and was now doing manufacturing engineering. "You can do that?" she asked, "you can just switch engineering fields... but weren't you a Mechanical Engineer in college." I explained that an engineering degree was NOT about learning how every different type of device works, like a humongous "car repair" degree or something. There are just way too many devices and things in the world to know how they all work, and an engineer needs to be able to imagine completely new ones. Instead, they teach you how the laws of the universe work, how to approach problems, how to do research, how to think about things and how to model them in your head or with mathematics so that whatever problem I was given I would be able to solve it. "An engineering degree is not so much about skills," I said, "It is about meta-skills... and that means that I can switch to ANY field I want, engineering or otherwise, as long as I have the time to do the background research on it." She looked at me with a stunned expression and said, "Oh MY GOD**, that is the justification for having a liberal arts degree!!! And those bastards over in the engineering school have figured out how to do it?"
I will always remember that. Unless I get amnesia.
* One of her questions on an exam was "If you lived in the time of Kepler, would you have believed his theory of how the planets revolved around the sun?" I thought "great, an opinion question... I can't get this wrong." I wrote for one and a half pages on how I could not have existed back then, but if somehow I had I would have believed Kepler because his mathematics worked better than anyone else's. Despite it being an opinion question, I got it wrong. When I went to her office to complain she explained that people in Kepler's day believed the Church or Tycho, and I would have too. I admitted that after I thought about it later I realized that I would not have believed Kepler, but not because of why she thought... I said that like the other handful of real scientists of the day, I would have been no doubt hawking my own theory to explain everything. "You see, if you assume a "gage rotation" of the universe, and first subtract that out..." She looked at me like I was from another planet.
** Despite being an atheist... she wasn't a very good one.
So when Armstrong said "one giant leap for mankind" you think he just meant us guys and that he was excluding women by not saying humankind or persons?
Just because Strunk and White says something doesn't make it so. My copy of Webster's still defines man as "an individual human" and "the human race." That is just as authoritative as The Elements of Style is. The fact is that, like it or not, "man" still does double duty and both male gender specific AND gender neutral. Is it confusing? Yes, that is one of the many unfortunate irregularities of English. Just like "geese" does double duty as female gender specific and gender neutral for... well... geese. "Man" will probably stay that way for another hundered years or more, maybe for as long as we speak "modern" English. There has been just too much literature written that way for "personkind" to sound normal. Language experts trying to change it to be PC is even tougher than when they tried to convince American's not to say "ain't." (I was on their side, but that was a losing battle.) Or when the Soviets tried to eliminate the word for "mine" from the Russian language because it wasn't proper socialist grammer. Be grateful our language at least doesn't go around trying to give gender to inanimate objects.
BTW, I thought one of the points of Star Trek was that it wasn't supposed to be what people of the future were like, it was about people from the present with futuristic window dressing. You know, the Romulan's were the Chicoms, the Klingon's were the Ruskies, the Federation was NATO. That was most obvious in Undiscovered Country when the Soviet Union... oh, I mean Klingons... collapsed economically and were reborn as our allies.
Slashdot Mirror
I always wanted to get or write a nuclear war game. I don't mean something like Missile Command. I mean a strategy game. Start the game at the beginning of the nuclear arms race, with the player being the leader of one of the nations (like in Civ). He would get to make decisions about how much money to spend on weapons, training, R&D, espionage, civil defense, missile defense, etc. He could make decisions about things like signing treaties, research priorities, picking targeting strategies, picking civil defense strategies, swapping or giving away tech, etc. He could change readiness states, evacuate cities, order recon flights, attempt espionage or sabotage, launch attacks (of course), etc. Along the way different problems would arise depending on how wisely the player spent his money and the "world situation." A player who didn't invest much in training and who didn't develop good weapon control procedures would have a higher chance that one of his units would unexpectedly "release" their weapons during high states of alert. Too strict of weapons control would slow down response time and might encourage The Enemy to think they could succeed in a decapitating first strike. A war might stay "cold" for decades, and then suddenly heat up when one side gets enough strategic advantage that they think they can win a nuclear exchange. A well played game might never go "hot."
'Things are going well and tensions are declining, and all of a sudden the game drops into "real time mode" the alarms go off. The Enemy calls up on the hotline (you did develop and implement The Hotline didn't you?) and says that one of their units has gone rogue (maybe you should have given or leaked Advanced Weapons Control Methods to them) and launched a nuclear tipped ICBM at one of your cities, "It isn't a deliberate attack, please, PLEASE, don't retaliate against our innocent civilians for the crimes of one madman." What do you do? Or everything looks fine, tensions are low, although sunspot activity is running high. Then your Air Defense Command reports a sudden first strike. Only some of the sensors are giving confusing or conflicting data. It could be a computer or sensor glitch; The Enemy has no reason to launch now. If you don't launch before the RVs hit (perhaps you should have invested in Mobile Launchers) then most of your ICBMs will be wiped out in their silos. What do you do?'
To get a really good sim of nuclear brinksmanship you'd need to have other countries that could have alliances, critical resources, their own nukes (of course), etc. 'Tensions are running high between you and Nuclear Power A, when all of a sudden atomic explosions start lighting up your cities (Suitcase Nukes? Stealth?) and sabotage takes out several of your units. Nuclear Power A is the obvious culprit... except that it could also be Nuclear Power B that is trying to use current tensions to get you and A to wipe ea. other out. Do you launch against A, against B, against everybody*?'
You'd also want to simulate some basic level of internal economics and politics so that nations could change attitude and power, The Senate could overrule your decisions if your position wasn't "secure" enough, or leaders could get deposed without a shot being fired (the ultimate victory... or loss). That would mean adding non-state actors (like terrorists, revolutionaries, legitimate and "faked" protest groups) and some level of psychological warfare. "Are you sure you want to order all the major cities evacuated, Mr. President? That could hurt your approval rating and our economy considerably. If you are wrong..."
Oh, and to make the most of it you'd want to add non-nuclear weapons, so you could have Chemical, Biological, and Conventional, arms races and wars along with Nuclear. Although non-nuclear "hot" wars would need great simplification in order to keep the interface manageable. 'You are losing a very important conventional war involving several major allies with critical resources and bases. Releasing the use of tactical nuclear weapons would turn the tide. Doing so could also escalate to a strategic nuclear exchange. Without your allies resources you will not be able to maintain your current weapon parity with The Enemy. What do you do?'
If done properly and OBJECTIVELY then it could also be a useful teaching tool on Grand Strategy, Games Theory, and The Cold War. Maybe you could even have it so you could alter physics or human nature or add "exotic" weapons to the game to experiment with hypothetical scenarios. A player could try to emulate Stalin or Kennedy, they could try arms reduction talks (trust but verify) with peaceful co-existence or sneak attacks, they could wage "limited" wars or test out that Nuclear Winter theory (something else that might could be customized). Of course, you'd want a multiplayer version. You can see why I have never even bothered to write it... it is a HUGE project. Quite beyond my abilities and free time.
But, perhaps The Bazaar could do it. I have put the idea in the public domain, is anyone willing and capable of pursuing it?
* A wargasm as they say, and my likely response.
"Besides, it's pretty obvious that World War III has started when NORAD picks up 500+ separate launches in the space of a few minutes."
Except when it is a training tape put in the computer accidentally. This is something that supposedly has happened in both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Notice that civilization still exists, which suggests that both countries were not so "hair trigger" that they can't deal with such glitches. From what I hear, though, the Ruskies came close. (Geekoid, I don't suppose you have any info and can discuss our "close call"?)
That is why you don't necessarily want to "launch on warning". That is why the Ruskies would target our missile silos even when they KNOW that we could empty them by the time their missiles impact... it doesn't necessarily mean that we would do so. Launch on warning is more accident prone than "launch on verification." Twenty to Thirty minutes still isn't a long time to decide whether to destroy civilization or not when there are unknowns that have to be tracked down (like in the aforementioned "training accident" problem). You can't call back those ICBMs if you find out that the launch was a mistake a few seconds after they leave the silos. In theory the first strike attacker could hope that the defending nation would mistakenly conclude the attack wasn't real, or would at least not be sure enough that it was real that they would be willing to authorize ending society as we know it. The fact that we did not accidentally incinerate ourselves during the Cold War suggests that we were not on such a "hair trigger" and that this first strike theory did have a chance of working. Fortunately the Soviets never felt it had a good enough chance to pull it off and they were willing to collapse as a society before they were willing to "roll the dice and take their chances."* But then again, we did have a triad of deterence instead of one system.
Targeting "empty silos" also forces the attacked nation to "use them or lose them" in the first strike. RVs in the first strike have a better chance of fratriciding ea. other due to all the nukes going off in a short period of time. Such ICBMs also will not be available (because they were either launched or destroyed) for "cleaning up" targets that might have been missed in the 1st strike and needed to be attacked again, forcing the use of less survivable or less accurate delivery systems like bombers or boomers.
Yeah, they targeted our silos. Yeah, we could have emptied them before their RVs hit. Yeah, they presumably knew that. It was still a descent targeting strategy anyway. What scares me is the recent revelations that they also planned to finish off our population centers with smallpox laden RVs as well. You should never underestimate those Commies.
* Which means that the rest of us owe Geekoid and the other people who were at SAC a word of thanks that we arrived at the 21st century neither dead or Red (unless you live in Cuba or the PRC... sorry guys, we'll free you when we can). Thanks.
That's ok. Odds are it is not amphible asbestos, the only type known to be hazardous. Unfortunately in the rush to ban asbestos, non one bothered to try and differentiate between the different types, and chrysotile (a.k.a. soft white) asbestos which was used for over 95% of asbestos applications was banned along with the more hazardous amphible types. For those of you in San Fransisco, there are supposedly extensive outcroppings of chrysotile around the Bay area; so if you live in SF, you're probably already exposed.
PCBs and dioxin aren't as safe, but neither is it as bad as most people think. In 1976 an explosion scattered huge amounts of PCBs over Seveso, Italy. No fatalities or cancer cases are known to have come from this incident. A NIOSH study of U.S. workers exposed to high (a couple of orders of magnitude higher than the U.S. exposure maximum exposure) quantities of dioxin showed no increase in cancer or other fatal conditions. Unfortunately it is not harmless. In high quantities it does cause a severe skin rash called chloracne. If you value your complextion you will want to avoid large amouonts of PCBs and dioxin.
On the other hand, if you are a techie from San Fransisco with acne, then you probably don't have much to lose... Just kidding. Even if you don't get killed by the contamination you may still be responsible for its clean up costs. Congratulations, you just bought a Superfund site.
I hate to break this to the programming community, but you did not invent the philosophy of "open source" or the "bazaar vs. the cathedral."
Science has had an "open source" component for pretty much as long as there has been modern science. Everybody works on some little bit of the problem (figuring out how the universe works), and when they have something they think is reasonable they publish it for everyone else to critique. Such publications may not technically be free, because you have to subscribe to the journals, but in reality if you go to any science library you can get free access to them. Really, the philosophy of finding mistakes by releasing code as "open source" so that a lot of other people can look at it and tinker with it is the same old philosophy behind peer-review and publication of scientific papers. The "open source aircraft design movement" exists; it is called "Journal of Aircraft" and is delivered to my home every couple of months.
This may get me modded down, but I think that "open source" is just Computer Scientists figuring out something that the other branches of science have already known for a very long time. Getting new developments into the public domain and letting other researchers bang around on them will yield even newer and better developments. One team of people locked away in isolation is not nearly as likely to develop a workable product (which for science would pretty much be a model of everything in the universe.)
That said, I don't think the idea of developing aircraft the same way that you develop programs is a good idea, because they are NOT the same sort of things. I'm sure you all know the joke about if Airplane development went like Computer development then we'd already have hypersonic transport aircraft with world spanning range that the average person could afford to own and operate... and they would explode once every week or two killing everyone on board. Aircraft Theory and Aircraft Conceptual Design and Aerodynamic Behavior and other such things are generally done as public science and/or published in journals and presented at conferences (i.e. "open source"). When it gets time to actually design the aircraft, this is done with a relatively small, closed team of people. There is a good reason for this. Airplane and rocket crashes kill people. Pick up a copy of The Right Stuff and read the first chapter. Such things ARE tested regularly. They are tested methodically and often. In wind tunnels and CFD code and on the ground and finally in the air. They are tested with methods and in progressions that were proven to work with VERY costly (in dollars and lives) prior experience. You could call it "extreme programming" for aircraft. Aircraft design is also complex. Simply moving the battery from the front to the back of a plane this size can invalidate all previous flight test data, so it is with good reason that the development is done by people who know the whole picture intimately (a difficult thing for a hobbyist to do). And, many aircraft design groups don't want their detail designs and their "tricks of the trade" to be open source because they are proprietary or classified. Yes, other sciences have "Closed Source" projects, too; but unlike in computer science, they tend to usually be offshoots and niche developments with the bulk of science being "open source" (to use CS lingo). Even big, private company laboratories in other scientific fields publish a lot of "open source" scientific material. Not only do they realize the value of having it reviewed and verified by other scientists "for free," but they also understand the importance of such publication in maintaining their organization's prestige in their industry and in recruiting the best new talent.
Aerospace has had "open source" for almost 100 years now. Physics has had it since the days of Newton and Galileo. Computer scientists, welcome to the club. Just don't think the rest of us haven't known about this for a long time... and stop tacking the phrase "open source" on everything. Try terms like "peer review" and "in the public domain" on for size; maybe you'll sound less socialist and the public will take it more seriously.
oops, remove the space between the h & t before trying the link
"Could a missile fired from sub orbit on an (relatively) inexpensive platform such as this one, actually knock out a satellite? "
t .h tm
Yes.
http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/asa
It doesn't matter whether you think the risks are worth it.
It matters if the potential customers think the risk is worth it.
I think you are refering to a "rockoon".
o n. htm
http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/lvs/rocko
They were invented by Dr. Van Allen and some of his associates. They were only for sounding rockets, which explore the upper atmosphere but don't go into orbit. If you want to go into orbit, you still need a lot of horizontal velocity so the rockoon is not as handy for that.
I suggest that instead of replacing jet fuel with hydrogen to make airplane crashes safer, we concentrate on doing away with the fuel altogether. The aircraft could be made to fly using only the atmosphere it travels in as the fuel source. Of course, this would be a monumental technical challenge. In order to reduce its diffuclty to a manageble level, our initial airliner design could focus on just eliminating the fuel used during cruise, and could still carry a small amount of fuel for climb-to-altitude and descent-to-landing. This will mean that there is still a slight fuel danger on the aircraft, but it would be much reduced over current designs.
With the problem reduced to merely eliminating the fuel used during cruise, the problem becomes easier. The proposed airliner could be designed to cruise in the Ozone Layer. Once in the Ozone Layer, the use of conventional engines could be stopped and the aircraft could cruise on engines powered by the catalyitic decay of ozone. Ozone is only a meta-stable arrangement, and its decay into normal oxygen releases energy. The proposed airliner's engines could contain a catalytic bed that would greatly accellerate the decomposition of ozone. The heat released in this process could be used to replace the heat normally gained by burning fuel. An added benifit of such an ozone burning airliner would be that it could have effectively unlimited range, as long is it remained in the Ozone Layer.
"Of course there are better methods (eg putting in water supply) but just a thought."
Due to a combination of dilution and the effect of clorine, attempting biowarfare attacks against a water supply is not very effective.
But you are right, there are better methods. They tend to involve generating aeresols, usually with a moving or area source. That is the reason for the worry over cropdusters.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
There are a lot of people on Slashdot that know a little bit about the science and technology outside their area of expertise.
What amazes me is the belief by so many people that the experts and specialists who work in these fields must be idiots who cannot see the obvious solutions that seem to occur to the "brilliant" outsiders that reside here at Slashdot.
A little hint people. If it is a completely obvious solution, then at least one of the "experts" has probably also thought of and analyzed it. If a completely obvious solution has not been implimented then it is probably because there is some subtle problem with it that is beyond your ability to forsee.
If you really wanted an airplane that did not have any explosive or flammable fuel on board, there are two options.
One, of course, is physical energy instead of chemical energy. I am, of course, refering to a big rubber band. I had a small model airplane that worked on the same principle when I was young. Of course this is not practical, since range would be incredibly short.
The second solution would be to use nuclear energy. A small atomic pile could provide power for the engines. A heat exchanger could take heat from the reactor and input it into the engine in place of the normal fuel combustor. Considerable research was done on this concept during the 1950s and 1960s and the theory is sound. I am sure that some people are going to immediately complain that this design replaces the danger of fire with the danger of a release of radioactive material in the event of a crash. I am happy to report that as part of the Nuclear Aircraft research previously mentioned a reactor design was developed that could survive a high-speed, worst-case-scenario crash without releasing any radioactivity. The technology was demonstrated by slamming a prototype into a hardened concrete target at the aircraft's top speed. Given the current advances in materials and nuclear technology since the Nuclear Aircraft program, surely even greater safety could be achieved with present designs.
I do not expect either of these solutions to be implimented, but then I don't expect to see Hydrogen airliners either (or at least until oil gets a LOT more expensive).
Hydrazine is used in the manuvering thrusters on the Space Shuttle. Hydrazine is a monopropellant and would not require an oxidizer.
The Space Shuttle Main Engines do use, as you put it, "pure liquid Hydrogen" and that is the fuel in the External Tank (along with liquid oxygen as an oxidizer).
"Well, this was discussed as well on the NPR show. The cost of refitting is a few hundred thousand dollars per plane ... in other words, peanuts compared to the cost of the plane in the first place, and a small added cost over the lifetime of the airframe if the cost could be stretched out. One of the reasons it would be relatively inexpensive is that you take the entire plane apart every few months for inspections anyway, and things like fuel tanks get replaced every few years during overhauls. Or so they said. "
I don't suppose they mentioned that if an existing aircraft was retrofitted for hydrogen that it would require placing some of the cryogenic hydrogen in the fuselage. This would cut down on the number of seats the in the plane and increase the danger in the event of an accident (currently fuel is only stored in the wings). Also, since current aircraft are not optimized for hydrogen, the most of the benifits hydrogen gives would NOT be realized, which means the planes would not be cheaper to operate and might be more expensive. Certainly they would be more expensive per seat mile once about 60 ft. of the seats are ripped out to add more fuel tankage.
"but there are already widespread distribution mechanisms for refrigerated, compressed gasses; that is, this is a well understood, solved problem, not a show stopper."
Just because the technology exists doesn't mean that it won't be very expensive to junk current fuel transport and refueling equipment and replace it with the already developed (but NOT already manufuctured) cryogenic equipment. Also, there isn't enough current hydrgoen fuel production in the world to accomodate this switch. That means constructing a lot of new fuel production facilities (H2 production cannot be done in present refineries). All that won't be cheap.
"This isn't basic scientific research stuff, it is well understood, applied engineering research at this point."
No it isn't. It is conceptual studies. The drawing of the Hydrogen L-1011 cargo liner on the Pheonix Program's website is from an old Lockheed study done in the 1970s. It is all theory. It is good theory, but it still needs to be tested. The guys from Lockheed thought that the best way to do that would be to do a pilot program with some modified P-3s. The added loiter time they thought they could get out of the P-3 would help offset the program costs. That would give real world data to support or disprove the conceptual studies. But the program was never done. The 1st step will have to be some form of all up testing on large H2 aircraft. After that, then we can have "well understood" designs. Not to say the current ideas are bad. They just wouldn't be optimized, and they might overlook minor problems that would be uncovered in a testing program.
Sure, I like the dream of a H2 economy as much as the next engineer. But we can't sweep the huge capital costs associated with the change under the rug. Plus the fact that current fuel technology is well understood and is very mature. A hydrogen fuel economy still has a lot of unknowns and would require larger factors of safety during the early stages of the switch. And, of course, refitting existing engines and vehicles for hydrogen will result in reduced efficiency because they are not optimized for that fuel. All this means more cost. And lets not forget that money is merely a symbol for resources. So until current fuel costs skyrocket or something requires us to junk all our current infrastructure and vehicles, then switching to a hydrogen economy (even partially) will consume more resources than it will free up.
Actually, in many ways Liquid Methane would be a better alternate fuel than Liquid Hydrogen.
There safety of hydrogen as a fuel source depends on how it is stored in the aircraft.
One method of storing this is just to store it as a compressed gas. This is not a very efficient way to store it, and it will have considerable negative impact on the range and or cargo capacity of the aircraft. In other words, air travel would get a lot more expensive and more rare. Not likely to happen. This method would also be dangerous because a rupture of a compressed hydrogen storage tank would release a lot of energy just from the bursting of the pressurized tank. The hydrogen would then be mixed with the surrounding air in a potentially VERY explosive combination, much like an FAE bomb. It is unlikely that a large portion of the hydrogen cloud would have the right fuel/air mixture to explode, but even a small percentage would be a big explosion. In an open area a large portion of the hydrogen might escape without burning, but in an enclosed area like the WTC, a large portion of it would probably still have burned. No benefit to using this method, and a lot of negatives.
The Hydrogen could be stored in a metal hydride. Basically the hydrogen is "soaked up" into metal like water soaking up into a sponge. Amazingly you can get quite high hydrogen storage densities with this method, even higher than storing it as a compressed gas. It will be much less of a fire hazard than conventional jet fuel. The hydrogen will not come out of the metal-hydride "sponge" all at once; so even if there is a fire it will be a small but long fire instead of a big, quick one. This method will be even safer because of the fact that the planes will never leave the ground. Metal-hydride may give good storage densities for automobiles, but the fuel tanks would be way too heavy to use on an aircraft.
The third method is cryogenic storage, as either liquid or slush hydrogen. This method gets the best storage densities as hydrogen storage goes; but it is still a lot less dense than normal jet fuel. That means you still need much bigger fuel tanks to get the same range. This might not be more expensive (and might even be cheaper) because of possible engine improvements. But you have the problem of handling a cryogenic fuel, which adds to costs (and the possibility of a ground crew injury). Then you have the problem of where to put the fuel. There isn't enough room in the wings to put all the fuel there, like is done with normal jet fuel. One possibility is to put it in the fuselage, but that is VERY dangerous because you now have the double threat in a crash of killing the passengers with cryogenic hydrogen before they have a chance to be killed in the resulting fire. Putting the extra tanks out on the wings makes sense from a structures point of view because you have shorter load paths, and would get the cryogenic fuel somewhat further away from the passengers; but it still would not eliminate the fuel as a risk. Yes a puddle of liquid hydrogen WILL burn. As the liquid boils it mixes with the air, creating a flammable mixture. As the mixture over the puddle burns the heat increases the rate of boiling of the puddle. This is actually not too different from what happens when a puddle of non-cryogenic fuel burns. Will it be less of a fire hazard? Maybe. A hydrogen fire will not emit as much thermal radiation, which seems safer; but for the same reason it is invisible and therefore harder to fight (a problem that might be solved with trace impurities). In an open area a hydrogen fire will dissipate more quickly and cover less area, but that doesn't apply to the WTC case because it wasn't in an open area and hydrogen might have actually been worse because of the possibility of explosion instead of just fire. I also wonder what that high a volume of cryogenic hydrogen would have done to the steel structure upon impact; the huge temperature swings from ambient temperature to cryogenic to a hydrogen flame might have caused the collapse to happen sooner. In a normal crash that happens in an open area hydrogen is theoretically safer, but modern jet fuel is not as explosive as most people believe, thanks to evolutionary refinements in its composition and I have not seen any full up aircraft tests (such as have been performed with modern jet fuel) that assesses the added hazard of storing large volumes of cryogenic fuel in a passenger aircraft.
On the plus side, hydrogen powered aircraft could have smaller (possibly cheaper and more quiet) engines. They would not pollute as much (though they still generate NOx). Despite the extra tankage, the aircraft might even be lighter and cheaper. It is possible, therefore, that a fleet of hydrogen-powered airliners might be cheaper to buy and operate than a fleet of normal ones. Or at least it would be if you didn't have to factor in the capital cost of rebuilding the entire fuel production, fuel transport, and refueling infrastructure. But of course you do. If something (a huge terrorist campaign or a sudden shortage of oil) were to wipe out our current fuel infrastructure and we had to rebuild it from scratch, then we might want to look at hydrogen again. Until then it will take a revolution in fuel storage density, hydrogen production and transport technology, or some new super hydrogen-only super engine to justify junking a fuel infrastructure we have already paid for.
This is not a new idea. Hydrogen has been considered as an alternate fuel in airliners since at least the 1970s. There are good reasons why it has not been adopted.
Bottom line, for now liquid or slush hydrogen is the only practical storage method for large aircraft. Even then, the storage densities of Hydrogen suck. Fire hazards are safer, but it almost certainly would not have prevented the WTC collapse (it might even have hastened it). The added hazards of cryogenic fuel (especially if stored in the fuselage) may more than make up for the reduced fire hazard. Like so many other technologies, it offers the tantalizing potential for reduced costs; if only we didn't have an already-paid-for infrastructure that supports the current technology of choice... but we do. If you are building a scramjet then it is probably worth the effort to put up with the extra tankage and the cryogenics and the custom fuel infrastructure. If you are building a passenger jet, then you are just asking for more cost with only incremental benefits that have yet to be demonstrated in full up testing. If the gov't wants to help this along, they could have an X-plane program to demonstrate full up development of a hydrogen cargo plane or bomber (the engineering would be similar enough to a civilian airliner for lessons to carry over), then slam one of the planes into the ground in a simulated crash when the program is over to get data on the actual safety of large hydrogen powered aircraft. Until then, the technology will (rightly) lie dormant until something makes it more economically attractive (i.e. a more efficient use of resources).
References: Hawkins, W.M. and Brewer, G.D., "Alternate Fuels Make Better Airplanes: Let's Demonstrate Now," _Astronautics_and_Aeronautics_, Sept. 1979
Raymer, D.P., _Aircraft_Design:_A_Conceptual_Approach_, AIAA, 1992
"And I can show you a bunch of people who work harder than 99% of America, and are STILL barely getting by, barely able to feed and clothe their kids.
"
Ok, I'm not part of this argument, but I'll bite anyway. Give specifics, not just vague "possible situations." I'll even let you get away with "harder than 90% of America", since 99% is very hard work indeed.
I am very interested because I have managed people at the low end of the social ladder occasionally. The people that the temp agency would scrape together and send to us to do basic manual labor. Most of them won't pay attention to training and look for every excuse to goof off. Most of them. But a small percentage don't: they listen to training, they aren't afraid of hard work, some will try to figure out better or easier ways to do the work. I don't know how this small percentage wound up on the bottom of the labor pool, but I can promise you that at my plant they didn't stay there very long. It is too rare to find someone who is really willing to put in hard work to just waste them away in a low value job. Did they suddenly become rich? No, of course not... but they are allowed to climb to the next ladder of the labor pool, and if they can handle the more complex or difficult work, then they go even higher. It is always nice when such people are also good learners, but even "simpletons" who you know will carry at task through to completion without goofing off as soon as a supervisor isn't looking got snatched up into full time work and a higher pay grade so that they wouldn't be lost.
I think it is possible that a thinking person who will work hard could find himself or herself on the bottom of the economic ladder. I don't believe that they would stay there very long. Even someone who is a slow learner, but is honest and willing to work "harder than 99% of Americans" can find plenty of places that will be happy to employ them and, while they might never get rich, could rise out of poverty.
Of course, as long as we keep defining poverty as a percentage of the average income, then we will always have it.
I admit that you could possibly prove me wrong with the phrase "barely able to feed and clothe their kids" because if someone really tried, they could have A LOT of kids. Is that what you mean, that you know someone with like twenty-four kids below age 18?
Or is it your definition of "barely able to feed and clothe." I have known some spoiled brats that would consider not having the latest $150+ Nike shoes "barely clothed" even though I played just fine with pair of Chuck Taylor All Stars. Perhaps there might be someone who is a workaholic who is so additcted to the consumer and name-brand culture that they don't budget properly for the essentials. I mean, we don't all have to be Amish, but we don't have to turn brand loyalty into a religion either.
So give us the specifics. You can use fake names to protect the subjects if you like, but use real people... if you really know them. Are these people just a victim of a very temporary setback? Are they baby factories? Do they lack budgeting skills? If it is just "the man" keeping them down, then I suggest that you give them the phone number of a good temp agency that supplies industrial labor pools; if they really work that hard, then it shouldn't take them long to find an employer that sees their value and brings them on full time.
That might have worked on me. My youngest brother would have eaten them all just to prove he could.
"Open on my desk is a copy of "Project Sherwood - The U.S. Program in Controlled Fusion", published in 1958 - I believe as a part of a huge nuclear energy conference "
That is great! lol.
Where can I get a copy of that, DTIC doesn't seem to have it. Is it classified?
Hot fusion occurs when you get the fusing atoms (usually an isotope of Hydrogen) to be very energetic and they slam into each other with enough energy overcome the electrostatic repulsion between their nuclei and fuse together. Since "very energetic" also translates into "very hot" this is called Hot Fusion. Hot on the order of 100,000,000 degrees Kelvin. Since Hot Fusion is the standard method of fusion research this is usually just shortened to Fusion.
Cold fusion is an attempt to coax atomic nuclei together at much lower energy states. "Much lower energy states" translates in English to "lower temperatures." Lower temperatures on the order of 300 degrees Kelvin. Hence the name "Cold Fusion." Respectable researchers tend to try to coax these nuclei into fusing at lower temperatures by doing things like replacing the electrons in the atom with muons to alter the atom's properties and allow it to overcome the nuclei's electrostatic repulsion easier. These sort of researchers don't get a lot of press. Another group of cold fusion researchers tries to accomplish the same thing by failing to stir the water in their calorimeters, then claiming the "anomalous heat gain" as fusion. They then get a lot of press and write scathing papers about how much cooler chemists are than physicists. This latter bunch doesn't get the press they used to and now seems to spend their time writing in obscure "alternative" periodicals and complaining about "the establishment."
We could have a fusion power plant operating within a year or two if it were really important. We have had the technology to do so for DECADES. You think I'm kidding?
Here is how it is done. You need two deep wells and a geothermal style power plant. And it all needs to be in someone else's back yard. You lower a handy Hydrogen Bomb (which is fusion powered) into one of the wells and detonate it. The heat from the H-Bomb's fusion reaction turns groundwater around the well into steam, which is turned into power by your nearby geothermal-style power plant. For continous power production, you need at least two wells so that while one is being prepared for a detonation, you can get power from the other one.
Everything is proven technology. We have H-bombs. We have even detonated them underground, so we know how do do that. We also have working geothermal power plants. So what is the hold up? Well, first you have the whole problem of just whose back yard do you put this monster in. Then you have the problem of commercially available H-bombs for "power plant fuel" would make a horrible nuclear proliferation problem. And, of course, the energy industry does everything by cost and since no one has ever done one of these power plants and it contains a LOT of costs that could potentially get very large... no body wants to try it. I can't say I blame them. But it is technically possible. We could have a fusion power plant in the immediate future. But it wouldn't be a fusion power plant anyone would actually want to have.
...and it always will be. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I've heard that "fusion is ten years away" myth for as long as I can remember. It is right up there with "flat screen TVs" and "the Space Station" for being the most often cited "we almost have it figured out" technology.
Wait a minute...
We finally did get the flat screen TVs and the Space Station. Maybe it is the year 2001 after all. Maybe they will be right about fusion too. On the other hand, I don't have my flying car yet...
I had a very interesting history professor back in college*. She taught History of Science, yet she had no idea how a scientist thought. She was a perfect example of an "artsie craftsie" and was also clearly a closet socialist. Still, she was well-spoken and fun to talk to. She also seemed to like me (as a student), I guess because I actually wanted to learn the material and not just make a good grade.
I ran into this professor several years later and she asked how my engineering career was going. I explained that I had started doing environmental and energy engineering (probably the opposite of what she thought) and was now doing manufacturing engineering. "You can do that?" she asked, "you can just switch engineering fields... but weren't you a Mechanical Engineer in college." I explained that an engineering degree was NOT about learning how every different type of device works, like a humongous "car repair" degree or something. There are just way too many devices and things in the world to know how they all work, and an engineer needs to be able to imagine completely new ones. Instead, they teach you how the laws of the universe work, how to approach problems, how to do research, how to think about things and how to model them in your head or with mathematics so that whatever problem I was given I would be able to solve it. "An engineering degree is not so much about skills," I said, "It is about meta-skills... and that means that I can switch to ANY field I want, engineering or otherwise, as long as I have the time to do the background research on it." She looked at me with a stunned expression and said, "Oh MY GOD**, that is the justification for having a liberal arts degree!!! And those bastards over in the engineering school have figured out how to do it?"
I will always remember that. Unless I get amnesia.
* One of her questions on an exam was "If you lived in the time of Kepler, would you have believed his theory of how the planets revolved around the sun?" I thought "great, an opinion question... I can't get this wrong." I wrote for one and a half pages on how I could not have existed back then, but if somehow I had I would have believed Kepler because his mathematics worked better than anyone else's. Despite it being an opinion question, I got it wrong. When I went to her office to complain she explained that people in Kepler's day believed the Church or Tycho, and I would have too. I admitted that after I thought about it later I realized that I would not have believed Kepler, but not because of why she thought... I said that like the other handful of real scientists of the day, I would have been no doubt hawking my own theory to explain everything. "You see, if you assume a "gage rotation" of the universe, and first subtract that out..." She looked at me like I was from another planet.
** Despite being an atheist... she wasn't a very good one.
So when Armstrong said "one giant leap for mankind" you think he just meant us guys and that he was excluding women by not saying humankind or persons?
Just because Strunk and White says something doesn't make it so. My copy of Webster's still defines man as "an individual human" and "the human race." That is just as authoritative as The Elements of Style is. The fact is that, like it or not, "man" still does double duty and both male gender specific AND gender neutral. Is it confusing? Yes, that is one of the many unfortunate irregularities of English. Just like "geese" does double duty as female gender specific and gender neutral for... well... geese. "Man" will probably stay that way for another hundered years or more, maybe for as long as we speak "modern" English. There has been just too much literature written that way for "personkind" to sound normal. Language experts trying to change it to be PC is even tougher than when they tried to convince American's not to say "ain't." (I was on their side, but that was a losing battle.) Or when the Soviets tried to eliminate the word for "mine" from the Russian language because it wasn't proper socialist grammer. Be grateful our language at least doesn't go around trying to give gender to inanimate objects.
BTW, I thought one of the points of Star Trek was that it wasn't supposed to be what people of the future were like, it was about people from the present with futuristic window dressing. You know, the Romulan's were the Chicoms, the Klingon's were the Ruskies, the Federation was NATO. That was most obvious in Undiscovered Country when the Soviet Union... oh, I mean Klingons... collapsed economically and were reborn as our allies.
Maybe it is that future genetically engineered corn.