Law of Beta strikes again
on
SPF Design Frozen
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The registry was only actually completed today; the parser wasn't fully operational before that (it was just online for testing).
Unfortunately some of you caught the parser while it was buggy... it *should* be fine now.
It's also correct that some of the records were produced before the standard was finalised. All these bugs should now be out of the system (I'm going to regret saying that)...
Convection: if hot air made things rise as fast as most posters seem to think, slashdot would have reached low earth orbit by now. Airships aren't hot air balloons, they do have active altitude control.
Flammability: Modern airships use non-flammable helium (the manufacturers don't appear to state what they plan to use in this case). The Hindenberg only burned strongly because of the flammable metals in her skin; the hydrogen vanished, literally, in a flash. Even then, more than half of the passangers and crew survived:
http://www.dwv-info.de/pm/hindbg/hbe.htm
Speed: Airships can manage up to 80 knots
http://www.airship.demon.co.uk/whatis.html
Weight / lift capability: 'just under' 1 million litres of water weighs 'just under' 1 thousand tonnes. Guess what? The air-buoyancy of a helium airship this size is 'just under' 1 thousand tonnes (I won't bore you all with the math).
The only scary thing about this airship is the fact of 1000 tonnes of *anything* flying around overhead (Although a fully laden Boeing 747 has a max take-off weight up to 400 tonnes:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/jetliner/b747 ).
If it did crash, however, it'd be the world's biggest water baloon.
So it's started already... with compasses and protractors. From observation of such sent-back-through-the-wormhole documentaries from the future as Star Trek and Babylon 5, you'll be able to determine at what point the uninvention of fuses, fire extinguishers, money and fashion sense occur.
And probably plenty more I'd not thought of...
Slashdot Mirror
The registry was only actually completed today; the parser wasn't fully operational before that (it was just online for testing).
Unfortunately some of you caught the parser while it was buggy... it *should* be fine now.
It's also correct that some of the records were produced before the standard was finalised. All these bugs should now be out of the system (I'm going to regret saying that)...
Flammability: Modern airships use non-flammable helium (the manufacturers don't appear to state what they plan to use in this case). The Hindenberg only burned strongly because of the flammable metals in her skin; the hydrogen vanished, literally, in a flash. Even then, more than half of the passangers and crew survived:
http://www.dwv-info.de/pm/hindbg/hbe.htm
Speed: Airships can manage up to 80 knots
http://www.airship.demon.co.uk/whatis.html
Weight / lift capability: 'just under' 1 million litres of water weighs 'just under' 1 thousand tonnes. Guess what? The air-buoyancy of a helium airship this size is 'just under' 1 thousand tonnes (I won't bore you all with the math).
The only scary thing about this airship is the fact of 1000 tonnes of *anything* flying around overhead (Although a fully laden Boeing 747 has a max take-off weight up to 400 tonnes:7 ).
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/jetliner/b74
If it did crash, however, it'd be the world's biggest water baloon.
So it's started already... with compasses and protractors. From observation of such sent-back-through-the-wormhole documentaries from the future as Star Trek and Babylon 5, you'll be able to determine at what point the uninvention of fuses, fire extinguishers, money and fashion sense occur.
And probably plenty more I'd not thought of...