I recall reading long ago that US nuke sub reactors were designed to cool by convection if the pumps are shut down, making them undetectable except by the means you describe.
Fact, rumor, or fiction? I don't remember the source, so I'm not sure.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
Some naval reactors can operate as natural convection reactors. Some not.
But even when you are using no pumps on the reactor, that doesn't mean you're not using any pumps - the MSW pumps are going to be running anyway, along with a host of smaller pumps.
And even ignoring the pumps, there's the steam generators - not as noisy as one might think, but by no means silent.
Nonetheless, in spite of all the noise that are inevitable in a nuke boat, it's possible to make them so quiet that they are effectively holes in the water. Not all nuke boats are so quiet, of course. But the new stuff? Listen for the direction where you don't even hear fish swimming, and that's where the boat is hiding....
Note, by the way, that a diesel boat can take advantage of all those technologies as well.
Any "swag" should at least be in the same ballpark as what you are guestimating.
Unless, of course, a particular figure is traditionally used in conversation to represent a "large but indeterminate amount".
"A million" , or "millions" is frequently used this way in modern American English. As in, "there are a million reasons not to do that", which doesn't really mean that there are a million reasons, or even in the time zone of a million. Just that there are a hell of a lot....
Note that back in the Old Testament days, "forty" was used the same way - "it rained forty days and forty nights" meant (to a listener/reader back then) "it rained for a hell of a long time", and "they wandered in the desert for forty years" meant "they wandered around for a hell of a long time".
I know that LPD's are big, lumbering cargo and personnel transport ships and they have navigational SONAR, so I'm interested in the sub in particular -- What do you think led to the accident? Did the crew have enough sensors on to see? Do the books not mandate the SONAR methods which would have helped the sub detect the LPD? Was the sub required to maintain stealth given the Strait of Hormuz' vicinity to Iran?
An LPD isn't all that big, really. It's also not "lumbering". It's what they call a "gator freighter" - it moves Marines around.
The sub had sensors that could see in front of them, if they were submerged. The Straits are too shallow for the tail.
What the books mandate is not really a subject to be bandied about in pubs. Suffice it to say that being run into (or running into someone) is very bad form, and to be avoided when possible.
Subs ALWAYS maintain stealth, unless they're surfaced. The only time a submerged submarine won't be "maintaining stealth" is if it is firing missiles/torpedoes, or running like hell from someone else's torpedoes fired at them.
or do they keep sub routes a secret from some or all surface ships?
The only thing a surface ship would be told is that there is a submarine operating (or not) in a given area of the ocean - not exactly where in that area.
And the areas in question aren't small.
New Orleans prolly knew that there were boats in the region of the Persian Gulf, but no more than that.
Um.... We can't have perfected it. We rely on nuclear-powered submarines which are fundamentally un-stealthy because of the noise of the hot water running through the pipes.
While it is true that a nuke boat is inherently noisier than a diesel boat, it should be pointed out that an Ohio class boat (and later LA class boats, for that matter) are quieter than background - you detect them by looking for places you don't hear normal aquatic noises like fish and such.
Note, of course, that this applies at low speeds. At higher speeds, they're noisier than background. But not all that much noisier unless you're running fast near the surface.
Since you obviously know the subject, maybe you can comment on three items of my post:
1. Who has the primary duty to avoid such a collision?
Both parties, actually. But the Sub will be held to a higher standard. Because the surface ship is expected to not see the boat.
2. Is it reasonable to expect a surface ship to see a submarine 30' below the surface at night?
30' below the surface isn't nearly far enough down to make the sub invisible, even at night. But, in general, we don't expect surface ships to see our subs unless they're snorkeling.
3. Would it be expected that many sailors aboard the sub will hear 100,000 HP diesels of a surface ship a couple of hundred feet away?
Two things:
New Orleans only has 40,000 HP engines.
The anechoic coating on a submarine makes it pretty hard to hear anything going on inside from the outside, and pretty hard to hear anything going on outside from the inside.
On the other hand, we usually expect the sonar guys to hear this sort of thing.
On the gripping hand, you won't be trailing your tail in the Straits of Hormuz, and aren't likely to hear something overhauling you until it gets really close. By which time dodging is impossible in restricted waters.
In my opinion these answers, made by a competent person, would be far more useful than guessing about me and at the same time telling nothing on the subject of discussion.
Probably. The real question in the business is who was overhauling, and who was being overhauled. There's no excuse for a sub bumping a diesel-powered LPD from behind. There's a lot more excuse for the boat being run over by the LPD in tight waters, which these were.
I should note that the last couple paragraphs of TFA were completely unnecessary, and serve no other purpose other than to contribute to anti-nuclear hysteria - the presence or absence of nuclear weapons had no effect on the collision between the French and Brit boats, and there was ZERO chance, even if both boats had been sunk by the collision (basically impossible unless both boats were running at flank speed, and damn unlikely even then), of any of the nuclear weapons on board being a "catastrophe narrowly averted".
If some Iraqi national showed up in the USA and was caught tampering with vote results to make himself president we'd rightly acknowledge the action as one of war, yet if one of our own people did it you'd have us think it's fundamentally different.
Alas, an act of war is NOT treason. So, yes, it's fundamentally different.
Or maybe the real story here is about the insecurities and perils of current electronic voting machines - the kind of topic slashdotters are interested in - and party affiliation is incidental because readers are smart enough to understand that system can be rigged by any party or any person.
Or not, since this wasn't actually about electronic voting machines, but about vote-buying.
Some people basically extorted money from candidates to buy votes.
They then handed the money (less their commission, presumably) to their flunkies in the precincts to buy the votes that were paid for.
The flunkies decided they'd rather keep ALL the money rather than just the commission, and lied to voters about how the machines worked (note that this could only work with really stupid voters - read the instructions on screen, and this won't be an issue), and changed a few votes themselves and pocketed the bribe money.
If there had been no electronic voting machines, things would have worked pretty much as they did, except that the flunkies in the precincts would have made less money on the deal, since they'd have had to pay for the votes the old-fashioned way.
Yes, it's popular to blame all the evils of democracy on electronic voting machines. Alas, a quick reading of history shows that people were subverting the vote long before electronic voting machines existed, and doing so far more often than is generally the case today.
Getting rid of the electronic voting machines won't stop vote fraud. It won't even slow it down. It might speed it up some, since the old-timers in the vote fraud community probably don't have the tech-savvy to actually do much with the possibilities inherent in electronic voting machines, but they do have a good working understanding of the tried and true techniques useful with paper ballots....
Or is this just another Republican "the media is liberal and always against us" whine?
A couple of things:
I'm not a Republican. I'm one of those Libertarians you mentioned a while back.
We're not talking about "the Media". Looking in "the Media" is how I found out the guys in question were Democrats. "The Media" didn't hide the fact at all. What we're talking about is/.
Now, the problem may be that/. editors don't like story submissions that mention that Democrats are scoundrels. I have no evidence one way or another.
Or it may be that people who submit stories don't like to point out that the Democrats are scoundrels. Again, I have no evidence one way or another, since I never pay attention to who submitted a story.
Alternatively, it may be that Democrats are assumed to be scoundrels by default, and that it's only worth mentioning when a Republican is a scoundrel. Which is basically silly, since both Democrats and Republicans are scoundrels by default.
Well, just convene a meeting with only those Senators that agree. It said nothing about any minimum number, just that two-thirds of those *present* concur
From the US Constitution, Article I, Section 5:
and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business
So, yes, there IS a minimum number.
Note that it's still possible to get a Treaty ratified with only 34 Senators approving it.
You must be new here./. is full of Liberation engineers and IT industry protectionists.
Alas, it doesn't really matter what/. is "full of". But it is true that the Party of a Republican in the news tends to be mentioned in the summary, while the Party of a Democrat in the news tends to be quietly ignored in the summary.
Note this case as an example. Nowhere does it mention that the people doing this were Democrats, though it wasn't terribly hard to determine.
Not to make this more political than it will be, but do we know what direction those stolen votes went?
Well, it took some googling, but it seems the five involved were Democrats. So it's probably pretty safe to assume the stolen votes were stolen from various Republican candidates and given to various Democrat candidates.
Though why anyone should care about the Party of someone running for the local School Board is beyond me (yes, one of the elections in question was for the local School Board).
Note, by the way, that what happened was good, old-fashioned, vote-buying. With a twist, in that the people actually handed the money to buy votes in the field decided to keep the money and just change a few votes themselves.
The crimes by government against the people can not be tolerated. They are worse than mere murder (other than mass murder) because they damage us all. Likewise, massive financial crimes damage all of us.
People such as election fraudsters and Bernard Madoff should be executed (and not by silly lethal injection) in public.
You are aware that Madoff didn't work for the government, correct? He was an old-fashioned private-citizen criminal....
Bet on someone strongly opposing covering it with solar panels or solar thermal generators. And the associated access roads, repair sheds, power lines, whatnot.
Our numerical system (including the concept of 'zero'), much of chemistry (including the identification of alcohol), the very word 'algorithm' all come from Arab scholars. It's not a big stretch to start our reckoning at the point where the two cultures were roughly even.
Our "numerical system (including the concept of 'zero')" was pretty much a copy (by Muslim scholars) of the one in use in India.
Note, by the way, that much of what you attribute to "Arab scholars" was done by "Persian scholars". Call an Arab a Persian, or vice verse, and you'll have a blood feud going for the next 500 years. Try "Muslim scholars" for a nice, not controversial phrase.
Something changed sometime in the last 500 years to enable western technology to really take off, and I'd be willing to bet it's cultural.
You'd lose your bet. What changed was Tamerlane. You remember him, don't you? The guy who killed off all the educated people in Persia (and most of the non-educated ones too).
Hard to sustain a tradition of scholarship when anyone who can read has his head tossed onto a pile with all the other people who can read.
I didn't suggest Mississippi was the Federal Government. I did suggest - and do suggest - that the overall deficit burden at all local state and Federal levels is interdependent and is certain to result in cessations of funding and transfers from one government level to the next, requiring significant increase in taxation over the next 12 years to come close to maintaining current commitments.
Not so much as you might think. Federal commitments are just that - Federal. If the Feds don't, or can't, send the money to the States to cover Federal commitments, the States aren't actually under any obligations to find money to pay for those Federal commitments.
That means when the federal government runs a deficit, all ogvernment levels will ultimately be paying taxes to deal with the fallout of that red ink on their budgets in subsequent years. There is no free lunch.
Nope. Feds can't pay their bills, they can't. Doesn't obligate the States to pay the Fed's bills.
My point: You will not have a choice. You once had that choice and you made that choice. You have been enjoying a dollar's worth of government for much less than a dollar for decades. That dollar's wortg of government was not "on sale". The bill for the difference - between what you got and what you paid for it - comes due.
Won't argue with that. But much of that "dollar's worth of government for much less than a dollar" has been at the Federal level. States aren't allowed to play those games, generally.
So, when the piper comes calling for his payment, the Feds will be raising taxes on everyone and everything to make up the differences. But the State governments won't be in that pickle - they have no deficit spending to make up, and the Feds can't really require the States to spend money (well, they DO do so now and then. But the Courts generally tell them to take a flying leap if the States don't want to play).
So, in ten or twenty years (I'm betting closer to ten than twenty, myself), the Feds are going to be in a serious crack. But the States will, in general, be fine.
Thing is, the federal debt in the USA has been spiralling so fast since 2000 that all of these "reports" and pointing to same as the portents of the Four Horsemen are going to go the way of the dodo in a dozen years or so - or less.
All very well and good.
But Mississippi isn't the Federal government, and Ms can tax whatever it likes without affecting the Federal deficit in the slightest.
Note, by the way, that Ms, like pretty much all the States (and unlike the Federal government), are required to balance their budgets.
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That's a slight exaggeration. I could hear them when I stood next to them.
Almost? Not quite. Every pump is sound-isolated from the hull.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
Some naval reactors can operate as natural convection reactors. Some not.
But even when you are using no pumps on the reactor, that doesn't mean you're not using any pumps - the MSW pumps are going to be running anyway, along with a host of smaller pumps.
And even ignoring the pumps, there's the steam generators - not as noisy as one might think, but by no means silent.
Nonetheless, in spite of all the noise that are inevitable in a nuke boat, it's possible to make them so quiet that they are effectively holes in the water. Not all nuke boats are so quiet, of course. But the new stuff? Listen for the direction where you don't even hear fish swimming, and that's where the boat is hiding....
Note, by the way, that a diesel boat can take advantage of all those technologies as well.
It's always possible. Nonetheless, "forty" as a euphemism for "an indefinite but large number" is still in use in the middle east. So I expect not.
This is about what I'd have expected - the New Orleans hit the Hartford.
The angle of impact suggests that the Hartford began a turn to avoid the collision at the last minute.
Unless, of course, a particular figure is traditionally used in conversation to represent a "large but indeterminate amount".
"A million" , or "millions" is frequently used this way in modern American English. As in, "there are a million reasons not to do that", which doesn't really mean that there are a million reasons, or even in the time zone of a million. Just that there are a hell of a lot....
Note that back in the Old Testament days, "forty" was used the same way - "it rained forty days and forty nights" meant (to a listener/reader back then) "it rained for a hell of a long time", and "they wandered in the desert for forty years" meant "they wandered around for a hell of a long time".
An LPD isn't all that big, really. It's also not "lumbering". It's what they call a "gator freighter" - it moves Marines around.
The sub had sensors that could see in front of them, if they were submerged. The Straits are too shallow for the tail.
What the books mandate is not really a subject to be bandied about in pubs. Suffice it to say that being run into (or running into someone) is very bad form, and to be avoided when possible.
Subs ALWAYS maintain stealth, unless they're surfaced. The only time a submerged submarine won't be "maintaining stealth" is if it is firing missiles/torpedoes, or running like hell from someone else's torpedoes fired at them.
The only thing a surface ship would be told is that there is a submarine operating (or not) in a given area of the ocean - not exactly where in that area.
And the areas in question aren't small.
New Orleans prolly knew that there were boats in the region of the Persian Gulf, but no more than that.
While it is true that a nuke boat is inherently noisier than a diesel boat, it should be pointed out that an Ohio class boat (and later LA class boats, for that matter) are quieter than background - you detect them by looking for places you don't hear normal aquatic noises like fish and such.
Note, of course, that this applies at low speeds. At higher speeds, they're noisier than background. But not all that much noisier unless you're running fast near the surface.
Both parties, actually. But the Sub will be held to a higher standard. Because the surface ship is expected to not see the boat.
30' below the surface isn't nearly far enough down to make the sub invisible, even at night. But, in general, we don't expect surface ships to see our subs unless they're snorkeling.
Two things:
New Orleans only has 40,000 HP engines.
The anechoic coating on a submarine makes it pretty hard to hear anything going on inside from the outside, and pretty hard to hear anything going on outside from the inside.
On the other hand, we usually expect the sonar guys to hear this sort of thing.
On the gripping hand, you won't be trailing your tail in the Straits of Hormuz, and aren't likely to hear something overhauling you until it gets really close. By which time dodging is impossible in restricted waters.
Probably. The real question in the business is who was overhauling, and who was being overhauled. There's no excuse for a sub bumping a diesel-powered LPD from behind. There's a lot more excuse for the boat being run over by the LPD in tight waters, which these were.
I should note that the last couple paragraphs of TFA were completely unnecessary, and serve no other purpose other than to contribute to anti-nuclear hysteria - the presence or absence of nuclear weapons had no effect on the collision between the French and Brit boats, and there was ZERO chance, even if both boats had been sunk by the collision (basically impossible unless both boats were running at flank speed, and damn unlikely even then), of any of the nuclear weapons on board being a "catastrophe narrowly averted".
Alas, an act of war is NOT treason. So, yes, it's fundamentally different.
Or not, since this wasn't actually about electronic voting machines, but about vote-buying.
Some people basically extorted money from candidates to buy votes.
They then handed the money (less their commission, presumably) to their flunkies in the precincts to buy the votes that were paid for.
The flunkies decided they'd rather keep ALL the money rather than just the commission, and lied to voters about how the machines worked (note that this could only work with really stupid voters - read the instructions on screen, and this won't be an issue), and changed a few votes themselves and pocketed the bribe money.
If there had been no electronic voting machines, things would have worked pretty much as they did, except that the flunkies in the precincts would have made less money on the deal, since they'd have had to pay for the votes the old-fashioned way.
Yes, it's popular to blame all the evils of democracy on electronic voting machines. Alas, a quick reading of history shows that people were subverting the vote long before electronic voting machines existed, and doing so far more often than is generally the case today.
Getting rid of the electronic voting machines won't stop vote fraud. It won't even slow it down. It might speed it up some, since the old-timers in the vote fraud community probably don't have the tech-savvy to actually do much with the possibilities inherent in electronic voting machines, but they do have a good working understanding of the tried and true techniques useful with paper ballots....
A couple of things:
I'm not a Republican. I'm one of those Libertarians you mentioned a while back.
We're not talking about "the Media". Looking in "the Media" is how I found out the guys in question were Democrats. "The Media" didn't hide the fact at all. What we're talking about is /.
Now, the problem may be that /. editors don't like story submissions that mention that Democrats are scoundrels. I have no evidence one way or another.
Or it may be that people who submit stories don't like to point out that the Democrats are scoundrels. Again, I have no evidence one way or another, since I never pay attention to who submitted a story.
Alternatively, it may be that Democrats are assumed to be scoundrels by default, and that it's only worth mentioning when a Republican is a scoundrel. Which is basically silly, since both Democrats and Republicans are scoundrels by default.
From the US Constitution, Article I, Section 5:
and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business
So, yes, there IS a minimum number.
Note that it's still possible to get a Treaty ratified with only 34 Senators approving it.
Alas, it doesn't really matter what /. is "full of". But it is true that the Party of a Republican in the news tends to be mentioned in the summary, while the Party of a Democrat in the news tends to be quietly ignored in the summary.
Note this case as an example. Nowhere does it mention that the people doing this were Democrats, though it wasn't terribly hard to determine.
Well, it took some googling, but it seems the five involved were Democrats. So it's probably pretty safe to assume the stolen votes were stolen from various Republican candidates and given to various Democrat candidates.
Though why anyone should care about the Party of someone running for the local School Board is beyond me (yes, one of the elections in question was for the local School Board).
Note, by the way, that what happened was good, old-fashioned, vote-buying. With a twist, in that the people actually handed the money to buy votes in the field decided to keep the money and just change a few votes themselves.
US Constitution, Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
Well, it's not levying war against the US.
It's not adhering to the enemies of the US.
And it doesn't actually give aid and comfort to the enemies of the US.
So, basically, that's how it's not treason.
Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
I trust you can demonstrate how this action fits, since you have declared that "treason is the proper definition"?
You are aware that Madoff didn't work for the government, correct? He was an old-fashioned private-citizen criminal....
Quite so.
But it should be pointed out that /. tends to mention the Party of a wrongdoer if the wrongdoer is Republican, and omit it if he's a Democrat.
Sorry, treason is explicitly defined in the Constitution. I doubt seriously the definition can be stretched to fit this.
Death Valley? A very sensitive desert ecosystem.
Bet on someone strongly opposing covering it with solar panels or solar thermal generators. And the associated access roads, repair sheds, power lines, whatnot.
Our "numerical system (including the concept of 'zero')" was pretty much a copy (by Muslim scholars) of the one in use in India.
Note, by the way, that much of what you attribute to "Arab scholars" was done by "Persian scholars". Call an Arab a Persian, or vice verse, and you'll have a blood feud going for the next 500 years. Try "Muslim scholars" for a nice, not controversial phrase.
You'd lose your bet. What changed was Tamerlane. You remember him, don't you? The guy who killed off all the educated people in Persia (and most of the non-educated ones too).
Hard to sustain a tradition of scholarship when anyone who can read has his head tossed onto a pile with all the other people who can read.
Not so much as you might think. Federal commitments are just that - Federal. If the Feds don't, or can't, send the money to the States to cover Federal commitments, the States aren't actually under any obligations to find money to pay for those Federal commitments.
Nope. Feds can't pay their bills, they can't. Doesn't obligate the States to pay the Fed's bills.
Won't argue with that. But much of that "dollar's worth of government for much less than a dollar" has been at the Federal level. States aren't allowed to play those games, generally.
So, when the piper comes calling for his payment, the Feds will be raising taxes on everyone and everything to make up the differences. But the State governments won't be in that pickle - they have no deficit spending to make up, and the Feds can't really require the States to spend money (well, they DO do so now and then. But the Courts generally tell them to take a flying leap if the States don't want to play).
So, in ten or twenty years (I'm betting closer to ten than twenty, myself), the Feds are going to be in a serious crack. But the States will, in general, be fine.
All very well and good.
But Mississippi isn't the Federal government, and Ms can tax whatever it likes without affecting the Federal deficit in the slightest.
Note, by the way, that Ms, like pretty much all the States (and unlike the Federal government), are required to balance their budgets.
I wish I lived in your world. Here in the Real World (tm), governments tax anything they can get away with taxing.
After all, if you have revenue, you'll find a way to spend it....
Either that, or most of our women are much too sensible to waste time in a field like CS.
In other words, just because you think a field is important, doesn't imply that everyone agrees with you.