Portland was covered in ash in 1980 when Mt St Helens went boom. Despite standard air filters and add-on jury-rigged filters (panty hose), many cars ended up with scored cylinders & pistons.
Cars take in a LOT less air than commercial aircraft piston engines.
The fine-grained, gritty ash caused substantial problems for internal-combustion engines and other mechanical and electrical equipment. The ash contaminated oil systems, clogged air filters, and scratched moving surfaces. Fine ash caused short circuits in electrical transformers, which in turn caused power blackouts. The sewage-disposal systems of several municipalities that received about half an inch or more of ash, such as Moses Lake and Yakima, Washington, were plagued by ash clogging and damage to pumps, filters, and other equipment.
Come on, this is Slashdot. Most people who haven't ever left their native area are oblivious to where other places are. You could ask most Americans where the border between Quebec and British Columbia is, and they'd point to some arbitrary place..
{snip}
Somewhere to the west of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick?
Put a reflector lens on an aerostat at 140,000' a la http://www.jpaerospace.com/ and add a control system to the laser so it first sends a pilot beam at low power. The pilot beam is reflected back, and when the returned pilot beam is detected, only then can the laser go to full power. If the pilot beam is lost, chop the power, and start seeking where the aerostat went.
Power required is much less, the laser's on the ground so all you have to loft is the reflector/diffuser lens assembly, and solar cells with batteries on the aerostat allow it to keep station. An exclusion zone is required for aircraft so you don't blind pilots, but exclusion zones are a well accepted concept and pilots understand that already.
You could also put Arduino-controlled drones with variable-geometry wings on the aerostat. Drop them when the alert is given; wings unfold at optimum altitude, which uncover Stuka-like sirens powered by airflow. Use solid-fuel turbofans to propel them so the drones will have a long 'shelf life' and can loiter for hours as needed, and add a parachute for soft landing, recovery and reuse. Might as well turn cruise missiles into something useful...
Such firmware is used already by most cellphone manufacturers. See Cell Broadcast in WIkipedia. It's a matter of will on the part of telecom agencies to require it and on the part of emergency authorities to implement it.
Cellphones *are* radio receivers. Instead, use the hardware better; require implementation of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast Cell Broadcast, which worked well for this purpose in the past:
Cell Broadcast messaging has a number of features that make it particularly appropriate for emergency purposes:
It is not as affected by traffic load; therefore, it may be usable during a disaster when load spikes tend to crash networks, as the 7 July 2005 London bombings showed. Another example was during the Tsunami catastrophe in Asia. Dialog GSM, an operator in Sri Lanka was able to provide ongoing emergency information to its subscribers, to warn of incoming waves, to give news updates, to direct people to supply and distribution centres, and even to arrange donation collections using Celltick's Cell Broadcast Center, based on Cell Broadcast Technology.
Cell broadcast is widely deployed since year 2008. In Europe, most handsets do have cell broadcast capability, and the major European operators have deployed the technology in their networks.
Cell Broadcast is a mobile technology that allows messages (up to 15 pages of up to 93 characters) to be broadcast to all mobile handsets and similar devices within a designated geographical area. The broadcast range can be varied, from a single cell to the entire network.
If former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, a former telecom exec, could not figure out his satphones needed to be charged to work in the days before Katrina, well, what are the odds you'd get satphones charged in the 3rd world?
The Hawaii wing of the Civil Air Patrol uses manually-piloted Cessna 172s for the same mission, but Cessnas and pilot training are both spendy, whereas Sky Pups can be locally produced with minimal tools.
EE, indeed. Car batteries are designed for the short duration, large load of a starter, not the steady drain needed to power a house. Car batteries won't last 1 year under those conditions.
This seems to contradict the available data for a 4MW plant. Perhaps you could provide your source for the capital cost of a 4MW pebble bed reactor, including the cost of permitting and regulation?
There's just a wee bit of difference between, at most, 5W of non-ionizing radiation transmitted by a mobile phone (which, at best, could transfer 50 millijoules to an IC), and the 50 Joules in a charged particle at near-relativistic speed. A cellular base station does transmit more effective radiated power but that's mostly due to the gain in the antenna array. Solution: Don't drive up the cellphone base station mast.
The Professor Irwin Corey of the Internet (Wikipedia) points to an article in Scientific American (2008-07-21), 'Solar Storms: Fast Facts' which declared "Studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month."
I won't compare Apples to Priuses directly, but three order of magnitude difference in energy between cosmic radiation and mobile phones should give a clue to the clueful.
Would you mind, horribly, assisting someone whose primary concern is the health of his g'father-in-law? How might I find out about getting Medicare to admit such a thing might be needed? Regret not in Washington (accustomed to finding Washington information and translating it to Orygun with our definately-not-standard state health care plan), but your advice would be appreciated.
My g'father-in-law had his installed by a Medicare-approved provider with no battery backup and no generator. Be happy to provide specifics on request via e-mail.
Is there a Medicare reg which requires a BBS or backup generator? Sure would like to know...
> Ordinary citizens don't get access to ANI
Well, why not? All you need is to buy a toll-free number service with same-day online billing detail, and every caller is shown with their true ANI data. Then, only give out the toll free number.
Yeah, spendy. So's privacy, these days.
> The problem isn't from Telcos. You can't spoof caller ID from a regular land line phone
Wrong. I can buy a card with 100 minutes of spoofing for my landline at the local Buy 'n Fly for $20.
Windmils ain't free; they need maintenance, and do break in unexpected ways.
The right kinda land ain't free, either; gotta survey, find sealable underground where there's wind, which is not a common combination.
And, the compression/decompression process loses about 80% of the original power.
However, this is needed; the federal Bonneville Power Administration revealed the surges in wind power nearly fried the NW portion of the Western Grid in 2008 by overload, in a report announced on KGW news last night. And, since http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/ shows wind is reliable 4% of the time, we have to store it somehow. But, it won't be cheap.
Let's do the math: Ask a biochemist or a physicist.
If you calculate the energy required to break a carbon-carbon molecular bond (348 kJ/mol) you can caluate the mininum frequency which can generate that energy, as > 600 THz. Your cellular antennas transmit between 0.8 and 1.99 GHz, nowhere close by over four orders of magnitude.
Now, sunlight is dangerous, but not a 20W transceiver 6' away. Police cars typically use higher power radios, and you don't see them kvetching about the risk.
If you are still concerned, put some aluminum window scren on the wall where the antennas are mounted, and stucco over the screen. http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/emf.html debunks the 'power lines cause leukemia' myth, BTW.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahem.
Portland was covered in ash in 1980 when Mt St Helens went boom. Despite standard air filters and add-on jury-rigged filters (panty hose), many cars ended up with scored cylinders & pistons.
Cars take in a LOT less air than commercial aircraft piston engines.
As per the US Geological Service http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Publications/MSHPPF/MSH_past_present_future.html :
The fine-grained, gritty ash caused substantial problems for internal-combustion engines and other mechanical and electrical equipment. The ash contaminated oil systems, clogged air filters, and scratched moving surfaces. Fine ash caused short circuits in electrical transformers, which in turn caused power blackouts. The sewage-disposal systems of several municipalities that received about half an inch or more of ash, such as Moses Lake and Yakima, Washington, were plagued by ash clogging and damage to pumps, filters, and other equipment.
Come on, this is Slashdot. Most people who haven't ever left their native area are oblivious to where other places are. You could ask most Americans where the border between Quebec and British Columbia is, and they'd point to some arbitrary place..
{snip}
Somewhere to the west of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick?
Bull.
The USCG uses C-130Hs http://www.alea.org/photogallery/gallery.asp?rid=165&gid=209 which are turboprop-powered. That's a jet engine attached to a gearbox which runs the propellors.
They also use HH-60H and HH-65 helicopters, also jet engine powered. http://www.uscg.mil/d17/airstasitka/Mission.asp
Mod parent down for inaccuracy, mayhaps?
Jerry Pournelle's been beating that drum for years.
Put a reflector lens on an aerostat at 140,000' a la http://www.jpaerospace.com/ and add a control system to the laser so it first sends a pilot beam at low power. The pilot beam is reflected back, and when the returned pilot beam is detected, only then can the laser go to full power. If the pilot beam is lost, chop the power, and start seeking where the aerostat went.
Power required is much less, the laser's on the ground so all you have to loft is the reflector/diffuser lens assembly, and solar cells with batteries on the aerostat allow it to keep station. An exclusion zone is required for aircraft so you don't blind pilots, but exclusion zones are a well accepted concept and pilots understand that already.
You could also put Arduino-controlled drones with variable-geometry wings on the aerostat. Drop them when the alert is given; wings unfold at optimum altitude, which uncover Stuka-like sirens powered by airflow. Use solid-fuel turbofans to propel them so the drones will have a long 'shelf life' and can loiter for hours as needed, and add a parachute for soft landing, recovery and reuse. Might as well turn cruise missiles into something useful...
Such firmware is used already by most cellphone manufacturers. See Cell Broadcast in WIkipedia. It's a matter of will on the part of telecom agencies to require it and on the part of emergency authorities to implement it.
Cell Broadcast messaging has a number of features that make it particularly appropriate for emergency purposes:
It is not as affected by traffic load; therefore, it may be usable during a disaster when load spikes tend to crash networks, as the 7 July 2005 London bombings showed. Another example was during the Tsunami catastrophe in Asia. Dialog GSM, an operator in Sri Lanka was able to provide ongoing emergency information to its subscribers, to warn of incoming waves, to give news updates, to direct people to supply and distribution centres, and even to arrange donation collections using Celltick's Cell Broadcast Center, based on Cell Broadcast Technology.
Cell broadcast is widely deployed since year 2008. In Europe, most handsets do have cell broadcast capability, and the major European operators have deployed the technology in their networks.
Cell Broadcast is a mobile technology that allows messages (up to 15 pages of up to 93 characters) to be broadcast to all mobile handsets and similar devices within a designated geographical area. The broadcast range can be varied, from a single cell to the entire network.
If former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, a former telecom exec, could not figure out his satphones needed to be charged to work in the days before Katrina, well, what are the odds you'd get satphones charged in the 3rd world?
Instead, until http://www.jpaerospace.com/ perfects the aerostat station, build a series of Sky Pup-based http://skypup.wikispaces.com/ really cheap drones with Arduino-type autopilots http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844:BlogPost:35640 and huge honkin' loudspeakers.
The Hawaii wing of the Civil Air Patrol uses manually-piloted Cessna 172s for the same mission, but Cessnas and pilot training are both spendy, whereas Sky Pups can be locally produced with minimal tools.
EE, indeed. Car batteries are designed for the short duration, large load of a starter, not the steady drain needed to power a house. Car batteries won't last 1 year under those conditions.
This seems to contradict the available data for a 4MW plant. Perhaps you could provide your source for the capital cost of a 4MW pebble bed reactor, including the cost of permitting and regulation?
80% ? Got a citation for that, or did you just pull it....
There's just a wee bit of difference between, at most, 5W of non-ionizing radiation transmitted by a mobile phone (which, at best, could transfer 50 millijoules to an IC), and the 50 Joules in a charged particle at near-relativistic speed. A cellular base station does transmit more effective radiated power but that's mostly due to the gain in the antenna array. Solution: Don't drive up the cellphone base station mast.
The Professor Irwin Corey of the Internet (Wikipedia) points to an article in Scientific American (2008-07-21), 'Solar Storms: Fast Facts' which declared "Studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month."
I won't compare Apples to Priuses directly, but three order of magnitude difference in energy between cosmic radiation and mobile phones should give a clue to the clueful.
Wasn't this press release dated 2010-04-01 ?
Switzerland will have the bomb 30 seconds after their check to Pakistan clears, any time they decide they want one.
If?
Would you mind, horribly, assisting someone whose primary concern is the health of his g'father-in-law? How might I find out about getting Medicare to admit such a thing might be needed? Regret not in Washington (accustomed to finding Washington information and translating it to Orygun with our definately-not-standard state health care plan), but your advice would be appreciated.
My g'father-in-law had his installed by a Medicare-approved provider with no battery backup and no generator. Be happy to provide specifics on request via e-mail. Is there a Medicare reg which requires a BBS or backup generator? Sure would like to know...
> Ordinary citizens don't get access to ANI Well, why not? All you need is to buy a toll-free number service with same-day online billing detail, and every caller is shown with their true ANI data. Then, only give out the toll free number. Yeah, spendy. So's privacy, these days.
> The problem isn't from Telcos. You can't spoof caller ID from a regular land line phone Wrong. I can buy a card with 100 minutes of spoofing for my landline at the local Buy 'n Fly for $20.
Windmils ain't free; they need maintenance, and do break in unexpected ways. The right kinda land ain't free, either; gotta survey, find sealable underground where there's wind, which is not a common combination. And, the compression/decompression process loses about 80% of the original power. However, this is needed; the federal Bonneville Power Administration revealed the surges in wind power nearly fried the NW portion of the Western Grid in 2008 by overload, in a report announced on KGW news last night. And, since http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/ shows wind is reliable 4% of the time, we have to store it somehow. But, it won't be cheap.
Test didn't include the Nokia E90, far and away the best keyboard of any smartphone (6 rows).
How do you flush the tube and recoat it with fuel? Look at the Fiesler F1, better known as the V-1, and its tres-simple pulsejet engine.
Steve Gibson can get it done for you. http://www.grc.com/
Not me; I have my own interwebs on 160m - 70cm with e-mail gateways. It's called ham radio.
Let's do the math: Ask a biochemist or a physicist.
If you calculate the energy required to break a carbon-carbon molecular bond (348 kJ/mol) you can caluate the mininum frequency which can generate that energy, as > 600 THz. Your cellular antennas transmit between 0.8 and 1.99 GHz, nowhere close by over four orders of magnitude.
Now, sunlight is dangerous, but not a 20W transceiver 6' away. Police cars typically use higher power radios, and you don't see them kvetching about the risk.
If you are still concerned, put some aluminum window scren on the wall where the antennas are mounted, and stucco over the screen.
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/emf.html debunks the 'power lines cause leukemia' myth, BTW.