If they can pull this off it should be a good indication of how well building things on mars will work. In order to have any long-term mission being able to pre-build things is crucial.
I did read the article. Only the hybrid turbofan/PDE engines would work at any speed.
For the pure PDEs, even if the minimal speed is something like 30kts, there still has to be some way to get the aircraft up to the minimal speed before the PDEs start providing thrust. I was saying that it would make sense to use that same source of power to get airborn and away from the airport before engaging the noisy PDEs to go supersonic. Even if the aircraft is not going to be supersonic and instead is using the PDEs to conserve fuel it would be prudent to get to a higher altitude before turning them on to avoid blasting the people who work in and around airports with even more noise than they have now.
I assume you read the article as well, and saw the part about the guy joking about how he felt after running the PDE for an hour. He was in a protective enclosure, think about what that noise would do to airport workers. Heck, what about the passengers on the flights?
From what I understand of the article, this is using hydrogen as a fuel, not exactly practical. I would think even a very wll vaporized liquid fuel would present a very large problem for this technology. Gasses are just not compact enough to be used as general fuels.
I say that that this technology is a few decades off from real use, unless amazing jumps foward in using liquid fuels occur or somebody miraculously develops both a space-efficent way to store hydrogen and a cheap way to produce it.
They keep talking about how noisy it is, why would that matter if you are going supersonic above the ocean? You'd have to use some other sort of engine to take off and land, wouldn't you? My understanding is that this technology does not function below a certain airspeed.
"all the other generators tripped offline as the outage cascaded (whatever that means)."
What happens in a cascade power outage is something that isn't supposed to happen happens, a switch opens for example.
Let's say three power lines run power to a place from power stations, and they are all at 75% capacity. One turns off for some random reason. Now the other two lines are running at 112% capacity. To keep those lines from melting down, they turn off. Now, there is a crudload of power being generated with nowhere to go, so to keep the generators from getting screwed up, they trip their breakers and shut down. That puts more load onto the working circuits and generators. The working circuits become overloaded with the additional demand placed on them, and their breakers trip to prevent Very Bad Things (tm) from happening. When those trip, their generators trip, shut down, and the load transfers to yet more lines, which trip their breakers... cascade.
Very bad idea.
MS would crank up the FUD machine and say "Look, you can be sued at any time by anybody who contributed to linux!"
I would think it would be a better idea to re-release everything under a new license instead of hiring a pack of lawyers.
These bombs aren't being designed because people like to live next to military outposts. People don't wander into potential bomb sites to look at the big guns...
What does happen is that certain militaries will deploy their equipment where the most collateral damage will be caused. The civilians are being used. When they die the occupying power can come on TV and rant about the US "murdering innocent civilians". Never mind that they stuck an AAA battery in a residential neighborhood, that's not important.
I think these bombs are a good curiosity to have but would be too expensive for general use. I hope that these bombs will make a commander think twice about using civilians as a shield. Unfortunately I think the effect will be the opposite, and military installations will get even more integrated with the populace for defense. Sometimes cause and effect really sucks...
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If they can pull this off it should be a good indication of how well building things on mars will work. In order to have any long-term mission being able to pre-build things is crucial.
I did read the article. Only the hybrid turbofan/PDE engines would work at any speed.
For the pure PDEs, even if the minimal speed is something like 30kts, there still has to be some way to get the aircraft up to the minimal speed before the PDEs start providing thrust. I was saying that it would make sense to use that same source of power to get airborn and away from the airport before engaging the noisy PDEs to go supersonic. Even if the aircraft is not going to be supersonic and instead is using the PDEs to conserve fuel it would be prudent to get to a higher altitude before turning them on to avoid blasting the people who work in and around airports with even more noise than they have now.
I assume you read the article as well, and saw the part about the guy joking about how he felt after running the PDE for an hour. He was in a protective enclosure, think about what that noise would do to airport workers. Heck, what about the passengers on the flights?
From what I understand of the article, this is using hydrogen as a fuel, not exactly practical. I would think even a very wll vaporized liquid fuel would present a very large problem for this technology. Gasses are just not compact enough to be used as general fuels.
I say that that this technology is a few decades off from real use, unless amazing jumps foward in using liquid fuels occur or somebody miraculously develops both a space-efficent way to store hydrogen and a cheap way to produce it.
They keep talking about how noisy it is, why would that matter if you are going supersonic above the ocean? You'd have to use some other sort of engine to take off and land, wouldn't you? My understanding is that this technology does not function below a certain airspeed.
"all the other generators tripped offline as the outage cascaded (whatever that means)."
What happens in a cascade power outage is something that isn't supposed to happen happens, a switch opens for example.
Let's say three power lines run power to a place from power stations, and they are all at 75% capacity. One turns off for some random reason. Now the other two lines are running at 112% capacity. To keep those lines from melting down, they turn off. Now, there is a crudload of power being generated with nowhere to go, so to keep the generators from getting screwed up, they trip their breakers and shut down. That puts more load onto the working circuits and generators. The working circuits become overloaded with the additional demand placed on them, and their breakers trip to prevent Very Bad Things (tm) from happening. When those trip, their generators trip, shut down, and the load transfers to yet more lines, which trip their breakers... cascade.
At least that's my understanding.
Very bad idea. MS would crank up the FUD machine and say "Look, you can be sued at any time by anybody who contributed to linux!" I would think it would be a better idea to re-release everything under a new license instead of hiring a pack of lawyers.
These bombs aren't being designed because people like to live next to military outposts. People don't wander into potential bomb sites to look at the big guns...
What does happen is that certain militaries will deploy their equipment where the most collateral damage will be caused. The civilians are being used. When they die the occupying power can come on TV and rant about the US "murdering innocent civilians". Never mind that they stuck an AAA battery in a residential neighborhood, that's not important.
I think these bombs are a good curiosity to have but would be too expensive for general use. I hope that these bombs will make a commander think twice about using civilians as a shield. Unfortunately I think the effect will be the opposite, and military installations will get even more integrated with the populace for defense. Sometimes cause and effect really sucks...