A lot of people in the defense analysis industry don't put a lot of stock into Gerald Bull being killed because of Iraq's super gun program under Saddam H. The thing about Gerald Bull being killed by the Mossad is that he was also helping with the lesser known Iraqi orbital rocket program. The thing about a super gun project is that it is relatively difficult to conceal a very large cannon being constructed that just so happens to aim at Israel. Israel's air force had already successfully executed a precision bombing attack inside Iraq that destroyed a nuclear facility, so doing another such attack was relatively simple for them in the early 1990's. An ICBM or even an IRBM project would be something that they couldn't easily target (like the vintage Scud missiles) since they are easier to hide than a 1000 meter pipe several feet wide angled up at the sky.
In WWII, Nazi Germany was trying to construct a super gun aimed at England. The Allies didn't know what all the construction was about, but they chose to bomb the large construction site, eventually destroying the cannon before it could be finished.
I am not a Nuclear Physicist, but I think you can use a combination of Thorium and Pu239 to kind of breed a high-heat generating isotope U-233 which might work for a Radioisotope Thermal Generator.
Again, I am not a nuclear physicist, and I think that research in thorium power still has a ways to go.
With the reduced lunar gravity, will big jumps be possible?
MTHEL already tested against multiple mortars
on
Truck-Mounted Laser Guns
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The Laser in the article is a development of the MTHEL project. The purpose of MTHEL is to defend positions against incoming rockets and mortars. One of the test videos actually shows the MTHEL hitting 3 different mortar rounds launched from 3 different positions all traveling through the air at the same time.
Not just IT projects, If I recall my project management class at Harvard, more than 50% of all business projects fail to meet all deliverables on time, or on cost. It turns out most of the projects that fail are due to some sort of "because the higher executives said to do this". Few people who make the really top decisions in any large project are willing to make the tough choices when the project team tells them that the project will suffer due to a lack of resources, or is behind schedule.
From what I have read about this find, there are probably no cells that haven't been destroyed from the freezing process that would help produce a clone of the animal, there is always hope that some may still be intact.
Octane rating really doesn't have a bearing on how much energy is in a gallon of fuel. Octane rating only describes how controlled a burn you can get from the fuel without nasty detonation and knock inside your motor.
Unleaded Gas Mid grade has around 125,000 BTU per gallon 89 Octane rating.
Ethanol is roughly 76,000 BTU per gallon but has 113 Octane rating
Diesel has roughly 126,000 (biodiesel) 139,000 (petroleum diesel) BTU per gallon but has octane rating of approx 15-25
Fermentation, then distillation takes a lot of time and energy to make alcohol type fuel that does not have as much energy per gallon as gasoline.
We are much better off following through with the research to convert fructose to 2,5 Dimethylfuran which is a totally chemical process which can be run as a production without waiting for microbes to ferment something to 5% concentration, then distilling to 90%, then using some other drying process to get to 99%
I hope that this technology works well outside the laboratory. I mean, the real test is to see if a mass produced product that holds up in real climates for long periods of time.
The typical solar electric system price around the Northeast region of the US costs over $10000.00 If a system producing the same power can be bought for 10% of that and lasts over 5 years, It will definately be worth the investment.
I wonder if we will get higher speeds on copper or maybe just cheaper fiber interface cards. Fiber optic networking technology has always been fast, but I guess due to production quantities, it never seems to be as cheap to implement even in a Data center environment. I wonder if we will ever get to see fiber optic network interfaces that are close in price to the copper ones.
We run multiple cat6 cables as trunk links between our switches just because there are more ports to do so and it is cheaper to do those runs.
I am not a physicist nor am I an engineer, but I think this is called a non-newtonian fluid.
If it is, that is pretty cool. I remember trying to figure a use for fluids with this kind of property.
you can experiment with non-newtonian fluids at home by taking a small amount of water, say a glass full, and adding lots and lots of cornstarch. When you have added enough, the fluid will flow slowly, but when you hit it with a spoon, it will be rigid.
I am not an aerospace engineer, and I don't know how much thrust one would need to get airborne on a glider like that, but there are small piston driven ducted fan engines that currently run hi-powered radio controlled aircraft to over 100Mph. These model aircraft are designed to look like minature fighter jets.
I am a friend of racing engine builder Gregg Hekimian at http://www.hekimianracing.com/ and he has built single cylinder lawnmower engines that can go over 50 Mph carrying a 300lb man running on 93 octane gasoline for a strange sport called lawnmower racing here in the southern USA. The cost of the engine was about $1000.00 US
Again, not an engineer, but it seems to reason that it is possible to build a small lightweight engine that can generate the thrust necessary to keep the aircraft and pilot aloft for a while at modest speeds.
I am a Windows Systems Admin. Honestly, before everyone jumps on me because I work with Microsoft product, I view it as a way to finance the things I do outside of work.
Right now, without the job that I do (which involves lots of paperwork), I would not be able to pay for my night schooling that I take in order to get my Bachelors. In the future, when the school stuff is done, I feel that I will have more skills, more free time, and more money to challenge myself in other ways, like learning another OS.
If your pay is good, and you still have time that you feel is not being put to good use, you can find other ways to grow in your chosen field.
I bought my current Canon EOS3 with powergrip for $400.00 USD used a year or so ago, and I still get a kick out of the high quality pictures at ASA-100 or slower film. I can do sports-action shots at 6 frames/second, and take multi-hour exposures for astronomy stuff.
Ditching this for a digital SLR of similar photo quality would cost me close to an order of magnitude more than I paid, and it would be superceded by the next newest model in about 2 years.
I agree that AD integration is important, but as an administrator, I still think Exchange is not the easiest thing in the world to live with. Backups and Restores are still pretty labor intensive without 3d party tools, centralized managed archiving is not possible without expensive 3d party tools as well, which makes leagal compliance tough sometimes.
First off, I am not a high energy physics person and I haven't looked into this too much, but from what I have read
The start up power demand for this thing could be big. Separating Dueterium from the other isotopes of Hydrogen, heating things to 100 million degrees C, and the magnetic containment fields required for this research could use a lot of power in the years before it becomes a viable reality, assuming that they get practical fusion power.
The thing about nuclear fission power that no one seems to like to hear is, that it is going to be costly.
Thorium Fuel is a very promising nuclear fission fuel with very little long lived waste elements, and Sub-critical reactor designs are possible with Thorium (requires electrical power to actually make the reaction run) that cannot sustain a nuclear reaction when power is shut off. These are called Accelerator driven systems. They would be very safe, leave little waste, but they would not supply huge Gigawatts of cheap power that people seem to want. If people are willing to pay more for the electricity bill, it can be done with technology available now.
U235 is a finite resource and we have probably enough in the USA to keep us supplied for our lifetimes, but I think different nuclear fuel and fuel cycles are needed for nuke power to be an effective and safe system.
Thorium Fuel would cut out most of the Nasty Waste products, and it has been used on an experimental basis, but more work needs to be done check out www.thoriumpower.com
Argonne National Labs had the EBR II reactor for processing waste but it was shut down after proving that it could process waste in decent quantity.
Accelerator Driven Systems are a nice idea, but again, more research is needed.
What must happen for Nuke power to be an alternative here in the US is a focus on not what is cheap, but what is safe and clean long term. That is the main strategic issue.
I have used their "super street" octane boost product with very positive results in different cars of all types including a Nissan Maxima sedan without any real problems.
I was driving along on a highway on a Sunday morning when my main ABS unit with all the actuators, solenoids, and such blew a seal. Since it ties to all the brake lines, there was a sudden complete loss in brake pressure. I was stuck with a car going 55mph and a brake pedal that sank straight to the floor. Having an automatic, it wasn't easy for me immediately downshift, but I got it and was able to slow down enough to use the cable-actuated parking brake to come to a stop. Needless to say, the drive to the garage was a slow one.
No offense intended to the people of the article, but some of that waste (if we are talking used fuel elements) still contains Uranium and Plutonium which has a half life of 10^8 years. While I am pretty sure I won't live to see that, It still is a pretty messy thing to deal with.
One thing that this sort of storage technology is good for is for the short lived stuff with half lives in the hundreds of years.
My humble opinion is that this technology is used after the really long lived nasty stuff is separated and destroyed (neutron bombardment looks promising). There was an Argone National Labs Experimental Sodium reactor that in "proof of concept" separated all the uranium from spent fuel (electro refining)but the program was cancelled due to budget cuts.
Believe it or not, there is technology being researched to destroy radioactive waste products with accelerators that actually looks like it may work.
Not trying to be an overall pessimist, but one of the most difficult parts of being the president is that having a very partisan congress makes any proposed "good idea" from anyone a big target. I would really like to see legislation for Industrial Hemp, Biodiesel, and many other non-fossil fuels take root as an energy policy, but special interest lobbying groups would make passing any major changes through the legislative branch almost impossible.
Alternative Reactor Technology could be cool
on
Port-A-Nuke
·
· Score: 1
I keep wondering if anyone is working on the Accelerator driven Subcritical reactor. I mean it would be darn cool just to be able to have a nuclear fuel that couldn't sustain a reaction on its own (needs particle accelerator to make reaction work), uses a fuel that could not be used to make weaponry (Thorium I think), and doesn't leave long-life nasty waste to dispose of.
I guess for nuclear technology in the US, that profit motives are stronger than any others.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of people in the defense analysis industry don't put a lot of stock into Gerald Bull being killed because of Iraq's super gun program under Saddam H. The thing about Gerald Bull being killed by the Mossad is that he was also helping with the lesser known Iraqi orbital rocket program. The thing about a super gun project is that it is relatively difficult to conceal a very large cannon being constructed that just so happens to aim at Israel. Israel's air force had already successfully executed a precision bombing attack inside Iraq that destroyed a nuclear facility, so doing another such attack was relatively simple for them in the early 1990's. An ICBM or even an IRBM project would be something that they couldn't easily target (like the vintage Scud missiles) since they are easier to hide than a 1000 meter pipe several feet wide angled up at the sky.
In WWII, Nazi Germany was trying to construct a super gun aimed at England. The Allies didn't know what all the construction was about, but they chose to bomb the large construction site, eventually destroying the cannon before it could be finished.
I am not a Nuclear Physicist, but I think you can use a combination of Thorium and Pu239 to kind of breed a high-heat generating isotope U-233 which might work for a Radioisotope Thermal Generator.
Again, I am not a nuclear physicist, and I think that research in thorium power still has a ways to go.
With the reduced lunar gravity, will big jumps be possible?
The Laser in the article is a development of the MTHEL project. The purpose of MTHEL is to defend positions against incoming rockets and mortars. One of the test videos actually shows the MTHEL hitting 3 different mortar rounds launched from 3 different positions all traveling through the air at the same time.
Not just IT projects, If I recall my project management class at Harvard, more than 50% of all business projects fail to meet all deliverables on time, or on cost. It turns out most of the projects that fail are due to some sort of "because the higher executives said to do this". Few people who make the really top decisions in any large project are willing to make the tough choices when the project team tells them that the project will suffer due to a lack of resources, or is behind schedule.
From what I have read about this find, there are probably no cells that haven't been destroyed from the freezing process that would help produce a clone of the animal, there is always hope that some may still be intact.
76,000 for ethanol is more than 125,000 for gasoline ?
Octane rating really doesn't have a bearing on how much energy is in a gallon of fuel. Octane rating only describes how controlled a burn you can get from the fuel without nasty detonation and knock inside your motor.
Unleaded Gas Mid grade has around 125,000 BTU per gallon 89 Octane rating.
Ethanol is roughly 76,000 BTU per gallon but has 113 Octane rating
Diesel has roughly 126,000 (biodiesel) 139,000 (petroleum diesel) BTU per gallon but has octane rating of approx 15-25
Fermentation, then distillation takes a lot of time and energy to make alcohol type fuel that does not have as much energy per gallon as gasoline.
We are much better off following through with the research to convert fructose to 2,5 Dimethylfuran which is a totally chemical process which can be run as a production without waiting for microbes to ferment something to 5% concentration, then distilling to 90%, then using some other drying process to get to 99%
DMF also has more energy per gallon than ethanol
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/7204
I hope that this technology works well outside the laboratory. I mean, the real test is to see if a mass produced product that holds up in real climates for long periods of time.
The typical solar electric system price around the Northeast region of the US costs over $10000.00 If a system producing the same power can be bought for 10% of that and lasts over 5 years, It will definately be worth the investment.
I wonder if we will get higher speeds on copper or maybe just cheaper fiber interface cards. Fiber optic networking technology has always been fast, but I guess due to production quantities, it never seems to be as cheap to implement even in a Data center environment. I wonder if we will ever get to see fiber optic network interfaces that are close in price to the copper ones.
We run multiple cat6 cables as trunk links between our switches just because there are more ports to do so and it is cheaper to do those runs.
I am not a physicist nor am I an engineer, but I think this is called a non-newtonian fluid.
If it is, that is pretty cool. I remember trying to figure a use for fluids with this kind of property.
you can experiment with non-newtonian fluids at home by taking a small amount of water, say a glass full, and adding lots and lots of cornstarch. When you have added enough, the fluid will flow slowly, but when you hit it with a spoon, it will be rigid.
I am not an aerospace engineer, and I don't know how much thrust one would need to get airborne on a glider like that, but there are small piston driven ducted fan engines that currently run hi-powered radio controlled aircraft to over 100Mph. These model aircraft are designed to look like minature fighter jets.
I am a friend of racing engine builder Gregg Hekimian at http://www.hekimianracing.com/ and he has built single cylinder lawnmower engines that can go over 50 Mph carrying a 300lb man running on 93 octane gasoline for a strange sport called lawnmower racing here in the southern USA. The cost of the engine was about $1000.00 US
Again, not an engineer, but it seems to reason that it is possible to build a small lightweight engine that can generate the thrust necessary to keep the aircraft and pilot aloft for a while at modest speeds.
I am a Windows Systems Admin. Honestly, before everyone jumps on me because I work with Microsoft product, I view it as a way to finance the things I do outside of work.
Right now, without the job that I do (which involves lots of paperwork), I would not be able to pay for my night schooling that I take in order to get my Bachelors. In the future, when the school stuff is done, I feel that I will have more skills, more free time, and more money to challenge myself in other ways, like learning another OS.
If your pay is good, and you still have time that you feel is not being put to good use, you can find other ways to grow in your chosen field.
I agree,
I bought my current Canon EOS3 with powergrip for $400.00 USD used a year or so ago, and I still get a kick out of the high quality pictures at ASA-100 or slower film. I can do sports-action shots at 6 frames/second, and take multi-hour exposures for astronomy stuff.
Ditching this for a digital SLR of similar photo quality would cost me close to an order of magnitude more than I paid, and it would be superceded by the next newest model in about 2 years.
I agree that AD integration is important, but as an administrator, I still think Exchange is not the easiest thing in the world to live with. Backups and Restores are still pretty labor intensive without 3d party tools, centralized managed archiving is not possible without expensive 3d party tools as well, which makes leagal compliance tough sometimes.
First off, I am not a high energy physics person and I haven't looked into this too much, but from what I have read
0 7/1635251&tid=126&tid=14 to produce tritium as a fuel source would be a better fuel for fusion.
The start up power demand for this thing could be big. Separating Dueterium from the other isotopes of Hydrogen, heating things to 100 million degrees C, and the magnetic containment fields required for this research could use a lot of power in the years before it becomes a viable reality, assuming that they get practical fusion power.
I thought using neutrons from some idea like this one http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/
The thing about nuclear fission power that no one seems to like to hear is, that it is going to be costly.
Thorium Fuel is a very promising nuclear fission fuel with very little long lived waste elements, and Sub-critical reactor designs are possible with Thorium (requires electrical power to actually make the reaction run) that cannot sustain a nuclear reaction when power is shut off. These are called Accelerator driven systems. They would be very safe, leave little waste, but they would not supply huge Gigawatts of cheap power that people seem to want. If people are willing to pay more for the electricity bill, it can be done with technology available now.
Its a giant battle station
U235 is a finite resource and we have probably enough in the USA to keep us supplied for our lifetimes, but I think different nuclear fuel and fuel cycles are needed for nuke power to be an effective and safe system.
Thorium Fuel would cut out most of the Nasty Waste products, and it has been used on an experimental basis, but more work needs to be done check out www.thoriumpower.com
Argonne National Labs had the EBR II reactor for processing waste but it was shut down after proving that it could process waste in decent quantity.
Accelerator Driven Systems are a nice idea, but again, more research is needed.
What must happen for Nuke power to be an alternative here in the US is a focus on not what is cheap, but what is safe and clean long term. That is the main strategic issue.
check out www.pricechemical.com
I have used their "super street" octane boost product with very positive results in different cars of all types including a Nissan Maxima sedan without any real problems.
Just don't exceed manufactureres guidlines.
I was driving along on a highway on a Sunday morning when my main ABS unit with all the actuators, solenoids, and such blew a seal. Since it ties to all the brake lines, there was a sudden complete loss in brake pressure. I was stuck with a car going 55mph and a brake pedal that sank straight to the floor. Having an automatic, it wasn't easy for me immediately downshift, but I got it and was able to slow down enough to use the cable-actuated parking brake to come to a stop. Needless to say, the drive to the garage was a slow one.
No offense intended to the people of the article, but some of that waste (if we are talking used fuel elements) still contains Uranium and Plutonium which has a half life of 10^8 years. While I am pretty sure I won't live to see that, It still is a pretty messy thing to deal with.
One thing that this sort of storage technology is good for is for the short lived stuff with half lives in the hundreds of years.
My humble opinion is that this technology is used after the really long lived nasty stuff is separated and destroyed (neutron bombardment looks promising). There was an Argone National Labs Experimental Sodium reactor that in "proof of concept" separated all the uranium from spent fuel (electro refining)but the program was cancelled due to budget cuts.
Believe it or not, there is technology being researched to destroy radioactive waste products with accelerators that actually looks like it may work.
Not trying to be an overall pessimist, but one of the most difficult parts of being the president is that having a very partisan congress makes any proposed "good idea" from anyone a big target. I would really like to see legislation for Industrial Hemp, Biodiesel, and many other non-fossil fuels take root as an energy policy, but special interest lobbying groups would make passing any major changes through the legislative branch almost impossible.
I keep wondering if anyone is working on the Accelerator driven Subcritical reactor. I mean it would be darn cool just to be able to have a nuclear fuel that couldn't sustain a reaction on its own (needs particle accelerator to make reaction work), uses a fuel that could not be used to make weaponry (Thorium I think), and doesn't leave long-life nasty waste to dispose of.
I guess for nuclear technology in the US, that profit motives are stronger than any others.