I'm getting sick and tired of all these damn misconceptions that Neutron/Enhanced Radiation bombs just kill people and leave buildings standing, ready for utilization by an occupying force.
GET THE $^@%$W%%^. FACTS STRAIGHT!
Neutron Bombs were researched and created as enhanced kill and area denial weapons, to use tactically against the advance of Warsaw / CommBLock Armoured columns in the anticipated invasion of Western Europe. The only to date fielded Neutron weapon is the W-70 Warhead for use in air-dropped tactical nuclear bomb (B-61)
With the specific design to roast russians through the armour of their tanks, and make a large section of real-estate too radioactively hot to cross.
These weapons do not just go *pop* like a toy, IT STILL YIELDS 20+ KILOTONS, UP TO 170kt, which is 10x greater than the Hiroshima Bomb.
ALRIGHT?! OKAY? Drop A neutron bomb and you still flatten the surroundings, and you make it unliveable for a good amount of time!!! GRRR.
(Makes you wonder about US doctrine in using these things in friendly German territory. If the Cold war had ever become hot)
You want to see uncontained plasma, that is 3 to 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun?
Go watch lightning. Each bolt is a rod of air heated to the point of incandescence and packing a temperature between 15-30,000 degrees celsius.
It's very short lived, as soon as the current is gone, it radiates out of existance, dumping its energy into the surrounding air, with a big BOOM
that we call thunder.
(which also makes me wonder about the likelihood of that Sci-Fi small arms staple, the plasma rifle. Wouldn't the plasma bolts dissolute a few meters from the barrel as they dump their energy to the air, with a big BOOM? And hell you only need simple magnetic shielding to bounce them off)
At anyrate a worst case containment failure would just level the building. Not even that. Without the magnetic fields the plasma would stop fusioning, quickly expand and loose temperature rapidly, as someone else mentioned, the reactor walls would probably soak up most of the heat, as the loose post fusion plasma would pack only a fraction of the heat output that fusing plasma would give you.
There are many ways to make energy off a tokamak type fusion reactor. Running a working medium through the reactor walls to heat up, and then carry it through a high pressure turbine hooked up to a generator. If this was the case, this system would easily suck up the heat produced by uncontained plasma in a failure mode.
At worst case if the plasma squirted out of the field suddenly and burned through the hull, contacting this working medium, maybe water or molten sodium, you'd probably get a big boom and a steam explosion. Trash the reactor building, but not much else.
This Soyuz TM-26 is one in a long line of Soyuz
capsules starting with Soyuz 1.
Soyuz 1, had a number of problems, the most prominent, was having the drouge, primary and secondary parachutes all fail, sending the descent
capsule into the steppes, Cosmonaut aboard, at a speed, probably around 450-500mph.
http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/flights/soy uz1.htm PICTURES!
There are alot of disimilar comparisons here, that's one of the first mistakes people make when they try and compare Russian equipment and mindset to western equipment and mindset.
The leaking shuttle: Yes, the U.S. Shuttle leaks air at a fairly high rate, especially when compared to the Saylut/MIR/Zvezda design, or even most other manned spacecraft. If you had any engineering background, you'd realize that the cylinder hull structure of Saylut/MIR/Zvezda, is optimum for building a _strong, air-fast hull_ that is light. The U.S. Shuttle's pressure hull is more akin to a rhombus, much more complex, and if you wanted to add a few more tonnes of reinforcing material to it, you could have it just as airtight as MIR or Zvezda. Of course, it's much more wisely spent saving on that weight, and using it for more payload capacity, and a little more canned air.
Soyuz vehicles, being cheaper. Well, yes they are, but a Shuttle can be reused. A shuttle could _Carry_ a Soyuz in it's entirity in it's payload bay.
A shuttle can ferry about 21,000kg of junk. Or about the weight of three loaded Soyuz TMs. Shutt;es have an orbital duration of about 1 month at maximum, and the airframe lifespan... well we're still using them, you figure it out.
A soyuz, can ferry about.. well 600kg of junk crew of three included, in it's tiny 9cubic meter of inhabitable space cabin. And stay independent on it's own in orbit for about 14 days. And it is single use.
Comparing these vehicles is pointless.
Oh GOd, the Russians bought a SPARCstation off the shelf for their station, vs our 386s. A sick truth: It dosent really matter. A PDP-12 could do the job. The original fit for the space shuttles were 5 IBM microcomputers with a whopping 99k of magnetic core memory. And the shuttle can practically fly itself from launch to landing using these. If it works, why bother changing it? I hate to tell you this, but the laws that apply to home computers, have no grounds in the aerospace industry. 80% of the computers used in the defense systems date from before 1985.
America and Russia, each has their strengths.
We have better systems integration, flight designs, and lead time on new technology and manufacturing innovations.
Russia has strong reliability in a few launch systems (because they've been around since 1965) and practical long-time manned orbiting stations, They also have more experience in Nuclear Reactors for SpaceFlight, and Nuclear-Electric Ion engines. Then again, this is the country that drove it's Space Program nearly broke trying to copy our shuttle. It cost them nearly $14 billion dollars to make their BURAN shuttle system. (double our 8 million budget) And what did they do? Fly it once, unmanned. Now all their shuttles are Resturants and Tourist attractions.
Dont bother trying to elevate either America or Russia above each other. It's a useless argument. Just be happy we're working together.
It is somewhat particularly troubling indeed. The US Military as a whole is farming most of their computer programming out to civillian contractors these days. For example, I believe the Navy has most of the software for their ballistic missle submarines done by GTE. (These are the same folks that use NT4.0 for navigation and damage control routines on Aegis missle cruisers, which have failed more than once, leaving a billion dollar vessle dead in the water)
As opposed to the USAF, which just barely does most of their work in house.
At anyrate, talk to a military programmer, and they'll admitt that quality control can be iffy, budgets are short, and the Brass is always looking for a way to trim budgets. Even if it means going with an off the shelf product, hacked and crammed into working by only one or two enlisted men, who leave a few months later for higher paying civillian jobs.
And now the Military is looking at things like fully autonomous combat vehicles. The next US Army MainBattleTank, in later versions will operate autonomously, Both the Navy and Airforce hope to fly UCAV (unmanned combat air vehicles) that for a large part operate autonomously, if not fully. Hackability of these systems may not be practical, many of them will operate without external data connections, being solid systems. What is my concern more than anything, is that these systems need their software to perform at all, and the trend at cutting corners, and having a shrinking qualified personnell base, is what the Military is really in danger of.
Forget Lizard!! go for a full Penguin body mod!
on
Behold the Lizardman
·
· Score: 1
I'm imagining as human kind in general runs out of new ideas, new styles and fads.. When we're stunningly over-entertained and burned out playing Quake v.23; when movie studios have finally run out of ways to repackage 30 year old Sci-Fi concepts, and Son of the Matrix #15 is a box-office flop;
With a large majority of people starved for any form of new stimulation, body manipulation will become fully realized.
Forget prosthetic implants, and tattos, and branding. Think more like altered genetics, functional sex changes. Species changes, complete and flawless quick.. and expensive - but just cheap enough that the biotech firms and unions that perform the manipulations make optimal amounts of money.
How many of you Linux Zealots would spend $200k adjusted, to be a giant intelligent penguin?
At least the world would be perhaps, tolerant, when your boss is a talking tiger, and your co-worker is a hermaphrodite medusa-ish thing.
Plus!! The office furniture and keyboard manufacturers would make a killing!!- adapting for all those body forms and new hand shapes. Everyone's happy! and plenty of $$$$ going around.
I'd personally just like to be a giant possum. As those have ambidexterous hind feet, with opposable thumbs, my wpm could double.
Spielburg is a very adaptable director, one of the best in my opinion. He can direct some stunning pap, like Jurrassic Park, etc. But he can also direct with cold, stunning sincerity, such as the battle scenes in 'Private Ryan' the horrors, of 'Schindler's List' or, his best, in my opinion, 'Empire of the Sun' anyone here even remember that movie? Couldnt get too much more dystopic without being a Terry Gilliam production. For that matter, in some ways, Empire of the Sun is a good 'to use a burned out phrase' cyberpunk movie; the portrayal of technology changing the world. The death of old Japan, the rise of the new, nuclear age, witnessed first hand.
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I'm getting sick and tired of all these damn misconceptions that Neutron/Enhanced Radiation bombs just kill people and leave buildings standing, ready for utilization by an occupying force.
GET THE $^@%$W%%^. FACTS STRAIGHT!
Neutron Bombs were researched and created as enhanced kill and area denial weapons, to use tactically against the advance of Warsaw / CommBLock Armoured columns in the anticipated invasion of Western Europe. The only to date fielded Neutron weapon is the W-70 Warhead for use in air-dropped tactical nuclear bomb (B-61)
With the specific design to roast russians through the armour of their tanks, and make a large section of real-estate too radioactively hot to cross.
These weapons do not just go *pop* like a toy, IT STILL YIELDS 20+ KILOTONS, UP TO 170kt, which is 10x greater than the Hiroshima Bomb.
ALRIGHT?! OKAY? Drop A neutron bomb and you still flatten the surroundings, and you make it unliveable for a good amount of time!!! GRRR.
(Makes you wonder about US doctrine in using these things in friendly German territory. If the Cold war had ever become hot)
You want to see uncontained plasma, that is 3 to 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun?
Go watch lightning. Each bolt is a rod of air heated to the point of incandescence and packing a temperature between 15-30,000 degrees celsius.
It's very short lived, as soon as the current is gone, it radiates out of existance, dumping its energy into the surrounding air, with a big BOOM
that we call thunder.
(which also makes me wonder about the likelihood of that Sci-Fi small arms staple, the plasma rifle. Wouldn't the plasma bolts dissolute a few meters from the barrel as they dump their energy to the air, with a big BOOM? And hell you only need simple magnetic shielding to bounce them off)
At anyrate a worst case containment failure would just level the building. Not even that. Without the magnetic fields the plasma would stop fusioning, quickly expand and loose temperature rapidly, as someone else mentioned, the reactor walls would probably soak up most of the heat, as the loose post fusion plasma would pack only a fraction of the heat output that fusing plasma would give you.
There are many ways to make energy off a tokamak type fusion reactor. Running a working medium through the reactor walls to heat up, and then carry it through a high pressure turbine hooked up to a generator. If this was the case, this system would easily suck up the heat produced by uncontained plasma in a failure mode.
At worst case if the plasma squirted out of the field suddenly and burned through the hull, contacting this working medium, maybe water or molten sodium, you'd probably get a big boom and a steam explosion. Trash the reactor building, but not much else.
This Soyuz TM-26 is one in a long line of Soyuz capsules starting with Soyuz 1. Soyuz 1, had a number of problems, the most prominent, was having the drouge, primary and secondary parachutes all fail, sending the descent capsule into the steppes, Cosmonaut aboard, at a speed, probably around 450-500mph. http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/flights/soy uz1.htm PICTURES!
Cripes.
There are alot of disimilar comparisons here, that's one of the first mistakes people make when they try and compare Russian equipment and mindset to western equipment and mindset.
The leaking shuttle: Yes, the U.S. Shuttle leaks air at a fairly high rate, especially when compared to the Saylut/MIR/Zvezda design, or even most other manned spacecraft. If you had any engineering background, you'd realize that the cylinder hull structure of Saylut/MIR/Zvezda, is optimum for building a _strong, air-fast hull_ that is light. The U.S. Shuttle's pressure hull is more akin to a rhombus, much more complex, and if you wanted to add a few more tonnes of reinforcing material to it, you could have it just as airtight as MIR or Zvezda. Of course, it's much more wisely spent saving on that weight, and using it for more payload capacity, and a little more canned air.
Soyuz vehicles, being cheaper. Well, yes they are, but a Shuttle can be reused. A shuttle could _Carry_ a Soyuz in it's entirity in it's payload bay.
A shuttle can ferry about 21,000kg of junk. Or about the weight of three loaded Soyuz TMs. Shutt;es have an orbital duration of about 1 month at maximum, and the airframe lifespan... well we're still using them, you figure it out.
A soyuz, can ferry about.. well 600kg of junk crew of three included, in it's tiny 9cubic meter of inhabitable space cabin. And stay independent on it's own in orbit for about 14 days. And it is single use.
Comparing these vehicles is pointless.
Oh GOd, the Russians bought a SPARCstation off the shelf for their station, vs our 386s. A sick truth: It dosent really matter. A PDP-12 could do the job. The original fit for the space shuttles were 5 IBM microcomputers with a whopping 99k of magnetic core memory. And the shuttle can practically fly itself from launch to landing using these. If it works, why bother changing it? I hate to tell you this, but the laws that apply to home computers, have no grounds in the aerospace industry. 80% of the computers used in the defense systems date from before 1985.
America and Russia, each has their strengths.
We have better systems integration, flight designs, and lead time on new technology and manufacturing innovations.
Russia has strong reliability in a few launch systems (because they've been around since 1965) and practical long-time manned orbiting stations, They also have more experience in Nuclear Reactors for SpaceFlight, and Nuclear-Electric Ion engines. Then again, this is the country that drove it's Space Program nearly broke trying to copy our shuttle. It cost them nearly $14 billion dollars to make their BURAN shuttle system. (double our 8 million budget) And what did they do? Fly it once, unmanned. Now all their shuttles are Resturants and Tourist attractions.
Dont bother trying to elevate either America or Russia above each other. It's a useless argument. Just be happy we're working together.
It is somewhat particularly troubling indeed. The US Military as a whole is farming most of their computer programming out to civillian contractors these days. For example, I believe the Navy has most of the software for their ballistic missle submarines done by GTE. (These are the same folks that use NT4.0 for navigation and damage control routines on Aegis missle cruisers, which have failed more than once, leaving a billion dollar vessle dead in the water)
As opposed to the USAF, which just barely does most of their work in house.
At anyrate, talk to a military programmer, and they'll admitt that quality control can be iffy, budgets are short, and the Brass is always looking for a way to trim budgets. Even if it means going with an off the shelf product, hacked and crammed into working by only one or two enlisted men, who leave a few months later for higher paying civillian jobs.
And now the Military is looking at things like fully autonomous combat vehicles. The next US Army MainBattleTank, in later versions will operate autonomously, Both the Navy and Airforce hope to fly UCAV (unmanned combat air vehicles) that for a large part operate autonomously, if not fully.
Hackability of these systems may not be practical, many of them will operate without external data connections, being solid systems.
What is my concern more than anything, is that these systems need their software to perform at all, and the trend at cutting corners, and having a shrinking qualified personnell base, is what the Military is really in danger of.
I'm imagining as human kind in general runs out of new ideas, new styles and fads.. When we're stunningly over-entertained and burned out playing Quake v.23; when movie studios have finally run out of ways to repackage 30 year old Sci-Fi concepts, and Son of the Matrix #15 is a box-office flop;
With a large majority of people starved for any form of new stimulation, body manipulation will become fully realized.
Forget prosthetic implants, and tattos, and branding. Think more like altered genetics, functional sex changes. Species changes, complete and flawless quick.. and expensive - but just cheap enough that the biotech firms and unions that perform the manipulations make optimal amounts of money.
How many of you Linux Zealots would spend $200k adjusted, to be a giant intelligent penguin?
At least the world would be perhaps, tolerant, when your boss is a talking tiger, and your co-worker is a hermaphrodite medusa-ish thing.
Plus!! The office furniture and keyboard manufacturers would make a killing!!- adapting for all those body forms and new hand shapes. Everyone's happy! and plenty of $$$$ going around.
I'd personally just like to be a giant possum. As those have ambidexterous hind feet, with opposable thumbs, my wpm could double.
They said it was 15 miles low of it's minimum altitude, when it fired it's orbital insertion motors, and looks to be a complete loss.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/23/mars.orbi
Spielburg is a very adaptable director, one of the best in my opinion. He can direct some stunning pap, like Jurrassic Park, etc. But he can also direct with cold, stunning sincerity, such as the battle scenes in 'Private Ryan' the horrors, of 'Schindler's List' or, his best, in my opinion, 'Empire of the Sun' anyone here even remember that movie? Couldnt get too much more dystopic without being a Terry Gilliam production. For that matter, in some ways, Empire of the Sun is a good 'to use a burned out phrase' cyberpunk movie; the portrayal of technology changing the world. The death of old Japan, the rise of the new, nuclear age, witnessed first hand.