And doesn't remotely solve his problem, either. From the FAQ:
"a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time" and "Shared games will be unavailable on even an authorized device when the account holder’s library is currently in use on another computer"
In other words, if he's playing a game, his wife still can't use any other game in his library. That's exactly the same situation he was bemoaning.
And what happens to helium as temperature changes? Its volume changes too. And what happens when its volume changes? Its density changes. And what happens when its density changes? You guessed it. The buoyancy of the blimp changes.
Did I say it was for instantaneous buoyancy change to climb or descend? No. You just made that assumption. It isn't used for that, as you note. It is, however, correct to state that the buoyancy is changed. I will grant you that it is close to 15 years since I got to fly in it, and spoke to the pilot; my memory was rusty. The primary goal is indeed to keep the envelope pressure constant.
However, that doesn't change the fact that "you couldn't possibly be wrong" is unnecessarily arrogant and belittling. I'm fairly certain I could've been a lot more wrong. And I'm fairly certain your own statements aren't perfect, either.
"The most widely used type of airship today is the blimp, which is a non-rigid airship having a generally flexible balloon envelope filled with a lighter-than-air gas such as helium. Inside the balloon envelope are one or more ballonets that can be filled with outside air. The filling of the ballonets compresses against and displaces the helium within the balloon envelope, and as the ballonets are filled (using outside air instead of the lighter helium), the overall weight of the blimp increases. Allowing the ballonets to deflate permits the helium to expand to fill more of the envelope, thus lightening the weight of the blimp."
If you looked at my link, you should have seen that it, too, has vectored thrust engines. That's hardly unique. And nor is recompressing, AFAIK. The only reason that the Skyship 600s don't recompress is because they're using a readily-available commodity (external air) in the gas bladders, so it is unnecessary to store it. Doing so would be a waste of energy. You simply use more outside air to fill the bladders as needed.
Indeed. I'm lucky enough to have flown in one, and discussed the system with the pilot. They're used for trim and buoyancy both; inflate or deflate bladders to shift the helium forwards or backwards inside the envelope. Inflate both bladders to decrease buoyancy. Deflate both bladders to increase buoyancy. (And in addition, adjust quantity of sandbags in hatches underneath the passenger cabin to get the craft approximately at neutral buoyancy before liftoff.)
Nice excuse. Never seen it myself. Most likely, because if you're that close to death, you're going to die if placed in a car with no medical assistance, and no life support systems. You know what I have seen, multiple times? People injured or killed in accidents caused by speeders.
If it's a choice between having a handful of lives lost in a largely fictitious scenario, or a large number saved by preventing people driving like they're *completely* insane, I know which I'll choose.
Complete and utter rubbish. I have never even driven a vehicle with braked cruise control, and I have driven numerous different vehicles from the last three years from European, Japanese, and American manufacturers, not a one of them being an entry-level model.
While some cars do have the ability to apply the brakes while using cruise control, most do not. That's easily demonstrated by enabling cruise control and then driving down a reasonable gradient. Your car quickly exceeds the cruise control-selected speed, often by a very significant margin.
So no, unless your car is in the minority with the ability to brake automatically to maintain an upper threshold on cruise control speed, then you don't have a speed limiter. You have cruise control. And I sincerely hope you're aware of that fact.
Clearly, the idea of "reading" speed limits and varying your speed based upon some detected speed limit is a bad idea, at least with current technology. Signage-based solutions are easily disturbed by tampering with signs, and GPS-driven, database-linked solutions are subject to errors in the databases.
However, the idea of capping the maximum possible speed is sound, and here's why. With the exception of a few places which stubbornly hold onto their lack of permanent speed limits -- essentially some roads in Germany and the Isle of Man, to my knowledge -- it is fairly trivial to ascertain the maximum legal speed for a road-licensed vehicle within Europe. (Yes, the speed will vary by country, but there will be a speed limit beyond which *no* European country will allow you.)
That limit should be hardwired into your vehicle, because legally, you have no reason *ever* to exceed it. If you have an emergency, you contact emergency services (police, ambulance, whatever) who are legally allowed to exceed that limit. If you don't have an emergency, you abide by the limit. And if the technical challenges of a vehicle-enforced speed limit on every road can be solved, it would be a good idea there, too.
And here's why it is a good idea. If everybody -- including the politicians and those tasked with enforcing (and making money out of) the speed limits are forced to abide by them too wherever possible, then we can be sure that irrationally slow speed limits will be raised to rational levels. In the current system used by many countries, we have two rules. One for the general populace, designed to raise funding via a system of road taxation based on illogically-slow speed limits, and one for those who create and enforce the system, and are allowed to ignore the speed limit with a nudge and a wink.
If their cars cannot ignore the speed limit, they suddenly have a vested interest in setting proper speed limits. Right now, they have the very opposite in many countries.
My god, you mean they serve a drink that is supposed to be made with near-boiling water at the temperature of near-boiling water? It's insanity!
If you don't hold a cup of coffee carefully, don't take care when drinking from it, or you place it between your legs and pull out of the drive-thru, then sorry -- that's your own fault, or that of your parents for not teaching you coffee is hot.
Cook your own food at home? Hell, own a regular electric kettle? If so, you probably deal with food and/or beverages that are just as hot on a daily basis.
Have you looked at a road lately? Even though the markings are mostly not in the vehicles' tire tracks, they paint becomes worn very quickly indeed. We put up with it for paint because it's a radically different color to the background, so even heavily-faded paint is easy to see. Paint emitting a relatively dim glow is not going to be so easy to see, and it is going to need much more frequent repainting. Not to mention that the markings will have to cover a much larger proportion of the road to have any real utility, making the volume of paint required significantly higher.
We already have enough difficulty and expense maintaining the world's roads. Making them even more expensive and difficult to maintain is an idiotic idea, done largely in the name of being pseudo-futuristic. For the most part, you don't pay direct attention to the road surface when driving anyway, except when slowing for junctions. You focus most of your attention further down the road, or at least you are driving properly and anticipating problems. The correct answer isn't nonsensical painted snowflakes shimmering on the road. It is easily-maintained, automated road signs that would very quickly pay for themselves in a reduced failure rate and far-less-frequent maintenance.
You know, the same thing as the messaging gantries we have over many large roads now, although a far smaller scale is needed on most roads.
But that's not sexy and futuristic, so it doesn't win awards. Idiotic rubbish like this does.
Because it's a work of fiction which will never happen? He's admitted as much by saying he's not participating. If there was any money in it, he'd be participating. There's not, so he's getting some good PR and some hero-worship from the gullible.
You may also want to draw your 14km radius turn on the map, to see what it looks like. Here you go:
http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm...and now look at everything from Santa Clarita to Lebec, and everything from Tracy to the San Francisco area. Or are you putting your train stations an hour's drive outside of each city? Because if so... well, you're making them drive a third of the entire route from one city to the other just to get to your Hyperloop.
And I guarantee you once you zoom in far enough, that straight-looking stuff in between Lebec and Tracy has areas where the curve is too tight to stay in the confines of the road while traveling comfortably at 800mph as well. I'm just pointing out the *really* obvious bits here. The bits that don't come even close to a 14km radius.
I suggest you try zooming in on the map. And also considering that roads are three dimensional, and unless you're considering all three dimensions, you're wasting your time.
Enlighten us: What's the solution. It doesn't run underground. (It was directly stated that it would be on stilts in the media coverage I read.) It doesn't run along freeways. (They're not designed for the constraints of 800mph travel.) So... where does it run?
Land is going to be what kills this project, before it even gets as far as anything technical. How do you acquire the land for the route as a private entity, without eminent domain?
Every time you buy a parcel of land the neighboring parcels know they're suddenly worth a fortune to you, because you can't just go around them at 800 mph. You have to stay within safe and comfortable G-force maxima for your passengers, which means no more than gentle changes in routing -- and that means you'll have hundreds of hold-out roadblocks in the midst of your route, refusing to sell unless you can provide them with an instant and very comfortable retirement. And if you can't persuade them to sell... well, somehow you have to find a route around them, and buy even more property to make your new route happen.
And then there's the neighbors whose property you aren't buying who will mire you in lawsuits because they don't want an ugly Hyperloop system at the end of their property.
Slashdot Mirror
And doesn't remotely solve his problem, either. From the FAQ: "a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time" and "Shared games will be unavailable on even an authorized device when the account holder’s library is currently in use on another computer" In other words, if he's playing a game, his wife still can't use any other game in his library. That's exactly the same situation he was bemoaning.
And what happens to helium as temperature changes? Its volume changes too. And what happens when its volume changes? Its density changes. And what happens when its density changes? You guessed it. The buoyancy of the blimp changes.
Did I say it was for instantaneous buoyancy change to climb or descend? No. You just made that assumption. It isn't used for that, as you note. It is, however, correct to state that the buoyancy is changed. I will grant you that it is close to 15 years since I got to fly in it, and spoke to the pilot; my memory was rusty. The primary goal is indeed to keep the envelope pressure constant.
However, that doesn't change the fact that "you couldn't possibly be wrong" is unnecessarily arrogant and belittling. I'm fairly certain I could've been a lot more wrong. And I'm fairly certain your own statements aren't perfect, either.
Also, a quote from a patent by Don Shaw, CEO of Advanced Tactics Inc., might be pertinent:
"The most widely used type of airship today is the blimp, which is a non-rigid airship having a generally flexible balloon envelope filled with a lighter-than-air gas such as helium. Inside the balloon envelope are one or more ballonets that can be filled with outside air. The filling of the ballonets compresses against and displaces the helium within the balloon envelope, and as the ballonets are filled (using outside air instead of the lighter helium), the overall weight of the blimp increases. Allowing the ballonets to deflate permits the helium to expand to fill more of the envelope, thus lightening the weight of the blimp."
If you looked at my link, you should have seen that it, too, has vectored thrust engines. That's hardly unique. And nor is recompressing, AFAIK. The only reason that the Skyship 600s don't recompress is because they're using a readily-available commodity (external air) in the gas bladders, so it is unnecessary to store it. Doing so would be a waste of energy. You simply use more outside air to fill the bladders as needed.
Indeed. I'm lucky enough to have flown in one, and discussed the system with the pilot. They're used for trim and buoyancy both; inflate or deflate bladders to shift the helium forwards or backwards inside the envelope. Inflate both bladders to decrease buoyancy. Deflate both bladders to increase buoyancy. (And in addition, adjust quantity of sandbags in hatches underneath the passenger cabin to get the craft approximately at neutral buoyancy before liftoff.)
I'm failing to see what's unique here, tbh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyship_600
Nice excuse. Never seen it myself. Most likely, because if you're that close to death, you're going to die if placed in a car with no medical assistance, and no life support systems. You know what I have seen, multiple times? People injured or killed in accidents caused by speeders. If it's a choice between having a handful of lives lost in a largely fictitious scenario, or a large number saved by preventing people driving like they're *completely* insane, I know which I'll choose.
If either of my vehicles had the feature, believe me when I say I would be aware of it. Neither does.
Complete and utter rubbish. I have never even driven a vehicle with braked cruise control, and I have driven numerous different vehicles from the last three years from European, Japanese, and American manufacturers, not a one of them being an entry-level model.
While some cars do have the ability to apply the brakes while using cruise control, most do not. That's easily demonstrated by enabling cruise control and then driving down a reasonable gradient. Your car quickly exceeds the cruise control-selected speed, often by a very significant margin.
So no, unless your car is in the minority with the ability to brake automatically to maintain an upper threshold on cruise control speed, then you don't have a speed limiter. You have cruise control. And I sincerely hope you're aware of that fact.
Clearly, the idea of "reading" speed limits and varying your speed based upon some detected speed limit is a bad idea, at least with current technology. Signage-based solutions are easily disturbed by tampering with signs, and GPS-driven, database-linked solutions are subject to errors in the databases.
However, the idea of capping the maximum possible speed is sound, and here's why. With the exception of a few places which stubbornly hold onto their lack of permanent speed limits -- essentially some roads in Germany and the Isle of Man, to my knowledge -- it is fairly trivial to ascertain the maximum legal speed for a road-licensed vehicle within Europe. (Yes, the speed will vary by country, but there will be a speed limit beyond which *no* European country will allow you.)
That limit should be hardwired into your vehicle, because legally, you have no reason *ever* to exceed it. If you have an emergency, you contact emergency services (police, ambulance, whatever) who are legally allowed to exceed that limit. If you don't have an emergency, you abide by the limit. And if the technical challenges of a vehicle-enforced speed limit on every road can be solved, it would be a good idea there, too.
And here's why it is a good idea. If everybody -- including the politicians and those tasked with enforcing (and making money out of) the speed limits are forced to abide by them too wherever possible, then we can be sure that irrationally slow speed limits will be raised to rational levels. In the current system used by many countries, we have two rules. One for the general populace, designed to raise funding via a system of road taxation based on illogically-slow speed limits, and one for those who create and enforce the system, and are allowed to ignore the speed limit with a nudge and a wink.
If their cars cannot ignore the speed limit, they suddenly have a vested interest in setting proper speed limits. Right now, they have the very opposite in many countries.
My god, you mean they serve a drink that is supposed to be made with near-boiling water at the temperature of near-boiling water? It's insanity! If you don't hold a cup of coffee carefully, don't take care when drinking from it, or you place it between your legs and pull out of the drive-thru, then sorry -- that's your own fault, or that of your parents for not teaching you coffee is hot. Cook your own food at home? Hell, own a regular electric kettle? If so, you probably deal with food and/or beverages that are just as hot on a daily basis.
Have you looked at a road lately? Even though the markings are mostly not in the vehicles' tire tracks, they paint becomes worn very quickly indeed. We put up with it for paint because it's a radically different color to the background, so even heavily-faded paint is easy to see. Paint emitting a relatively dim glow is not going to be so easy to see, and it is going to need much more frequent repainting. Not to mention that the markings will have to cover a much larger proportion of the road to have any real utility, making the volume of paint required significantly higher.
We already have enough difficulty and expense maintaining the world's roads. Making them even more expensive and difficult to maintain is an idiotic idea, done largely in the name of being pseudo-futuristic. For the most part, you don't pay direct attention to the road surface when driving anyway, except when slowing for junctions. You focus most of your attention further down the road, or at least you are driving properly and anticipating problems. The correct answer isn't nonsensical painted snowflakes shimmering on the road. It is easily-maintained, automated road signs that would very quickly pay for themselves in a reduced failure rate and far-less-frequent maintenance.
You know, the same thing as the messaging gantries we have over many large roads now, although a far smaller scale is needed on most roads.
But that's not sexy and futuristic, so it doesn't win awards. Idiotic rubbish like this does.
He hasn't taken it down. It is still online: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g155033-d183336-r158988363-L_hotel_Quebec-Quebec_City_Quebec.html Therefore the summary is demonstrably wrong.
Mod parent up. Article summary is wrong.
Parent is dying to be modded insightful.
Because it's a work of fiction which will never happen? He's admitted as much by saying he's not participating. If there was any money in it, he'd be participating. There's not, so he's getting some good PR and some hero-worship from the gullible.
You may also want to draw your 14km radius turn on the map, to see what it looks like. Here you go: http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm ...and now look at everything from Santa Clarita to Lebec, and everything from Tracy to the San Francisco area. Or are you putting your train stations an hour's drive outside of each city? Because if so... well, you're making them drive a third of the entire route from one city to the other just to get to your Hyperloop.
And I guarantee you once you zoom in far enough, that straight-looking stuff in between Lebec and Tracy has areas where the curve is too tight to stay in the confines of the road while traveling comfortably at 800mph as well. I'm just pointing out the *really* obvious bits here. The bits that don't come even close to a 14km radius.
Zoom in more. I see plenty.
Well yeah, there's that to it too, obviously. He's only seeking attention, not actually proposing a viable project.
Freeways look straight when your map is zoomed out. Now zoom in. Not so straight any more. Plus you're only considering them in two dimensions.
I suggest you try zooming in on the map. And also considering that roads are three dimensional, and unless you're considering all three dimensions, you're wasting your time.
Enlighten us: What's the solution. It doesn't run underground. (It was directly stated that it would be on stilts in the media coverage I read.) It doesn't run along freeways. (They're not designed for the constraints of 800mph travel.) So... where does it run?
How many freeways do you know that are designed for 800mph travel?
It was directly stated that it would be overground on stilts. Underground would bring its own set of challenges.
Indeed. He's the second coming of Dean Kamen.
Land is going to be what kills this project, before it even gets as far as anything technical. How do you acquire the land for the route as a private entity, without eminent domain?
Every time you buy a parcel of land the neighboring parcels know they're suddenly worth a fortune to you, because you can't just go around them at 800 mph. You have to stay within safe and comfortable G-force maxima for your passengers, which means no more than gentle changes in routing -- and that means you'll have hundreds of hold-out roadblocks in the midst of your route, refusing to sell unless you can provide them with an instant and very comfortable retirement. And if you can't persuade them to sell... well, somehow you have to find a route around them, and buy even more property to make your new route happen.
And then there's the neighbors whose property you aren't buying who will mire you in lawsuits because they don't want an ugly Hyperloop system at the end of their property.