The way I remember reading it, the idea is to give the car variable steering input (not to be confused with variable levels of steering assistance). In other words, a slight turn of the wheel at very low speeds results in a large amount of steering response, where a large amount of steering input at higher speeds results in slight amount of steering response.
To give simplified idea of how the system works, imagine an additional set of gears inserted into the steering shaft that are similar to those found in a standard rear axle differential. The steering wheel is connected to one sun gear, and the other shaft that continues on to the front wheels is connected to a secon sun gear. There is a set of planetary gears in a retainer that connects the two sun gears together. When the planetary gears are locked (not the retainer itself), the steering functions essentially the same as a normal car. However, a motor is connected to this retainer so that a controller can change the position of the retainer either with, or against the steering input to affect how much rotation is conveyed from one sun gear to the other. Without proper system control, the steering input could actually reverse itself from what would be considered normal (i.e. turning the steering wheel left could make the wheels turn right).
Although the steering response is varied, it still remains in direct mechanical connection with the wheels, so a certain amount of tactile feedback is maintained. From what I read, it was still a concept under development. The idea being that it could give a car the ability to reduce a driver's oversteer input in an unsafe or reduced traction condition.
Maybe they can include this feature on the next firmware upgrade: When the phone hears you utter an expletive, it will delete the last word for you. Not only can we continue to propagate bad cellphone etiquette, but also enhance it with people regularly cursing at their phones in public places while texting.
Bubble it into water in which you release into shallow man-made ponds in order to accelerate algae growth. Harvest the resultant algae, squeeze the oil out of it and make biodiesel. Put the leftovers from that into a fermenter and get what amount of ethanol you can from it. Then dump whatever is leftover from that onto fields to decompose and enrich the soil.
Yes, you are eventually liberating the carbon again in multiple paths, but it comes down to whether you want to actually sequester the carbon, or are willing to recycle it through a number of diversified fuels as many times as possible.
Seems that having an industrial-sized tank of LN2 outside the building for such a purpose might make sense as a rather inexpensive emergency backup cooling system. Diesel generators keep the server farm online while cool N2 gas (after evaporation) keeps the server room cool. Just keep the ventilation system balanced properly that you don't displace the oxygen in the rest of the building, too.
And that brings up one caveat: You wouldn't have access to the areas cooled without supplied air when such a system is in operation (that's why it would be an emergency backup). Though, you could get back in fairly quickly (matter of minutes) once normal power is restored and the room is ventilated.
I hope you're not expecting the view to change much...except for the one mounted on the rover.
While maybe not as sexy, perhaps surface temperature (that of the actual surface, since there isn't an atmosphere) and solar radiation sensors reporting back data might be more interesting/useful to graph.
The ozone layer of the upper atmosphere really only filters out wavelengths of light that are less than 320nm or so (ultraviolet and higher spectrum). Most LASERS typically operate using wavelengths in the visible spectrum of light or infrared range.
Well, Motorola developed something that sounded like this, but from what I understand, they often have to be packaged in an enclosure that's some gaudy shade of pink, occasionally emit short, audible clips of annoying boy-band songs, and they're only useful for conveying gossip between young teenage girls.
Finally, is the very wrong law in the US that disenfranchises convicted felons from voting. As more and more people are convicted (and very predominantly from poor demographics), the US democracy becomes less and less representative. And we all know where that leads.
A valid point. But also consider the "what if convicted felons were allowed to vote." Locally, it has the potential for organized crime to gain an advantage. Felons (not necessarily convicts) could work to elect a local Sheriff that was lax on enforcement. In a more extreme case, they could work to install someone who might be susceptible to corruption. In larger elections it's a pretty moot point, but locally, there are more implications if this were allowed.
In some sense, it is a rather broad and general way of trying to keep the "lunatics from running the asylum."
Yes, that is a valid concern, but that is not from TFA. In fact, the only mention of electrocution comes directly from the slashdot editor's/submitter's summary:
including the remote possibility of electrocution since it is impossible to stop the solar panel from generating electricity during the repair attempt.
The above quote rather explicitly attributes the danger of electrocution from electricity being generated from the solar panel, not the discharge from static build up.
The short of it (no pun intended): Electrocution from the electrical current from the solar array? No. Electrocution due to a static discharge? Possibly yes, but it's not the source of the lethal electricity alluded to by the summary.
But wouldn't result in a burn injury or the risk of death due to decompression and not electocution?
Maybe I'm being too pedantic on the definition of electrocution, which is death from electric shock, not death resulting from some failure caused by an electrical discharge.
including the remote possibility of electrocution since it is impossible to stop the solar panel from generating electricity during the repair attempt
Forgive my ignorance, but are they going to do this spacewalk repair bare-handed? Is there at least two exposeds part of a spacesuit that is conductive from the outside to the inside (you need two points to complete a circuit)? If there's something like aluminum ring seals at the wrists, have another crewmember double wrap them with duct tape or electrical tape before sending them outside.
How does electrocution come into play with this? Dielectric breakdown through the suit shouldn't be an issue as I seem to recall on a previous story that we're talking roughly 160VDC potential, nearly the same as US household wall socket voltages. Deadly? Yes. Arc through your spacesuit (twice)? Hardly.
Looking at it, I was thinking something similar. However, it's more akin to a single transistor radio than a simple crystal set. There's external power being provided, which is used for amplification. I'm willing to bet that the power leads are functioning more as the antenna than the nanotube is, especially at the frequencies they describe. They've essentially come up with a nanotube acting as a specialized transistor that resonates at specific frequencies and detects (demodulates) and amplifies the demodulated signal through its transistor-like properties.
They make it sound more exciting than it really is once you look at what is technically going on.
Well, for engagement, I'd certainly agree with your point, but for surveillance, I'd think the platform would have a number of advantages.
The first one is stealth, if it's capable of hiding in between the seas, then you'll have a heck of a time picking it up on ship radar. Even if it is seen, it'll blend in fairly well with the sea clutter on the display. Helicopters and airplanes stick out like a sore thumb, both visually and on radar.
The second is speed. Although they'd take a significant hit in higher seas, they can potentially put up with more banging and bouncing around than a human crew could ever take. And, with the unit being virtually encapsulated, seaworthiness is no longer an issue (the water it would take would be minimal).
And as far as surveillance goes, couldn't a simple telescoping arm with a camera equipped with gyro-stabilized optics be employed? You couldn't use it effectively underway, but a slow/stop speed it would give you a decent vantage. I regularly use a 14x power set of gyro-stabilized binoculars and I can read boat registration numbers (3" high block letters) fairly easily from over a half-mile away in 5 foot sea conditions.
Let's face it, Popular Mechanics likes to write fluff, and whatever they can do to make something sound more cool, sexy and manly is their primary M.O. Step back, look at the actual facts (in which there are few in this case) and not the claims of the marketing group, nor the speculation and opinions of the writers and the real potential uses start to become visible.
Someone didn't proof read the caption, either: 55-mpg?!? The only boat that gets that kind of economy is a sailboat. They obviously meant 55 mph, which is mentioned in the article itself. A typical jet-ski gets somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-12 mpg, largely depending on how you ride it and its engine configuration (carbureted two-stroke, direct injection two stroke, or fuel injected four stroke). A boat the size described will be lucky to hit 4 miles to the gallon.
Okay, so Wikipedia could conceivably do the same thing...and on top of it, have the open Wiki page along with the "certified" info page essentially alongside it.
Imagine going and looking up an article regarding Elephants on Wikipedia. You'd land on the the common wiki entry there, but there could be a banner header that has something to the effect "Check out the certified entry here." with some cute marketing graphic to boot. The link takes you to a non-editable article on the exact same subject, and there's a link to a form to submit suggestions about the article to the official keepers of the "certified" information.
Are there bugs to iron out? Sure. The point is that if Wikipedia wanted to do such a model and run it side-by-side with the classic Wikipedia, they are in one very good position to do so at this point.
Feeding grain to cows is more of a developed agricultural thing. It's used to improve the quality of meat and help increase milk production. Even so, grain, such as corn is usually only a smaller portion of a cow's diet, hay, green feed (cut grass/clover), and pasturing still provide the bulk of a cow's daily intake.
In places where farming is more closer to subsistence, cows are pretty much left on a diet of strictly grass that is naturally available. Using a cow to generate electricity is probably the simplest and most cost-effective method to extract energy from grasses in those areas.
If you were to going to use biogas, you need setup an anerobic digester to break down grass (that would have to be harvested) or manure (which would also have to be manually shoveled up). From there, you'd run the gas through an internal combustion engine, which would require a certain degree of maintenance. If you burned the grass or manure (that still would have to be manually collected), you'd still have to come up with some type of heat engine to convert the heat energy into mechanical and then eventually electrical power.
Why not let the cows do the work of collecting the grass, and then producing the mechanical energy needed to turn an alternator? The mechanics of the system become a lot simpler, involve less input work, and can be cobbled together with junk spare parts commonly available rather than some expensive new machinery.
Remember that the combustion of hydrocarbons (Jet fuel) also requires oxygen, too.
Part of the way engines work at that altitude, in particular turbine engines, is that they densify the air coming into the combustion area by compressing it, thus getting more oxygen into the combustion area. Water is also a resulting product of burning hydrocarbons, too (you combine oxygen not only with the carbon atoms, but also with the hydrogen atoms). I don't exactly know how this is handled or tolerated at such low temperatures, but I'm willing to bet that between the latent heat expelled from the engine and the fine dispersement (atomization - to use a common, but incorrect term) that the resulting water doesn't pose any problem.
Maybe it's a logistics thing. You can essentially produce hydrogen on-site from an electrical generation power source, say a nuclear reactor onboard an aircraft carrier. Instead of having a carrier resupplied with jet fuel, av-gas or whatever from a supply ship, they just make what they need onboard. Improved fuel efficiency then just helps sell the idea.
Not saying that's the reason, just speculation on my part.
So, the fuel economy would go up with less fuel in the tank? Is this the reason why my wife always seems to drive her Taurus around with the fuel gauge always on "E"?
You people need to stop feeding this sort of stuff to the mechanically inept. I mean, it took me two hours to explain there was no such thing as "blinker fluid" to her friend the other day.
Tired of dealing with underlings trying to take you out by blowing the whistle on your illicit financial dealings? We have just the type of business equipment that you're looking for. Stop those do-gooders right in their tracks by automatically keeping them from copying those fudged books and secretive memos. Act now, and we'll throw in the automatic notification upgrade so you can terminate their employment before they have the chance resort to other means of toppling your investment scam...
(okay, I'll put my tinfoil hat back in the closet, now)
Oh sure, it could be, but has it? Once in a while, an Amtrak ticket agent may ask to see a photo ID when purchasing a ticket, but that's about it. No metal detectors, taking off your shoes, X-ray machines or invasive passenger databases. Unless congress really gets fanatical about maintaining funding subsidies for rail passenger transportation in the United States, I doubt that they're going to pony up the cash to upgrade its security, either, no matter whatever silly form it may take.
Besides all of this, passenger trains are a bit less appealing to terrorists. As you alluded to, it's hard to crash them into intended high-profile targets and even harder to kill everyone onboard, considering it is possible for anyone onboard to stop the train and flee, if need be.
If something this silly were enacted, it might be possible to get to a last-minute travel destination faster via Amtrak than by plane...despite some of their trains being up to 18 hours late occasionally.
Slashdot Mirror
The way I remember reading it, the idea is to give the car variable steering input (not to be confused with variable levels of steering assistance). In other words, a slight turn of the wheel at very low speeds results in a large amount of steering response, where a large amount of steering input at higher speeds results in slight amount of steering response.
To give simplified idea of how the system works, imagine an additional set of gears inserted into the steering shaft that are similar to those found in a standard rear axle differential. The steering wheel is connected to one sun gear, and the other shaft that continues on to the front wheels is connected to a secon sun gear. There is a set of planetary gears in a retainer that connects the two sun gears together. When the planetary gears are locked (not the retainer itself), the steering functions essentially the same as a normal car. However, a motor is connected to this retainer so that a controller can change the position of the retainer either with, or against the steering input to affect how much rotation is conveyed from one sun gear to the other. Without proper system control, the steering input could actually reverse itself from what would be considered normal (i.e. turning the steering wheel left could make the wheels turn right).
Although the steering response is varied, it still remains in direct mechanical connection with the wheels, so a certain amount of tactile feedback is maintained. From what I read, it was still a concept under development. The idea being that it could give a car the ability to reduce a driver's oversteer input in an unsafe or reduced traction condition.
Maybe they can include this feature on the next firmware upgrade: When the phone hears you utter an expletive, it will delete the last word for you. Not only can we continue to propagate bad cellphone etiquette, but also enhance it with people regularly cursing at their phones in public places while texting.
<grin>
Here's one possible solution:
Bubble it into water in which you release into shallow man-made ponds in order to accelerate algae growth. Harvest the resultant algae, squeeze the oil out of it and make biodiesel. Put the leftovers from that into a fermenter and get what amount of ethanol you can from it. Then dump whatever is leftover from that onto fields to decompose and enrich the soil.
Yes, you are eventually liberating the carbon again in multiple paths, but it comes down to whether you want to actually sequester the carbon, or are willing to recycle it through a number of diversified fuels as many times as possible.
Seems that having an industrial-sized tank of LN2 outside the building for such a purpose might make sense as a rather inexpensive emergency backup cooling system. Diesel generators keep the server farm online while cool N2 gas (after evaporation) keeps the server room cool. Just keep the ventilation system balanced properly that you don't displace the oxygen in the rest of the building, too.
And that brings up one caveat: You wouldn't have access to the areas cooled without supplied air when such a system is in operation (that's why it would be an emergency backup). Though, you could get back in fairly quickly (matter of minutes) once normal power is restored and the room is ventilated.
I hope you're not expecting the view to change much...except for the one mounted on the rover.
While maybe not as sexy, perhaps surface temperature (that of the actual surface, since there isn't an atmosphere) and solar radiation sensors reporting back data might be more interesting/useful to graph.
The ozone layer of the upper atmosphere really only filters out wavelengths of light that are less than 320nm or so (ultraviolet and higher spectrum). Most LASERS typically operate using wavelengths in the visible spectrum of light or infrared range.
Well, Motorola developed something that sounded like this, but from what I understand, they often have to be packaged in an enclosure that's some gaudy shade of pink, occasionally emit short, audible clips of annoying boy-band songs, and they're only useful for conveying gossip between young teenage girls.
(sorry, couldn't resist.)
A valid point. But also consider the "what if convicted felons were allowed to vote." Locally, it has the potential for organized crime to gain an advantage. Felons (not necessarily convicts) could work to elect a local Sheriff that was lax on enforcement. In a more extreme case, they could work to install someone who might be susceptible to corruption. In larger elections it's a pretty moot point, but locally, there are more implications if this were allowed.
In some sense, it is a rather broad and general way of trying to keep the "lunatics from running the asylum."
Yes, that is a valid concern, but that is not from TFA. In fact, the only mention of electrocution comes directly from the slashdot editor's/submitter's summary:
including the remote possibility of electrocution since it is impossible to stop the solar panel from generating electricity during the repair attempt.The above quote rather explicitly attributes the danger of electrocution from electricity being generated from the solar panel, not the discharge from static build up.
The short of it (no pun intended): Electrocution from the electrical current from the solar array? No. Electrocution due to a static discharge? Possibly yes, but it's not the source of the lethal electricity alluded to by the summary.
But wouldn't result in a burn injury or the risk of death due to decompression and not electocution?
Maybe I'm being too pedantic on the definition of electrocution, which is death from electric shock, not death resulting from some failure caused by an electrical discharge.
Forgive my ignorance, but are they going to do this spacewalk repair bare-handed? Is there at least two exposeds part of a spacesuit that is conductive from the outside to the inside (you need two points to complete a circuit)? If there's something like aluminum ring seals at the wrists, have another crewmember double wrap them with duct tape or electrical tape before sending them outside.
How does electrocution come into play with this? Dielectric breakdown through the suit shouldn't be an issue as I seem to recall on a previous story that we're talking roughly 160VDC potential, nearly the same as US household wall socket voltages. Deadly? Yes. Arc through your spacesuit (twice)? Hardly.
Looking at it, I was thinking something similar. However, it's more akin to a single transistor radio than a simple crystal set. There's external power being provided, which is used for amplification. I'm willing to bet that the power leads are functioning more as the antenna than the nanotube is, especially at the frequencies they describe. They've essentially come up with a nanotube acting as a specialized transistor that resonates at specific frequencies and detects (demodulates) and amplifies the demodulated signal through its transistor-like properties.
They make it sound more exciting than it really is once you look at what is technically going on.
Well, for engagement, I'd certainly agree with your point, but for surveillance, I'd think the platform would have a number of advantages.
The first one is stealth, if it's capable of hiding in between the seas, then you'll have a heck of a time picking it up on ship radar. Even if it is seen, it'll blend in fairly well with the sea clutter on the display. Helicopters and airplanes stick out like a sore thumb, both visually and on radar.
The second is speed. Although they'd take a significant hit in higher seas, they can potentially put up with more banging and bouncing around than a human crew could ever take. And, with the unit being virtually encapsulated, seaworthiness is no longer an issue (the water it would take would be minimal).
And as far as surveillance goes, couldn't a simple telescoping arm with a camera equipped with gyro-stabilized optics be employed? You couldn't use it effectively underway, but a slow/stop speed it would give you a decent vantage. I regularly use a 14x power set of gyro-stabilized binoculars and I can read boat registration numbers (3" high block letters) fairly easily from over a half-mile away in 5 foot sea conditions.
Let's face it, Popular Mechanics likes to write fluff, and whatever they can do to make something sound more cool, sexy and manly is their primary M.O. Step back, look at the actual facts (in which there are few in this case) and not the claims of the marketing group, nor the speculation and opinions of the writers and the real potential uses start to become visible.
Someone didn't proof read the caption, either: 55-mpg?!? The only boat that gets that kind of economy is a sailboat. They obviously meant 55 mph, which is mentioned in the article itself. A typical jet-ski gets somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-12 mpg, largely depending on how you ride it and its engine configuration (carbureted two-stroke, direct injection two stroke, or fuel injected four stroke). A boat the size described will be lucky to hit 4 miles to the gallon.
Okay, so Wikipedia could conceivably do the same thing...and on top of it, have the open Wiki page along with the "certified" info page essentially alongside it.
Imagine going and looking up an article regarding Elephants on Wikipedia. You'd land on the the common wiki entry there, but there could be a banner header that has something to the effect "Check out the certified entry here." with some cute marketing graphic to boot. The link takes you to a non-editable article on the exact same subject, and there's a link to a form to submit suggestions about the article to the official keepers of the "certified" information.
Are there bugs to iron out? Sure. The point is that if Wikipedia wanted to do such a model and run it side-by-side with the classic Wikipedia, they are in one very good position to do so at this point.
Feeding grain to cows is more of a developed agricultural thing. It's used to improve the quality of meat and help increase milk production. Even so, grain, such as corn is usually only a smaller portion of a cow's diet, hay, green feed (cut grass/clover), and pasturing still provide the bulk of a cow's daily intake.
In places where farming is more closer to subsistence, cows are pretty much left on a diet of strictly grass that is naturally available. Using a cow to generate electricity is probably the simplest and most cost-effective method to extract energy from grasses in those areas.
If you were to going to use biogas, you need setup an anerobic digester to break down grass (that would have to be harvested) or manure (which would also have to be manually shoveled up). From there, you'd run the gas through an internal combustion engine, which would require a certain degree of maintenance. If you burned the grass or manure (that still would have to be manually collected), you'd still have to come up with some type of heat engine to convert the heat energy into mechanical and then eventually electrical power.
Why not let the cows do the work of collecting the grass, and then producing the mechanical energy needed to turn an alternator? The mechanics of the system become a lot simpler, involve less input work, and can be cobbled together with junk spare parts commonly available rather than some expensive new machinery.
I think that they're trying to come up with a solution that is an alternative to solar. Some places are known to be overcast for weeks at a time.
Remember that the combustion of hydrocarbons (Jet fuel) also requires oxygen, too.
Part of the way engines work at that altitude, in particular turbine engines, is that they densify the air coming into the combustion area by compressing it, thus getting more oxygen into the combustion area. Water is also a resulting product of burning hydrocarbons, too (you combine oxygen not only with the carbon atoms, but also with the hydrogen atoms). I don't exactly know how this is handled or tolerated at such low temperatures, but I'm willing to bet that between the latent heat expelled from the engine and the fine dispersement (atomization - to use a common, but incorrect term) that the resulting water doesn't pose any problem.
Maybe it's a logistics thing. You can essentially produce hydrogen on-site from an electrical generation power source, say a nuclear reactor onboard an aircraft carrier. Instead of having a carrier resupplied with jet fuel, av-gas or whatever from a supply ship, they just make what they need onboard. Improved fuel efficiency then just helps sell the idea.
Not saying that's the reason, just speculation on my part.
So, the fuel economy would go up with less fuel in the tank? Is this the reason why my wife always seems to drive her Taurus around with the fuel gauge always on "E"?
You people need to stop feeding this sort of stuff to the mechanically inept. I mean, it took me two hours to explain there was no such thing as "blinker fluid" to her friend the other day.
I suppose the next iteration will be text messaging the way you want your senator to vote.
Text "Aye" to 73628 to vote YES.
Text "Nay" to 73628 to vote NO.
(Standard messaging charges apply.)
Attention corrupt senior corporate management:
Tired of dealing with underlings trying to take you out by blowing the whistle on your illicit financial dealings? We have just the type of business equipment that you're looking for. Stop those do-gooders right in their tracks by automatically keeping them from copying those fudged books and secretive memos. Act now, and we'll throw in the automatic notification upgrade so you can terminate their employment before they have the chance resort to other means of toppling your investment scam...
(okay, I'll put my tinfoil hat back in the closet, now)
Oh sure, it could be, but has it? Once in a while, an Amtrak ticket agent may ask to see a photo ID when purchasing a ticket, but that's about it. No metal detectors, taking off your shoes, X-ray machines or invasive passenger databases. Unless congress really gets fanatical about maintaining funding subsidies for rail passenger transportation in the United States, I doubt that they're going to pony up the cash to upgrade its security, either, no matter whatever silly form it may take.
Besides all of this, passenger trains are a bit less appealing to terrorists. As you alluded to, it's hard to crash them into intended high-profile targets and even harder to kill everyone onboard, considering it is possible for anyone onboard to stop the train and flee, if need be.
If something this silly were enacted, it might be possible to get to a last-minute travel destination faster via Amtrak than by plane...despite some of their trains being up to 18 hours late occasionally.
Greyhound?? Eeesh...let's not even go there.
Has someone developed a photovoltaic solar panel that produces natural gas?