Why is weaponizing space when you have neighbours like Pakistan a good idea? What about Pakistan thinking they need to weaponize space because they have a neighbour like India?
Ball bearings would be too few to interdict Earth-orbits when launched from Moon. Assuming the typical satellite is having a target area of 10 square meters, you'd want to be hit by at least two balls (to keep a bit of overkill). That means that you could use 10 millions balls to cover an area 10 by 10 kilometers.
Kinetic energy penetrators launched from space assume they are already there, on the perfect trajectory. How they get there is very very energy intensive, so much so that ground-based lasers might try thousands of shots for a lower energy use.
That's a 23 mm recoilless auto canon - this will allow you to shoot more than one round against a possible target, and the recoilless part is good to keep the orientation of the satellite while you shoot.
As for the "high speed approach" and 12-gauge and whatever, it seems overkill to have a shotgunon a satellite that probably won't have enough reaction mass to maneuver against more than one possible target. Just launch some sand grains or whatever.
As for "have 20 and carry them into orbit" - what orbit are we talking about? most of the satellites "fly" (or float) on orbits that differ greatly, and maneuvering is costly in either time, fuel or both. Not even the space shuttle can maneuver at will in space, and it brings to it gobs of fuel
As the celestial coordinates are usually read daily (as training, if for no other reasons), a 1% error in navigation is not important (considering all the dangerous/interesting things are detectable either visually, by radar, by radio beacon or whatever.
Trying to navigate from Pearl Harbour to Philippines without daily fixes and with that 1% error could send you to destination a day earlier (or later) than assumed.
All radio frequency is absorbed by sea water - it's just that lower frequencies are absorbed less, so you could receive a low (or very low, or ultra low, or whatever) at higher depths.
You're in the middle of the ocean in a storm. Or even better, you're NOT in the middle of the ocean in a storm, and want to know if you can drift a couple more hours before hitting some rocky island or not.
Having even 1 kilometer accuracy is very good in this situation, not to mention 200 meters. On the other side, in this case, 10 meters accuracy would be overkill.
The best hope of hitting this kind of targets would be lasers. However, I think only USA has lasers that maybe approach the level of power and accuracy needed to hit a target floating very fast at several thousand kilometers "up there"
There is a reason diesel train engines have been replaced by diesel-electric hybrids or electric-only train engines - that diesel engines do not have enough low-end torque.
And it's electric engines that power the Volt.
As a side note, give me the power curve, and I can calculate the torque at any rpm
Let's say that I create the nation of the "Isle of Rocky-Outcrop at Sea".
I need food to sustain my nation. How can I buy it, even if I can print enough "Rocky-Outcrop at Sea" kronen? By the way, where do I get the paper to print the money? I don't have a printing press, how do I buy printed money?
There is such thing as national bankruptcy - that's the moment when nobody wants the money I can print.
Think of this hybrid as an automatic transmission with viscous coupling (torque converter).
You can very much use an engine with low torque at low rpm, as the torque converter is uncoupled and the engine revvs up while the wheels turn slowly.
You can run your gasoline engine at 5000 rpm and maximum power while the car just started from a standstill.
It is just the same with the electric motor: your gasoline engine revvs up to 4000 rpm, puts out 50 kW and the electric engine happily takes it and makes it all torque. On the other hand, a manual transmission would have the engine at 1000 rpm in first gear and maybe 10 kW and will accelerate slowly until the 4000 rpm and 50 kW are reached (when it will shift and go to 2400 rpm and 25 kW in the second gear).
Couldn't agree more on low-end torque for making a car feel quick
Yes, the annual savings are much more impressive. However, if the Volt is build in the US of A, it will have 70% taxes on top of the full price (I think), so it gets much much worse.
I think those 40 miles are travelled with a 16 KWh battery pack - so, you should compare the cost of 16 kWh of electricity against about a gallon of gas.
Maybe nuclear can not compete on price in USA, but it certainly can in Norway, parts of Russia, England and so on. $1/Watt of maximum power might be much more expensive depending on what you live.
I have an old 1200 kg (2500 pounds?) car with a 90 HP engine - and I find it lacking acceleration once above 120 km/h (75 mph). On the other hand, I rarely use that speed.
"It's ridiculous to think of a nation as bankrupt" Iceland would like to disagree.
Just like anything else, a nation goes bankrupt when it can't pay its debts (retirement funds, government employees, education, health care, military, police and so on).
Oh, we're talking about US of A who can send its armed forces into any unlucky country that doesn't toe the line
I'm not disputing what you say about this. However, we're talking about different things here: -R10 would be a 10-cylinder diesel engine, and with more cylinders the engine is easier to balance. -high speeds and an open cockpit means a lot of wind noise, tire noise and so on. Having the engine barely audible in those conditions is not the great feat you imply it to be -the vibrations of a diesel engine are noteworthy ony at low rpm, especially at idle. At higher rpm the current diesels are only a bit more noisy than earlier-decade gasoline engines.
I'm waiting for the diesels to take over the market, maybe then the gasoline my car uses will be cheaper:)
Diesel gives you better low end torque (but electric motors have much more of it anyway) Diesel engines are more expensive, and getting power from them forces you to turbo them (which increases costs too) On the other hand, gasoline engines are quieter (in both noise and rumbling), and can reach higher power without turbo (typical gasoline engines have higher power than similar displacement turbo diesel engines, and lower cost) Gasoline engines don't have low end torque, but that doesn't matter at all.
Now, Mercedes is preparing some diesel-hybrid model (the class E with a 2.2 liter diesel).
We need no breakthru in physics - we only need a breakthru in fusion technology. We know the necessary physics for fusion, fission, solar, geothermal, tide,... What we lack is either efficiency (fusion is still under break-even), price dumps (solar), places to build and so on.
Just as new cars gradually replace aging cars...
Save for govermnent intervention, all old plants will produce as long as they could economically do so (or it would be cheaper to keep in operation than to mothball or disband them). New nuclear plants might not replace old nuclear plants, but replace coal plants, or hydro, or the energy consumption might simply go up.
"While supplies last" - this would mean the usual price at 1.8$/W, or about double.
This is only for the panels, you need a complete system, which brings the price per W somewhere around $4.
This could bring you to four penny a KWh if you live in a "good" area, all to be paid at start. Paying double or triple that "as you go" is not so bad a solution, though.
Nuclear power is not endless, and (in build costs for the power plants) not cheap.
As for solar and wind, where I am there were one or two days when I could have flew a kite in the last couple of months, and most of the time it was cloudy. Go, nuclear power, go!
Slashdot Mirror
Why is weaponizing space when you have neighbours like Pakistan a good idea? What about Pakistan thinking they need to weaponize space because they have a neighbour like India?
Ball bearings would be too few to interdict Earth-orbits when launched from Moon. Assuming the typical satellite is having a target area of 10 square meters, you'd want to be hit by at least two balls (to keep a bit of overkill). That means that you could use 10 millions balls to cover an area 10 by 10 kilometers.
Kinetic energy penetrators launched from space assume they are already there, on the perfect trajectory. How they get there is very very energy intensive, so much so that ground-based lasers might try thousands of shots for a lower energy use.
That's a 23 mm recoilless auto canon - this will allow you to shoot more than one round against a possible target, and the recoilless part is good to keep the orientation of the satellite while you shoot.
As for the "high speed approach" and 12-gauge and whatever, it seems overkill to have a shotgunon a satellite that probably won't have enough reaction mass to maneuver against more than one possible target. Just launch some sand grains or whatever.
As for "have 20 and carry them into orbit" - what orbit are we talking about? most of the satellites "fly" (or float) on orbits that differ greatly, and maneuvering is costly in either time, fuel or both. Not even the space shuttle can maneuver at will in space, and it brings to it gobs of fuel
As the celestial coordinates are usually read daily (as training, if for no other reasons), a 1% error in navigation is not important (considering all the dangerous/interesting things are detectable either visually, by radar, by radio beacon or whatever.
Trying to navigate from Pearl Harbour to Philippines without daily fixes and with that 1% error could send you to destination a day earlier (or later) than assumed.
All radio frequency is absorbed by sea water - it's just that lower frequencies are absorbed less, so you could receive a low (or very low, or ultra low, or whatever) at higher depths.
Late-era navigation by stars, and air-navigation by stars (see bombers in World War II) got by with about a nautical mile precision.
You're in the middle of the ocean in a storm. Or even better, you're NOT in the middle of the ocean in a storm, and want to know if you can drift a couple more hours before hitting some rocky island or not.
Having even 1 kilometer accuracy is very good in this situation, not to mention 200 meters. On the other side, in this case, 10 meters accuracy would be overkill.
The best hope of hitting this kind of targets would be lasers. However, I think only USA has lasers that maybe approach the level of power and accuracy needed to hit a target floating very fast at several thousand kilometers "up there"
Go, alarm systems, go!
Next time when I want to leave the car in winter without moving it for a month (or more), I'll disconnect the battery
I've had fuel in my car for more than 4 weeks in winter, without starting it. I had no problems with this.
There is a reason diesel train engines have been replaced by diesel-electric hybrids or electric-only train engines - that diesel engines do not have enough low-end torque.
And it's electric engines that power the Volt.
As a side note, give me the power curve, and I can calculate the torque at any rpm
Let's say that I create the nation of the "Isle of Rocky-Outcrop at Sea".
I need food to sustain my nation. How can I buy it, even if I can print enough "Rocky-Outcrop at Sea" kronen? By the way, where do I get the paper to print the money? I don't have a printing press, how do I buy printed money?
There is such thing as national bankruptcy - that's the moment when nobody wants the money I can print.
Think of this hybrid as an automatic transmission with viscous coupling (torque converter).
You can very much use an engine with low torque at low rpm, as the torque converter is uncoupled and the engine revvs up while the wheels turn slowly.
You can run your gasoline engine at 5000 rpm and maximum power while the car just started from a standstill.
It is just the same with the electric motor: your gasoline engine revvs up to 4000 rpm, puts out 50 kW and the electric engine happily takes it and makes it all torque. On the other hand, a manual transmission would have the engine at 1000 rpm in first gear and maybe 10 kW and will accelerate slowly until the 4000 rpm and 50 kW are reached (when it will shift and go to 2400 rpm and 25 kW in the second gear).
Couldn't agree more on low-end torque for making a car feel quick
Yes, the annual savings are much more impressive. However, if the Volt is build in the US of A, it will have 70% taxes on top of the full price (I think), so it gets much much worse.
I think those 40 miles are travelled with a 16 KWh battery pack - so, you should compare the cost of 16 kWh of electricity against about a gallon of gas.
Maybe nuclear can not compete on price in USA, but it certainly can in Norway, parts of Russia, England and so on.
$1/Watt of maximum power might be much more expensive depending on what you live.
I have an old 1200 kg (2500 pounds?) car with a 90 HP engine - and I find it lacking acceleration once above 120 km/h (75 mph). On the other hand, I rarely use that speed.
"It's ridiculous to think of a nation as bankrupt"
Iceland would like to disagree.
Just like anything else, a nation goes bankrupt when it can't pay its debts (retirement funds, government employees, education, health care, military, police and so on).
Oh, we're talking about US of A who can send its armed forces into any unlucky country that doesn't toe the line
Too true
Mod parent up
I'm not disputing what you say about this. However, we're talking about different things here:
-R10 would be a 10-cylinder diesel engine, and with more cylinders the engine is easier to balance.
-high speeds and an open cockpit means a lot of wind noise, tire noise and so on. Having the engine barely audible in those conditions is not the great feat you imply it to be
-the vibrations of a diesel engine are noteworthy ony at low rpm, especially at idle. At higher rpm the current diesels are only a bit more noisy than earlier-decade gasoline engines.
I'm waiting for the diesels to take over the market, maybe then the gasoline my car uses will be cheaper :)
Diesel gives you better low end torque (but electric motors have much more of it anyway)
Diesel engines are more expensive, and getting power from them forces you to turbo them (which increases costs too)
On the other hand, gasoline engines are quieter (in both noise and rumbling), and can reach higher power without turbo (typical gasoline engines have higher power than similar displacement turbo diesel engines, and lower cost)
Gasoline engines don't have low end torque, but that doesn't matter at all.
Now, Mercedes is preparing some diesel-hybrid model (the class E with a 2.2 liter diesel).
We need no breakthru in physics - we only need a breakthru in fusion technology. We know the necessary physics for fusion, fission, solar, geothermal, tide, ... What we lack is either efficiency (fusion is still under break-even), price dumps (solar), places to build and so on.
Just as new cars gradually replace aging cars...
Save for govermnent intervention, all old plants will produce as long as they could economically do so (or it would be cheaper to keep in operation than to mothball or disband them). New nuclear plants might not replace old nuclear plants, but replace coal plants, or hydro, or the energy consumption might simply go up.
"While supplies last" - this would mean the usual price at 1.8$/W, or about double.
This is only for the panels, you need a complete system, which brings the price per W somewhere around $4.
This could bring you to four penny a KWh if you live in a "good" area, all to be paid at start. Paying double or triple that "as you go" is not so bad a solution, though.
Nuclear power is not endless, and (in build costs for the power plants) not cheap.
As for solar and wind, where I am there were one or two days when I could have flew a kite in the last couple of months, and most of the time it was cloudy. Go, nuclear power, go!