I just watched "Darkest Hour" about WW2 & Churchill, a brilliantly acted and filmed historical drama. Highly recommended.
In today's news, Iran will begin food rationing, since the theocratic dictatorship has apparently spent the massive bribe Obama illegally gave them ( while, for Obama, typically, lying about it ) on terrorist and overseas adventurism. ( kinda like Obama )
This while across Iran, there are protests, some being out down with ruthless violence.
And I run into this.
And the fundamental difference between a government that cares about it's citizens, ( if only for enlightened self interest, after all, no workers = no riches ) and one where the rulers consider all mankind to be a source of slaves for their cult, is in stark contrast.
I can't help but admire the entrepreneurial aspect of this. I really don't like crack, as a highly addictive recreational drug, even though I try and be libertarian on the subject of drugs.
Funny, a bit scary, and you can use this as an example of societal decay. Or wrong headed enlightenment.
Posted on Wednesday, September 12, 2018 - 07:54 pm:
Very interesting. I want to spend $2. "No permits" "NOR WOULD THEY GET ONE" I don't care if they had a permit or not. Bunch of huffy authoritarian clowns in charge anyway. Like I said, "I'd buy one". Said, "probably doesn't write". Sounds like they didn't even try the pens out. Cause that would be hard to do. {insert sarcasm emoji} Need to return the man's property. Bunch of larcenous vandals. If they were my machines,..........................................................Pen's mightier than......
In fact, don't ask anyone to. This is bleeding edge technology, and the observations are still informing the theory. Aka, it works most of the time, but not always, and you have to build it full scale and try before you know for sure.
Fluidized bed nuclear reactors are another possible use of man made quicksand, offering the possibility of a "fail safe" system. Aka, the power to the pumps stops, and it shuts down without human input, automatically, based on geometry.
This should not be confused with the salt water nuclear rocket, invented by Zubrin. Where uranium salts dissolved in water are pumped into a reaction chamber of a rocket engine, undergo chain reaction fission, and propel the vaporizing fuel out the back to produce thrust. ( the reaction peaks behind the chamber, thus allowing continuous operation without destroying the engine ) Think of it as an atomic squirt gun that rides through space on a continuous atomic explosion. Do not try this at home. Do not operate in our atmosphere.
Which in turn is not at all like a molten salt nuclear reactor. The latter uses molten high temp ( usually thorium ) salts in a fail safe system.
But.... Ignoring the exotic and common chemical plant use of Fluidized materials, the danger to ships is real, and not limited to the scenarios in the article above. Simply experiencing temporary micro gravity conditions in a container, or ship's hold, can have the contents heave, or shift, as the ship rises and falls in heavy seas.
To see this phenomenon, simply fill a clear container 1/4 full of sand or gravel, and drive ( or simulate by bouncing, like on a sofa ) down a rough road and watch the contents heave in ways you wouldn't see in a pile on the ground. Now imagine that scaled up to the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Who the heck is shipping waterlogged cargo? I live next to a limestone quarry where they load thousands of tons of the crushed stuff onto bulk carriers daily. I've never seen them add water to the mix. You pay by the pound, it doesn't make sense to send water.
I have a fun read book by "Corkey" Meyer, who was a test pilot at Grumman in WW2, and beyond. Real impressions and informed analysis of WW2 & later planes, he was part of a program where pilots tested not only other company's aircraft, but also captured enemy planes, with the intent of improving the current & next generation.
How many folk flew both a Zero & a Tigercat? A very few. Surprisingly his pick for #1 fighter in the European theater was the Thunderbolt, not the Mustang, since the Thunderbolt had benign stall/spin behavior, while the Mustang was a notorious killer, with viscous secondary stall characteristics, And because the P&W R2800 in the Thunderbolt could bring you home with pistons flailing in the breeze after entire cylinders were shot away, while a single Mauser rifle bullet in the Mustang cooling system would seize up the Rolls Royce/Packard built Merlin. As an example, all of the top ten aces in Thunderbolts survived the war. Not so for the Mustang.
Anyhoo.
The Grumman Panther jet, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046806/ (The Bridges at Toko-ri ) had large wing tip fuel tanks added to extend range. The fuel sloshing around in the tanks made the airplane nearly uncontrollable, so they added baffles. On the first test flight of the new tanks, all seemed normal at first, then the problem returned. It was found the battles had been torn loose and were laying on the bottom of the tanks, so they rebuilt them with heavier and better braced baffles.
Oil tankers have baffles. Most tanker vehicles do. The fluid just flows around them during pumping. But ore carriers, bulk grain, etc, seldom have as many, if any baffles because of the difficulty & Time to load many smaller sections, as it won't flow like water...... Normally.
Apparently safety means they need to add baffles and accept the penalties.
I have a fair? eye for motion/G load differences, on this kind of video, your's may be much better, and of course, the usual from behind shot doesn't show panic reaction on the steering wheel that is the difference between recovery and tip over.
It is obvious that some shifting loads are responsible for the observed tip overs.
If you've never indulged in dash cam videos, you may be shocked at the idiocy. Since in Russia, insurance makes Dash cams common, you can see a lot of truck accidents, and "winter passing morons" is a whole sub genre! Trucks tipping over is big too, and some of the ones I've seen obviously have more happening than is visible.
Also Heavy Equipment Fails videos, especially the long semi-trailer dump trucks, that you see tipping over as the load unbalances during a high angle dump. You can't help but want to yell, "Noooo!!" at the screen.
I have developed the habit of watching dash cam footage before trips, to make me more cautious paranoid in my driving habits. I think it may be masochism.
BTW there's an infuriating sub set of dash videos that seems to be mostly, but not exclusively, Indian, of slow speed head on collisions where the filming car is on a single lane road, stops, and the other car just drives right into them.
Footnote. Dash cams have cured me of the habit of hanging in the left hand lane on divided highways with divider Jersey walls. Bad thing happen over there. Bad things.
A bit OT from the fluidized beds, but water treatment plants can have processing basins that are heavily aerated and are death traps since the SG is so low that if you fall in, you go straight to the bottom.
Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - 12:29 pm:
Sifo.........That is pretty funny but in the truckers defense, maybe the straps are to hold the wood posts along the edges which sort of hold some of the stone and sand?
Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - 03:47 pm:
Except that as the straps work their way through the sand piles they're going to get loose and then the 4x4's hit the pavement. Trying to figure out where this is. Palm trees and run down houses. It be California or some 3rd world country. Same thing actually.