Random thing you loathe right now.

bekkilyn wrote:

Joycon issues and shoddy controllers in general.

Especially now that the Nintendo repair center is apparently closed and it's impossible to get the stupid joycon drift fixed.

Good thing I have an adapter that lets me use a DualShock 4 with my Switch.

60 year old cement basement that I have to try and level before installing vinyl plank flooring, sigh.

My cat has gone missing. He has been missing almost two days now. We move out on Thursday.

Rykin wrote:

My cat has gone missing. He has been missing almost two days now. We move out on Thursday.

Crap. Maybe leave out some food? Put up a couple of flyers in the local area?

Coldstream wrote:
Rykin wrote:

My cat has gone missing. He has been missing almost two days now. We move out on Thursday.

Crap. Maybe leave out some food? Put up a couple of flyers in the local area?

Or maybe an item that would be strong with his own scent, if he's typically indoor-only?

Vacation is over. I am back at work today, and man, it's very hard to get back to working after a week of doing nothing. I am still going through all the email that came in while I was gone, and I'm very overwhelmed at how little actually got done while I was out. Guys, you shouldn't need me here. You should have been able to answer these questions and make a ton of forward progress without me. I thought I had enabled my team better than this. Oh well.

Made brownies and must have used the wrong amount of sugar. Not sweet enough sadly. Now debating to throw them out or try to turn them into something else. Probable should just chuck'em.

master0 wrote:

Made brownies and must have used the wrong amount of sugar. Not sweet enough sadly. Now debating to throw them out or try to turn them into something else. Probable should just chuck'em.

Smother them in butter cream frosting?

master0 wrote:

Made brownies and must have used the wrong amount of sugar. Not sweet enough sadly. Now debating to throw them out or try to turn them into something else. Probable should just chuck'em.

Eat them with ice-cream. Come on, rookie!

Yep. Or crumble them into fruit yogurt.

Coldstream wrote:
master0 wrote:

Made brownies and must have used the wrong amount of sugar. Not sweet enough sadly. Now debating to throw them out or try to turn them into something else. Probable should just chuck'em.

Eat them with ice-cream. Come on, rookie!

This problem can we solved with the right amount of nutella.

I stumbled across a youtube video with more technical jargon than actual science regarding whether we could build a SHIELD helicarrier today. It is a wannabe "Because Science" channel that posited some misleading facts in support of the helicarrier being impossible to build.

The one that struck out to me the most was that "no vtol craft has lifting rotors that are smaller than the fuselage/body". Almost immediately, my mind went to the F-35 liftfan and then a myriad of drones. And it looks like I am not the only one. I came across a blog that mentioned the liftfan while I researched things like plastic density/cm^3, along with specs for aluminum, steel and carbon fiber.

There are no weight specs I could find on the helicarrier but its dimensions are sandwiched in between the 90K ton Enterprise aircraft carrier and its larger retrofit.

I determined that 276 (50") liftfans could fit into each helicarrier rotor. Each liftfan produces 10 tons of thrust on its own. So 276 liftfans in each of the 4 helicarrier rotors would net ~11K tons of lift which, while short of 90K tons, is ballpark enough to start the conversation. What would the capabilities/efficiencies be of a 100" liftfan? 300"? 500"?

We don't know how much of the 90K is steel structure versus cargo (aircraft, electronics, crew and support). We do know that steel is not required and carbon fiber is twice as strong at 1/5 the weight of steel. (1/5 of 90K tons is 18K tons) Plastics could replace nonstructure fixtures and equipment and many types have ~50% less mass than carbon fiber. (We may not currently have the capability to mass produce that much carbon fiber but we could build it.)

The Enterprise has 4600 crew. Since the helicarrier would not replace 100% of the functionality of an aircraft carrier, who could supposed how many crew were needed for its operation? 3000? 2000? 800?

Fun fact: the Hindenburg weighed only 242 tons. If you chopped up the structure of 4 of them, they would roughly fit the dimensions of the helicarrier. Its structure is made of aluminum so there could be further weight benefits there. Or there is plenty of room to grow if double, triple or more structure is needed.

The real stickler is what are the power requirements and how would you generate power? I am leaning that you would have to go with nuclear because otherwise range and flight duration would be severely hampered.

The F35 liftfan is only providing partial hover thrust - the exhaust nozzle on the main engine vectors thrust down at the rear of the aircraft.

There's scale issues when looking at drones and thinking "just do that bigger". You can't just increase rotor size and call it good, it's change the entire dynamics of the system, not least of all because the limiting factor of a rotary wing is usually tip speed approaching Mach 1. Bigger rotor means faster tip speeds, means slower rpm.

Then there's structural issues. You're taking about thousands of tons of thrust. For comparison, a really big airplane like an A380 makes a few hundred thousand POUNDS of thrust (~150 tons thrust). I'd warrant that materials do not exist that would be simultaneously strong, stiff and light enough for those additional orders of magnitude of force you're talking about.

You're right that power is an issue. More specifically, power to weight ratio is an issue. Nuclear is waaay down the power to weight list, which is why flying reactors don't exist (with the exception of micro reactors for space applications, where the limiting factor is fuel weight, and the power output would barely run your cellphone).

In short, short of fundamental quantum leaps in numerous unrelated technologies, the helicarrier remains laughably impossible.

The F35 liftfan is only providing partial hover thrust - the exhaust nozzle on the main engine vectors thrust down at the rear of the aircraft.

I took that into account. The total vertical lift of the F-35 is 19 tons of thrust with the liftfan providing 10 of those.

Then there's structural issues. You're taking about thousands of tons of thrust.

90K tons is one end of the spectrum and not optimized at all. Around 1K tons is the other end from repurposing 4 Hindenburgs. The 150 tons of thrust of the A380 is discouraging but completely out of the realm of possibility

You're right that power is an issue. More specifically, power to weight ratio is an issue.

And here I was just about to post that the new A1B reactors produce 700MW of power each...
And what about things like thorium reactors? And I thought that nuclear powered aircraft were banned but not impossible?

fangblackbone wrote:

And here I was just about to post that the new A1B reactors produce 700MW of power each...

700MW isn't going to cut it, but we're at least getting within an order or two of magnitude.

By my math, the 90k tons lift (i.e. 180 million lbs of thrust downwards) you mentioned earlier translates to roughly 244 MW of power, assuming 100% end-to-end efficiency between generation and propulsion, zero safety margins, and the inability to accelerate in any direction except down, as all we're getting at that point is enough thrust down to hover.

More realistically, you're going to need gigawatts plural for propulsion alone, plus lord knows how many more (tens of GW? Hundreds?) for life-support and a town-sized electrical grid for a few thousand crew and the facilities of an aircraft carrier.

For reference, the current world record for a jet engine thrust is ~134,400 lb , so for illustration of the scale we're talking about, you're proposing an equivalent of one thousand, three hundred and thirty nine of those pointed down)

fangblackbone wrote:
You're right that power is an issue. More specifically, power to weight ratio is an issue.

And I thought that nuclear powered aircraft were banned but not impossible?

They're not impossible, they're just a spectacularly bad idea in the real world. Like making a car that's powered by hamsterwheels - there's no technical reason you couldn't do it, but refuelling at the pet store is inconvenient, you'd have a top speed of 2 mph, and you wouldn't smell great by the time you got to work nine hours after leaving home.

But anyway, suppose you ignore the power-to-weight problem, you've still got enormous issues around:

  • Safety of the crew - add a few more hundred tons to the weight of the thing for the lead shielding you're going to have to use,
  • Crash survivability- do you want a Chernobyl if the pilot has a hard landing?
  • Environmental robustness - how's your reactor going to respond to a high-vibration environment over years? Lightning strikes? High intensity radio waves? Wide swings in temperature? G-forces? Laser-fire and alien invasion? Norse god magic?
  • Maintenance - how many more engineers, technicians and scientists do you need just for the power plant? Is it even safe to perform maintenance in-situ or does the whole damn thing need to be removed and maintained on the ground?
  • Redundancy - you're going to need multiple reactors, even if you do have a magical one that generates enough power on it's own. So multiply all the previous problems by three.

Come on, Jonman. We were seriously considering launching spaceships in atmosphere by shoving hydrogen bombs under them at the rate of one per second. As a race, we total suckers for helicarriers. It's wonder they have not been tried yet.

Oh, wait...

IMAGE(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRPBOoKRIRETZWW4Tim12k9PamFKt7nKQr7e5YY0bU9bGqINqO6&usqp=CAU)

A couple more things I dug up:
-The Langley carrier weighed 12.7K tons, carried 36 planes and a crew of only 468. (powered by boilers though)
-The weight of the A1B reactor is classified but a few places have rumored it to be 800 tons.
-I found a small reactor (25-30 MW) with a ratio of .5-.75 T/MW So a gigawatt worth of power for 500 tons?!

We're gonna need a bigger helicarrier.

And I'll give you guys a military perspective: why in the hell would I want to put a bunch of extraordinarily expensive aircraft eggs in such a vulnerable basket? Aircraft carriers are heavily armoured for a reason, and are designed to sustain multiple, heavily damaging attacks and still be battle-worthy. A Heli-carrier would be laughably easy to destroy, since the most critical systems (which keep it in the air) are also delicate and in a highly vulnerable position. You would need to have absolute, unquestioned, unchallenged air superiority to bring something like that anywhere near a war-zone.

But in the spirit of fun, I could see an argument being made for something like the large flying-wing drone carrier in Air Combat 7. It's intrinsically air-worthy, would work with current technology, and carries sufficient firepower with its drone air-wing that it would be a formidable threat in the right environment. Again, I'm not particularly convinced that it still wouldn't be better to simply have a drone aircraft carrier ship, as it would have a higher drone capacity, along with refueling and repair capabilities. I actually think that drone-carriers will become increasingly common in the next 20-30 years.

Coldstream wrote:

A Heli-carrier would be laughably easy to destroy, since the most critical systems (which keep it in the air) are also delicate and in a highly vulnerable position.

Uh, I think you're forgetting heli-carriers have a cloaking device! Sheesh man, try to keep up.

deftly wrote:
Coldstream wrote:
Rykin wrote:

My cat has gone missing. He has been missing almost two days now. We move out on Thursday.

Crap. Maybe leave out some food? Put up a couple of flyers in the local area?

Or maybe an item that would be strong with his own scent, if he's typically indoor-only?

Dexter showed up on the porch this morning. He was clean and appears to not have had any issues finding food while he was out. He is currently grounded.

PaladinTom wrote:
Coldstream wrote:

A Heli-carrier would be laughably easy to destroy, since the most critical systems (which keep it in the air) are also delicate and in a highly vulnerable position.

Uh, I think you're forgetting heli-carriers have a cloaking device! Sheesh man, try to keep up. ;-)

Add another gigawatt.

Jonman wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:
Coldstream wrote:

A Heli-carrier would be laughably easy to destroy, since the most critical systems (which keep it in the air) are also delicate and in a highly vulnerable position.

Uh, I think you're forgetting heli-carriers have a cloaking device! Sheesh man, try to keep up. ;-)

Add another gigawatt.

Might as well add a flux capacitor at that point.

This week.
PTO cancelled due to a project that could have been done last fall, but 2 groups that are doing the work delayed till the month before the vendor was scheduled to stop supporting the VPN. My PTO cancelled due to managing the partner that VPN was connected with who has been trying to get us to do this work since September.

My boss of 20.5 years got a new position at our parent company thanks to our team for all the work we do and which he will be replicating across all compaines owned by the parent. We will be reporting to one of the groups that was mentioned in first loathe starting end of June.

I popped a crown off a Molar last night eating french fries. I left a message for my dentist, hopefully they can get me in today. Luckily, its the one crown I had a root canal on so no exposed nerves/no pain, just wierdness in eating as I have to eat on my left side of my mouth.

PaladinTom wrote:
Coldstream wrote:

A Heli-carrier would be laughably easy to destroy, since the most critical systems (which keep it in the air) are also delicate and in a highly vulnerable position.

Uh, I think you're forgetting heli-carriers have a cloaking device! Sheesh man, try to keep up. ;-)

Doh!

There was enough coffee left in the house for one cup. Just one. I made that cup of coffee, savoring the smell, taking that first sip. But then... BAM... cup goes flying, coffee has splashed up on the monitor, the desk is soaked, but luckily the spilling liquid missed the keyboard and the powerstrip. I don't know how I will handle my day without any coffee.

My wife lives by the horchata latte from peet's. A few times a week I am tasked with peet's drive thru duty

Insurance doesn’t cover son’s Epi-pen anymore. This is a change in the last year. Didn’t know until attempting to fill prescription today.

Cost without insurance.......$1000.
Here’s hoping there is some generic.

Big Pharma is evil.

WTF? That is probably the most directly indirect blood money I have heard of.

It still amazes me that people still have time to be scheming, grifting and oppressing during a pandemic.
I hope the abyss really is bottomless as we are constantly finding new lows.

MathGoddess wrote:

Insurance doesn’t cover son’s Epi-pen anymore. This is a change in the last year. Didn’t know until attempting to fill prescription today.

Cost without insurance.......$1000.
Here’s hoping there is some generic.

Big Pharma is evil.

That's some sh*t.

I had to get one to take allergy shots. I've never had shock, but definitely some coughing and watery eyes and such.

My job upgraded insurance plans for this year. So I waited to start from November to January. The original price for mine with insurance was like $350, but with the new plan it was $10 generic charge. Got very lucky.