America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.
My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person.
Thanks Walter, to you too, wherever you are.
America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.
My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person.
Thanks Walter, to you too, wherever you are.
“Roger Sowell: centrifugal force (or is it centripetal? I can’t recall) increases ”
If you stand beside the contraption, it is centripetal (towards the center); otherwise the parts of the wheel would fly away tangentially.
If you move with the wheel, you have the feeling it is centrifugal (away from the center); but this force, like the coriolis-force, only exists because you are accelerated.
“Smokey: The Lockheed model never made it to production. As I recall, one of the objections was what would happen if a heavy flywheel turning at 100,000 RPM was let loose in a crash, to go spinning down city streets”
A flywheel-driven passenger-bus was produced and (that was years ago) in use in the swiss city of Neuchatel. The wheel was run up at the stops with electricity.
Materials have improved and the Formula 1 team of Williams built a KERS-system with a flywheel (the other teams used batteries). While braking, the KINETIC ENERGY RECOVERY SYSTEM stores the energy. It seems to have been a flop, or not yet developed enough (too heavy).
My favorite “space moment” of the last decade is the punch in the nose the Buzz Aldrin gave the tin hat interviewer when he insulted Aldrin’s honesty about the “faked” moon landing.
SteveSadlov (11:55:44) :
…. It’s intuitively obvious.
I don’t like the “intuitively obvious” argument. “Look at the receding glaciers, the climbing global temperatures, the increase in CO2. Man-kinds CO2 emissions are the cause of global warming. It’s intuitively obvious.” Sound familiar?
paullm (22:21:53) :
Gads, off-topic, but relevant in a way to the AGW debate, unfortunately.
What Giap said, exactly, is not important…
I think it is significant when a point of view is supported by a fraudulent quotation that claims that the North Vietnamese were on the point of surrender while the fact was that they were resolved to keep on fighting forever. I would think that this is important for evaluating what actually was happening then. Furthermore, you miss the point of Giap’s comments on opinion. They understood the power of public opinion in America, and so did LBJ. Wars ARE won on many fronts, and they were determined to win. At any cost. Good or bad, that’s it. You can’t just claim that the military was stabbed in the back by weak-minded, craven reporters who didn’t understand we were close to victory.
Anthony does a good job of presenting the opposition to the AGW view without going off the cliff into senseless ranting. Many who comment here, and I am referring to comments about global warming, not just politics and history, are not so scrupulous. The sad and funny thing is, if you read the comments at RealClimate and other such sites, the tone and structure of many of the non-scientific comments are the same – only a few words are changed. Some core beliefs shared by BOTH sides:
– specific facts are not important
– “bending the truth” is okay to serve the larger truth
– everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot or a liar
– there is a vast conspiracy to hide the truth
– the opinion of the other side will lead to the end of all that is valuable in our culture
ralph ellis (07:15:17) :
That was a forward-looking can-do generation – an era in which bravery, success and triumph were to be championed, not derided.
Compare the Apollo epic with today’s world.
My children are not allowed to have a sports day, in case someone wins.
My children are not allowed to walk to school, in case they hurt themselves.
My children cannot play ball in the playground, as it is dangerous.
Boys are not allowed to play cowboys and Indians, as that is violent and racist.
My children have to slow their education, to allow others to catch up.
Engineering is for dumbheads who cannot get into finance.
Rockets may harm the environment.
A deliberate concentration on simple wind technology will prevent anyone building a nuclear space-probe to go to Mars.
Money needs to be channelled towards helping the Third World, not elitist stunts.
We need to reduce wealth and output, to help the environment and prevent CO2.
It would be more environmentally friendly if we lived in mud huts and used strip-farming.
The Medieval Era was a golden age.
WOW, grumpy old man alert.
Good on ya mate
I was in junior school circa 60 – 64. They tried banning our schoolyard games, not because anyone got hurt but because there was the potential for someone to get hurt.
I moved on to secondary school and although it was still allowed, there was a lot of talk of banning competitive sport. WHY? Because there are winners & losers in competition!
The headmaster of my school was extolling the virtues of CSE, how everyone would leave school with a certificate. He was unable to answer when my father asked what I, (aged 11), thought was a reasonable question.
What is the value of a certificate that everyone gets?
When the head was unable to answer, my father answered the question for him. He said, “as an employer, I see it as having no value, being nothing more than a certificate that says the person has attended school”
The whole system has been on a downhill slope ever since 🙁
DaveE.
Lichanos, consider this:
– specific facts are not important
When the other side can’t even figure out the importance of clouds on a water planet, then sure, any other minutia pales into insignificance.
– “bending the truth” is okay to serve the larger truth
I do not believe this, and no skeptics that I know believe this. ALL of the alarmists I know seem to believe this, however. From what I’ve seen, the entire object of “skeptics” is to arrive at the actual facts. If I were to see compelling evidence that the AGW alarmists were, in fact, correct, then I’d be all over it. I have yet to see anything even remotely credible.
– everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot or a liar
Welcome to the internet 🙂
– there is a vast conspiracy to hide the truth
It’s not so vast, but it’s effective. Just make sure the media is on your side, and given the MASSIVE leaning to the left of media workers, you just need to frame your theory or argument or whatever in a left-right dichotomy.
– the opinion of the other side will lead to the end of all that is valuable in our culture
Well, throwing away everything we in the first world have worked for and built up over the centuries does seem like that, doesn’t it? In a way?
Lichanos, thank you for pointing out that the Giap quote may have been inaccurate [but to be fair, your source is trying to prove a negative by saying he could find no reference to it before a certain date]. But I don’t want to use anything that might be questionable, and I won’t use that quote again.
That said, though, I recall comments from P.O.W.’s saying that things immediately got much better for them in prison camp as soon as the B-52’s began bombing Hanoi.
Why would the prison guards suddenly start treating the P.O.W.’s so much better? Obviously, because they were told to make nice. If the ruling politburo lost the confidence of the populace [and what better attitude adjuster than a B-52 with its 108 500 & 750 pound bomb load], they could not have carried on with the invasion of the South. American negotiators also reported a sudden burst of cooperation by Hanoi when the bombing began, in actually getting agreements on issues that had been stalled for years. Hanoi’s apologists can try to explain that away if they like. But the fact is that the anti war faction kept us from effectively prosecuting the war by constantly criticizing the bombing of Hanoi, and by constantly protesting any attack on Haiphong harbor, the gateway for 90% of the munitions flowing into North Viet Nam. As Lincoln observed, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
By not closing ranks and supporting our military during war time, the Left in this country is responsible for the war’s outcome. Their treacherous activities led directly to the deaths of American soldiers. Undermining our military and our country was fun for a lot of people at the time — who could safely protest [and truth be told, much of their protesting was due to their personal fear of the draft].
And I will never understand why people like John Kerry and Jane Fonda were not prosecuted for traveling to North Viet Nam and conducting their own private negotiations, and acting as North Vietnam’s propagandists.
~snip~
Thanks Buzz for seeing the truth about the hoax of AGW.
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1792/Flashback-Another-Moonwalker-Defies-Gore-NASA-Astronaut-Dr-Buzz-Aldrin-rejects-global-warming-fears-Climate-has-been-changing-for-billions-of-years
@ur momisugly Smokey (08:36:53) :
Lichanos, thank you for pointing out that the Giap quote may have been inaccurate [but to be fair, your source is trying to prove a negative by saying he could find no reference to it before a certain date].
Further to my point about logic, or the lack of it, and the AGW debate:
“To be fair…?” You seem to be implying that the unmasking of the Giap quote is somehow inconclusive, as if it might be true, although you, being cautious, will refrain from using it. Strange…If you applied this sort of reasoning to AGW, you would be a supporter of the eco-fundamentalists, instead of their critic. After all, can you prove conclusively that AGW is not and WILL not occur, given the circumstantial evidence that it MIGHT be occurring now? (Keep in mind, I think there is little basis for such positive statements!) No. You cannot prove that negative. You can only show that there is no support for the positive statement. Just as you cannot prove that you are not the Devil’s servant (he hides his tracks so well) or that you won’t go stark raving mad tomorrow.
Similarly, there is NO evidence that Giap held that view, and in fact much evidence that he held the contrary view. Not much hope for unearthing a long forgotten killer-quotation from General G. about how the war was lost.
As I was saying, people on the anti-AGW side often adopt a stance that they would denounce vigorously, and rightly, if taken by the pro-AGW side. This is the curse of politics, the realm of untruth, in which only Power has the rights to declare truth.
Just an historical point – if we had “closed ranks” before the war, you have no evidence that we would have won. Of course, this leaves aside the point of whether we should have been there in the first place. The country was for the war at first – the ranks were nicely closed – then they began to wonder what the hell it was for? Doesn’t that seem like a good question for a democratic people to askitself?
@ur momisugly CodeTech (08:30:46) :
Conspiracy? Well, the media do a bad job of reporting on science, and they are swayed by apocalyptic fears just like scientists and lots of other people. I predict it will all fizzle out in a few years if the global mean temperature holds flat or declines.
One of my earliest memories is of watching a Gemini shot on TV. Must have been 1966.
Summer 1969 my dad bought a model of Apollo 11, which he used to teach me how to assemble, paint and apply decals to a plastic scale model. The model even had a little fully articulated lunar module including moving legs. The third stage had the four flap cowling which opened to allow extrication of the lunar module. I wish I’d kept it, but it took up lots of room (was about 3 feet tall). At some point I had to toss it to make room for new models I wanted to build. Oh well …
lichanos,
As with most other climate alarmists, you have the Scientific Method turned completely on its head:
For the umpteenth time: it is the duty of those purveying the CO2=AGW nonsense to prove their case. It is not the responsibility of skeptics to disprove the CO2=AGW hypothesis.
No wonder you don’t get it. Time to reset, and see if you can figure out how to falsify the long held theory of natural climate variability — which fully explains today’s climate, without the unnecessary addition of a minor trace gas.
Occam’s Razor makes clear that adding extraneous explanations like that generally leads to incorrect conclusions. If you want credibility, show us empirical, real world evidence that CO2 raises the planet’s temperature. [The output from GCMs doesn’t count as evidence. Show us real reproducible, falsifiable evidence. If you can.]
Or, try falsifying the theory of natural climate variability… if you can [you will be the first]. That is the Scientific Method.
Running a new hypothesis up the flag pole, then demanding that skeptics must salute it, is simply bad science. It is non-science. But it’s probably the only ‘science’ the warmist crowd has.
SteveSadlov (12:26:30) :
I have vague memories of that kit. Revelle IIRC.
DaveE
@ur momisugly Smokey (12:29:41) :
Alas, you have clearly not read my comment, or else your passion has totally clouded your ability to reason about it. I am not a climate alarmist – I AGREE with nearly all of the critiques posted by Anthony on this site. Is that clear enough?
I was not demanding that you meet this condition:
“…can you prove conclusively that AGW is not and WILL not occur, given the circumstantial evidence that it MIGHT be occurring now?”
I was positing that as an ABSURD condition, one of which I allege you to be guilty. At least we agree that it’s absurd.
Really, how can one have a rationale debate if even the people you agree with don’t make any sense? Jury duty taught me that everyone can reason quite well if they feel they have to, but sometimes I wonder…
“”” ralph ellis (00:59:35) :
>>>No-one has mentioned Werhner von Braun yet, or is that
>>>too sensitive a subject still?
Ah, yes, that old America-ribbing joke.
Q. I say, I say, I say. Why did America beat Russia to the Moon?
A. Because the American Germans were better than the Russian Germans.
Da da da da daaaa….. (rounds of applause) … 😉 “””
Don’t laugh; I know of an (American Sponsored), America’s Cup Sailing site; whose site motto says:
“OUR Kiwis, are faster than YOUR Kiwis.”
A recognition of the depth of Kiwi sailing, and the raft of them to be found in lots of other Nations’s sailing teams; BUT, also a slap at American teams, for not recognising that there are a large number of very skilled American Sailors; who are more than capable of putting together an American AC team at the top performance level in that sport; without just blanket hiring, of Kiwi sailors.
George
“”” Ron de Haan (17:48:43) :
tallbloke (16:14:31) :
Roger Sowell (13:16:28) :
given a recent breakthrough in energy storage via high-speed flywheels. The device is under construction, and it is a bit premature to celebrate, but we should know by December or January if this works as advertised.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/grid-scale-energy-storage-flywheel.html
“Round and round went the bloody great wheel
In and out went the prick of steel”
Sounds fun. What are they going to construct these from?
tallbloke:
Depleted Uranium, what else? “””
Actually depleted Uranium would not be a good flywheel material; it isn’t nearly strong enough to take the stresses.
In stationary applications, flywheels might have some use; but I doubt it.
Even with absolutely perfect balance it would have to withstand the constant bearing wear that results from the incessant 84 minute “hum” vibrations; that plague gyro systems. The 84 minute vibration is of course the period of a simple pendulum whose length is the radius of the earth.
It is also the absolute minimum period of an earth satellite, circling at the earth surface; or the round trip time of a trip through any length “graviational tunnel”, say from SFO to LAX.
The flywheel bearing would eventually wear out from precession due to the earth’s rotation. You could of course gymbal mount it, to remove those side thrusts; but then you would have two extra sets of bearings to wear out through ocnstant rotation.
No matter how you cut it; storing a whole lot of energy in a small space is damn dangerous; no matter how you cut it; and gasoline is about as safe as any method yet tried. As for “Super” batteries; the more “super” they are; the more dangerous, and environmentally obnoxious they are; they aren’t the answer either.
George
Lichanos (13:05:01) :
“Alas, you have clearly not read my comment…”
Actually, I didn’t read your comment clearly. My apologies for missing what you were saying. I assumed that you were taking that ‘absurd’ position. My bad for assuming.
George E. Smith (14:48:57) :
“”” Ron de Haan (17:48:43) :
tallbloke (16:14:31) :
Roger Sowell (13:16:28) :
given a recent breakthrough in energy storage via high-speed flywheels. The device is under construction, and it is a bit premature to celebrate, but we should know by December or January if this works as advertised.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/grid-scale-energy-storage-flywheel.html
“Round and round went the bloody great wheel
In and out went the prick of steel”
Sounds fun. What are they going to construct these from?
tallbloke:
Depleted Uranium, what else? “””
Actually depleted Uranium would not be a good flywheel material; it isn’t nearly strong enough to take the stresses.
In stationary applications, flywheels might have some use; but I doubt it.
Even with absolutely perfect balance it would have to withstand the constant bearing wear that results from the incessant 84 minute “hum” vibrations; that plague gyro systems. The 84 minute vibration is of course the period of a simple pendulum whose length is the radius of the earth.
It is also the absolute minimum period of an earth satellite, circling at the earth surface; or the round trip time of a trip through any length “graviational tunnel”, say from SFO to LAX.
The flywheel bearing would eventually wear out from precession due to the earth’s rotation. You could of course gymbal mount it, to remove those side thrusts; but then you would have two extra sets of bearings to wear out through ocnstant rotation.
No matter how you cut it; storing a whole lot of energy in a small space is damn dangerous; no matter how you cut it; and gasoline is about as safe as any method yet tried. As for “Super” batteries; the more “super” they are; the more dangerous, and environmentally obnoxious they are; they aren’t the answer either.
George
George, you are correct again.
Gasoline is very safe and we have even made it safer.
I have serious doubts about the long time durability of heavy, real heavy fly wheels
spinning at 100.000 rpm.
But it is a challenge to build a prototype.
The weight and strength of the flywheel could be created by the creation of a composite material. (Could be done with depleted uranium although the choice of material was intended as a joke)
It must be very well balanced and extremely strong.
It would need a super buffer that is able to absorb the kinetic energy in case the fly wheel for some reason flies apart or is released from it’s axle for some kind of reason.
To let it spin in an underground housing would an the obvious solution.
The real big idea is to build it entirely free of bearings using an electric magnetic field, thus creating a free flying solution spinning under vacuum conditions for low drag. (No bearings, no axle, no wear, no vibrations, no humming, no maintenance)
But I still think coal and gas are the better option.
Who needs windmills anyhow?
George E. Smith (14:48:57) :
The Euler pendulum you correctly describe would probably affect only a gyro that was not initially set up to have a rotational axis parallel to the rotational axis of the Earth. forgive me if I have this wrong, it’s been many years since I worked with navigational gyros.
Balance & gyro drift are another matter though, the factors in that are many, even in air or magnetic bearings.
Add to that, how many minutes can be stored in a gyro & from where?
Here in the UK, we can go weeks without wind, ditto the rest of Europe! The backup still needs to be there & will probably be even “dirtier” due its intermittent use.
Someone, one of the phils I think, said we can start 1.3Gw in 12 seconds. This sounds like & fairly well matches in power Dynorwig pumped storage units which actually can achieve max power in about 75 seconds. Then of course there is the problem of getting them in sync with the grid before bringing them online. Unless yoou want to bring the grid down of course.
DaveE.
Lichanos,
My final remarks on Vietnam and WC:
You wrote: “You can’t just claim that the military was stabbed in the back by weak-minded, craven reporters who didn’t understand we were close to victory.”
Try the facts:
1)after the press was given unprecedented access to the war effort the military was stabbed in the back by the press;
2)the press, by essentially reversing the result of the tremendously successful response by the troops against an incredibly widespread and massive V.C. assault the press did contribute greatly to U.S. troops being withdrawn and to the North’s victory realized.
What would the outcome have been if the U.S. remained? I have my opinions and that’s all they are and beside the point. The point is taking the weapon out of the warriors hands when they have fought successfully, sacrificing for others only to be demeaned and further sacrificed at home.
I initially pointed out the fact many things contributed to the outcome of the Vietnam War. I felt the need to respond to your rant about the quote of one N.V. General and your making a narrow argument somehow excusing Cronkite, and his colleagues, from not getting a report correct which significantly (not exclusively) contributed to one certain path of violence and death – apparently without their public remorse. I am not aware of any such acknowledgments.
Possibly you’ll understand my perspective. It is not that difficult, but I will not respond to further nit-picking that would only waste space feeding your appetite for verbiage.
Cronkite’s narrative delivery during space missions was tremendous. Unfortunately, for me, the above and his thereafter liberal agenda driven career detracted from those and other such great presentations.
It will be great, once again, when we can see progress toward our exploring the outside universe and another, improved Cronkite-like can relay it to the public – if we don’t freeze first.
You know, as much as I am enthused by Bransons Virgin Galactic effort, watching their promo videos on their website sickens me how they are so cloyingly dripping with the AGW propaganda, and if thats how the capitalists in britain talk, its no wonder things are insane over there (never mind the insanity on this side of the pond).
DaveE, George Smith, Ron de Haan,
The commercial flywheels do incorporate the aspects you mentioned, non-contact bearings (they “fly” after reaching a certain speed), evacuated chamber, and composite rotor material. Some are built underground as a buffer against failure at high speed. Part of the know-how is in constructing a nearly perfectly balanced cylinder that does not wobble at high speed. Another aspect is not losing speed as the earth rotates (the gyroscopic effects mentioned earlier). There is probably an effect from earth orbiting the sun, but I do not know if it is significant.
I have been fascinated by these gadgets ever since my grand-dad allowed me to spin up the axe sharpener on his farm (early 1960’s). This had a hand-crank geared up to a grindstone that rotated on a horizontal axis. It must have had wonderful bearings as it would spin for quite a long time after we cranked it as fast as possible. When he was not looking, my cousins and I would try to stop the rotating wheel as quickly as possible by pressing a length of wood against it. We learned some good lessons about energy stored in a rotating mass (and lost a bit of skin).
“Ron de Haan (20:48:03) :
Patrick Davis (19:23:55) :
“No-one has mentioned Werhner von Braun yet, or is that too sensitive a subject still?”
Patrick Davis, read: Ron de Haan (18:55:32) :
I have mentioned Von Braun in relation to the German V-Program.
Without the genius of Von Braun and his rocket technology there would not have been a V-weapon program in Germany and no successful US Space Program.
He was lucky to survive the war, lucky he was not prosecuted in Neurenburg,
lucky to continue his rocket development in the USA and lucky the Cold War triggered a Space Race.
We were all lucky he was not deported to the USSR.
I am sure a lot of people who experienced the effects of his V1 and later his V2 have a different opinion. The same goes for the prisoners who worked under extreme conditions on his program.
But it was war and we are lucky that he was on the side that lost the war.
So in short: Briliant and successful rocket scientist who was very, very, very lucky.
His big disappointment came in the end when the Space Program was terminated and budgets were reduced. He had great plans for a permanent Moon Base and all the plans ready for a flight to Mars.”
Sorry, war is no excuse to ignore the slave labour that put Braun in a position to be exploited, and he in turn to exploit the US *because* of it, by the US in their ICBM and other rocket, Saturn V, programs. All that “secret” technology was salted away by the US at the end of WW2.
To me this is just as unpalatable as those involved in loading the prison trains which took millions to their deaths.
We’re after truth in the AGW “dabate”, then truth should prevail in this discussion about how NASA got there.
“George E. Smith (14:26:45) :
“”” ralph ellis (00:59:35) :
>>>No-one has mentioned Werhner von Braun yet, or is that
>>>too sensitive a subject still?
Ah, yes, that old America-ribbing joke.
Q. I say, I say, I say. Why did America beat Russia to the Moon?
A. Because the American Germans were better than the Russian Germans.
Da da da da daaaa….. (rounds of applause) … 😉 “””
Don’t laugh; I know of an (American Sponsored), America’s Cup Sailing site; whose site motto says:
“OUR Kiwis, are faster than YOUR Kiwis.”
A recognition of the depth of Kiwi sailing, and the raft of them to be found in lots of other Nations’s sailing teams; BUT, also a slap at American teams, for not recognising that there are a large number of very skilled American Sailors; who are more than capable of putting together an American AC team at the top performance level in that sport; without just blanket hiring, of Kiwi sailors.
George”
And who was NZ’s most famous sailor? Sir Peter Blake, who spent most of his *famous* sailing life in and around Emsworth, Hants, UK.
I won’t go in to why I dislike the attention this man attracted in NZ when he was freely sailing about the place (Off Western Australia I think) and was killed by pirates, while, other “little people” (Lillybing) were being vicioucly killed at home (NZ).