Freeman Dyson « Search Results

Isegoria: As the article notes, a cargo airship is slower and less expensive than conventional air freight, but faster and more expensive than rail — and doesn’t need a runway or rails.
David Foster: 340000 pounds is 170 tons. That is less than the capacity of two standard railcars. A single train can include more than 100 cars. Dirigible are intriguing, but I don’t see how they can possibly beat rail or water for heavy freight.
McChuck: It would be better if they made England English again.
McChuck: The easiest and cheapest way to harden an existing home is to add an 16″-24″ decorative brick wall or facing around it. Especially if you use two courses.
Gavin Longmuir: Hmmm! Does the name “Hindenburg” ring a bell? Large quantities of highly combustible hydrogen with fire-prone lithium batteries driving sparking electric motors — good luck getting insurance! Remember the Good Old Days when every investment idea included the word “Nano-”? Now, the scammers use terms like “Green Hydrogen”. Presumably, “Green Hydrogen” is hydrogen generated by electrolyzing scarce water (see Lake Powell) using unreliable...
Jim: “At this stage, the company plans to get a prototype built by 2025, and to have a full-sized hydrogen airship flying in 2028.” For those not familiar with aviation, this means that if they’re bought by an established player once they run out of money they could have a prototype by 2028 and a full-sized hydrogen airship flying in 2034. Expect certification no sooner than 2042. [This is not a joke post.]
Jim: Kunning Druegger: “Notice how whenever ‘war with China’ is discussed, it’s always located near, next to, or in China.” An astute observation.
Ezra: Make improvised fighting [or protective] positions out of furniture and sandbags [or cinder blocks]. If your house built on a slab OK. If not, support from the basement to where the position is on the above floor might be needed. In an emergency cut off the electricity, water, natural gas. Have halon fire extinguishers available.
Borepatch: I wonder what the weather-related accident rate will be. It was weather caused crashes that killed airships in the 1930s.
Grasspunk: Graham, I prefer the old school format of the joke, “As the actress said to the bishop.”
Kunning Druegger: Notice how whenever “war with China” is discussed, it’s always located near, next to, or in China. Not that the GAE ever would, but retrenching is the only viable strategy. Let them have the Pacific. Smart money says Nippon, Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia would bleed the Yellows white.
Kunning Druegger: One should keep in mind how wildly unrealistic testing like this is. Bullets are about as consistent as a female eyewitness. This is not to say that houses are actually bulletproof, rather the ballistic dynamics get pretty strange when you start adding variables. I think Wang Wei Lin’s idea is a capital one, and I bet a few handy fellows could probably build a very successful business “ruggedizing” ; houses. In this vein, if anyone is interested and has the excess cash,...
Wang Wei Lin: I was never under the delusion that my basic 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath house with plywood and vinyl exterior would protect me from small arms fire. Building a new house with metal plates under the drywall around doors and windows would be a simple upgrade for a frame house.
Isegoria: I’m not sure what silka is, but American homes tend to have a wood frame and gypsum board (“drywall”) interior walls. The exterior might have fiber-cement siding, but not enough to be bulletproof.
Isegoria: Yes, the Castillo de San Marcos is Florida’s cannonball-eating Spanish fort: Built from coquina — sedimentary rock formed from compressed shells of dead marine organisms — the walls suffered little damage from the British onslaught. As one Englishman described it, the rock “will not splinter but will give way to cannon ball as though you would stick a knife into cheese.”
Grasspunk: Didn’t we have a discussion about the benefits of limestone walls? Cannon balls just sunk into the walls of that fort in Florida, IIRC.
Szopen: Well, I guess this pertains to the US only. Here we’re building old style. My house’s exterior walls are 24 cm silka (~9.44 inches), plus warming (styropian) and plaster. Interior walls 12 cm silka (with load bearing walls 24cm).
Jim: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kiVVzxoPTtg Heh.
Bob Sykes: As late as the 1950′s, Methuen, Massachusetts had a bonfire festival, but I believe it happened on July 4. Methuen then was a heavily French-Canadian Catholic town. The bonfire was huge, an immense stack of old lumber, railroad ties, etc.
Harry Jones: Darwin shrugs.

Isegoria

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