Posts by John Smith 19

Re: anyone read Wikinomics?

"I bring that up because what they're talking about with maximizing the value of their new build investment is how they've always operated. They're not doing anything new, as far as company strategy, it has just been so long since a really new plane appeared that people have forgotten :)"

Exactly. Build a core design (probably with bunch of new tech) and milk it for decades afterward. Thumbs up for the observation.

In 25-30 years his successor will start saying "It's about time we looked at moving the 787 on."

Re: But, but.... Won't anybody think of the koalas?

"No worries. The mallee used is from Western Australia, we don't have native Koalas. It seems that the population did originally extend to WA, but it seems they may have been hunted to extinction by humans tens of thousands of years ago, when the climate started to become dry."

Really?

So Koala farming for burgers?

Re: Ahem.

""What has happened to the good science journalists?"

I can give you a clue.

"I agree it is a great article"

*smug smile*"

Sadly not working at the BBC it would seem

Re: The Govt priorities are Fuscked up

"Imagine a future where the UK was the first to generate self sustaining fusion by pumping £42bn into a UK only ITER, and became a net Energy and Energy Technology exporter to the WORLD."

There are quite good reasons to believe ITER won't work any better than the other upteen previous versions.

Things like for example the 1000 odd collisions the particles have to make before there is a reasonable probability of fusion happening. That's why they are so damm big (and getting bigger). There's no such thing as a "desk top" TOKAMAK.

That the particle distribution is Maxwellian and only a very small % of the whole will be at the top end of the tail IE energetic enough to fuse. The bulk of the charge will be in pole position to drain the energy that small fraction generates as heat or radiation.

That the concave magnetic fields of the TOKAMAK design do not apply a corrective force to shepherd the plasma particles back to the centre of the torus, so they continually dump energy to the walls, which has to be topped up somehow.

ITER will however make Europe self sufficient in plasma science PhD's for the foreseeable future.

Re: Maybe we get to meet some of the NSA cube rats as well.

"You should definitely go into IT security. "

Maybe I already am. You'd never know.

" Every major company would love to hear how they could protect themselves against having their secrets stolen by spy-tech, Chinese moles, zero day exploits, and social engineering. "

What a charmingly perfect world you must live in. Please pat a passing unicorn on the head for me.

IRL no Board member likes to hear they are going to have to spend serious money (and OMFG it's not even as if it's all on hardware but training on vermin staff, who could like, leave us afterward and take it with them, the ba**ards)

"When someone with the resources of a state actor want your s**t, it's really hard to keep them from getting it."

Well done.

You have learned the first lesson of security.

Re: Here's another one I prepared earlier

"A large proportion of the cost of a satellite is the custom design and build. Is it not standard practice to build at least one identical spare alongside the original?

Certainly comm sat operators do like to have spares (either on the ground or on orbit).

The learning curve on most satellites is very steep. The cost to double production (IE 1 --> 2) is a lotsmaller. Iridium hired the guy who developed iPad production to streamline the process. Their 77 sats were much cheaper to knock out at the end.

Re: Return of Hermes

"Ariane5 was originally intended to carry the Hermes spaceplane as part of the Eu's "Frogs in Space" project. Shoudl be easy enough to reinstate it"

I'll point out that Hermes got cancelled because it got too fat to carry, much like some Americans.

Re: Yes the ULA have been pushing the "irrisponsible" routine for a while now.

"LO2/LH2 engines are "better" but also more complex and expensive. The lack of good LO2/LH2 technology, especially for upper stages (like the Centaur), is what is keeping Russia away from deep space probes. "

Generally speaking people think of the RL10 as one of the simplest LO2/LH2 engines, given its relatively modest chamber pressure and fairly benign expander cycle.

I'd expect a Russian RL10 to be mfg with he same level of automation as their other engines, which means substantially cheaper.

@Mike SMith

REAL men use COPY CON FILENAME.ZIP

Well played.

@A Twig

"Rather than launch straight into "universal" - start off with a system that can do one thing well, say unemployment benefit."

Umm. Because 8 benefits with the simplest claimants was the phased roll out.

It's my understanding that the UK benefits system is really complex.

Re: OTOH, you could regulate to encourage new business

"By treating the taxation differently, between none productive money and money spent taking risks by creating jobs and building the economy."

Actually this has been tried in the UK.

Typically what happens is some sort of tax break for higher rate tax payers only if they invest in some kind of "scheme."

Typically tax lawyers and accountants construct "pseudo" risky schemes that look like they are investing in something new (and risky) but in fact are not.

Then tax courts rule it's an "Aggressive tax avoidance" scheme the people reach a (very reasonable) agreement to pay off (some) of their (alleged) liability and it all starts over again.

Look up "Business Expansion Scheme" ad nausum.