Posts by John Smith 19

"This was purely about leadership ambitions in the Tory party,"

As have most of the issues that have resulted in the UK being enveloped in a perpetual s**t storm for the last 3 years.

"Grayling seems sackproof, leading one to wonder what bodies he knows the location of."

It's simpler than that.

He appears to be her only actual friend in the Cabinet from their shared background in the same constituency party IIRC

Nothing much short of committing Frankie Boyle levels of malfeasance on live television would get May to even consider sacking him.

"he was either very confident or very stupid "

Why couldn't he be both?

He was after all a) A Conservative Cabinet Minister b) An ex public school boy.

Such people are programmed to believe a) They are always right b)People will always believe them.

I think I have found a quick verbal short hand to sum of this sort of character in 2 words.

"Stirling Archer."

"May seems to be determined to do a reprise of Downfall "

I like the idea, but be careful what you wish for.

You've just replaced one dumbass (with possible ASD) with something worse

Boris "I'm too busy banging someone 20 years my junior to run the country" Johnson

Jacob Rees-Mogg. A complete ba***rd in a nice suit with elegant pronunciation is still a complete ba**rd.

Jeremy Corbyn. "Fellow traveler" of the ERG in spirit, if not name.

What a s**t shower they are.

"Small teams work much better than big ones for most cases."

Wow.

5 decades on from "They Mythical Man Month" and people making the same old mistakes in the same old ways.

Unf**kingbelievable.

"To be fair, it sounds like a lot of back-end integration was also part of the deal. "

And that's where it gets complex..

For example

Client "Once you've collected the information we need you to load it into our mainframe back end. It's an MQ/CICS/DB2 stack"

Con-sultant "What's a mainframe?"

They're not called con-sultants for nothing.

And the answer will always be "yes" whatever the requirement.

Their bigness does not actually give their customers any more real safety or assurance

"Fool me once..."

I think you'll find it's rather more than once.

And yes, trust is earned, not given.

But data fetishists do not ask for you data. They either demand it as a right (when you actually have a legally enforceable right to refuse) or simply take it if you don't (hello NHS).

Would he have even bothered to show up here if it was not for Edward Snowden's data dump?

Would he f**k.

"They had to be reselling hardware and software as platforms for their own software."

No.

That's kind of the point.

This was straight box shifting.

And that moves Autonomy from (glamorous) "software, services and consultancy" to "box shifting."

"and motorsports is that due to a bunch of luddites

True.

But that still leaves open their use in radiators (and that's basically the reverse of what a pre-cooler is)

I did not know until recently that F1 engines are built to much narrower tolerances than regular engines. The piston/engine block clearance is roughly 1/2-1/3 that of a regular car and if the block cools down the pistons cease.

So there are several fluids that need to be kept at the right temperature and REL can certainly help with this.

However the last time REL looked at this their tech was deemed "Too expensive" for F1.

Mfg Engineering work has cut REL HX mfg costs to about 1/10 of what they were.

"I've previously read that they'd envisaged this to be fully automated "

True. The cost of a meatsack in the control loop by default (which NASA Marshall insisted on for Shuttle) makes initial testing very hairy. I'm not sure where you'd get the suborbital hops part.

REL have looked at what it takes to carry passengers for Skylon. While a design is in a computer you can add and subtract whatever you like so they decided to find out what you should design in (side access doors are not an optional extra for example) and what you can safely leave out.

Such provisions would still be "Fly By Wire," without a mechanical linkage.

Which is now SOP for all new large aircraft like the 777 and A380.

"If you study the mass budget table in the design paper this should be apparent."

Perhaps you should study the bit labeled "Growth margin."?

Skylon has one.

Other SSTO concepts don't.

"..Reaction Engines can keep most of their development work in the UK the better."

Actually they do.

The test facility is in the US.

The HX was designed and built in the UK.

Which AFAIK is where the design and mfg operation is planning to stay.

BTW AFAIK this is the first new high temp,high speed airflow test site in the US for decades. I think they're hoping it will raise some fees testing out other peoples idea for hypersonic flight.

Elon Musk would disagree with you.

In 2011 Elon Musk though they could do full reusability with the F9.

In 2014 he took it off the table.

Now he thinks they can do full reusability with a vehicle about 6x bigger than current LV's and 1.5x bigger than the Saturn V.

OTOH it's known that a winged vehicle can do re-entry from LEO, as Buran,Shuttle, and the X37b have demonstrated. The latter two multiple times.

Another,..subtle benefit is your engine.. smaller; it doesn't need a thrust-to-weight ratio

greater than 1:1

True. In fact SABRE's expected to be about 15:1. Rubbish for a pure rocket (but with an Isp of 3000secs in air breathing mode) and pretty phenomenal for a jet engine (SoA is around 10:1).

Skylon's thrust requirement (depending on what you think is necessary) can be 1/2 to 2/3 of GTOW

The test engine (which these sections are the precursors to) is expected to be about 20 tonnes thrust, which (at 2/3 GTO) means a (potential) flight test vehicle of 28 tonnes (big fighter aircraft or roughly 60 seat regional jet).

Now, could you build an orbit capable FTV with that mass? Who can say....

Third, how is this pre-cooler going to do when it sucks in a bird?

Firstly I'd like to congratulate you on your amazing grasp of SABRE and Skylon.

No, really, it's truly quite abnormal.

In answer to your question the front end of the nacelle housing the SABRE has a spike inlet. The pre-cooler sits behind this so there is no direct path. In the very unlikely event it ricochets round this and does hit part of the pre-cooler the pre-cooler is actually in 4 sections, which I'd guess can all be isolated.

It's a launch abort, not a loss of vehicle situation. And yes Skylon was designed to take off with one engine failing. Once it's in the air there's time to sort things out. The payload won't go to orbit that day, but nor will it rain down in little pieces.

"Yes, the quaffing would be spectacular, at 0 g."

Actually it's better than that.

Skylon was designed to be statically stable in a way that Shuttle (and anything else that's got big point masses at the base, like any rocket stage) is not.

So it's designed to not need the continuous control surface "fluttering" you see in combat aircraft (that have either relaxed or zero static stability).

IOW it could be flown by a human without a computer between them and the controls.

Making Skylon (potentially) the worlds fasted human pilotable aerospace plane.

Which would be quite exciting so some groups of pilots.

single crysta...are very very smooth..unlike..lower temperature blades

Actually all turbine blades are very smooth.

It's just that the usual cast blades are poly crystalline and you can see (when the surface has been suitably prepared) you can see the grain boundaries.

The trouble with SC blades is they are very slow to cool down, as you have to take them out of the (special) furnace s-l-o-w-l-y.

"There's a growing mood for self assembly satellites. "

Says who?

The people pitching one of the 18-40 TSTO VTO ELV's that are desperately scrabbling for market?

The infrastructure to do that does not actually exist. It'll have the compatibility issues of VHS/Betamax/V2000 multiplied by a 1000.

Now how will they get that tinkertoy satellite to GEO? Or to escape velocity?

Skylon's T/O buys you a full size GEO comm sat and the stage to get it there (or to escape velocity, or just below, but with a big payload).

"On paper it could put 12.5 tons into LEO"

You're about 1 generation behind the D2. That's 15 tonnes.

What you don't seem to know about Skylon (because you've just cut-and-pasted a generic SSTO idea perhaps) is it is the only SSTO that offers VTO TSTO payload fraction IE 3-4% of GTOW as payload.

And the 3000 sec Isp (during air breathing mode, but that's enough) buys it a lot of weight growth in a way rocket based VTOL designs just don't have.

"Burning Hydrogen in air will also produce NOx "

As part of the LAPCAT project REL developed a new design of combustion injector that is expected to generate 1% of the NOx of existing combustors.

The SABRE 4 cycle splits the system into 2 separate combustion chambers this is now much more viable.

"what I can gather here HP really wanted Autonomy, "

Is anyone else hearing....

<gollum>

We wants it

We wants it

We must have Autonomy

</gollum>

And so Leo got it. Regardless of advice. Regardless of cost.

Whatever happened to "The buck stops here" ?

"Bought it on a whim, in a rush without doing all that?"

For something that's going to consume 11 billion dollars in cash (not some kind of share swap) shall we say that the CEO interest (given "It's the future of the company") seems a tad minimal?

I'd say "I bet he regrets that now," but honestly I don't think he does.

After all it wasn't his money he p**sed away.

And maybe that's the problem.

CEO who don't feel any sense that it is their money.

"99% of the new features added in the last 10 years are useless, "

But what sounds better.

"Word whatever now has <some other stupid new bell or whistle 5 people might understand and 2 will use>"

or

"Now we fixed the top 10% of the most complained about bugs in the last release.

Actually Microsofts greatest achievement is to convince people that s**t SW is all that is possible, and all that is needed.