Re: Oppuortunity knocks
>China is #1 in rare earths, much of it illegally.
Damn our lanthanides got under their country. Just like our oil getting under the middle East.
I blame geography
21371 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2009
>Predominently Chinese businesses have come out of nowhere, and buy up everything on a speculative whim.
Those damn Chinese capitalists. If only the socialist banks, hedge funds and investors in the west had the profit motive, organization experience and access to cheap capital to allow them to do this
Just don't upset the Great Old Ones
>Time to put the Fairey Swordfish back in production?
Surely the Supermarine seaplane would be better?
Then when it falls off the aircraft carrier it will at least float.
In fact you wouldn't need an aircraft carrier - just some sort of yacht with a floating wardroom and some sort of tender with aviation fuel, stocks of bombs and the necessary grubby mechanics
And yet somehow are incredibly expensive Das Keyboard
There is an army dept in an office block next to me. It is obviously some sort of administration dept rather than running-shooting-killing dept.
However they do have to wear boots and uniforms while queuing at Starbucks. They are also of a physique which suggests the typical Texan rather than the Special Forces
Conclusion:
1, Somewhere in the DoD is a supply of camo trousers with a 56inch waist
2, If they ever were to be deployed their camo wouldn't really conceal them - a forest might not be enough
3, They are unlikely to strike terror into the Russian army
>could manufacture a single -- quantity one -- aircraft qualified toilet seat for some ridiculous price. ($3000?)
Even without military certification (was this made entirely in the USA by US owned companies, with a certain percentage being veteran owned and all following federal labor guidelines) and aviation certification (did 10 engineers sign off that this part is only a toilet seat and can't emit RF that could trigger the nuclear bomb in bay next to )
It's incredibly expensive to design and tool a single replacement part for some 50 year old bit of kit.
How much would it cost you to make a windscreen for a 1972 Vauxhall Viva from scratch? Probably more than $3000 !
>But the basic issue here is that DoD desk wallahs' desks aren't going to be suddenly deployed to the field
So if the whole DoD wasn't a socialist conspiracy to provide jobs for life, free college education, and free healthcare to the unemployable you could contract-out all the non running-shooting-killing part to civies ?
On the other hand.
You are a lowly paid academic.
You volunteer to go to the big city to provide expertise for free that would cost $$$$ if they had to pay.
You sit in a meeting with a bunch of consultants/lawyers/PR who are being paid $$$$
And then they nickel and time you on the coffee from the station
My prof once did this.
Went to London for some gov dept meeting and got a burger at the station. Claim denied since there had been refreshments provided (tea and biccies).
So he refused to sign off on the official report.
Eventually 2 civil servants were dispatched to our swampy outpost to reason with him. They made the mistake of saying how they had traveled first class .....
I had one and a visit to a very remote site in a foreign country. Card readers were out at the local town so I persuaded the only bank branch to give me a cash advance.
Caught a huge amount of shit for it.
OK my new policy is either a manager comes with me and pays for everything or the next time I have a problem with the official process I abandon the $M of kit I have with me and come home.
>We need a Manhattan project for a working commercial fusion reactor and should have started about 10 years ago.
We sort of did with ITER. But that was more like asking the USAF, the Royal Navy the USMC and the French resistance to all design the bits of the bomb they wanted and come together to deliver it at the target
>I think the problem was that the FAA naively let Boeing self approve the MAX and more.
No the FAA has to let Boeing self approve the MAX - they are the only ones that know how it works.
The FAA aren't like the teacher with the "correct" answers in the back.
What they failed on was not pushing Boeing's risk assesments. If you have a critical component you have to consider what happens when it fails, and the various modes that it can fail in, and what sort of redundancies are needed. And all that has to be documented.
This is what the FAA failed to do. You don't need to be an expert on the 737-MAX, or even on aviation, to know to ask these sort of questions !
The problem is that the FAA wasn't just rubber stamping Boeing's approval it was rubber stamping Boeing's auditing of it's own approvals
Was once explaining to a visiting American how the NMR lab in the chemistry dept was being moved and renamed the MRI lab. To 'I quote' avoid the 'N' word.
He seemed very confused about why we were mentioning the 'N' word. I was even more confused about why he was confused.
This was many years ago before twitter......
>For example, we spend a lot more money per km of railway than other countries with comparable geographical constraints
Not quite the same.
France = monsieur farmer would you like more money to turn your land into a TGV line than you currently get from the Eu for not farming it ? Mais Oui !
Japan = there is an uninhabited mountain range between two major cities. Get tunnelling. Hai
China = there is nobody living in the flat farmland between these two cities. Excuse me I live here ! (sound of gunshot off screen) There is nobody living in the flat farmland between these two cities
UK = The land between these 2 cities goes through 1000s of privately owned Englishmen's suburban castles, each of which for some reason is worth £1M. And the farmland is all owned by somebody who lives in an actual castle and is in the House of Lords. And there is a rare toad somewhere outside Birmingham so the line will have to go via Lands End.
Those are politician-driven projects, full of power struggles, pork barrels and general incompetence.
While this was designed sub-contracted to the usual pork-barrelled defence contractors, down-scoped, budget reduced, re-scoped, cancelled, restored, sub-contracted, launch vehicles (payload size G forces) changed because of politics etc etc