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Hello, just a lurker who's been slowly reading through this thread. I only have high school chem so I've learned a lot in the thread, keep up the mad chemistry! Can tell abou details of hydrogen airship construction upon request Cichlidae posted:Russia only stands to benefit from climate change in the short term. Their permafrost is no good for growing proper crops since it doesn't have enough humus, so other than spongy, miserable living area, warming it up doesn't do them a whole lot of good. Combined with the whole global collapse of society past the two-degree mark, nobody in the world really benefits long-term from accelerating the change. The Russians are on track to be turbofucked by climate change, fortunately. (?) In Siberia methane is exploding, literally. This is bad if you consider that gas pipelines through Siberia are the only good economic thing Russia still has going
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May 26, 2018 17:11
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Nebakenezzer posted:Hello, just a lurker who's been slowly reading through this thread. I only have high school chem so I've learned a lot in the thread, keep up the mad chemistry! I'm requesting those hydrogen deets
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May 26, 2018 17:16
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The only way you win by accelerating climate change is if your goal is to exterminate humanity. Nobody, not even Putin, is going to do it intentionally rather than just doing so incidentally to capitalism
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May 26, 2018 21:19
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UberJew posted:The only way you win by accelerating climate change is if your goal is to exterminate humanity. Nobody, not even Putin, is going to do it intentionally rather than just doing so incidentally to capitalism 
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May 27, 2018 00:00
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UberJew posted:The only way you win by accelerating climate change is if your goal is to exterminate humanity. Nobody, not even Putin, is going to do it intentionally rather than just doing so incidentally to capitalism You underestimate America 
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May 27, 2018 00:04
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Yeah, there's a clip of one of these dumbasses sticking his face in the black exhaust cloud and basically going "Suck it, libs!"
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May 27, 2018 04:34
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Rolling coal is motivated by half ignorance, half pure spite for the world outside of your solipsistic field of view. The only time I've seen exhaust like that with any other motive was a single dyno run at a car show where the driver asked everyone to stand back because he had to err on the side of running rich to keep his engine safe. Still selfish and environmentally unfriendly, but the guy put down 1500hp and over 2000lbf of torque and won the competition and then switched back to street mode with clear exhaust.
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May 27, 2018 05:36
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UberJew posted:The only way you win by accelerating climate change is if your goal is to exterminate humanity. Ask me at the end of a rough shift, and I'd happily spend a night figuring out how to fire the methane clathrate gun tomorrow.
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May 27, 2018 06:34
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GWBBQ posted:Rolling coal is motivated by half ignorance, half pure spite for the world outside of your solipsistic field of view. The only time I've seen exhaust like that with any other motive was a single dyno run at a car show where the driver asked everyone to stand back because he had to err on the side of running rich to keep his engine safe. Still selfish and environmentally unfriendly, but the guy put down 1500hp and over 2000lbf of torque and won the competition and then switched back to street mode with clear exhaust. Dyno queens are one thing, but most high-power street builds might smoke a tiny bit as the turbo spools up, but then it clears under full boost. These dipshits saw that, thought "smoke = power", and went to the performance shop yelling "MAKE MY TRUCK SMOKE MORE THAN ALL THE OTHER TRUCKS!!!" Then the soot particles get in the oil and form liquid sandpaper, the unburnt excess fuel also gets in the oil and dilutes it until it's as thin as water, the engine lunches its bearings and a dipshit is now out $10k minimum for a new one. It's a self-correcting problem in the long run.
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May 27, 2018 07:23
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Enourmo posted:These dipshits saw that, thought "smoke = power" No, they think "smoke = owning libs".
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May 27, 2018 07:51
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydN5DApIJgI
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May 27, 2018 08:04
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Ola posted:No, they think "smoke = owning libs". "Prius repellant", some call it.
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May 27, 2018 13:37
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Giving yourself lung cancer to own the libs
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May 28, 2018 22:14
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Hremsfeld posted:Giving yourself lung cancer to own the libs Enourmo posted:It's a self-correcting problem in the long run. Meh, I'd just wish they'd grow up. Live for yourself, not to spite other people.
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May 29, 2018 00:05
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Yay I get to link this again!
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May 29, 2018 03:49
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BIG HEADLINE posted:So my reprint edition of Ignition! arrived, and even though I have to do a fair amount of reading and Wikipedia-ing to 'get' certain things, reading about the mercaptan-based rocket propellants that still have sections of Florida smelling like a skunk decided to up its game is entertaining. Not to mention the fact that fuels that "weren't far off G-based nerve agents in composition" were also considered at one point. Glad to hear you got your copy. Did you get a notification prior to shipping? I also pre-ordered a copy in late January so hopefully I'll get it soon! Edit: ok this is super creepy, just ten minutes ago I got an e-mail from Amazon saying they are trying to fulfil the order. Stop reading my terrible posts Amazon! Pile Of Garbage has a new favorite as of 12:55 on May 29, 2018 |
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May 29, 2018 12:08
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BMan posted:You underestimate America Amateurs. Get a large slow diesel and turbocharge it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwa8jP9fa1Y
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May 29, 2018 12:14
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cheese-cube posted:Glad to hear you got your copy. Did you get a notification prior to shipping? I also pre-ordered a copy in late January so hopefully I'll get it soon! Two of them, actually. Both telling me it'd get to me sooner than they initially claimed.
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May 29, 2018 12:54
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cheese-cube posted:Glad to hear you got your copy. Did you get a notification prior to shipping? I also pre-ordered a copy in late January so hopefully I'll get it soon! I cancelled my Amazon order (was telling me late June delivery) and picked up a copy from my local B&N
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May 29, 2018 22:52
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ROCKET SCIENCE
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I went to the local Books-a-Million halfway through Scott's video and they didn't have it. 
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May 29, 2018 23:23
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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illectro posted:I cancelled my Amazon order (was telling me late June delivery) and picked up a copy from my local B&N Amazon said the same for me, then they changed the delivery date a day or two later, so I have my copy now.
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May 30, 2018 11:10
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zedprime posted:My baseless assumption on the R-11 happenings is someone just found a warehouse full of it and the properties mean it'll run in just about any refrigeration unit. I can't imagine making it when anything but the fancy unsaturated refrigerants are sold at commodity prices that means your manufacturing capital is better spent on something vaguely legal. i think they've detected it as being produced at an increasing rate that is only explained by someone making it rather than happening across a stash its also apparently far cheaper to produce than other refrigerants which is why someone might be doing so
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May 30, 2018 15:49
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. With some of the updates to the standard you can specify just about any unbranched organic with halogens in 4-5 digits.
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Jose posted:i think they've detected it as being produced at an increasing rate that is only explained by someone making it rather than happening across a stash they just found the source 
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May 30, 2018 15:52
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Captain Foo posted:I'm requesting those hydrogen deets (Note: as someone who redid their high school chem three years ago and was pleased AF to get an A+ in the course AND remember how to calculate PH on the final, I'm not a big chemistry brain. If y'all see a mistake/can add something, please do.) If you were dreaming zeppeling yourself through the sky in a rigid airship, the first problem is actually holding the hydrogen lifting gas. During the time of BIG AIRSHIP (1900-1940) those handy polymers we all take for granted were not around. So lifting cells were doped canvas on the outside, with a very particular sort of leather on the inside. Made from the cecum of cows, it was called gold beater's skin, as it was the stuff you needed to make gold leaf. (Not really sure how, exactly.) Gold beater’s skin was also used to make gloves. The cecum was pickled in brine, then doped to the canvas. Because of the organic nature of the material, that meant lifting cells would eventually go bad, with moisture would cause the leather to rot. The Germans who ran DELAG (world's first airline!) and the German military in World War 1 learned that keeping a drat close eye on hydrogen purity was vital, for among other reasons, looking for cells that were developing rot and had to be replaced. Flushing cells and refilling them with new hydrogen was also important - not only for lifting efficiency's sake, but because it was probably the best option for keeping the interior dry. The later British Imperial airship scheme figured on lifting cells lasting about a year. Though once manufactured, lifting cells didn't have much of a shelf life if they were not being used. Several times, airships were 'hung up' in their hangers (had their lifting cells drained) and kept there, and mice would always end up eating the inner linings.  Lifting cells being made. If you wanted to go for a flight, you first needed to figure out your max pressure height. When on the ground, airships have their cells filled only to a percentage of their max capacity. This is because gas will expand as altitude increases and air pressure declines. The max pressure height would be the altitude (adjusted for temperature, barometric pressure, and altitude) that the cells would expand to 100% of their capacity. The pressure inside the lifting cells was fairly mild - only 2 to 3 psi. Fortunately, the chemistry of the physical properties of gasses was well understood by 1900. When a new airship was completed, the first flight it took was in the factory to find its zero point, the point where its weight was perfectly balanced with its lift. This could be done so precisely that a man at the fore and aft gondolas could lift or haul down a 650 ft airship. Y'all know that pure hydrogen is hard to ignite - it is when hydrogen mixes with air that thermal excesses happen. This was somewhat unfortunate, as early airships as part of their normal flying routine, or in an emergency, would have to vent hydrogen. Airships often would vent hydrogen in the last stages of flight, to keep their buoyancy neutral or slightly negative, as they had expended most of their fuel and, hopefully, ordnance. The lifting cells, like all pressurized containers, were built with overpressure relief valves, and these valves were *also how* you set the pressure height. As far as hydrogen airship operations were concerned, this was the most important system - like the modern jetliner that uses hot exhaust gases to keep the cabin air supply warm, this was a system that absolutely had to work correctly, or else woe betide the crew. For example: L 2 was the name of the second airship accepted into German Naval service, first flying on September 6th 1913. She displaced 27,000 m3 (953,000 cu ft), was 157.94 m (518 ft) long, and had a useful lift of 11,100 kg (24,500 lb). On October 16th, a special flight was planned, with Zeppelin engineers accompanying Korvettenkapitän Behnisch, head of the Naval aviation department. It was a beautiful sunny fall day, and the flight was supposed to depart at 10 AM. While it had been hauled out of its shed for that time, one of its engines wouldn’t start, and L 2 sat in the warm sun while mechanics fixed the engine. At noon, L 2 took off with her VIPs - and when she reached 2000 ft, giant tongues of flame began to shoot out her engine exhausts. She then exploded. The airship crashed near an army engineer battalion, and they rushed to help - only to be thrown back by the wreckage, which glowed with the heat it had just absorbed. Everybody onboard was killed, though one poor SOB lived till nightfall in a hospital. The heat of the sun had warmed the hydrogen in the cells, and that of course caused the gas to expand. So when L 2 took off, she passed her pressure height, unbeknownst to the crew, and the pressure valves vented their gas, vented the gas onto the main gangway, and then into the engines. Victorian Nedelin catastrophe aside, hydrogen airships and their crews in the First World War sometimes survived incredible things. This included being riddled with (non incendiary) bullets, having AA shells go through a lifting cell (this airship managed to get back to a base and make a perfect landing), and one time, an AA shell exploding inside a lifting cell. Every type of weather was flown in, including (reluctantly) thunderstorms, where some airships took multiple lightning strikes with little to no damage. One flight, a Zeppelin returning over the North Sea, encountered a thunderstorm near Amsterdam, and reported extreme St. Elmo’s fire, with flames ‘a foot long’ sprouting from the metal bands in the caps of the lookouts at the top of the airship. That same storm, the captain found he could summon ghostly fire to his fingertips by sticking his hand out the window. At the same time, hydrogen is treacherous stuff. For non-combat losses, the single biggest cause of spontaneous airship explosion was thunderstorms tripping the emergency pressure valves though big pressure changes, sometimes aided by the thunderstorm’s sharp updraft. Fixing hydrogen leaks was fun, too, as it involved clambering around on the tension cables and the airship's framework, while talking, singing, or whistling to yourself, so a change in pitch could warn you if were near the source of the leak (and maybe if it was a big one and you should get out of there so you don't pass out.) British lighter-than-air flyers say that hydrogen is *not* odorless - that it gives the air a noticeable metallic tang. The British took a long time to develop incendiary bullets, but in the September of 1916 they applied them to enormous effect. Hydrogen airships had grown since the L 2 - L 30, the first ‘Super Zeppelin’, displaced 55,000 m3 (1,949,600 sq ft), was 198 m (649 ft) long, and had a useful lift of 27,721 kg (61,600 lb), with a crew of anywhere from 17 to 25 - and they could burn real good. Maybe the 20th century has jaded us to explosions, but people at the time described burning zeppelins as turning the night to day. As Zeppelins attacked in groups, when one burned, it could be observed up to 70 km away by other Zeppelins. For the crews of airships, ignition was death. When incendiary bullets were introduced, crews began seriously considering how they would die - death by fire, or death by falling. Many choose the latter, and several accomplished airship captains jumped to their death rather than burn. A very few did survive airship infernos. [Rather horrifying account available upon click, CTRL-F "What Strasser and Dietrich didn't know is that L 48 had survivors".] This was not the only risk airships posed to crews. On two separate occasions a failing airship was abandoned by crews - only to have the derelict take off again and float away. Headcounts then revealed that there were still crew aboard the stricken ship. The second time this happened, the French Air Force tried in vain to shoot down the airship; the derelict airship having found equilibrium two or three thousand feet above where the air force could effectively fly. In terms of ‘vast amounts of hydrogen gas being tricky poo poo’, there was also the Alhorn incident. Alhorn by 1918 was the main naval Zeppelin base, with 5 gigantic hangers. On January 5th, 1918, a crew was cleaning L 47 and L 51 in one shed (with loving gasoline, a detail I couldn’t make up) when a fire started. The first Zeppelin caught fire, then exploded, which caused the Zeppelin right next to it to explode. (Likely the spike in temperature caused the cells to expand and then valve gas.) Immediately after this, a Zeppelin in a nearby shed exploded, and then three more Zeppelins, in sheds a half-mile away, exploded with such force that they brought their sheds down with them. This was either sabotage (which the British remained completely silent about) or, more likely, the force of the first and second explosions via pressure primed the other airships to explode. It’s a mystery to this day. (Or, maybe, don’t clean hydrogen airships with gasoline.) In 1917 and 1918, the airships evolved to fly really, really high for the day (up to 25,000 ft.) This was found to be challenging for airship crews, as they might stay at that altitude for up to eight hours at a time. This was bad enough, but Zeppelins might require a fair bit of heavy labor at that altitude, shifting fuel and water ballast around via manual pumping. If you were in the control gondola, a walk to the toilet and back was some 700 ft, with some fun ladder climbing at the start and the end.  You don't wanna get lightheaded on these ladders There was, of course, no heating system for the crew; to fight the extreme cold, crew sometimes added layers of newspaper to their fur-lined flight suits. The supplemental air system that was developed had issues before it was mostly worked out. Initially, there were pots of pure oxygen, which for some reason were often contaminated with a strong oily taste that made it almost unusable. It also lead to chapped lips and monster hangovers. This got switched up with liquid air, which worked a lot better. Quote: “One did not either feel either hungry or thirsty after (taking liquid air), but extraordinarily alert, and far from experiencing any feeling of fatigue one felt one could knock down a brick wall.” Another problem was that the manly men of the Naval Airship division sometimes thought themselves too man to need regular oxygen, and captains had to start issuing orders for crew to use the air while in flight, even making it a message on the ship’s telegraph. (Zeppelins obviously used ship’s telegraphs, I mean what did you expect them to use.) Later missions - particularly the ‘silent raid’ - saw many crewmen sidelined with altitude sickness despite these measures. Britain used hydrogen lighter than air craft too - but used smaller, simpler blimps, for scouting and anti-submarine work in the North Sea. These blimps could be anything as simple as one or two man airplane fuselages with the wings removed and a gasbag attached, to purpose built ten man craft. It a weird ying-yang relationship, the Germans were the best at building expensive, high performance rigid airships, but terrible at building blimps: this was because the Navy specified blimps with almost the size and performance of rigid airships, thus robbing the design of the virtues of blimps: simplicity and small size. The British, meanwhile, desperately coveted rigid airships, but despite constant intelligence finds thanks to Zeppelin wrecks, were more or less awful at them. For whatever reason, British engineering culture worked much better with blimps. Every side also used hydrogen balloons for observation on the western front. These were tethered one-man observation platforms, and in something of an irony, were probably the safest aircraft of World War 1. Balloons carried wireless telegraphs, binoculars, and cameras, and could not only observe but correct artillery fire. They were very important, and thus heavily defended. They typically were suspended about a kilometer above the ground, and were guarded by: a heavy anti-aircraft gun presence, other guys in balloons with machine guns, stringing cables in the air with a web of barrage balloons, standing air patrols over the balloons, decoy observer balloons booby-trapped with explosives detonated from the ground, and the explosive nature of a hydrogen balloon itself, especially considering that without incendiary ammo, attacks were only effective at extremely close range. While the war produced ‘balloon-aces’, only the best dared attack. Getting back to safety for a moment, the balloon observer was the only WW1 aviator who had a parachute. WW1 parachutes were bulky, but the balloon could be rigged to assist parachute deployment. I’ve also read that entire baskets were rigged to be detachable, so in the event of an attack, the basket would drop and deploy its own chute. Wikipedia posted:The idiom "The balloon's going up!" as an expression for impending battle is derived from the very fact that an observation balloon's ascent likely signaled a preparatory bombardment for an offensive. Post war, there was still a lot of interest in hydrogen rigid airships among naval powers. Compared to airplanes at the time, airships had enormous endurance and could haul comparatively vast amounts of equipment. Remaining Naval airships were divided among the victor nations - save the United States, which got shut out of the spoils for a variety of reasons. These ambitions soon flamed out. Two nations, Great Britain and France, actually flew hydrogen airships - the British flew a copy of late war German designs, the French flew a captured late war Zeppelin - but despite taking air-frames and designs from the Germans, they neglected the most important bit: all the soft skills the Germans knew to operate in reasonable safety. So the French operated their airship for six months, setting an endurance record and flying over North Africa before encountering a thunderstorm off of Italy that tripped the pressure valves at the wrong time, and well, you know the rest. The British copied a late war ‘height climber’ design, and completed it to sell to the US navy. They also modified the design to work from docking masts, adding about a ton of weight to the nose and another ton of weight to the tail to maintain trim, as well as making the helm much more responsive at low altitude - and this was unwise. Had they consulted with Zeppelin engineers, they would have found out that height-climbers were very lightly built to fly better at high altitudes - so lightly built in fact, that as a safety measure they had their controls restricted at low altitudes as a safety feature, as too sharp rudder or elevator movements could warp the fuselage. So, naturally, when the US navy personel came over to England to get trained up in how to fly the ZR-1 as it was named, the British flew her double-crewed in a test flight over Hull, and then decided to test how the airship handled violent alternating port and starboard manuvers. The airship snapped in the center, broke into two bits, and exploded. Of the 49 men aboard, only five survived, a record for airship disasters you’d think the British had deliberately tried to set. Military rigid airships would then become the exclusive domain of the United States. Through the 1930s, hydrogen airships operated by the Zeppelin company would form the world’s first transatlantic airline. The British, too, experimented with airship airliners, but that story ends “like the Titanic, but with much more exploding.” Even helium couldn’t stop valve fuckery, though. After losing the ZR-1, the USA commissioned the ZR-2,USS Shenandoah, based partially on intel gleaned from a captured WW1 Zeppelin, the L 49. ZR-3, the USS Los Angeles, was built by the Zeppelin company and flew across the ocean in 1923 - the last successful transatlantic flight until The Spirit of St. Louis did it in 1927. When she arrived in New Jersey, she was drained of hydrogen and filled with Helium - that the drained USS Shenandoah had provided. While she was hung up, the Shenandoah had her safety pressure valves removed to economize on helium, over the strenuous objections of her commanding officer and everyone who understood why they were called safety valves. Filled with helium, the Shenandoah encountered a thunderstorm over Ohio, got caught in a violent updraft. Exceeding her pressure height, the cells, unable to vent, expanded past the space limits they were supposed to occupy, and tore herself into two bits. 14 Officers and crew died, though as the pieces came to earth, they did not explode.
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May 31, 2018 16:28
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Nebakenezzer posted:If you were dreaming zeppeling yourself through the sky in a rigid airship, awesome
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May 31, 2018 17:50
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Awesome post and I just want to point out that the doomed R101 gave us one of Iron Maiden's best songs.
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May 31, 2018 18:10
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Nebakenezzer posted:AirshipEffortPost Nice! I listened to a podcast recently about airship design compromises and why we don't bother with them anymore, but it was nowhere near as detailed as this.
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May 31, 2018 18:30
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Neb's got a whole series of lighter-than-air effortposts in the Aeronautical Insanity thread in AI, if you want more.
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May 31, 2018 19:11
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Slavic Crime Yacht posted:Awesome post and I just want to point out that the doomed R101 gave us one of Iron Maiden's best songs. I was just about to say the same thing, as it's all I could hear while I was reading that fascinating and awesome post. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsM6wpIA3Sc
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May 31, 2018 21:38
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Hexenritter posted:I was just about to say the same thing, as it's all I could hear while I was reading that fascinating and awesome post. All the good Iron Maiden songs are "things you didn't know about British history".
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Jun 1, 2018 00:31
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Chillbro Baggins posted:All the good Iron Maiden songs are "things you didn't know about British history".
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Jun 1, 2018 16:05
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90s Cringe Rock posted:What's Fear of the Dark? Famous pedos
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Jun 1, 2018 16:13
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Jesus Christ I honestly had no idea airships were a thing outside the Hindenburg disaster and fiction, let alone used in combat. That's some amazing history right there. Thanks for sharing!
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Jun 1, 2018 17:10
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Chillbro Baggins posted:All the good Iron Maiden songs are "things you didn't know about British history". I'd probably modify that to history in general, but then it'd still be wrong because Maiden owns. I wonder if they've written any songs about dangerous chemistry. Maybe I should write them and tell them of Klapotke.
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Jun 1, 2018 20:45
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Buff Skeleton posted:Jesus Christ I honestly had no idea airships were a thing outside the Hindenburg disaster and fiction, let alone used in combat. That's some amazing history right there. Thanks for sharing! Neb's blog (there's a few links in the Zeppelin post above) has a whole chronological series on how airships developed and how they were used in war, absolutely recommended reading if that post piqued your interest.
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Jun 1, 2018 20:54
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Buff Skeleton posted:Jesus Christ I honestly had no idea airships were a thing outside the Hindenburg disaster and fiction, let alone used in combat. That's some amazing history right there. Thanks for sharing! Thanks! If you are interested in knowing more and want to subscribe to my newsletter [X], I put a few links to my blog in that post, where I go into proper  detail. They are posts I made for the aeronautical insanity thread a few years ago. I feel everyone should know about the time the Germans almost succeeded in supplying their African colonial forces via sacrificial airship, the same way I feel everyone should know about President Andrew Jackson and CheeseDirt Road Junglist posted:Nice! I listened to a podcast recently about airship design compromises and why we don't bother with them anymore, but it was nowhere near as detailed as this. Those are partially fightin' words (we can take it on over to the AI thread if you want to hear about exciting recent developments in Lighter-than-Air (LTA) aviation), but I will say that LTA has its niche and is making a comeback. Google is using super-pressure balloons in its scheme for connecting the rest of the world to the internet cheaply. A superpressure balloon keeps its pressure constant regardless of altitude, compressing excess gas in a cylinder instead of having to vent lifting gas. Even those insane transatlantic balloonists in the 1970s still had to vent gas regularly, which was a ticking clock as to how many days they could stay airbourne, so this is a good innovation. Google bought Moffett field a few years ago for this project (Moffett Field being the Pacific base for rigid airships in the 1930s for the USN - they retained their giant hangers.) Google learned, though, that superpressure requires extremely precise quality control - even a single pinhole causes the balloon to deflate within hours. Speaking of Google and Moffett Field, one of the billionaire Google founders is building a modern airship yacht. If airships become the non plus ultra of bling I will be a happy man One more chemfact (if somebody ITT can post a good buoyancy gas that is hideously dangerous I'd appreciate it): late model German and American airships of the 1930s had a clever method for generating water ballast. They condensed the water vapor out of their exhaust, and then shunted it to ballast, allowing them to regenerate what was previously a consumable. In my not-very-educated opinion, I think we could use this method to help ease the potable water crises in certain parts of the world, like China and India, where they are almost out of water but have a poo poo-ton of combustion. I think (assuming cars and trucks could be adapted like this) it'd be a two-step process - first taking the water out of the exhaust, then a step to actually purify it from all the nasty, nasty stuff that I assume condensing water vapor from an exhaust pipe would produce. Ships use some sort of pressure chamber to boil seawater with minimal energy, then condense the water vapor - it sounds like that technology is simple and well understood. Least you think this crazy, I'll have you know that the US military developed a system to do this with hummers and similar. The kit costs 20K per vehicle though, (admittedly it actually generates potable water at the end of its process) but I was hoping a simpler, less high tech process that could be easily copied could be developed.
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Jun 1, 2018 21:47
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Fuel exhaust crud in much lower concentrations is part of the potable water problem to begin with and just as easy to fix as exhaust, which means it isn't. You're stuck with ancient technology with the major thing being it's cheaper to make hopefully. Filters, flashing/ distillation, adsorption based polishing. Every step adds more cost and mostly makes the potable water issue a class thing.
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Jun 1, 2018 22:01
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Nebakenezzer posted:One more chemfact (if somebody ITT can post a good buoyancy gas that is hideously dangerous I'd appreciate it): And in a shocking twist, it turns out that thread favourite chlorine trifluoride is the perfect lifting gas!
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Jun 1, 2018 22:21
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Buff Skeleton posted:Jesus Christ I honestly had no idea airships were a thing outside the Hindenburg disaster and fiction, let alone used in combat. That's some amazing history right there. Thanks for sharing! They were used in combat rather a lot before heavier than air bombers were figured out. Yeah, kind of a thing. The US had just as many or more disasters outside of combat than anybody else, and ours were, of course, bigger than all but the Hindenberg and Graf Zeppelin II, even though they used nice safe slightly-less-buoyant helium, because a) safer, and b) we had a fuckton of it, it's kinda just there in the oil wells because of radioactive decay and gets trapped under the same impermeable salt domes that hold the oil down. Turns out lighter than air flying things the size of a last-gen battleship kinda don't handle crosswinds well. USS Akron and USS Macon both met bad ends, and those were just the ones that rivaled the Hindenberg class, there were a few smaller ones that also ... we're getting a bit more into the AI Horrible Mechanical Failures thread's territory now, but it's probably easier to count Zeppelins that didn't crash due to weather. Nebakenezzer posted:(if somebody ITT can post a good buoyancy gas that is hideously dangerous I'd appreciate it) Yet. 
Chillbro Baggins has a new favorite as of 23:33 on Jun 1, 2018 |
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Jun 1, 2018 23:25
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Chillbro Baggins posted:Pretty sure the only thing better than H2 that can actually exist at STP (if you could get monoatomic H to be stable it'd be a pretty dense [compared to the gaseous form] solid at very much not STP, as far as anybody knows) is hard vacuum, and we don't quite have the structural materials for that to be practical for lifting things. Okay, this makes a whole lot of sense, but I'd never have thought of it myself. What's lighter than nothing? Has anyone actually tried making something float just by making a vacuum in it? I imagine a total lack of chemistry (e.g. vacuum) could be dangerous chemistry if someone had the right mindset. 
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Jun 1, 2018 23:51
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