Jonny 290 posted:

or unbalanced

I read about some technique for building turbine blades where they basically start with a little crystal of metal and grow the entire blade via some type of deposition so it's as close to perfect as we can get

FMguru posted:

comprehensively solving public health problems in the remotest, least developed parts of sub-saharan africa is easier than teaching southerners not to stand around barefoot in their own poo poo

FMguru posted:

comprehensively solving public health problems in the remotest, least developed parts of sub-saharan africa is easier than teaching southerners not to stand around barefoot in their own poo poo

Luigi Thirty posted:

wasn't there a goon who was working with a charity installing networked water pumps in African villages so they could track when they break down

pointers posted:

so someone mentioned agricultural land restoration projects and yes yes yes
1) biochar. gently caress yes biochar. increases cation exchange capacity, water retention, has a shitload of carbon so throw a lil nitrogen on that bitch and u got urself some beneficial microbes going. do a biochar
2) loving great green wall bitches. basically acacia trees have real deep roots AND they fix nitrogen?!?! holy mother of gently caress these things are awesome already. but then THEN they totally LOSE THEIR LEAVES AT A TIME WHEN AGRICULTURAL CROPS ARE IN ACTIVE GROWTH. so u can plant MUTHAFUCKING CROPS under these trees and they wont gently caress with the root system, get fuckin NATURALLY FERTILIZED and can still get sun and poo poo?!!? plus ur CREATING MUTHAFUCKING JOBS AND DISTRUPTING THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY b/c u gotta harvest those bitches between trees and aint no loving big-agri mass producution machines doin' that poo poo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall
3) and gently caress this documentary is awesome even if it gets all preachy at the end http://www.symphonyofthesoil.com/

loving soil (it is not dirt IT IS NOT DIRT) bitches, keeping things alive

HAIL eSATA-n posted:

these pumps (i used hand pumps/wells) break down at least once a year with heavy use and they are likely the only source of relatively clean water for miles. the village i lived in was smart and collected fees every month, about a dollar from each user, and kept it in a fund to repair the pump immediately upon failure.
most of my work in zambia was teaching people about the benefits of acacia trees like "msangu" and how they are literally free fertilizer.

HAIL eSATA-n posted:

literally free fertilizer

pointers posted:

plz direct me to how i can get involved with this it is extremely my poo poo

HAIL eSATA-n posted:

https://www.peacecorps.gov

Jonny 290 posted:

no dont

Luigi Thirty posted:

wasn't there a goon who was working with a charity installing networked water pumps in African villages so they could track when they break down

HAIL eSATA-n posted:

i hated my time there mainly because i'm a fuckup with sadbrains fwiw

Beast of Bourbon posted:

haha yes, the peacecorps, totally not a front for the us intelligence agencies

Beast of Bourbon posted:

haha yes, the peacecorps, totally not a front for the us intelligence agencies

Necc0 posted:

you'd think their funding wouldn't be so paltry if this were true

HAIL eSATA-n posted:

these pumps (i used hand pumps/wells) break down at least once a year with heavy use and they are likely the only source of relatively clean water for miles. the village i lived in was smart and collected fees every month, about a dollar from each user, and kept it in a fund to repair the pump immediately upon failure.
most of my work in zambia was teaching people about the benefits of acacia trees like "msangu" and how they are literally free fertilizer.

quote:

So JumpStartFund and the UCLA students have made good progress, but there’s a lot to figure out before anyone gets to tackle the really fun parts like testing, permitting, and construction. Ahlborn says the questions of how to build the low-pressure tube and the pylons that support it have mostly been solved, and creating the capsules shouldn’t be too tricky. The hard part is moving the capsules within the tube, and seeing how fast they can go.

quote:

“I have almost no doubt that once we are finished, once we know how we are going to build and it makes economical sense[, that we will get the funds,” Ahlborn says, and Musk’s cost estimate of $6-10 billion for a 400-mile stretch of Hyperloop is on point, based on the team’s work.

Considering the nonsense that’s getting venture capital these days, that’s not a crazy thing to say, though it will require unusually patient investors.

Jonny 290 posted:

who would you let into your african nation: a "peace corps" that is stealing toilet paper and washing paper plates, or a "peace corps" that has shitloads of cash and is evidently being funded by somebody big

qntm posted:

didn't the current prime minister of india win on a platform that included a bold plan of "toilets for all"

Sagebrush posted:

PleasureKevin posted:

this whole article: http://www.wired.com/2014/12/jumpstartfund-hyperloop-elon-musk/


yeah, you've made great progress. you made some CGI renderings with stock character models and poo poo. oh, and read all 50 pages on elon musk's white paper.




startup logic. hey, if that silly company can get $1million, then surely i can get $10 billion. actually, another company has been making crappy CGI mock-ups of vac trains for years but got no funding. what gives? http://www.et3.com

Bloody posted:

A minimum of half a billion toilets is a Lotta dang toilets

PleasureKevin posted:

this whole article: http://www.wired.com/2014/12/jumpstartfund-hyperloop-elon-musk/


yeah, you've made great progress. you made some CGI renderings with stock character models and poo poo. oh, and read all 50 pages on elon musk's white paper.




startup logic. hey, if that silly company can get $1million, then surely i can get $10 billion. actually, another company has been making crappy CGI mock-ups of vac trains for years but got no funding. what gives? http://www.et3.com

Jonny 290 posted:

no dont

Sagebrush posted:

just imagine the existential question posed by working in a facility with a turbine with molten sodium flowing through it at 2000 degrees and twice the speed of sound

quote:

The Soviet Union/Russian Navy Project 705 (Лира/Lira, "Lyre") was a class of hunter/killer nuclear-powered submarines. The class is also known by the NATO reporting name of Alfa. They were the fastest class of military submarines built...

[I]t used a powerful lead cooled fast reactor as a power source, which greatly reduced the size of the reactor compared to conventional designs, thus reducing the overall size of the submarine, and allowing for very high speeds. However, it also meant that the reactor had a short lifetime and had to be kept warm when it was not being used.

While more reliable, BM-40A reactor still turned out to be much more demanding in maintenance than older pressurized water reactors. The issue was that the lead/bismuth eutectic solution solidifies at 125 °C (257 °F). If it ever hardened, it would be impossible to restart the reactor, since the fuel assemblies would be frozen in the solidified coolant. Thus, whenever the reactor is shut down, the liquid coolant must be heated externally with superheated steam. Near the piers where the submarines were moored, a special facility was constructed to deliver superheated steam to the vessels' reactors when the reactors were shut down. A smaller ship was also stationed at the pier to deliver steam from her steam plant to the Lira submarines.

Coastal facilities were treated with much less attention than the submarines and often turned out unable to heat the submarines reactors. Consequently the plants had to be kept running even while the subs were in harbor. The facilities completely broke down early in the 1980s and since then the reactors of all operational Lira submarines were kept constantly running. While the BM-40A reactors are able to work for many years without stopping, they were not specifically designed for such treatment and any serious reactor maintenance became impossible. This led to a number of failures, including coolant leaks and one reactor broken down and frozen while at sea. However, constantly running the reactors proved better than relying on the coastal facilities. Four vessels were decommissioned due to freezing of the coolant.

triple sulk posted:

I still cannot fathom where a $6-10bn estimate can come from

Nintendo Kid posted:

really? in order to build his stupid hyperloop system he needs to build several 500 mile or so long tubes that are completely airtight and probably involve a ton of tunnels and poo poo to avoid elevation and direction changes as much as possible.

that 6 to 10 billion seems pretty legit, although honestly a bit low.

Citizen Tayne posted:

Stay safe, Stymie. Being right all the time is a burden I know all too ell.

Beast of Bourbon posted:

haha yes, the peacecorps, totally not a front for the us intelligence agencies

Beast of Bourbon posted:

haha yes, the peacecorps, totally not a front for the us intelligence agencies

Verdafolio posted:

what about molten-lead bismuth and you're trapped in a tiny titanium tube deep underwater

and it has to be on 24/7 with no maintenance lest the reactor "freeze".

Spime Wrangler posted:

evacuated tube transport for people is dumb for many reasons

the better tube technology is short to medium range pneumatic freight transport (like big versions of the pneumatic document tubes they use at the bank)

it's easy to build, easy to maintain, highly efficient, and cost effective

seriously you just put a bunch of standard reinforced concrete tubes end to end from point A to point B, hook up a big blower to one side, and start shoving capsules in. they can be aboveground or underground or whatever, and can be sized up to handle ISO-standard shipping containers. they're projected to reduce energy use (and emissions) per ton-mile by like 90+% over on-highway trucks.