DarkDobe posted:

Highly recommend The Peripheral if you like Gibson's stuff (or this genre in general)

Apparently it's getting an Amazon adaptation, for whatever that's worth - honestly would work pretty well as a show.

CaptainSarcastic posted:

Gibson is good, but this seems like a bit of a weird derail for the OSHA thread.

CannonFodder posted:

Well back to Snow Crash, The Raft is OSHA as gently caress.

Traxis posted:

I really want to know how this guy's plan works out

aphid_licker posted:

It just occurred to me that they could've just fired an RPG or something at Raven's sidecar and just would've had to clean up some radioactive debris bc nukes don't properly explode if the components aren't arranged 100% correctly.

French Canadian posted:

Does someone accidentally bump the wave dial up to 11 or how the gently caress does this happen? I've seen it happen in other wave pools

CommieGIR posted:

Your also talking about contamination that would make Chernobyl blush.

EvenWorseOpinions posted:

Baaaaaaayyyyyyeeeeeeerrrrrrr why are you setting up my cooooone

Baaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyeeeeeerrrrrrrr

Cartoon Man posted:

https://i.imgur.com/zzgCHF2.gifv

Flannelette posted:

One of my relatives said he got good at this and modifying the rockets in university where they used to have fireworks battles between the two dorms across a street for a couple of years before the police shut it down.
There's a good black and white photo of it somewhere but all I can find is the old newspaper story.
https://www.odt.co.nz/1975-rocket-war-lights-sky-over-university

Platystemon posted:

Nah.

Bomb material is more highly enriched, but there’s only tens of kilograms of it.

Chernobyl’s № 4 reactor vapourised something like fifty tonnes of fuel.

Platystemon posted:

Nah.

Bomb material is more highly enriched, but there’s only tens of kilograms of it.

Chernobyl’s № 4 reactor vapourised something like fifty tonnes of fuel.

Platystemon posted:

Count Roland posted:

Why is launching an RTG more dangerous?

Fresh fuel is relatively low in radioactivity. Uranium‐235 has a half‐life of seven hundred million years.

What’s really nasty is the daughter products generated by fission. These are things like iodine‐131, which has a half‐life of eight days and gives Ukrainians thyroid cancer.

These short‐lived isotopes also generate a lot of decay heat, which is why common reactor designs need active cooling for weeks after shutting down.

If you are launching a reactor into space, the solution is simple: don’t start the nuclear reaction till after the package is safely in orbit.

Meanwhile, an RTG’s principle of operation is to use something rather radioactive like plutonium‐238, half‐life 90 years. They live on decay heat.

Gram‐for‐gram, Pu‐238 a hell of a lot more radioactive than U‐235. If your rocket explodes and scatters its payload downrange, you’d really rather be scattering uranium.

tl;dr: Reactors are like djinn that are only going to really mess with you if and when you request power. RTGs, by design, draw energy from trapped demons.

Platystemon posted:

Project Pluto is only, like, the third most reckless nuclear rocket ever designed, after nuclear salt water rockets and Project Orion.

French Canadian posted:

Does someone accidentally bump the wave dial up to 11 or how the gently caress does this happen? I've seen it happen in other wave pools

haveblue posted:

They built and ran the nuclear ramjet on a testing stand, they thankfully never built the entire vehicle

Ignition! posted:

All sorts of efforts were being made, during the late 50's, to increase propellant densities, and I was responsible (not purposely, but from being taken seriously when I didn't expect to be) for one of the strangest. Phil Pomerantz, of BuWeps, wanted me to try dimethyl mercury, Hg(CH₃)₂, as a fuel. I suggested that it might be somewhat toxic and a bit dangerous to synthesize and handle, but he assured me that it was (a) very easy to put together, and (b) as harmless as mother's milk. I was dubious, but told him that I'd see what I could do.

I looked the stuff up, and discovered that, indeed, the synthesis was easy, but that it was extremely toxic, and a long way from harmless. As I had suffered from mercury poisoning on two previous occasions and didn't care to take a chance on doing it again, I thought that it would be an excellent idea to have somebody else make the compound for me. So I phoned Rochester, and asked my contact man at Eastman Kodak if they would make a hundred pounds of dimethyl mercury and ship it to NARTS.

I heard a horrified gasp, and then a tightly controlled voice (I could hear the grinding of teeth beneath the words) informed me that if they were silly enough to synthesize that much dimethyl mercury, they would, in the process fog every square inch of photographic film in Rochester, and that, thank you just the same, Eastman was not interested. The receiver came down with a crash, and I sat back to consider the matter. An agonizing reappraisal seemed to be indicated.

Phil wanted density. Well, dimethyl mercury was dense, all right— d = 3.07 —but it would be burned with RFNA, and at a reasonable mixture ratio the total propellant density would be about 2.1 or 2.2. (The density of the acid-UDMH system is about 1.2.) That didn't seem too impressive, and I decided to apply the reducto ad absurdum method. Why not use the densest known substance which is liquid at room temperature — mercury itself? Just squirt it into the chamber of a motor burning, say, acid-UDMH. It would evaporate into a mon- atomic gas (with a low C_p, which would help performance), and would go out the nozzle with the combustion products. That technique should give Phil all the density he wanted! Charmed by the delightful nuttiness of the idea, I reached for the calculator.
[…]
The result was spectacular. With 𝜑 = 0.1, and 27.5 percent of the tank volume filled with mercury instead of propellant, the bulk density was 4.9 and the boost velocity was about 31 percent above that of the neat propellant; at 𝜑 = 0.2 there was a 20 percent increase with 21 volume percent of mercury. At 𝜑 = 1.0, on the other hand, the best you could get was a 2 percent increase in boost velocity with 5 volume percent of mercury. Obviously, a missile with a low 𝜑, such as an air-to-air job, was where this system belonged—if anywhere.

I solemnly and formally wrote the whole thing up, complete with graphs, labeled it —dead pan —the "Ultra High Density Propellant Concept," and sent it off to the Bureau. I expected to see it bounce back in a week, with a "Who do you think you're kidding?" letter attached. It didn't.

Phil bought it.

He directed us, forthwith, to verify the calculations experimentally, and NARTS, horrified, was stuck with the job of firing a mercury- spewing motor in the middle of Morris County, New Jersey.

Firing the motor wouldn't be any problem; the problem lay in the fact that all of the mercury vapor in the atmosphere would not be good for the health of the (presumably) innocent inhabitants of the county —nor for our own. So a scrubber had to be built, a long pipe- like affair down which the motor would be fired, and fitted with water sprays, filters, and assorted devices to condense and collect the mer- cury in the exhaust before it could get out into the atmosphere. We had it built and were about ready to go, when the Navy decided to shut down —"disestablish" —NARTS, and ordered us to ship the whole mercury setup to NOTS. With a sigh of relief, we complied, and handed them the wet baby. Saved by the bell!

At NOTS, Dean Couch and D. G. Nyberg took over the job, and by March 1960 had completed their experiments. They used a 250- pound thrust RFNA-UDMH motor, and injected mercury through a tap in the chamber wall. And the thing did work. They used up to 31 volume percent of mercury in their runs, and found that at 20 percent they got a 40 percent increase in density impulse. (I had calculated 43.) As they were firing in the middle of the desert, they didn't bother with the scrubber. And they didn't poison a single rattlesnake. Technically, the system was a complete success. Practically—that was something else again.

quote:

Dimethylmercury is an organomercury compound. A highly volatile, reactive, flammable, and colorless liquid, dimethylmercury is one of the strongest known neurotoxins, with a quantity of less than 0.1 mL capable of inducing severe mercury poisoning, and is easily absorbed through the skin. Dimethylmercury is capable of permeating many materials, including plastic and rubber compounds. It has a slightly sweet odor, although inhaling enough of the chemical to notice this would be hazardous.

The acute toxicity of the compound was demonstrated by the 1997 death of heavy metal chemist Karen Wetterhahn, who died 10 months after a single exposure of only a few drops permeated through her disposable latex gloves.

Jet Jaguar posted:

At sea there are these rogue waves that can sometimes happen, where multiple waves combine and multiply their intensity way beyond what you'd normally get.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/roguewaves.html

Maybe it's easier to generate in a pool...

Neuromancer posted:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

coke posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLzgzvVxUV4&t=112s

Rebel Blob posted:

There's an opening line that loses meaning with every passing year.

McGavin posted:

quote:

On 21 April 1956, a five-year-old girl was examined at Chisso's factory hospital in Minamata. The physicians were puzzled by her symptoms: difficulty walking, difficulty speaking, and convulsions. Two days later, her younger sister also began to exhibit the same symptoms and she, too, was hospitalised. The girls' mother informed doctors that her neighbour's daughter was also experiencing similar problems. After a house-to-house investigation, eight further patients were discovered and hospitalised. On 1 May, the hospital director reported to the local public health office the discovery of an "epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system", marking the official discovery of Minamata disease.[16]

To investigate the epidemic, the city government and various medical practitioners formed the Strange Disease Countermeasures Committee (奇病対策委員会, Kibyō Taisaku Iinkai) at the end of May 1956. Owing to the localised nature of the disease, it was suspected to be contagious and as a precaution patients were isolated and their homes disinfected. Although contagion was later disproved, this initial response contributed to the stigmatisation and discrimination experienced by Minamata victims from the local community. During its investigations, the committee uncovered surprising anecdotal evidence of the strange behaviour of cats and other wildlife in the areas surrounding patients' homes. From around 1950 onward, cats had been seen to have convulsions, go mad, and die. Locals called it the "cat dancing disease" (猫踊り病, neko odori byō), owing to their erratic movement.[2] Crows had fallen from the sky, seaweed no longer grew on the sea bed, and fish floated dead on the surface of the sea. As the extent of the outbreak was understood, the committee invited researchers from Kumamoto University (or Kumadai) to help in the research effort.[17]

The Kumamoto University Research Group was formed on 24 August 1956. Researchers from the School of Medicine began visiting Minamata regularly and admitted patients to the university hospital for detailed examinations. A more complete picture of the symptoms exhibited by patients was gradually uncovered. The disease developed without any prior warning, with patients complaining of a loss of sensation and numbness in their hands and feet. They became unable to grasp small objects or fasten buttons. They could not run or walk without stumbling, their voices changed in pitch, and many patients complained of difficulties seeing, hearing, and swallowing. In general, these symptoms deteriorated and were followed by severe convulsions, coma, and eventually death. By October 1956, forty patients had been discovered, fourteen of whom had died: an alarming case fatality rate of 35%.[18]

quote:

On 21 October 1959, Chisso was ordered by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry to switch back its wastewater drainage from the Minamata River to Hyakken Harbour and to speed up the installation of wastewater treatment systems at the factory. Chisso installed a Cyclator purification system on 19 December 1959, and opened it with a special ceremony. Chisso's president Kiichi Yoshioka drank a glass of water supposedly treated through the Cyclator to demonstrate that it was safe. In fact, the wastewater from the factory, which the company knew still contained mercury and led to Minamata disease when fed to cats, was not treated through the Cyclator at the time. Testimony at a later Niigata Minamata disease trial proved that Chisso knew the Cyclator to be completely ineffective: "The purification tank was installed as a social solution and did nothing to remove organic mercury."[26]

The deception was successful and almost all parties involved in Minamata disease were duped into believing that the factory's wastewater had been made safe from December 1959 onward. This widespread assumption meant that doctors were not expecting new patients to appear, resulting in numerous problems in the years to follow as the pollution continued. In most people's minds, the issue of Minamata disease had been resolved.

quote:

Local doctors and medical officials had noticed for a long time an abnormally high frequency of cerebral palsy and other infantile disorders in the Minamata area. In 1961, a number of medical professionals, including Masazumi Harada (later to receive an honour from the United Nations for his body of work on Minamata disease), set about re-examining children diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

Memento posted:

My tv shows a bright blue when there's no signal, so it still works.

Platystemon posted:

Project Pluto is only, like, the third most reckless nuclear rocket ever designed, after nuclear salt water rockets and Project Orion.

Platystemon posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease