Here And There

by Bryan

10 comments

1 Badtux { 04.14.14 at 5:31 pm }

Interesting how you kept a straight face and avoided putting quote marks around “peaceful policies” :).

2 Bryan { 04.14.14 at 8:50 pm }

If you have read as much Soviet agitprop as I have, it isn’t at all difficult to do. When I was bored awaiting the return of a mission, I would write up all of the memos in the operations area as if they were printed in Pravda. As I did it in Russian, it was a while before I was told to stop it.

3 Kryten42 { 04.14.14 at 9:23 pm }

LOL Yep. 😉 Same here Bryan! 🙂 I did grin as I read that. 😉 😀

The problem with finding the airliner now is that the ocean bed there is a thick layer of loose silt. Depending on whether the airliner broke up and how much, will have a big impact on finding anything. Given that there is no surface wreckage so far, it’s not very likely unless they get very lucky. If it’s mostly intact, it’s likely sunk beneath the silt.

Ita destroyed sugarcane plantations also. They are estimating the damage bill to be up to AU$1 billion. Latest from Qld:

Cyclone Ita damage bill up to $1 billion after sugarcane and banana plantations damaged

OT: I just came across something interesting, and from a rather unexpected source! 😀 We were discussing solar power last year sometime, and it’s something I have a keen interest about, so I keep an eye on the research & development. 🙂

IBM Solar Collector Magnifies Sun By 2000X – These Could Provide Power To The Entire Planet

Of course, as soon as you read things like “power the whole planet”, you KNOW it’ll never happen in our lifetime, if ever! *shrug*

A side benefit of the IBM system, is that it also produces drinkable water! 🙂

A team at IBM recently developed what they call a High Concentration Photo Voltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system that is capable of concentrating the power of 2,000 suns, they are even claiming to be able to concentrate energy safely up to 5,000X, that’s huge.

The process of trapping the sunlight produces water that can be used to produce filtered drinkable water, or used for other things like air conditioning etc. Scientists envision that the HCPVT system could provide sustainable energy and fresh water to communities all around the world.

“Each 1cmX1cm chip can convert 200-250 watts, on average, over a typical eight-hour day in a sunny region. In the HCPVT system, instead of heating a building, the 90 degree Celsius water will pass through a porous membrane distillation system where it is then vaporized and desalinated. Such a system could provide 30-40 liters of drinkable water per square meter of receiver area per day, while still generating electricity with a more than 25 percent yield or two kilowatts hours per day. A large installation would provide enough water for a small town.”

The heat is absorbed into hundreds of tiny solar cells called photovoltaic chips. These gather the energy and are then cooled by microchannled water, which is why they are safely able to concentrate such large amounts of solar energy.

According to Greenpeace, this technology can establish itself as the third largest player in the sustainable power generation industry. A study published in 2009 predicted that solar power could supply all the world’s energy needs, with minimal space. Greenpeace estimates that it would take only two percent of the Sahara Desert’s land area to supply the entire planet’s electricity needs.

A common problem with modern-day solar collectors is that they can only take in a minimal amount of energy. This means that useful heat is wasted, cannot be harnessed and is thrown away. This technology eliminates that problem. Solar panels taking in too much energy run the risk of melting themselves due to mass amounts of heat. This is changing, as we continue to explore more efficient ways of energy generation, it’s becoming clear that it’s time to do away with the old, and usher in the new, clean, green technologies.

This project is being funded by the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation. They are supplying a three-year $2.4 million grant to develop the technology. Prototypes have been developed and are being tested.

This is another great technology that could provide power to the entire planet for free! Good reasons as to why we cannot implement this technology are non existent. At the end of the day, it seems that big oil corporations will do whatever they can to prevent change from happening, but the power of the people is greater. All we have to do is come together, create, and cooperate.

Right. I won’t be holding my breath for this change to happen though. *SIGH* What a good idea, for a change.

4 Bryan { 04.14.14 at 9:53 pm }

They need some different types of probes, and some mapping sonars to find the remains in silt. High efficiency metal detectors should be able to find the engines, and they can spread out from there to find the data recorders. I never believed that the claim about locating the aircraft in days was credible.

I hope they can prove this concept, because drinking water is going to be even more valuable than energy in the future because of climate change. I can see the concept and it looks reasonable, but it has to scale or it will be worthless. It is nice that people are still trying.

5 Jim Bales { 04.15.14 at 11:17 am }

* Searching for the aircraft

I had a discussion some years ago with colleagues who identified the technical reasons why Bob Ballard has been so skilled at finding shipwrecks. It is many factors, including:

1) Careful modeling of the most likely area of the surface at which the ship sank
2) Careful modeling of how the body of the ship descends to the bottom, including lateral motions away from the point it sank
3) Once he had a good idea where he should look, he checked out the local sedimentation rates to decide if he was likely to find the debris
4) Recognizing that a sinking ship leaves a long debris trail (miles long) as it sinks and is displaced laterally. So, he often used a camera as the prime sensor and looked for man-made junk on the seabed rather than using a sonar to find the hull

Now, planes are smaller than ships, so there may not be as much of a debris trail.

Autonomous underwater vehicles (like the Bluefin 21 used for this search) have limited energy and lights chew up the batter pack very quickly.

So, they will probably run with a side-scan or synthetic aperture sonar and hope to find some large chunks of airplane with those sonars.

If the fuselage were intact but buried, sub-bottom profilers (sonars that map into the muck) have been put on these vehicles and could find a buried aircraft, but you would really need to have a small search area!

Best
Jim

6 Bryan { 04.15.14 at 11:13 pm }

Another thing Ballard does is use sensors tethered to his ship, which speeds up the process and eliminates the battery problems. With the bottom two miles below you, and the possibility of one or more thermal layers, the senors need to be down near bottom in crush proof casings.

The reason I mentioned the engines is because they will usually drop as a single chunk of metal which is a much better target than whatever is left of the fuselage. Depending on the angle of entry into the water, the wings and tail should separate frome the body of the aircraft. The contents of the luggage compartments should also trail out during the descent to the bottom. I assume they are looking for pieces, not an aircraft. after the engines the data recorders are possibly the largest parts still intact.

Even if they locate the debris, there is no guarantee that they can retrieve anything from that depth. There are tools but they may not be available.

7 Kryten42 { 04.17.14 at 3:51 pm }

It is going to be interesting to see what happens over the next couple weeks. If there is anything to find where they are looking, it won’t be at all easy.

Here’s something from the “What WAS he thinking??” department, regarding Snowden & Putin in a TV interview. Snowden has proved himself to be a smart guy, so I have to wonder (as the author of this article does), what he’s up to…

Snowden Asks Putin Live On TV If Russia Carries Out Mass Surveillance; But Why?

Hmmmmm… “curiouser and curiouser said Alice”. 😉

I hope things are going easier for you m8, and you have been able to establish a manageable routine. 🙂 Best wishes, as always! 🙂

8 Bryan { 04.17.14 at 10:24 pm }

The search is entering the low information mode with a lot of data collection and analysis.

Snowden might want to leave and thinks the question will encourage Putin to help him move on. It also demonstrates that he isn’t working for the Russian government, which will annoy a number of his critics in the US. There may be a long sea voyage in his future, as I don’t see him trusting air travel.

9 Badtux { 04.18.14 at 3:13 am }

Given that the U.S. has even intercepted a diplomatic jet in their hilarious search for Snowden, I think the only plane that Snowden would be willing to step upon would be a Tu-95 taking the long way ’round (i.e. over international waters) to Cuba and from thence to his final destination wherever that be. In that case he might want to be careful what he wishes for, the Tu-95 isn’t exactly a luxury ride :).

Or the Russians might take him on a boat ride. If he embarasses them too much, he might just get accidentally “swept overboard” and, unfortunately, lost at sea.

10 Bryan { 04.19.14 at 9:45 pm }

I would guess a sea voyage on a cargo ship from Vladivostok to Ecuador as his most probable exit. His arrival is not Vlad’s problem.