Russians were desparate to show the US up.

Post #71,803 by static 12/31/02 9:09:27 PM Reply	Russians were desparate to show the US up. It was some years ago, but I recall a documentary comparing the US and USSR space-race. The USSR guessed an awful lot firing things at the moon: they threw stuff at it to see if they could hit it. The US was much more cautious. Wade. Microsoft are clearly boiling the frogs.
Post #71,815 by dmarker 12/31/02 10:38:38 PM Reply	Russians messed up by allowing politics to override tech They had better & more advanced rockets. They had excellent scientists. Their space module hardware was pretty basic when compared with US sophistication. IN fact, once the US got focussed, the USSR really couldn't match them. US technology when focussed inevitebly outclasses most other nations. Will be interesting to see how China progresses in this area over the coming years. I'm not yet convinced they can match US technology & engineering innovation. A case in poit here that I believe illustrates this best. In the US there is an incredible degree of home & individual innovation be it home built or home modified :- aircraft, helicopters, para gliders, boats, cars, trucks, bikes, skateboards, snow boards, snow mobiles. I doubt that there is any other nation (poss excl Canada) that can come near the US for the way ordinary citizens are able to push the boundaries of technology on such a large scale. decisions. Interestingly on a related theme, China as was (is?) the case in Soviet Russia (USSR) has next to no homebuilt industry for any of the above. It may be coming as even in China the authorities recognise that individual freedom to innovate truly makes a great nation. Today, most nations can at best only copy US home hobby innovation. (I am not talking about corporate products such as Japanese consumer electronics or Italian car styling etc: - just about individual ability to innovate). Few countries can offer their citizens access to the range of base materials that US citizens can obtain, and afford. Cheers Doug Marker
Post #71,819 by rcareaga 12/31/02 11:09:31 PM Reply	Let us hope, then... That the home hobbyists, whether here or abroad, never get into building those WMDs in their basements. I can see it now: My First Nuke\ufffd. Incidentally, John McPhee addressed this issue in his 1973 profile of physicist Theodore Taylor, The Curve of Binding Energy, in which Los Alamos alumnus Taylor maintained that this was already a clear and present danger--and if memory serves, he used the WTC towers as a hypothetical target in many of his examples (a reviewer on amazon.com says it "seems quaint when, 20 years after the fact, the ominous portents have come to nothing in particular" --in a paragraph posted five weeks before the September 2001 unpleasantness). cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #71,828 by Ashton 1/1/03 6:16:04 AM Reply	Ah yes, McPhee - - and the decline of US amateur electronics When that book came out, I cringed a bit; thought that he had quoted a bit too much of Ted Taylor's lore: recall when he discussed a 'problem' of yield (I forget the context now - but it was about early fission tests or transitional to the 'Mike' kluge which.. nevertheless vaporized Elugelap atoll). Gotta hunt up my copy.. He said.. ~ "if you were going to drive a nail, you wouldn't put the head up to it and push, would you?" Innocent enough, but it referred to a (then) pretty clever idea and - it sure as hell wasn't declassified. Of course, now we have Chuck Hansen's book with pictures and much of the substance of any mysteries diagrammed (!) even on to rudimentary thermonuclear tricks, including doping, reflectors, Po-Be n source, F-F-F: the works. What has declined however, in this vaunted US amateur experimentation - is the art + science too: represented by the Heathkit Co. No more kits from there; few left who use a soldering iron and merely construct (a TV, say - more than a few housewives did exactly that! once). All their excellent manuals gave both an overview explanation and then a detailed one of the exact operation of all the stages. Their test equipment wasn't quite HP in precision of pieces or accuracy, but - it was exc. training and explanation better than most texts. Many later engrs -- became interested via Heathkits, as kids. (I still use one of Heath's later and superb designs - which produces a rise-time of ~600 pSec - for scope risetime measurement and adjustment; it exceeds the performance of a couple $1500 "trade" devices of a decade ago and is equiv. quality to HP of a few years earlier. Ditto their tiny Geiger counter which was a kit form of the Monitor 4 and able to read alphas as well as very lo-energy X-rays. Lab quality. Alas, they made things like this just before they had to fold - for lack of interest.) Today we mainly buy stuff assembled (as always was cheaper - if labor is paid or figured-in). Even Hams / radio amateurs now most-often buy; they do not build. (Most that is; there's always a creative group at the core). It is apparent that fewer and fewer (old or young) today know even Ohm's Law: this while more and more of the environment is not merely electical but electronic in operation! So I don't know if Doug's comments apply as much as they once did {??} nor then, is the barrier to parity of the Chinese so unthinkable.. Ashton (And yes IMhO there are entirely too many people who know how to make a crude fission device -- while there are kilotons of Pu everywhere: at least that demands an implosion device; U²³⁵ makes the task almost too trivial to think about for long, in a world of loonies and some of those now in charge Here. All U²³⁵ ought to be guarded IN Fort Knox IMO) When the rich assemble to concern themselves with the business of the poor, it is called Charity. When the poor assemble to concern themselves with the business of the rich, it is called Anarchy. -Paul Richards
Post #71,873 by rcareaga 1/1/03 4:04:30 PM Reply	Re: Ah yes, McPhee Have you noticed, incidentally, that McPhee can make a book-length tome about damn near anything a ripping good read (although some would rather he'd get off his decades-long geology tear)? I mean, if I learned that his 2003 title was to be "Lint," I'd at least spend some time at Cody's or Moe's perusing it--and might very well take it home. cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #71,911 by Ashton 1/1/03 7:32:28 PM Reply	Well.. Rhodes ain't too shabby in that department, either. Hmmm Cody's. Migawd ... Berkeley. You might even know what a Bevatron is (was)! Did I miss you among the other 24,999 in that Vietnam march to-deliver-a clue-by-4? (or a newbie to the scene?) Yes, if you see a copy of Lint - the Real Story - I'll likely spring for it too. There are so few decent writers who also can add and know what an element might be. Turning scientists into writers seems to need a transposition of the Right-brain over to the Left- side. (Except that's wrong too - Feynman! and then there's M. Crichton: though I rarely consider an 'MD' a scientist, after watching a few try to play one - with real particles.) Ashton
Post #71,940 by rcareaga 1/1/03 10:28:18 PM Reply	Rhodes not shabby at all Indeed he ain't. I thought The Making of the Atomic Bomb was dazzling; the follow-up on the H-bomb a bit less so but still impressive. Nearly as good in its way as TMotAB is R.K. Massie's Dreadnought, published in 1991, an account of the Anglo-German naval rivalry from about 1870 to 1914. cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #71,929 by dmarker 1/1/03 9:40:34 PM Reply	You mean like Timothy McVeigh :-) But sadly when it comes to bombs, it seems that even the most repressive countries (Indonesia) can't stop fanatics mixing dung (well actually, nitrated fertilizer) with gas cylinders to produce a massive blast. Seems the raw materials for bombs is abundantly available almost anywhere. Cheers Doug
Post #71,829 by Ashton 1/1/03 6:38:38 AM Reply	But we are losing it.. (See my screed below rc's remarks) Yes, the car engines, toys and such -- but the world is electronic now, and Americans are Not interested in anything difficult; we will do anything for 'comfort and convenience' -- created by others; 'others' now may as well be offshore: we'll just buy it. It takes lots of hands-on experimentation to come to comprehend electronics, and gradually include more difficult concepts re AC, RF, pulse etc. This cannot happen without Interest. Little is being done educationally to foster that Interest at the age it must commence: rilly young. It shows. I see evidence every day. ie I don't doubt that there are (and will be) a core of clever ones - but it is declining in number and sophistication. When I was in HS, I thought briefly of trying to assemble a small cyclotron; only later did I see that I'd have had to know a lot more about RF electronics (and what a "304-TL" triode was for!) and vacuum diffusion pumps and ... to have gotten very far. I think that today, that "me" would be playing Nintendo, going to soccer, doing MTV. The thought wouldn't even arise.. for all the merchandised noise, and the Murican disdain anyway.. for any intellectual pursuit. 'Geek' as epithet illustrates this principle perfectly. (I could at least fake being dumb as a Dubya, where needed.) Microsoft is a good model for much of current US 'industry': brokers of others' commodities, or in the case of Billy/Bally - mere marketers of every idea they can steal, over-complicate, dissemble about - then peddle to the max. (Then there's Dell...) Guess it could go either way for 'US' -- Ashton When the rich assemble to concern themselves with the business of the poor, it is called Charity. When the poor assemble to concern themselves with the business of the rich, it is called Anarchy. -Paul Richards
Post #71,859 by Arkadiy 1/1/03 2:24:58 PM Reply	The world is no longer electronic it's digital. The times when electronics mattered ended with the advent of affordable microcontrollers. Innovation in electronics per se requires enormous fabs nowadays. things that you can reasonably do at home are not terribly interesting. What used to be a great hobby became too simple on one end (done by computers) and too complex on the other end (done by scientists). All that energy went into programming and networking. BBSs, hackers, Linux and so on. It had to happen. What I really wonder about is what's next... I think biotech (may be in 30 years). -- We have only 2 things to worry about: That things will never get back to normal, and that they already have.
Post #71,916 by Ashton 1/1/03 8:15:10 PM Reply	The world! is analog(ue). 'Digital' is a math contrivance of the homo-sap mind, a convention which permits certain Boolean operations. In the physical word, there is never 0 resistance or infinite resistance; nor can a delta-function exist (a pulse with 0-rise-time). As your digital fab folk have learned via many co$tly errata: every 'switch' has a finite rise time, obeys abstruse physics laws, sees a virtual wave-guide where a designer thought s/he was using wires. Skin-depth in ground-planes is now as much a consideration as it ever was, in the design of electron linacs or other microwave constructs. (And 'digital' sampling oscilloscopes are 'blind' for very much of their duty cycle - all those repetitive calcs. and such: whereas an analog scope is blind for a tiny fraction of a percent - merely to move the beam back to left side. Real engineers, especially while troubleshooting glitches caused by a PC-designer's ignorance of the above -- keep their Tek 'image intensifier' Ghz scopes around to find those glitches. Hey! your scope == Your Eyes. Another analog device.) Those whose "electronics training" is via Pee Cee Auto-Circuit simulations - are no more 'electronics engineers' than is Billy an 'innovator'. Go read some Bob Pease columns in Electronic Design* for the corollary to your thesis. * Chief Scientist at National Semiconductor, excellent writer and trekker in Nepal. Better yet, read his seminal book, Troubleshooting Analog Circuits. It's hilarious as well as concisely informative, from decades of experience. Check out his 'fuzzy logic' feedback control VS the classic designs, while at it. Those 1s and 0s you imagine: are nothing Like That in a world of quantum-like level changes at EH frequencies. Very much basic Maxwell and Helmholtz underlies the tasks of approximating the theory. Even in audio reproduction: your bit-streams tend to leave the ear cold. Old vinyl recordings (some produced with >20K BW) are the preferred medium of actual music lovers - at least those with the $ to feed the habit. The digital ADC/DAC degradations / artifacts the 'corpuscularizing' of actual ANALOG energy which the analog ear apparatus expects to 'hear': sustains the illusion for.. Yanni, rap, synthesizers and amplified 'guitars' - but makes a sustained brass, violin tone ICY. Loses the spatial positioning of an orchestra, etc. (Yes, as with wine tasting - the vocabulary ever fails to transmit the experience of listening critically to familiar works, and the rare double-blind test of those perceptions). Nobody understands the mechanism of the cochlea's conversion to brain information (or the brain itself obv) - notwithstanding recent work with cochlear implants -- and the horrific noise which THE MIND learns to recognize as ~'speech, after a while. But yes: the world imagines it is 'digital' - that I'll grant. 40% of Muricans aren't sure if the sun goes around the earth or.. Cheers, Ashton an analog type of device
Post #71,919 by Andrew Grygus 1/1/03 8:34:33 PM Reply	Yes, alas, digitial does not actually exist . . . . in our 100% analog universe. It can only be simulated, always imperfectly. Anyone who designs hard disk drives can tell you plenty about the non-existance of digital anything. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #72,031 by Arkadiy 1/2/03 11:59:44 AM Reply	What matters is the precision necessary and possible With Fourrier transforms you can have as much precision as you need (and willing to pay for), and often more than possible with analog devices. And hard drives actually illustrate my point: the analog electronics gone so far advanced as to be beyond the reach of any hobbyist, American or otherwise. -- We have only 2 things to worry about: That things will never get back to normal, and that they already have.
Post #71,922 by Another Scott 1/1/03 8:48:57 PM Reply	Be careful saying "never". Ashton writes: In the physical word, there is never 0 resistance or infinite resistance; nor can a delta-function exist (a pulse with 0-rise-time). Emphasis added. As I'm sure you're aware, [link\|http://www.suptech.com/super101.html\|superconductors] have 0 (zero), not "really, really small" resistance. :-) They're used in several real systems, e.g., [link\|http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2001-02/01-083.html\|MRI machines] (as discussed in the link). Cheers, Scott. (Pedants R Us. :-)
Post #71,924 by Ashton 1/1/03 9:17:06 PM Reply	Methinks that "0 resistance" does not transmit EMF across those er "frictionless outer valence electrons?" at precisely C - a velocity indistinguishable from that of the [also impossible to attain] "perfect vacuum". So, I'll take 'never' as a good approximation ;-) You'll note that 'DC' is the preferred mode of operating superconducting magnets.. and as the electrons dribble FIFO, this question of degraded velocity only appears not-to matter. And it doesn't (!) in these primitive applications. (And maybe hedge the bet. Given that the trend towards proliferation of a few of those kilotons of fissionable material which we have accumulated for our illusion of security: this fact + homo-sap suicidal tendency pretty much places a Species Survival Limit upon this species' imaginations of the word forever, and by implication never.) My mere guess is that TANSTAAFL Rulez. Ashton [cackle]
Post #71,941 by Another Scott 1/1/03 10:41:32 PM Reply	Electrical resistance and c are different issues. Electrical resistance of zero means that there's no power loss - i.e. P = IV = I^2R = 0. Thus, no heating of the material due to the current (no energy is lost to the material by phonons (lattice vibrations)). As discussed [link\|http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/ohmmic.html#c1\|here], the "drift velocity" or the net electron speed through a conductor is very slow - a few cm/hr to a few m/s - far less than c. They're [link\|http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2002-01/msg0038305.html\|faster] in superconductors but still far less than c. Superconductors aren't otherworldly. They're simply materials that have the proper combinations of electronic and lattice energy states such that conduction electrons can "pair", act as bosons, and have a forbidden "energy gap" such that they [link\|http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solids/bcs.html#c1\|cannot lose energy to the lattice] when the material is kept below a certain characteristic temperature. Cheers, Scott. (Who agrees that perfect vacuum, like "empty space", is ideal and doesn't exist. And who agrees that superconductors are lossy using AC.)
Post #71,948 by Ashton 1/1/03 11:42:01 PM Reply	Well... DC resistivity does seem bulletproof and like Newton's notes re fluxions, (IIRC he had an aside ~ "assuming mass remains constant" - which some take to be a prescience of Relativity ;-) I must eat the non-0 resistivity claim prima facie, since E=IR presumes 'DC'! :( Now as to impedance and the analogues of capacitive or inductive reactance: looks as if we have here not much likelihood of superconducting transmission, rectification? for much beyond milliHertz frequencies. Also kinda amazing data point distributions in the experimental evidence: can one say "straight line"? (The EE ideal is of course, "the straight wire with gain", as some early transistorized amplifier mfgs. loved to spin.) I have some experience of cryo-vacuum systems, incl. He reefers - but not with superconducting magnets (hands-on). Maybe.. had the SCSC gotten past the pork-barrel brigade, though moving to Texas would have cut it for me. Now I shall have to imagine Bosons! in practical day-day application. Nicely complete links. Thanks, Ashton
Post #71,950 by dmarker 1/2/03 12:15:07 AM Reply	A/C for runing a super conductor The only reason I can see for any inefficiency is that the electrons have to slow down & reverse direction & the logistics required to do that are inefficient plus the beneficial effect of the magnetic flux provided by the electron flow through the superconductor material, gets reversed every cycle. The 1st problem is losses due to latency in the collapse of the magnetic field then there is the effect of the revers polarity... I mean can you imagine what the ride would be like in Shanghai's maglev supertrain if the field holding it up reversed 50 or so times per second. That would be one brain scrambling ride <grin> Cheers Doug
Post #71,872 by rcareaga 1/1/03 3:50:18 PM Reply	Re: Russians messed up by allowing politics to override tech China...has next to no* homebuilt industry* They probably remember their unfortunate experiences with backyard steel mills during the "Great Leap Forward." cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #71,928 by dmarker 1/1/03 9:37:05 PM Reply	Yes - very good point. My interest is homebuilt h/c and ... homebuilt helicopters are not really practical or possible in today's China - even here in HK, although we keep hearing that the authorities are expected to relax regs. The US is the most flexible nation I know of re 'Experimental' class aircraft. I have always envied you guys living there for your freedom to 'rise to glory' and or 'plummet to hell' in comparative freedom. Even in Australia the authorities are bloody mindedly tough on what constitutes experimental craft & what one can do with them. Cheers Doug Marker
Post #71,942 by rcareaga 1/1/03 10:43:05 PM Reply	Re: Yes - very good point. My interest is homebuilt h/c and The US is the most flexible nation I know of re 'Experimental' class aircraft. I have always envied you guys living there for your freedom to 'rise to glory' and or 'plummet to hell' in comparative freedom. And with this policy alone the United States has gone a long way toward atoning for its infliction of John Denver's music upon the world. cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #71,944 by dmarker 1/1/03 11:02:29 PM Reply	OOOooooo that was below the belt <grin> But John did make a hellova big splash !!! (twice in his liftime)<grin> Cheers Doug Marker (ya gotta be nutz to fly in a 2nd hand cannard wing homebuilt)
Post #71,945 by Meerkat 1/1/03 11:27:31 PM Reply	Kinda OT: Insert tasteless joke here... How is John Denver's music like his aircraft? It's ultra-light, and down to earth. John. Busy lad.
Post #71,947 by rcareaga 1/1/03 11:41:55 PM Reply	Re: Kinda OT: Insert tasteless joke here... or (from about twenty years ago) -- "Did you hear about Jessica Savitch? She finally became an anchorwoman." cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #71,953 by dmarker 1/2/03 12:26:50 AM 1/2/03 12:33:35 AM Reply	Don't know of her - was she somone who wouldn't let go of a fishing story when common sense dictated otherwise ? Or did she stumble into a different story that was just too deep and mysterious ? Cheers Doug (Hmmmmmm - speedcar riding in muddy canals never did catch on up north - at least them florida swamp buggies are build for it and when ya do flip there is usually someone to pull you out) Edited by dmarker Jan. 2, 2003, 12:33:35 AM EST Expand All History
Post #71,956 by rcareaga 1/2/03 12:47:01 AM Reply	sic transit gloria mundi! Jessica Savitch (2/1/47 - 10/23/83) was an ambitious young newswoman being groomed for stardom (and, according to some detractors, showing signs of maxing out her Peter Principle early on--David Brinkley called her "the dumbest woman I have ever met"--but she was very easy on the eyes) in the latter 1970s. NBC was advancing her rapidly, but her behavior on and off the set was becoming a tad erratic, most notoriously when she had to go on air unexpectedly about three weeks before her death, and delivered her lines to the Teeming Millions apparently somewhat the worse for exotic alkaloids. After dining out one evening later that month she and her date (the latter driving) took a wrong turn in inclement weather and drove into a canal, drowning them both--hence "anchorwoman." Maybe you'd have to have been there... cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #71,949 by Ashton 1/1/03 11:49:08 PM Reply	Then there's Rod McKuen - for complete masslessness: Listen to the Warm But at least it wasn't sung.. But let us be charitable - he's gettin a bit old and: he laughed all the way to the bank, and still is in 'demand' for appearances. :-) (And I'd take both in pref. to a KennyG or a Yanni, thankyouverymuch..) A. Critic

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