It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
First, I am planning to book the house for the meetup this weekend, which I am tentatively slating for 6/10-6/12. Further planning discussion will be on the Discord (see link in sidebar).
Second, a few OTs back ike suggested I put together an Amazon wishlist to let people buy me books. Given that I am a sucker for books, this seemed like a good idea. I have plenty of money (and plenty of books), so don't feel under any obligation, but I figured I should give you guys the option.
Overhauls are Southern Commerce Raiding Part 6 and Nuclear weapons are not as destructive as you think.
Comments
I can confirm that bean has plenty of books. And yet, somehow, he manages to continually find room for more.
Very randomly brought up by the cruiser-killers post, I used Lutzow in a presentation I did for one of my classes this semester, discussing the project to defuse the Tallboy they found a few years ago in the Piast Canal from when the Brits sank her (kinda).
@LordNelson: “Every inch of wall space is covered by a bookcase. Each bookcase has six shelves, going almost to the ceiling. Some bookshelves are stacked to the brim with hardback books: science, maths, history, and everything else. Other shelves have two layers of paperback science fiction, with the back layer of books propped up on old tissue boxes or lengths of wood, so that you can see the back layer of books above the books in front. And it still isn't enough. Books are overflowing onto the tables and the sofas and making little heaps under the windows.
This is the living-room of the house occupied by the eminent Professor Michael Verres-Evans, and his wife, Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres, and their adopted son, Harry Bean Potter-Evans-Verres.”
Did Rembrandt or Van Gogh have too many paintbrushes? Kinda/sorta the same situation with books... there simply is no such thing as too many!
You've heard of C2 (command and control). You've probably heard of C3 (command, control, and communications). If you're really in tune with five-sided thoughts, you might even know C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance).
With that in mind, let me present the latest in abbreviational innovation from the US Marine Corps: [C5ISRT](https://mwi.usma.edu/the-marine-corps-needs-to-modernize-its-targeting-cycle-heres-how/#:~:text=C5ISRT%20(command%2C%20control%2C%20communications%2C%20computers%2C%20cyber%2C%20intelligence%2C%20surveillance%2C%20reconnaissance%2C%20and%20targeting).
That's right: command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting
(reposted with the link fixed)
You've heard of C2 (command and control). You've probably heard of C3 (command, control, and communications). If you're really in tune with five-sided thoughts, you might even know C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance).
With that in mind, let me present the latest in abbreviational innovation from the US Marine Corps: C5ISRT.
That's right: command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting
@quanticle
I used to think you guys were joking about have five-sided thoughts.
Also, if you move the reconnaissance before the intelligence you can pronouce it. (and probibly also get in trouble)
I fully expect that by the time I die that acronym will be something like C8IRSTABWXYQBBQ.
Raytheon has a free full sized poster of the 2023 ships and submarines of the US Navy, available for download at the link below:
https://t.co/bIhT4SZqKy
After playing around with it, it's not full sized, it's letter sized, and the pictures are not vectorial.
Still nice.
The B-52 continues to evolve. The Air Force has declared in its latest budgeting documents that once the B-52 fleet receives new Rolls Royce F130 engines, the aircraft will be re-designated as B-52J, from the current B-52H.
It's a big enough change that adding two to the letter might make sense.
The article says that the Air Force contemplated that, using B-52J as an interim designation with the final designation being B-52K. However, they decided to only bump the letter by one. Maybe they're worried about running out. After all, these planes are supposed to last until 2050 or so.
This is a fact that may have appeared on the discord a few days ago.
I think the reason they went with J only is that the number hasn't been rolled since the 60s, despite substantial upgrades, and while this is the biggest since then, it's not twice as big as everything else done so far.
So the plan with B52s is to ship-of-theseus them forever, or until war is no longer a thing, whichever happens first?
They skip the B-52I, because it might get confused with a (non existent) B-521. Same with the B-52O, if they get that far.
@Doctorpat
The current plan is to retire the B-52 fleet in the 2050s. Of course, "retiring the B-52 twenty-to-thirty years from now" is a plan that has been floated more than once, only for reality to intervene when it turns out that the airframes have held up better than expected, repairs are feasible after all, and hey, with the right electronics upgrades, the B-52 is still a viable platform for the latest cruise missile/air-launched ballistic missile/hypersonic glide vehicle/giant death-ray/whatever. And in the meantime when you need a big bomb truck that costs less to fly than any of the other big bomb trucks in the US inventory (the B-1, B-2, and soon, the B-21), well, it can do that too.
Alexander gives a very good reason for to skip the "B-52I" designation. But also, if the Air Force called it "B-52I" some lunatic would probably also try to rename it "Megafortress;" that would just be silly, so better to avoid the issue altogether.
"Don't use I because it looks too much like 1" is actually in the document they use to assign suffix letters, and in most similar documents.
Yes, I was making a Dale Brown joke.
Are you worried about the planet? Do the carbon and particulate emissions of modern diesel-engined cargo vessels get you down? Do you wish for a totally carbon free and sustainable way to ship your goods? We at SailCargo Inc have just the solution for you! Send your goods on one of our square-rigged wooden three-masted schooners, and ensure they're transported by a zero carbon vessel, made entirely out of sustainable materials!
I think I've spent ten minutes browsing SailCargo's website, and I still can't decide whether this is a serious venture, an elaborate prank, or just a scam.
They're at least trying. They have one ship, a 1909 cargo ship that's had a lot of rebuilding, and they seem to be building a second ship. That said, it's clearly nuts. You can probably get someone who is interested enough in ecoism to pay for a few of these, but it's clearly not scalable.
Even if buzzword compliance is a good thing wood is only sustainable if your need is small.
The economics of shipping are such that you really need metal hulls to have any hope of competing at anything other than a niche market (80 and 250 tonnes is only high end if you're talking air freight).
quanticle:
Could be all three at the same time.
At the small scale, they can probably lean pretty heavily on the sorts of people who volunteer for museum ships, Mystic seaport, etc. Heck, I can imagine spending a summer or semester sailing as a volunteer, let alone if they pay. It'd give you a bunch of good stories, it'd probably look good on your resume, and you'd have a nice tan and some extra muscles when you go back to school.
Colombia to eastern US would be pretty nice weather, too, assuming they aren't too pure to include GPS and a connection to the weather forecasts to avoid hurricanes.
Coffee makes sense as an initial market, everyone who's willing to pay for 'Fair Trade' would probably be willing to pay extra again for 'Fair Trade and 100% carbon free shipping'. A 6 oz cup of coffee appears to require about 10 grams of coffee grounds, which means an 80-ton cargo is about 8 million cups. 10 cents extra for 'sustainable' and the company gets $800k/voyage.
On the flip side, 8 million cups every 2-month voyage is not going to be close to saturating the market, not even in just one city. I bet NYC drinks more than that per day.
But of course that demonstrates the scale in the opposite direction too. Displacing just coffee shipping probably requires a fleet of 100+ ships, which will more than soak up the available volunteers. Hiring people for real at something resembling any other 'months away from home' job gets expensive awfully fast. And even if you can pull that off with your high margin 'ethical coffee' trade, expanding enough to threaten existing shipping companies just isn't going to happen.
That was more or less my analysis. I don't think you'd be able to get away with charging people given today's labor laws (and yes, I know how they crewed sailing ships in the waning days) but I could easily see it being "room, board, and whatever Columbia's minimum wage is". And frankly, that would be fairly tempting if I was in a place to be able to do it. As for crew, you could do what every other shipping line does and hire from the Philippines and other places labor is cheap, but even at the same wages, well, a Maersk E runs over 10,000 deadweight tons per crew.
bean:
Yet I suspect their boats need at least as many crew, maybe more than even a Seuzmax.
They don't have to pay for fuel, but so many crew for such little cargo, the inherent unreliability of wind and wood is going to cost more to maintain means it is pretty much a feel good project.
Even a metal hulled sailing vessel may have trouble with excessive crew requirements though it may be possible to automate the sails but then you need an energy source to move the sails.
bean:
But how often?
bean:
They also had the traditional maritime reactionary crap forcing people who wanted to crew steam ships to get sail experience for no good reason.
You can get a sailing ship with a surprisingly small crew (schooner rig is good for that) but even then, you have lots of exposed equipment topside, and that means lots of maintenance to keep everything running. But I'd be surprised if you can get below a dozen or so on a reasonable-sized cargo vessel. I'm not sure hull material is going to make a difference in how many people you need at sea, but it's definitely going to drive up running costs.
Once, probably a 4-month tour, but there are a lot of businesses which depend on people doing things once.
That was what I was referring to, yes.
"That was what I was referring to, yes." Glad you cleared that up. My mind jumped to press gangs!
Unrelated to the above, I take it that we have too many people with some kind of security clearance to permit much discussion of the recent leaks? I'll go and check DSL to see if Tarpitz has updated his assessment of the defence of Ukraine based on anything that has come out.
This was already a solved problem a hundred years ago. Late windjammers had a tiny steam engine for that. These vividly green folks would probably go for some solar panels plus battery rather than a "keep the lights on" IC portable generator.
Of course, the SMV Not A Gimmick (SMV = Sailing Motor Vessel) is to put some appropriately large traction kites on whatevermax ships that do have engines. Advantages:
- Not dinky vessel.
- The only "support structure" a kite needs is a tensile tether, thus it can be both lofted higher (where wind is faster), and can be put away where air draft is restricted.
- The force can act on the hull pretty low, not at the kite's altitude.
- Probably can reach at least as close to the wind as a fore-and-aft rig.
- With computer control, can fly crosswind (harvesting an area larger than its physical size; basically, "studsail mode").
- Perhaps a gimmick, but can be launched in a dead calm (not that this matters much on a ship with an engine).
Disadvantage:
- How to stow the thing.
@bean
I tried to buy you a wish list book. I couldn't find the please ship this to bean delivery option. Is everything set up alright or am I missing something obvious?
It appears Amazon is having trouble sharing addresses with third-party sellers. (I have no idea how, but that's what they're saying.) If send me an email, I will just give you that directly.
bean:
It limits how big the ship can be.
bean:
But they don't tend to be very big.
Basil Marte:
Deck space is going to be limited and the sails would do a pretty good job of blocking the light.
Basil Marte:
There is work being done on that though I suspect we'd be better off lowering the cost of nuclear propulsion so it can replace fossil fuels completely for every pair of ports that don't ban them.
Because simply put anything that depends on an engine for when there is no wind is going to be burning fossil fuels so the hybrid ship would only be a half measure.
On the crew size issue, it looks like the average crew size for a >100T schooner in merchant service in ~1905 was 6-7. That seems to be driven by a combination of running round-the-clock watches without excessive fatigue, and having one person available for everything that needs doing simultaneously in an all-hands-on-deck situation. There will be a scale at which either automation (i.e. powered winches) or extra crew will be required because one man is no longer enough to work that part of the rigging, but I don't think that's significant at the scale SailCargo is presently looking at.
Cost of shipping, whether by diesel or wind power, scales with volume whereas the bragging rights scale by value so at a certain number of $cm^-3 it makes sense. IIRC they carry very expensive fairtrade chocolate etc. Deeply impractical deivery options are decent veblen goods.
Interesting if possibly excitable article on an innovative miniature high speed manned attack sub by a UAE-based Ukrainian start-up.
Dogfighting with warships at 20+ knots sounds fanciful, but minelaying and delivering swimmers to the shore are classic missions for a midget submarine, and could complicate the ongoing occupation of Crimea. Sounds like a lot for a single operator to handle though, especially for a mission of any significant duration.