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Collimatrix

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Everything posted by Collimatrix

  1. Collimatrix
    OK, so the NASA page on Dwarf planets states that planets proper are massive enough to clear out their own orbital paths, while dwarf planets are not. Makes sense; the reason the astronomers think there's something there in the first place is that it's cleared out a path. So, some super-big KBO?
  2. Collimatrix
    A few months ago, someone chanced upon a combat report where a panther was lit on fire from a frontal transmission hit. Might have been a freak occurrence, but given the whining in WoT about that, it was pretty funny to read.
  3. Collimatrix
    What is the reasoning behind the cold-bleed cycle? Who the hell is able to make a nuclear reactor that heats up LH2 and a nozzle that can reasonably collimate such exhaust, but isn't able to make turbine blades that can withstand a reasonable TC/TH?
  4. Collimatrix
    I'd be curious to know what about the panther's transmission made it a fire trap for the crews. Any chance you can do follow-up Walter?
  5. Collimatrix
    So crimping will increase efficiency.
  6. Collimatrix
    The whole gun recoils, more or less. It's more precise because the optics are attached to the barrel.
  7. Collimatrix
    If LFTRs start getting a foothold, I'm curious how long it will take for the anti-nuclear crowd to start crowing about proliferation dangers. Sure; it's an accepted fact now that you can't make a bomb with LFTR fuel because U232 contamination would hopelessly complicate matters. Enrichment technologies powerful enough to remove the U232 would have to be so effective that it would simply be easier to make a bomb from scratch rather than using spent fuel. This logic is (given current enrichment techologies) sound. For now, people buy it. However, it is equally logical to point out that making a bomb from spent fuel from a light water reactor is basically impossible for a similar reason. Pu240 hopelessly contaminates the remaining Pu239, and any enrichment technology effective enough to separate the two could just as easily make a bomb from scratch. This has not stopped anti-nuclear activists from claiming that there is a clear proliferation hazard from spent LWR fuel elements. This is basically an addendum to the OP; hippies don't run on logic.
  8. Collimatrix
    Are these the KIWI ground tests?
  9. Collimatrix
    Seen on DE Watter's Facebook page: http://autoboltfirearms.com/ This doesn't seem very worky to me. The available energy from the recoil of cycling the entire firearm would be rather low; better to use lighter, faster-moving components. You know, the way they figured out over a century ago.
  10. Collimatrix
    It's like a reverse cobra! I wonder what control authority would be like at that great a negative alpha, or for that matter what the max negative G loading would be.
  11. Collimatrix
    Per Tanknet, S-tank got new APFSDS, but it wasn't as potent as the APFDS used in their centurions at around the same time because the autoloader couldn't handle the longer rounds. S-tank looks hard to upgun: There's basically no air around the gun (It's more or less built into the glacis), so it's hard to put a bigger gun in. There's also no space around the magazine, so any proposed bigger gun would be firing ammo with the same OAL to 105mm. And as per the anecdote above, it was already restricted to stubby 105mm ammo already. You could probably fit a longer-barreled version of the 110mm; at least the earlier ones with one-piece ammo. The RO roided-up L7 with higher pressure ammo might work too, assuming that the AL is gentle enough it doesn't mangle the combustible case rounds. Neither of those is really drastically more capable than the L7 itself is though; certainly both fall short of the mighty fury of the Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore.
  12. Collimatrix
    Proposed up-armor package for the S-tank:
  13. Collimatrix
    This is the thread for when you saw a thing, thought it was original, and then saw another thing and then realized that the first thing you saw was not original. The second part of Allen Ginsberg's Howl contains the repeated exclamation "Moloch!" As we are all very educated and cultured here, I'm sure that nobody needs to be told that Moloch was a god of the Canaanites to whom they offered children by way of fire (or at least that's what the people who wrote the Old Testament said about the Canaanites; the archeological evidence is more equivocal). This was pretty evocative and Moloch showed up in a lot of later art; notable Paradise Lost, which is that one poem that says everything about Satan that people think is in the Bible but isn't. While Moloch has shown up in plenty of times and places as a symbol for various things, I had thought that Ginsberg's use of Moloch as metonymy for the impersonal, mechanistic indifference of modern society was original. It's not. I had read a defense of the second half of Ginsberg's poem as an inspired metaphor, and had briefly considered him maybe halfway decent as a result. Seeing that he basically stretched a few, brilliant seconds of Weimar-era film into several tiresome lines that offer no particular improvement over the original material has forced me to rereconsider. It's all from Metropolis. Even the singular exclamation of the deity's profane name comes from the film. Only, in the film they do it once because they knew if they did it over and over again it would seem forced and weird. Fritz Lang managed to create the same metaphor with one word in one and a half minutes as it took Ginsberg to do with I don't want to count how many words and twenty eight years later. Allen Ginsberg may have been just a filthy hippie after all.
  14. Collimatrix
    I didn't even think it would be possible for suspension to seize like that. Good Lord. Xlucine, do you know anything about this?
  15. Collimatrix
    Interesting to see: http://www.currentmiddleages.org/artsci/docs/Champ_Bane_Archery-Testing.pdf It confirms Terry Pratchet's comment that "chain-mail from the point of view of an arrow can be thought of as a series of loosely connected holes."
  16. Collimatrix
    Look into something called "Simunitions," and a gaggle of imitators and similar concepts. You do a barrel-swap on your gun so it fires these very light projectiles that still move at a reasonable clip so that they're a fair impression of your blaster's trajectory when it's set to kill. Then everyone dresses up in big armor cushions and starts running scenarios.
  17. Collimatrix
    Continuing the theme of albums named "Thirteen Tales of ___", here are the Dandy Warhols: This is layers of reference and self-parody; the Dandy Warhols are a reference to Andy Warhol and by extension the band he managed, the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground is the ur-hipster band; edgy, unknown, widely imitated. Unimpeachable artistic integrity. The entire song is Stuff White People Like before there was a Stuff White People Like. It's like a big hipster onion, only the simile breaks down because when I cut hipsters with a knife, I don't cry. Also, boobies. I couldn't find a song from the Warhols I really liked that had a video that had Zia McCabe in it, so you'll just have to trust me when I say that early '90s Zia McCabe was cute as a button. Or I could just post that.
  18. Collimatrix
    Alright, this one is for LC:
  19. Collimatrix
    Pretty sure that's a YAH-63.
  20. Collimatrix
    FUCK REACTION DRIVES YO:
  21. Collimatrix
    I was going to ask you about the AMX-13 autoloader. IS-7 doesn't seem to have much internal space; a flaw shared with IS-3. I'm surprised there's enough turret depth to be comfy with the way the hull cross section is shaped, but then again, there isn't a basket, so maybe it really sucks when the thing rotates. Still scratching my head over when that placard could be referring to if there's no power ammunition conveyor, but who knows.
  22. Collimatrix
    Ukranian VEPR?
  23. Collimatrix
    So, I'm snowbound in a little motel in Rawlins, WY. It's a dinky, creaky old place with no internet, no running water, and it's built on an old Indian burial ground. Anyway, I was thinking about music. I listened to The Pierce's Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge on the way down here, end to end. Holy crap, this is a superb album. Allison and Catherine Pierce are both excellent singers with some really excellent harmonies (but not so often it gets dull). Instrumentation and melodies are varied too, but not so much it feels thrown together. And wow, the lyrics. The probity of the album's concept is immaculate. It oozes jealousy, loss, lust and toxic sexuality worthy of an opera. A taste:
  24. Collimatrix
    I am curious how wide IS-7 was. According to Ogorkiewicz, IS-3 and T-55 were built to the maximum width that Soviet rail gauge could permit two-way cargo. If IS-7 was wider, that would mean that it would be a substantially greater logistical burden to get IS-7s to the front.
  25. Collimatrix
    Is that a QLZ-87 variant the Kurds are using there?
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