[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On Sat, 2008-01-26 at 21:20 +0000, Brad Rogers wrote: > On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:00:11 +0000 > "M.Blackmore" <mblackmore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hello M.Blackmore, > > > That seems to dump ubuntu 7.10 into a corrupted screen from the bbc... > > Pollution by commercial shipping. Except that this ship is "green". > It's got a kite pulling it along. Oh, the old kite idea, shove it up a couple of thousand feet into the tradewinds and get it either pulling simply or with computer control get it doing some sort of aerobatic manouevre that increases its speed by many times and hence "bollard pull weight" due to the effect of accelerating air past the surface (like what a sail set properly to the wind does). I used to be an energy policy campaigner/lobbyist in the 70s and first part of the 80s with environmental groups nationally and internationally. The last time I read anything on kites was someone trying to get a PDP10 to control some actuators back in the mid 70s and it was proving nigh on impossible to do in real time given the sensor technology and ability to model and respond quickly enough with the actuators so wasn't going too, err, far. Nowadays the 4 year old solid state watch on my wrist has an order or two magnitude more computing power than the PDP10/11 range of minicomputers (which I worked with in that time/era/geological epoch feels more like) so I should think it's now perfectly feasible from the control and modelling of behaviour aspect. Also materials have probably improved no end - tougher fabrics and stuff like kevlar etc. for cables and so forth as wear and fray meant they reckoned they'd get through a couple of kites per Atlantic voyage, which made it pricey compared to even post Yom Kippur oil costs which prompted the research. I think the idea is even older and dates back to Victorian times if not long long before that given the energy advantage of hoisting a kite up high into steady winds and also the gain from accelerating it into fancy flying patterns ... if one can control those for something on the scale of a ship pulling kite, even for only a couple of hundred tonnes of ship. I suppose it could be done manually with considerable skill and some very strong armed matelots.... Meanwhile I'm still getting BBC sites locking up this ubuntu 7.10/firefox so thoroughly I can't even kill x windows nor get to a console and have to power switch off the laptop... How are other people viewing BBC sites? -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html