For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[Nightside]

3 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Yes, the (inflatable) lifeboats are stowed internally and can be (are) taken out the escape hatch if needed.

wow!

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

27 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Yes, the (inflatable) lifeboats are stowed internally and can be (are) taken out the escape hatch if needed.

Here's a sciency question: can you blow out long enough during an emergency ascent to prevent getting the bends?

[tater]

Just now, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Here's a sciency question: can you blow out long enough during an emergency ascent to prevent getting the bends?

You could take up alternate breathing...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/science/endangered-turtle-australia.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 minutes ago, tater said:

You could take up alternate breathing...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/science/endangered-turtle-australia.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

I (literally) LOL'd

Fiction has to be believable, but Nature can do whatever the heck she wants!

 

Oh - and I have another Science - type question...  Suppose someone, somehow, was able to pull off a 'Space Battleship Yamamoto" - type thing; would all that steel be a benefit in space or would it somehow become a radiation hazard?

(I have a vague recollection of reading something about a manned Mars ship needed to be built in a way to mitigate inter-planetary radiation... and that steel wasn't a good candidate)

Edited September 3, 2020 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[SOXBLOX]

Yeah, when high energy particles run into steel, they release energy, in the form of gamma rays, as they pass through the electron clouds of the material. So a steel box would literally fry you. Well, maybe not so drastically...

Anyways, metals are good at stopping uncharged particles like neutrons, so you do want metal shielding. Just, you need something fluffy underneath, to stop the bremsstralung gammas.

[mikegarrison]

[ARS]

4 hours ago, Nightside said:

I should clarify - do submarines have lifeboats they can launch when under?

The single Soviet Mike-class submarine had an escape capsule, which was jettisoned upon its sinking in 1989. Some Soviet submarines like the Oscar-class submarines are rumoured to have escape capsules for the crew. (In the sinking of the Kursk the crew was unable to reach the capsule.) However, the Typhoon-class submarine is also rumoured to have escape pods located near or about the sail. Evidence for this can be found in a German documentary on the Typhoon-class submarine Severstal. Exploration submarine such as DSV Alvin also features detachable section which float to the surface in emergency situation

Edited September 4, 2020 by ARS

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Nightside said:

I should clarify - do submarines have lifeboats they can launch when under?

  

23 hours ago, DDE said:

The use of lifeboats and escape pods is fundamentally driven by the imminent threat of whatever vehicle you're onboard ceasing to fly or float.

 

 

[Shpaget]

On 9/3/2020 at 3:27 AM, SOXBLOX said:

At 6'4", I'm with ya. If someone rubs me the wrong way, I think I might just ask that...

What annoys me even more than being asked if I play basketball, is that it would be considered rude to counter ask if they are jockeys. Double standards.

I would like to know the line of reasoning behind the question, though. Oh look at that tall guy, he must be playing basketball! Do they think that playing basketball makes people taller? Or that being tall makes people automatically interested in running around just to throw a ball through an entirely too small and inconveniently placed hoop?

[DerekL1963]

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Here's a sciency question: can you blow out long enough during an emergency ascent to prevent getting the bends?

In theory, yes.  In practice it's never been really tried from any deep depth as it's pretty risky.  Escape was considered the last resort, better to wait for rescue.  Of course, out of a three month patrol only the first 9-12 hours and the last 9-12 hours were in waters shallow enough to bottom and wait for rescue.  (For boats in the Pacific, it's frequently even less.)  We called the various escape and rescue systems "mommy systems", their only practical usage being to keep mothers, wives, and congresscritters happy.  We were under no illusion of what was likely to happen if we couldn't put the boat on the roof.
 

2 hours ago, ARS said:

The single Soviet Mike-class submarine had an escape capsule, which was jettisoned upon its sinking in 1989. Some Soviet submarines like the Oscar-class submarines are rumoured to have escape capsules for the crew. (In the sinking of the Kursk the crew was unable to reach the capsule.) However, the Typhoon-class submarine is also rumoured to have escape pods located near or about the sail.

The escape pods are pretty well known if you follow that sort of thing.  Here (for example) is one of a Typhoon's escape pods, and here is where it fits.  Here's the one from an Oscar.   Here is a list of all classes with escape pods and their specifications.  I know there's a full page about them, but I can't dig it up at the moment.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

On 9/3/2020 at 4:27 AM, SOXBLOX said:

At 6'4", I'm with ya. If someone rubs me the wrong way, I think I might just ask that...

What annoys me even more than being asked if I play basketball, is that it would be considered rude to counter ask if they are jockeys. Double standards.

"You're so tall. Do you play basketball?"
"No."
Suggested "Why?"

[DDE]

9 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Nation B's military leader uses rapid, unpredictable strikes to eliminate A's infrastructure in the region in the opening hours of the conflict. This forces A to extend supply lines from its home bases, or mount attacks from more distant, unaffected locations. If B can win just a couple more victories, they can offer peace terms to nation A under which B keeps a significant part of the buffer zone. If A cannot retaliate forcefully enough to drive out B (because A's infrastructure was destroyed, they cannot maintain a fleet in the region), and they are under pressure from the rest of the galaxy to end the war, they may opt for conditional surrender. This timely peace offer would be a diplomatic fait accompli.

And yet this isn't done well in fiction either... after thinking about examples, I think I can understand why. A lot of people really, really can't take the idea that the attacking side, such as any of the Axis powers during WWII, can also be the underdogs. This is because of a deep-running association of heroes with the underdogs.

So what it means is that, in fiction, side B tends to be unexpectedly powerful and its opening strike is utterly bombastic. Think North Korea taking over America (you know what game I'm talking about).

But this gets even more schizophrenic when you remember one of the problems with the Netflix Witcher series, and that is how they treat the Nilfgardians. Book and game Nilfgardians are patterned after Poland's long list of foreign conquerors, all of them more powerful and more organized that the heroes. They are simply an expansionist empire, a "boring" but plausible motivation, and they are detailed enough to make them believable. Also, they look fittingly snazzy:

Spoiler

So what does Netflix do with them? The much-mocked armor is just the cherry on the top. We are assured that they're "rabble", a "pariah state", even while they're just as powerful as the books. They're religious fanatics. We pretty much see them use suicide wizards! Do you realize exactly who they've turned them into!?

The following is not my talking point, but there's a theory that this is the result of Amerizanization of the setting. Apparently American audiences, which are the world's key culture producer as well as consumer, like their enemy to be some sort of either a cartoonish villain, a pariah, or even some sort of hermit state unknown to the wider world/galaxy... that is somehow the most powerful force out there, at least judging by its opening feats of martial might. Again, North Korea taking over America. Somehow.

...Frankly I'm not sure what we're discussing at this point. This is a post more suited to the 'Bad Sci-Fi' thread.

7 hours ago, Nightside said:

I should clarify - do submarines have lifeboats they can launch when under?

Russian ones do.

 

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Here's a sciency question: can you blow out long enough during an emergency ascent to prevent getting the bends?

You have to go slowly.

58 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

The escape pods are pretty well known if you follow that sort of thing.  Here (for example) is one of a Typhoon's escape pods, and here is where it fits.  Here's the one from an Oscar.   Here is a list of all classes with escape pods and their specifications.  I know there's a full page about them, but I can't dig it up at the moment.

It should be caveated that anything other than a VSK is more crude than an 'escape pod'.

VSUs and the like are tethered "reverse elevators" used to evacuate 2-4 suited-up people at once. VSKs are dry chambers usually specified to carry the whole crew.

[DDE]

3 hours ago, ARS said:

Exploration submarine such as DSV Alvin also features detachable section which float to the surface in emergency situation

It gets less impressive when you consider how bathyscaphs of old operated: they used jetissonable lead ballast. Alvin is essentially a pressurized ball with a foam hull around it.

What you're essentially looking at is a spacecraft jetissoning a service module.

[kerbiloid]

28 minutes ago, DDE said:

suicide wizards

Sounds like "old, experienced kamikaze"

But after looking at the Netflix nilfes (nilves), one thing gets clear: it's better to die than wear such armor. Probably, it's a part of their psychological training.

[DDE]

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Sounds like "old, experienced kamikaze"

They literally have them vanish, Ben Kenobi style, to cast a fireball. Meanwhileover in the gameverse, Sabrina Glevissig incinerated two armies like a rocket artillery battery, and she only died because one of those armies were her employer's.

And you're absolutely correct to imply that wizards don't grow on trees.

[kerbiloid]

10 minutes ago, DDE said:

And you're absolutely correct to imply that wizards don't grow on trees.

Unless somebody hangs them there, what is more than natural for the Nilfgaard, known for its antimagic hystery _{(history + hysteria)}.

Edited September 4, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Shpaget]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

"You're so tall. Do you play basketball?"
"No."
Suggested "Why?"

Or even worse, "Shame, you'd be good at it."

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

"You're so tall. Do you play basketball?"
"No."
Suggested "Why?"

You have no idea how many short people fetishize playing basketball. 

There is literally no way to get out of the whole story on 'if I had your height... Maaaan I'd be in the NBA - - why this one time in middle school..."

It never ends 

5 hours ago, DDE said:

It gets less impressive when you consider how bathyscaphs of old operated: they used jetissonable lead ballast. Alvin is essentially a pressurized ball with a foam hull around it.

What you're essentially looking at is a spacecraft jetissoning a service module.

James Cameron did a piece with subs and NASA types trying to game out how to do underwater exploration of a place like Enceladus.  It was pretty cool... And they talked explicitly about how very deep oceanic exploration is similar to space exploration... And done a lot less

[tater]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

Russian ones do.

Wow, never knew that. Must be crowded to fit the entire crew in that tiny thing...

[DerekL1963]

re:submarine escape

6 hours ago, DDE said:

You have to go slowly.

Yes, in conventional diving, you ascend slowly (and take breaks) to avoid the bends.  But conventional divers have air tanks - submarine escapees do not.  But keep in mind that reaching a state where you can get the bends is a product of pressure and time.  Submarine escapees minimize the latter.  The escape system is pressurized as quickly as possible, and the escape conducted as quickly as possible.  (At least on US boats, there's a plaque in and adjacent to the escape trunk listing the pressurization rate for various depth.)
 

33 minutes ago, tater said:

Wow, never knew that. Must be crowded to fit the entire crew in that tiny thing...

Very crowded...  Here's the interior of the pod on a Borei class SSBN:

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

The answer to the question of how many people you can fit into a telephone booth in an emergency is:

"One More" 

[tater]

4 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Very crowded...  Here's the interior of the pod on a Borei class SSBN:

How many decks? What's the crew complement, 80?

Edited September 4, 2020 by tater

[DerekL1963]

12 minutes ago, tater said:

How many decks? What's the crew complement, 80?

I have no idea, the crew complement is listed as 107.

[tater]

6 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I have no idea, the crew complement is listed as 107.

Seems like the officers are more likely to get out, the rest of the crew... not so much.

[TheSaint]

51 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Yes, in conventional diving, you ascend slowly (and take breaks) to avoid the bends.  But conventional divers have air tanks - submarine escapees do not.  But keep in mind that reaching a state where you can get the bends is a product of pressure and time.  Submarine escapees minimize the latter.  The escape system is pressurized as quickly as possible, and the escape conducted as quickly as possible.  (At least on US boats, there's a plaque in and adjacent to the escape trunk listing the pressurization rate for various depth.)

Ho-ho-ho...ho-ho-ho...ho-ho-ho...