For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Do those Geoids line up with the Kratons?

[kerbiloid]

The kratons are pink.

Spoiler

 

Edited November 19, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, Shpaget said:

There aren't many choices, apart from energy and death generation.

This.    As soon as you try to do anything with it..... fwoof pop!    (That’s officially what a matter/antimatter interaction sounds like.    Future star ships are going to sound weird... fwoof pop zoom!)

[kerbiloid]

There aren't many choices, apart from a billion dollars in small bills and a helicopter business jet with a paraglider in it.

***

Btw, did they dig it from the right, then put to the left?

Or it was previously stuck into?
 

Spoiler

 

Upd.
Does this diagonal symmetry line between the hill and the pit have some special geographical name / refer to a known toponym?

I.e. some Great West-East Frontier or so? (In terms like Midwest, Great Plains, etc.).

Edited November 19, 2021 by kerbiloid

[SOXBLOX]

Anyone else seeing the lunar eclipse? I stepped out and was simply blown away. Absolutely gorgeous. Seeing the Moon hanging there, all dim and reddish is just fascinating. To know that it's the shadow of the rock I'm standing on that's causing it is really something special...

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Anyone else seeing the lunar eclipse? I stepped out and was simply blown away.

Spoiler

 

Edited November 19, 2021 by kerbiloid

[AHHans]

11 hours ago, aziazukra said:

If you had 1kg of antimatter (safely contained), what would you do?

Try to expand our current understanding of physics!  E.g. figure out if the relation between its inertial and gravitational mass is the same as for regular matter.

But after I ran out of ideas for that, I'd probably use it to convince the funding agencies to keep funding me for "safekeeping" of the antimatter.

[AHHans]

8 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

Gravitational anomalies:
[...]

Thanks! I knew you could explain that better than me. Picture me adding a number of "That's exactly what I meant" to your post.

9 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

I'll think about that some more on a day when I haven't been building and measuring a network of very large triangles at a sewage treatment plant.

Well, looking at what I wrote, I didn't explain that well. You used the total gravitational force of the Moon in your calculations. But the gravitational force of the Moon mostly keeps Earth in its orbit around the barycenter. Only the difference between the Moon's force at the position on the Earth's surface and of the Moon's force at the Earth's center of gravity actually matters. From the Wikipedia article:

Black circle: Earth. The Moon is far to the right. The top picture shows the Moon's gravitational force on the surface away from the Moon, in the center, and on the surface facing the Moon. The lower picture shows the residual forces after the force at the center is subtracted. (Well, with the actual difference exaggerated for effect.)

This residual force is called tidal force, and is the only one that will change the direction of "down" due to the Moon being at a different position relative to you. (Which is how it causes the actual tides.) In reality the Earth's surface will also deform somewhat with the tides and lower their effect on you as you stand on the Earth's surface, but I just ignored that in my calculation.

9 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

Bonus: It's for deformation monitoring, so it's time-dependent. My brain (and the rest of me) hurts.

So, you want to prevent - or at least mitigate - something like what happened here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph9O9yJoeZY

 

[Admiral Fluffy]

5 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Anyone else seeing the lunar eclipse? I stepped out and was simply blown away. Absolutely gorgeous. Seeing the Moon hanging there, all dim and reddish is just fascinating. To know that it's the shadow of the rock I'm standing on that's causing it is really something special...

I saw that.

I had to get up at 3 AM to see it and it was worth it.

[SOXBLOX]

1 hour ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

I saw that.

I had to get up at 3 AM to see it and it was worth it.

Me, too! Apparently it was the longest duration in 580 years, so I wasn't gonna miss it. 

[SOXBLOX]

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Does this diagonal symmetry line between the hill and the pit have some special geographical name / refer to a known toponym?

I.e. some Great West-East Frontier or so? (In terms like Midwest, Great Plains, etc.).

It's the boundary between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. As far as I know, there's not a name for the (very sudden) transition between the two. The High Plains is used sometimes. The entire high, mountainous region of western NA is called the North American Cordillera.

Here in Texas and New Mexico, though, there's a thing called the Caprock Escarpment, which is a high-altitude plateau, and an extension of the North American Cordillera. It ends very abruptly, at a giant cliff that stretches from one end of the horizon to the other, called the Llano Estacado. That might work as a name as well.

[kerbiloid]

Thank you for the information!

[FleshJeb]

@SOXBLOXIt's not fair to nerd-snipe me with physical geography.
(It doesn't help that my favorite place in the world is in a high desert filled with escarpments and volcanoes.)

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, FleshJeb said:

(It doesn't help that my favorite place in the world is in a high desert filled with escarpments and volcanoes.)

Mustafar

[FleshJeb]

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Mustafar

A wee bit less "Mount Doom"

[Admiral Fluffy]

Why did they bother painting the orange tank white for the first shuttle launch?

[kerbiloid]

30 minutes ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

Why did they bother painting the orange tank white for the first shuttle launch?

Since STS-3 they stopped doing that to save mass.

Probably, got ensured that hydrogen stays cool under sun even in a non-white tank.

[razark]

3 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

Why did they bother painting the orange tank white for the first shuttle launch?

To look good.

[ARS]

Is it possible to make a helicopter carrier accomodate fixed-wing carrier based aircraft by outfitting the ship with catapult (to compensate for shorter runway on deck)? That way they can act like WW2 light carriers, lower number of aircraft onboard but can still do carrier duty

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

Is it possible to make a helicopter carrier accomodate fixed-wing carrier based aircraft by outfitting the ship with catapult (to compensate for shorter runway on deck)? That way they can act like WW2 light carriers, lower number of aircraft onboard but can still do carrier duty

They might be able to launch them, but they wouldn't have the arresting gear or deck space to land them. They can, however, operate VSTOL aircraft, like the F-35B.

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, TheSaint said:

They might be able to launch them, but they wouldn't have the arresting gear or deck space to land them. They can, however, operate VSTOL aircraft, like the F-35B.

This, also catapults up to the newest electrical ones on the ford class uses steam and navy shifted from steam turbines to diesel, exception is the nuclear powered carriers. 

[kerbiloid]

An underwater Orion drive could push both carrier and/or catapult.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

15 hours ago, ARS said:

Is it possible to make a helicopter carrier accomodate fixed-wing carrier based aircraft by outfitting the ship with catapult (to compensate for shorter runway on deck)? That way they can act like WW2 light carriers, lower number of aircraft onboard but can still do carrier duty

This is one of our USMC-supporting Navy ships, not referred to as a Carrier. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/01/25/uss-america-amphibious-assault-ship-replace-uss-wasp-japan-report.html

 

The Navy gets all personal if you call it a Carrier. It's an Amphibious Assault Ship.  It carries the dangerous stuff. (and also VTOL planes and helicopters)

 

[DDE]

16 hours ago, ARS said:

Is it possible to make a helicopter carrier accomodate fixed-wing carrier based aircraft by outfitting the ship with catapult (to compensate for shorter runway on deck)? That way they can act like WW2 light carriers, lower number of aircraft onboard but can still do carrier duty

Some of USMC "gators" were previously used to fly very small observation aircraft (basically your barnstormer's Cessnas). For such aircraft, no arrestor gear is needed, and with enough headwind they effectively become a VTOL. Heck, those C-130 landings on the larger carriers? AFAIK no arrestor gear was incolved either.

However, you probably want something closer to an S-3 Viking for your escort carrier to have military value, and that's pretty big. You might also have to justify the advantages of mini-flattops over seaplane carriers/flying boat tenders, at least in some theatres.

The broader ConOps is also suspect: land-based ASW aircraft have tremendously greater range, whereas for close-in ASW you might have an easier time with helicopters.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It's an Amphibious Assault Ship. 

But why "amphibious"? It can only swim, not crawl.

This one is amphibious.

Spoiler

(But you need the Breaking Ground DLC for the fenestrons.)