Re: OT. Freedom Of Speech

Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2006-07-12, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

snip

Did you know that they actually built hundreds of `Salamander' jet
fighters, but never got to deploy them due to lack of time and lack of
pilots? The original plan was to use Hitler Youth volunteers - but the
Salamander was such a pig to fly (it was a cheap and cheerful desperate
last ditch design of pure expedience - take a very simple and quick to
build air-frame made from existing parts and design ideas, bolt an
engine to the top, et voila! Instant jet fighter, and never mind the
aerodynamics), they really needed expert pilots.

Is that the one that took off using a sort of trolley instead of proper
undercarriage?

Nah - it had a proper undercart:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:He162_color010.jpg>

<http://www.vectorsite.net/avhe162.html>
<http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/he162.html>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_162>

I think you're thinking of the high-speed rocket launched
interceptor-glider, the Me 163. It was actually very similar to Burt
Rutan's SpaceShipOne in many ways - they're both basically gliders with
rocket engines (SS1 was officially registered as a glider and it's
certainly partly inspired by the Me 163) - except that the Me 163 had an
engine that was inclined to explode in bad landings in the early models.
The reason for that was the hypergolic fuel - two different nasty
chemicals that ignite spontaneously when mixed. What happened is that
iffy valving and plumbing could allow the dregs of the fuel to collect
here and there inside the works, and all it'd take was a bit of a bump
and you'd get the one component coming across the other component that
had formed a pool inside the combustion chamber (always a risk with any
horizontal rocket engine - the bloke who wrote Doom is trying to develop
a rocket launcher and has destroyed engines in horizontal testing in
just that way - but with non-hypergolic fuels), and `boom!'. Engine
mods reduced the risk as time went by.

But bad landings were par for the course.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_163>
(this says stuff I've read elsewhere):

`The design included a number of features from its glider heritage,
notably a skid used for landings, which could be retracted into the
aircraft's keel in flight. For takeoff, wheels were needed due to the
weight of the fuel, but these were released shortly after takeoff.'

(SS1's engine can't explode like that if it's operated remotely sanely -
the fuel is rubber, which needs to be heated and then given an oxidiser
(nitrous oxide) to burn. They dump any excess nitrous oxide before
re-entering, so there's no risk of fire at all beyond that point.)

Anyone taking off in one of those has to wonder just how
seriously the officers expect them to get back. 'We want you to fly this
to London' 'OK, then what?' 'Well, that's it really'.

Oh, they only had a range of about 30 miles. What you did was take off
when the bombers were near, shoot up at lunatic speed, and glide past
'em hoping that you'll hit 'em with *something* on the way past, and
then land again. It was in terms of function a short-range man-guided
ground-to-air anti-aircraft missile with guns strapped on because the
Luftwaffe didn't expect suicide attacks from their men.

`The performance of the Me 163 far exceeded that of contemporary
piston-engined fighters. After take-off from a dolly, it would be
traveling over 200 mph (300 km/h) at the end of the runway, at which
point it would pull up into an 80-degree angle of climb all the way to
the bombers' altitude. It could go even higher if need be, reaching
40,000 ft (12,000 m) in an unheard-of three minutes. Once there, it
would level off and quickly accelerate to speeds around 550 mph (880
km/h) or faster, which no Allied plane could hope to match.'

They developed quite a clever weapon for the Me 163: a photocell trigger
array of shooting things (ISTR cannons - but see below) on top of the
craft: you flew under the bomber, and the `Armoured Fist' array fired at
the appropriate moment. In theory. I've no idea how effective it was
in practice.

Ah!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_163>

`In service the slow-firing MK 108's proved to be a serious problem. The
Komet travelled so fast that it was almost impossible to hit a bomber
with the needed three rounds to destroy it. A number of innovative
solutions were attempted, the most promising being a battery of six 50mm
mortars known as Jagdfaust. The trigger was tied to a photocell in the
upper surface of the aircraft, and when the Komet flew under the bomber,
the resulting change in brightness caused by the underside of the
aircraft could cause the rounds to be fired. It appears that this weapon
was used in combat only once, resulting in the destruction of a Halifax
bomber.'

`In any operational sense the Komet was a failure. More were lost to
landing accidents than they ever accounted for in bomber kills, which
stand at only 16. At the same time the Komet was a successful design in
pointing the way to the future. It was one more piece of strong evidence
that the day of the propeller fighter was over, and it also spawned
improved weapons like the Bachem Ba 349 Natter and Convair XF-92.
Ultimately, the point defense role that the Me 163 played would be taken
over by the surface-to-air missile (SAM).'

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachem_Ba_349_Natter> - mental.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_XF-92> - ditto.

[snip]

I'm still a bit of a
pyromaniac (which, for those who might be reading, is *NOT* the same as
an arsonist. The only thing I set fire to that wasn't scheduled for
destruction was me. Well, there was the occasional accidental grill
fire and when you play with fire things do sometimes get out of hand,
but I was very good at dealing with it and careful enough that I only
did a Really Bad Thing once and that was with a model hot air balloon
which came down on next door's plastic extension roof and burnt a hole
in it.)

Heh heh :)) I was responsible for a few holes in the lino, when
investigating convection and turbines ...

I first dealt with a domestic fire before I'd started school - something
spat out from the fireplace and set fire to a rug. I was too small to
think about extinguishing it, so because my mother told me to `Go away,
I'm on the phone' when I tried to report the problem, I dragged it out
into the back garden leaving it to burn out on the lawn. My mother
tells the tale: I was too young to have any memory of the event at all.

During the war, the BBC stopped live broadcasts of 'Big Ben', as the
background noises could have given the enemy information about what was
really happening in central London.

Cunning. What amazes me is how much information distortion `our' lot
got up to, and how effective it was. So much stuff that the Germans
just swallowed hook, line, and sinker. Then again, they had so many
people working against them. This is from Wikipaedia about Garbo (but
says roughly what I recall hearing on Radio 4, so it's not far out):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_%28alias_Garbo%29>

He was a very useful weapon.

Yes - and there were a lot more where he came from, although very few
quite as resourceful.

snip

The Russians, meanwhile, fought and starved and died and beat
back the beastly Boche and saved the skins of the rest of us. I know
who won that war - Ivan, mostly. Irina, too - they had women fighting
as infantry and as fighter pilots. And I bet German soliders would have
been *really happy* to have met Russian women soliders, wouldn't they?
Especially if the Germans were lucky enough to have been captured by the
women.

If Hitler and Uncle Joe had managed to stay pals

They never were pals: Hitler was 100% against `communism'. Stalin
trusted no-one and could see right through Hitler. They had a
non-aggression pact so they could carve up Poland - but neither side
thought it'd last.

... I always thought it
was a bit unfair that the Russians were suddenly 'the enemy' after all
they did to help us in the real war.

Yes, but that was because they *were* the enemy in many ways, despite
being wartime allies against the Hitler anomaly. Churchill could see
that during the war, and did a lot of manoevering to deal with the
`Soviet Threat'. Unfortunately, he got no backup from the Yanks on this
(they scuppered quite a lot of Churchill's good ideas, due to having
almost no understanding of international relations or international
affairs) and we got the Soviets taking over Eastern Europe and all that
- but they wouldn't have done that if they hadn't felt threatened, which
was reasonable given the way they were viewed by pretty much everyone.
The way international relations worked back then was very iffy.

That tosser Truman got his boys to start bullying Stalin (and our lot)
via nuclear bombs at the end of WWII, and that was probably the thing
that sparked off the actual Cold War - leading directly to, for example,
the Berlin air lift crisis and suchlike. Stalin called their bluff,
reasoning that they can't have had many nukes in the early days and
couldn't possibly seriously harm the USSR with 'em - but he did have a
lot of tanks and suchlike, which certainly could do a lot of harm to
various people. So, for example, in 1968, it's `Hello Prague!'
(although by then the nuclear arsenals were huge enough to be
devastating - but again, the Soviets reasoned that no-one would start a
nuclear war over an invasion of Czechoslovakia, and they were right - so
what use were all those nukes to the Yanks? Nuffin' - at the time.)

I wonder if the 'cold war' actually
helped preserve the Soviet Union for longer than it would have lasted if
they'd had to stay 'our friends'?

I strongly suspect that if it hadn't been for the Cold War, the USSR
would have `lightened up' a good deal sooner than it did. The
leadership knew from the 1960s that they were doing it wrong and they
kept trying to fix the system - but given all the various stresses and
pressures, they couldn't go in the directions needed to sort things out.
There proabably wasn't a way forward to a semi-workable way of running
things without going through a patch where things fell apart a bit, and
they couldn't afford to have a period of weakness like that. Or so they
felt - of course they could have done, and the world would have been
better off, but you know how it goes.

On the other hand, China seems to be managing the transition to
`semi-sensible' without anything much worse than we had in 19th century
Britain - except, of course, on a much larger scale and with 20th
century technology (they really need a bit more 21st century gear -
really). Britain was brutally oppressive to its population back then,
almost as bad as China is to its population today. We got there, ish -
it looks to me as if they will, too - hopefully in less time.

Makes one wonder if perhaps the whole
Cold War thing wasn't cooked up at least as much by the Soviets as by the
Yanks.

Nah. I've read up on it quite a lot. What it was that the Yanks
started to throw their weight around with absolutely everyone, expecting
everyone to kow-tow because they had nukes and others didn't. It's why
Britain developed its own H-bomb - they discussed dropping the project,
but the foriegn secretary at the time vetoed the idea, on the grounds
that he didn't want *any* future foreign secretary to be spoken to as he
had just been spoken to by the Yanks. The only way to avoid that was to
be on a par with them in the nuclear field.

The thing is that it was enormously expensive to develop this stuff -
and the Soviets had to outmatch the Yanks, which was very, very, very
much more expensive. They didn't want to be messing about like that -
all the way through, the Soviets were simply reacting to Yank paranoia.
Sometimes stupidly, but it was purely reactive and defensive - and, to
an extent in some quarters at least, `against their better judgement'
because they could see the cost (others could see the cost and decided
it was unquestionably right to do it, no matter what the cost, because
Russia had to be strong - you know the deal).

Not one of Stalin, Truman, or Churchill could see any significant
difference between nukes and lesser weapons. Nukes were just better
bombs, that's all. Why treat them as a special case?

What did for the USSR and all that was the cost of keeping up with the
Yanks: they went bust, and it was a risk they knew about way back when.

I mean, look at Vietnam: the Yanks went there to fight against the
Commies. But they were fighting against Commies who had been funded by
the Yanks to throw out the colonial administration, run by France. The
Yanks funded Commies - sworn enemies of the Yanks - to fight against
their allies! And then it went pear-shaped. Well, what a surprise.
Fuckwits.

Hell, even during WWII, the Yanks fucked up like that - e.g., working to
push de Gaulle out of the picture, when he was the only available
Frenchman who was unquestionably going to fight the Germans all the way
with everything he could bring to bear, and when he was also the only
available Frenchman who had the required credibility in France to have
any authority at all. Yes, de Gaulle was a pain in the arse and he
drove Churchill to despair at times with his fuckwittedness - but
Churchill supported de Gaulle because he was an unequivocal fighter who
was unquestionably 100% against the Germans. The problem was what de
Gaulle was fighting *for*: the honour of France. Argh.

You can tell similar tales about the Yanks fucking up the world relating
to pretty much *any* of the post WWII trouble spots. The troubles in
the Middle East can be traced back to things like the Yank-driven
expulsion by British troops of the Palestinians to create the state of
Israel (the old fashioned Zionists had proposed *purchasing* the land,
all properly, one farm at a time, so that the local Arabs would not
resent them and would be happy to have them there because adding
European Jews would have just made the place richer and nicer to live
in. Instead, the state of Israel we've got seems to be taking its cues
from the book of Judges - not a happy time).

Other things that have caused the trouble: assisting the overthrow of
the Iraqi government to replace it with the evil dictator Saddam Hussein
(sprung from jail by the CIA). Messing around with Saudi Arabia rather
too much - which is why the Islamists are so anti-Saudi (mind you, the
house of Saud is pretty despicable on its own account). And so on.

The last 30 years of history that I've seen have led me to think I'd
rather enjoy a trip to Libya and taking tea with Gaddafi and probably
*some* of the Israeli cabinet (some are just far too paranoid for my
liking and don't ask me who's who - I just hear 'em on the radio, and
think `Oh god no not more of this, look you fools, *it's not working, is
it?*', just as I do when I hear the average Palestinian official
annoucement) - although obviously not while in Libya. But I wouldn't
dare go to the USA at the moment and I'd certainly not enjoy taking tea
with that slime-ball Dubya or his cronies.

snip

I'm utterly optimistic about it - because even if we do `go extinct',
life on Earth will carry on. That's what it's all about - we're nothing
special, just the current top of the heap. If we go, something else
will turn up, and it'll be better than us. That's life. :-)

I don't see any reason to be anything but optimistic - why do you think
I shouldn't be?

I don't expect 'all life on Earth' to cease for ever, any time soon. That
life can manage perfectly well with out us, though; it's our future I'm
not too sure of.

Well, yes - but why worry about our species? Any given species is just
one step on the way to somewhere. The way I look at it, no given
species can be expected to last for very long (in cosmic terms) - that's
what evolution's for. Species get replaced - each one is just part of
the matrix of life, and no species is in itself required, or perfect, or
deserving, or anything. Just a temporary expedient until something
better comes along. Why be bothered when it happens? Homo sapiens
sapiens will outlast you and me, without a doubt - and also, equally
without a doubt, homo sapiens sapiens will not exist at some point in
the future. Maybe the species will turn out to be a dead end, and maybe
it'll evolve into something better, but we'll never know a thing about
it. So why worry one way or the other?

Mass extinctions aren't a problem: they seem to cause an increase in the
rate of evolution. We've got loads of genetic diversity on the planet
despite having had loads of mass extinctions in the past.

Personally, I'd quite like to see `us' running the planet in a sensible
fashion, on the grounds that I dislike inefficiency and waste and
stupidity. If we run the place badly enough - well, that'll cause life
on Earth to go through a bad patch, and I don't like that idea at all
(actually, life in the sea is in fact going through such a bad patch.
Iceland has plenty of fish - we don't. Iceland has been running a 200
mile exclusion zone for how many decades now? I always thought that the
Icelanders had right on their side during the Cod Wars - and they did,
didn't they?)

But I've got no concerns for the survival of humanity at all - just
concerns for its current behaviour, which is really stupid given the
power we've got as a species. But - well, now we've got the power and
since we are screwing things up badly, people are in fact trying to deal
with it. Do you remember the old `Ecology Party'? A bunch of beardy
weirdies who no-one could take seriously? (actually, I always thought
they talked sense and didn't mind the fact that they looked stupid -
everyone did in the '70s anyway). Whatever - they were a fringe
movement, right? And now ecological concerns are top of the agenda
everywhere you go. Maybe the action isn't yet adequate - but at least
the issues are being taken seriously, and I think it's very heartening
that they're being taken very seriously by big business. Plenty of big
firms are taking the issue of climate change and diminishing fossil fuel
reserves a lot more seriously than governments - Shell and BP are two
notable examples. Well, firms like that are used to thinking in the
long term, they want to keep on making money in the long term, and
they're run by people who have some understanding of the validity of
scientific findings. Oh yes, and a lot of the data confirming climate
change has come from these firms. They *know* - so do others. We're
not sunk yet, just in deep trouble that's going to be quite expensive to
sort out.

snip

The bike I used for commuting is a 'Copenhagen Pedersen'
<http://www.dursley-pedersen.net/modern_pedersen/copenhagen.shtml>

Blimey! I looked at that, and thought `Hmm - weird. Hmm. Why? Ah! I
bet that's dead light, that' - and I was right:

<http://www.dursley-pedersen.net/dp_history.shtml>

I'm eccentric enough to carry it off.

<grin> Over in uk.comp.sys.mac, you'll find an eccentricer chap - who
keeps reminding me of you in some ways; I think he's about your age. He
doesn't ride a strange bicycle, but he does wear skirts (only at home -
he's not quite that eccentric) because they're very comfortable.

It's been too hot indoors lately even to wear a skirt ...

Yes. I'm not wearing anything at the moment. (one of the joys of the
modern world is that one can not bother with clothes at the same time as
engaging in normal (well, normal for the 'net) social interactions and
nobody even notices.

[snip]

The 'hammock' saddle is very efficient and comfortable. It's rarely
necessary to 'stand up' to pedal on a pedersen bike - indeed, it's
scarcely possible. The geometry is such that you get the proper
saddle-to-pedal distance and still have the ground close enough to put a
foot down without leaving the saddle or leaning over a long way - another
problem with many current 'mountain bike' and 'touring bike' designs.

Very nice. When I saw the picture, I thought `Hmm - yes, that's very
odd, but it looks just right. That's one of `those' designs, isn't it?
Someone's twigged something and got it just right, I'll bet.'

A real engineer, rather than a good craftsman (he could employ those),

I suspect you'll find he was a real engineer *AND* a craftsman - it has
the look of something designed by someone with their head in the space.

and
he started with the saddle. Almost all the forces on the frame elements
are resolved as tension or compression directly along the frame member, so
each piece can be light and slender - the saddle is a structural element,
not an after-thought.

Indeed. It strikes me as a good place to start the design of a bike -
now I've met an example of someone having done it. Ain't hindsight
grand?

Early Dursley-Pedersens (from the place in Gloucestershire where they were
made) are rumoured to be radio-active, from the uranium steel used to make
them.

<chuckle> Did you know that there was a fad for uranium glass
ornamental ware back in those days? Scary. Mind you, not as scary as
hearing about the woman who had a necklace made out of `Trinitite'.
Wassat? Well, you know they tested a nuclear bomb before dropping the
two on Japan? That was called the Trinity test. Trinitite was the name
given to the glassy blocks of fused minerals that the bomb created from
the ground beneath the test site.

I've got a picture of General Groves (who ran the Manhatten Project) and
Oppenheimer (who ran the bomb development) stood right underneath the
bomb detonation point. They ran tourist trips so the public could see
the place, and find out for themselves that all this talk about
radioactivity and fallout was overblown and there really wasn't anything
to be concerned about, honest.

And then, of course, people started dying of radiation induced problems,
because there *was* something to be concerned about, actually.

At least the Brits and the Soviets understood that there was a problem -
which didn't stop either of 'em irradiating soliders and civilians, but
at least they knew roughly what they were doing., i.e., killing people
for the sake of the data.

(btw, having read a lot about various nuclear programmes, I understand
why our lot say that it's perfectly safe in the UK: compared to what the
Yanks and Soviets got up to, our lot really are right up there alongside
Sir Galahad and the like, despite all the Very Bad Things they've done.)

Modern versions are built using carbon steel; 'carbon fibre' would
be interesting.

Generally speaking, you don't want to use carbon fibre in tubes like
that. A radically different design is usually best - basically, thin
tubes are good for constructions in steel. Carbon fibre's best in
tension, for starters. Aluminium alloy structures - big fat extrusions
and castings is the `right way' of using them. You don't want 'em
bending - you must avoid metal fatigue.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's very hard to get better than
decent steel for this kind of construction. One advantage it has over
everything else is that you can bend it a bit without it suffering any
sort of `fatigue' problems - only ferrous alloys have this property.
That's why it's great in thin tubes; other metals would fatigue and snap
if used the same way. Carbon fibre composites? Well, I expect there
are some which are similarly bendy - but you've got to be very good at
making the stuff to avoid problems over the long term with the composite
structure falling apart from the inside.

snip

I've kept the bikes
though; I will get around to riding them again. Eventually.

Hmm. Where do you live? (if you mind the question, ignore it)

North London, inside the North Circular.

Righto - not the most scenic part of the world from the point of view of
cycling. Hmm. Okay, it'll take some `oomph' to get going from there.

(I grew up in Harrow as it happens)

I'm perfectly at home mixing it
with the cars etc, so I can't blame the traffic or the hills for not
cycling. In my time I've cycled around Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch

You're mental. I've done Hyde Park Corner on a 125cc motorcycle and it
terrified me. Ditto Hanger Lane Gyratory.

and Tottenham Hayle Gyratory and Waterloo Bridge and Elephant and Castle
(and, yes, even Mornington Crescent).

Oh blimey. Although Mornington Crescent itself surely isn't so scary?
Aside from the risk of flashbacks to Monday evenings.

I even cycled up the hill to Ally
Pally, but only once. Going down is fun.

Yes.

I would want to get a new
anti-polution breating mask.

Do they actually help? I've often wondered.

I used to commute by pedal-cycle 10 miles each way to the office near the
Bank of England, when I had a job. 10,000 miles a year.

I wish I'd done that sort of thing.

An expensive set
of 'indexed' derailler gears would last about 1,000 miles if cared for;

Blimey. Well.

I've never worn out a hub gear (although I did manage to break one -
Sturmey-Archer had a materials or design problem with their 'improved'
5-speed in the early 90s and eventually they had to start again with a new
model. By then I'd fitted a Sachs hub).

Uhuh.

If I still had that job (or the money) I'd be a customer for that lovely
Rohloff 14-speed hub.

<chuckle> Is that the sign of an inveterate geek? - just got to have
the fanciest toy? ;-)

Rowland.

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