I've seen a few documentaries on this device (though not sure if I've seen this one yet... just started watching), and I find it absolutely amazing. It always makes me wonder just how much technology has been developed and lost (and how many times this has happened) due to events like the burnings of the library of Alexandria (for example) and others we may not even know have happened. The fact that this device is more intricate and more accurately "machined" (for lack of a better term) than was thought possible for its age just proves we don't know just how far back some of what we consider to be modern developments go.
This is a bit terse [0], but still very cool. I used to love to follow all of the new CPUs from the various vendors to see how they compared in performance, wattage, transistor count, etc. by following The CPU Info Center at Berkeley. Sadly, the site was abandoned around 2004 and removed some time after, but you can still see some of the content if you search archive.org for http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/cic (dig back to the spikes in 2005 or so).
My favorite was watching the Alpha... every time HP's PA-RISC would bump past it, DEC would release either a new generation or maybe just bump the clock in the Alpha and completely blow it away. Hungry beasts though... and way out of my budget when they were being made.
It would be neat to see a chart like that with modern CPUs - shame they abandoned the site.
0 - It has very short descriptions for each stage. There's not quite enough info to understand the "whys". Like it states that the 6501 was dropped after the threat of a lawsuit, but doesn't explain that it was because of it being pin-(and I believe signal)-compatible with the 6800, which the 6502 was not.
I wonder how long until someone creates an Android client for this (one that is configurable, not hard-coded to point to the defunct Ubuntu One servers).
I'd love to run a ZFS-backed Ubuntu One server for all my family's portable devices.
I'm surprised the Pond Racer [0] isn't in there. With its (relatively) huge engine nacelles way out front dragging the tiny cockpit way in the back, I swear it's got to be the inspiration for the "pod racers" in Star Wars.
I'm also surprised to see the Proteus and X29 in the list.
The Proteus was quite a ground-breaker and doesn't look too strange if you've seen a few gliders.
I remember seeing the X29 on the front cover of (I think) Popular Science back in the day, and thought it was a beautiful design. Highly efficient, highly maneuverable, and I think this was the one with a vertical canard (under the pilot, not visible in most pictures) that allowed it to corner flat (for improved visibility during dogfights).
I think the Edgley Optica looks like something from Lexx, the Bartini Beriev VVA-14 belongs in a video game and the Handley-Page Victor belongs in Agents of Shield!
I'm amazed that I'm reading in the same article talking about faults in limestone and "underground trapping of carbon dioxide emitted by power stations".
The water we're pumping down there isn't the only water deep in the earth. Water + C02 = carbonic acid, commonly known to dissolve limestone (frequently the cause of sinkholes when it happens near the surface). Am I the only one who thinks pumping enormous amounts of C02 deep into the ground (where it's going to come into contact with water and limestone) is a really, really bad idea?
Outside of that, very interesting article. Fantastic that they have access to a fault via an old military installation!
As I understand it, the bolts were pointing forward towards the fuel tank which caused the puncture and (the threads caused) the spark, but this was only in the Pinto wagon, a far less popular variant of the car. The hatchback most people think of as the Pinto did not have this design flaw (the bolts were perpendicular to the car instead of aiming forwards).
So, you had to rear-end a Pinto wagon (not hatchback) with a nearly empty tank so the bolts entered at the fume level for any chance of fire or explosion.
In addition to all of the other examples given, countless SoHo routers (just about everything from the old WRT54G workhorse on up) run MIPS processors.
Hopefully, this will get more traction than OpenSPARC did. I was really surprised that one didn't get adopted heavily. It runs Linux (and Solaris and OpenBSD), is multicore, CMT, low power.
There is also the RISC-V ISA (http://riscv.org/) being developed at Berkeley and the lowRISC SoC incorporating a 64-bit RISC-V CPU (http://www.lowrisc.org/) by a team in Cambridge.
I remember reading this article when it was first published and thought it was a fantastic piece of work.
When it was later discovered that the NSA has been doing this for years [0], the extent of their technical prowess really became apparent to me.
The whole point of hybrid cars are the fact that you're only on the throttle periodically. You start, stop, speed up, slow down all the time (especially in S. Florida!). Normally when you're slowing down, you're burning off the energy as heat (friction from the brakes), etc.
Adding an electric motor/generator to this allows you to recapture energy that is normally wasted slowing back down, so it can be reused to re-accelerate back up to speed. This is why hybrids (unlike non-hybrid cars) get better fuel mileage in town than on the freeway.
Aircraft, on the other hand, are at full-throttle on takeoff, and close to 3/4 throttle during the vast majority of the flight. There is no slowdown to recoup the energy until coming in for a landing. @beloch has already done the math showing the electric range would be downright miniscule, so there's very, very little to be gained here.
Until we have some utterly astounding advances in battery (or more likely, supercapacitor) tech (probably via graphene), this won't really be a cost-effective solution.
However, this would be an absolutely incredible motor for electric car conversions.
Imagine a pair of these (each powering an axle)... it would be considerably more powerful than even the Tesla Model S P85D.
Regenerative braking is only one advantage of the hybrid approach. The other significant advantages are:
1. The engine can be sized for average output, not peak output, which makes it more efficient.
2. The engine can stay closer to its optimally efficient RPM.
3. Because RPM variation is smaller, and because power requirements are smaller, you can use more efficient engine cycles like the Atkinson cycle.
I'm doubtful that the advantages will be worth the extra weight. #1 is not going to be as big of a deal for an airplane, since as you note, power output is a decent fraction of the maximum during cruise. (In contrast with a car, which might have a 200hp engine but only use 30hp of that in cruise.) But it should count for something. #2 might make a nice difference paired with a variable-pitch propellor. #3 gives a decent efficiency boost. Put it all together and it doesn't seem likely to be worth the extra weight, since that counts for so much in an airplane, but it's not completely absurd.
Note for the Tesla comparison that the limiting factor in the P85D's power output is the battery, not the motors. Lighter motors would certainly be good, but it'll be a small effect. If you really want more power, you either need a bigger battery, or a battery chemistry that can discharge faster.
Electric aircraft can recharge in flight from the sun. This will mostly be long endurance, high altitude utility aircraft, like Facebook/Titan Aerospace's wifi UAV or surveillance drones that can stay airborne indefinitely. These aircraft can be pseudo satellites without requiring a rocket launch. They must be extremely low in drag and weight efficient, with powerplant weight being a major issue because previously large electric motors have not had application in aerospace and have not been weight optimized as gas turbines have. Siemens has seen the growing market (QinetiQ Zephyr for another example) and is responding to it. We definitely won't be seeing any passenger aircraft electrically propelled anytime soon.
The article specifically mentions using this motor for hybrid passenger aircraft (which is what my post addressed). I mentioned nothing about UAVs or solar power (which is only possible with an enormous wing/fuselage ratio).
FTA:
"This innovation will make it possible to build series hybrid-electric aircraft with four or more seats," said Frank Anton, Head of eAircraft at Siemens Corporate Technology
These could dramatically improve the throttle command response of the aircraft and make the aircraft far quieter on departure and approach. Civil aviation is one of the most annoying hobbies that anyone has ever conceived, from the perspective of people who live near airfields. If this tech opens up the possibility of living near and airfield but not having to put up with the sound of private pilots coming and going all day long in Korean-War-era airplanes, that would be nice for those people.
> from the perspective of people who live near airfields.
Things more annoying than airplane noise:
* People who voluntarily choose to live near airports (which predictably have associated airplane noise), then complain about it.
* The ubiquitous, intentionally loud motorcycles (at closest approach, much louder than any small airplane, due to power law d^-2), which all get a free pass for some bizarre cultural reason, and are largely inescapable.
Some of the airplane noise perception problem is jealousy, and is easy to fix: go down to the airport, chat someone up, and they'll give you a ride.
