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Kiritimati is a small island currently
located bang in
the middle of the Pacific (or, if not quite
bang, at least close enough that moving it
to bang would be a simple
task). So, install a sizeable electric
motor on the island (solar powered, or run
from an extension lead to the nearest
continental outlet.) On the
pivot, mount a sizeable horizontal two-
armed rotor (about 5000 miles from tip to
tip, or roughly 8046.72 kilometres) made
of an adequately stiff material. At each
rotor tip are biggish (say, 5- to 10-mile-
long) hulls designed to aquaplane on the
water. The motor turns at something like
0.001 rpm. If the length of the arms
is just right, and if Kiritimati is
repositioned just a little, the hulls will
sweep past the west coast of the USA, New
Zealand, Japan and southern Alaska every
few hours. The difficulties of embarking
and disembarking at such high speeds will
be offset by the speed and
convenience (well, OK, just the speed
then) of this mass-transit sytem. And it
would look so good from space.
a global transportation solution
[hob,
May 17 2009]
the morning commute
[hob,
May 17 2009]
Space Elevator Light
Space_20Elevator_20Light
The idea [baconbrain] refers to, I think. [bristolz, Jun 25 2005]
Discovered by a Frenchman
http://en.wikipedia...rd-Gustave_Coriolis
[DenholmRicshaw, Jun 27 2005]
Coriolis Force
http://ww2010.atmos...es/mtr/fw/crls.rxml
an artifact of the earth's rotation [ato_de, Jun 28 2005]
Kiritimati chat
http://www.weirdtow...kiritimati_chat.jsp
[normzone, Jun 28 2005]
Kiritimati map
http://www.worldatl...trys/oceania/ki.htm
[normzone, Jun 28 2005]
Kiritimati + nude
http://www.google.c...search=&safe=images
Ok, I don't recommend following any of these links, but it's an exercise in Google possibilities. [normzone, Jun 29 2005]
Possible Gnarly extras
Gnarly_20Surf-Plough
Dude. Surfs up. [theleopard, Jun 23 2007]
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Hang on a minute - 25 km per minute by my rusty reckoning - this is going to be bangingly noisy and dangerous. Automatic bun as long as you paint bits of it yellow like an aeroplane propeller. |
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Hmmm - 15.5342798 miles per minute,
sounds about right. I was actually
going to put LEDs along the arms to
spell out messages which could only be
read by aliens with very long visual
latency and big telescopes. |
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But the LEDs can be yellow. Bun, then? |
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In space no one can hear you scream. In fact they can't hear anything. |
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I'm still a bit worried about these damn aliens though. Anyone who can sit through a 1000 minute "ring cycle" must be - well - alien |
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Just think of the world chapionship games of Got It, Dropped It, that could be played. |
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Slow it down to an acceptable spin rate, allowing dis/embarkation and this is almost feasable. Almost. |
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Or lose the rotation altogether and use Kirimati as a transoceanic multi-bridge hub. |
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Keeping the rotation, it would be an interesting exercise to calculate speeds and arrival/departure times... e.g. if I'm going from San Francisco to Tokyo, depending on rotation speed, it might be better for me to park on the tip of Rotor 3 and ride, rather than drive in and back out again. |
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Is earth curvature going to mess up your design? The equatorial bulge means you've got to build some serious flex into the rotors. |
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At these scales, I doubt you could get a material rigid enough to worry about straightness. After the structure is built on a large planar surface somewhere it would easily conform to the curvature of the earth. |
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excellent - flawless plan [basepair]. Can I
suggest that we look seriously at a similar
plan for the Azores, which I'm reliably
informed are near as damn in the middle
of the Atlantic Ocean. |
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I'm trying to grapple with the difficulties of embarking and disembarking. How about getting on at the centre and using some sort of halliard arrangement to pull you out to the tips? Then if we overlap the whole machine with the Azores one (somehow - but thank goodness we made the Azores one go clockwise and the Kiritimati one go anti-clockwise) and get the tips to match for a significant part of the journey, you could hop off one onto the other. |
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Ear muffs would be important. |
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I foresee a new extreme sport - watersurfing off the back. |
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Nearly speechless in admiration+ An interesting navigating challenge for ships on the water, though. |
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I can't search out the idea, but I swear somebody suggested a spacecraft launcher much like this, based at the South Pole. I say combine the two, with a tall tower build near Christmas Island, and add giant Ferris Wheels at the ends of the arms. The wheels would let the cars drop toward the ground moving slowly, so folks could jump aboard. Then the cars would go up and forward, while the passengers' breakfasts trail along behind. |
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//Can I suggest that we look seriously
at a similar plan for the Azores//
By all means. Which particular Azore
did you have in mind? |
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//I'm trying to grapple with the
difficulties of embarking and
disembarking.//
Grappling might
work, depending on the elasticity of the
grapple. The arms are going to be
going at 2 x pi x many = 6.3 x many
miles per hour.
An alternative is to
have smaller rotors near each of the
embarkation/demarkation points. You
step into one of these smaller rotors,
which is then synched (like meshing
gears) with the big one, and hop
across at the critical moment. Of
course, these secondary rotors would
also be fairly large, and it would be
more efficient to keep them spinning
constantly. So, you embark on the
secondary rotors via tertiary rotors, and
so on and so forth until you get down
to something the size of a kid's
roundabout (indeed, why not *use* a
kid's roundabout, thereby reducing the
cost of the whole enterprise).
This
micro-rotor will be light enough to
spin-up and slow down on demand.
Unfortunately I suspect it will have to
spin at several thousand rpm if
everything is to be synched. However,
rest assured that I am working on this. |
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//An interesting navigating challenge
for ships on the water, though// Ah,
but who'll be bothering with ships then,
eh? |
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//...a spacecraft launcher much like
this, based at the South Pole. I say
combine the two...//
This plan
was already tried in London. However,
the planners made the fatal mistakes of
(a) thinking too small (b) mis-locating
the London Eye and (c) forgetting to
lubricate the bearings in the Dome's
hub. |
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[basepair] On reflection, I'd've thought the
island of Pico serves our purpose well. |
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Ah, but reflection would put it
somewhere near Tasmania, would it
not? |
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And in any case, wasn't Pico the sixth
and smallest of the Marx Brothers? |
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I've boldly worked out* that 2 counter-rotating, 1000 minute per revolution, 4000 km*** radius rotor arms would spend 11** minutes being less than 10 metres apart if properly synchronised. |
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Plenty of time to hop across. |
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* I would point out that this was done on the back of the family envelope so the calculation might have got mixed up with the shopping list. |
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** In fact, I think it's 22 minutes |
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(and I assumed that the centres are 8000 km minus 10 metres apart to get maximum overlap time) |
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It is a wonder that no-one has yet
produced an LCD envelope, with a back
on both sides.
Nevertheless,
extensive checking* suggests that your
42 seconds is indeed correct - time
enough for all but the tardiest of
passengers to board.
*i.e., I
checked your spelling and punctuation,
and figured that if these were OK then
the numbers were probably sound too. |
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Nice name. Large slowly rotating bun for you. |
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Would the Coriolis effect need to be taken into account? |
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//Would the Coriolis effect need to be
taken into account?// Glad you spotted
that one. Passengers will be given
clockwise-twisting spiral straws with
their drinks. If [jonthegeologist]'s
Azorotator becomes operational,
naturally those passengers will be given
widdershins-twisting spiral straws. |
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If the length of your rotors is right, the Coriolis effect will drive the rotation, just like it drives the rotation of weather systems. Once you've given your rotors an initial spin you can turn down - or even turn off - the electric motor on Kiritimati. |
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Or if you want to be even more halfbaked, you might want to see if the Coriolis effect will apply enough force to your rotors to allow the motor to be switched over to a dynamo. Hey presto! Free power tapped from the rotational energy of the planet. How halfbaked is that? |
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Blimey! I will have to read up on Mrs.
Coriolis and her effect.
But I
thought it only worked because of the
interaction between the rotation of the
earth and the north-south movement of
air? (I can see how, if you drive air from
the equator to the pole, it must start
spinning to conserve angular
momentum. But if you have a fixed axis
of rotation, will the effect drive the
rotation?).
If this works, then it
could power the LEDs that I wanted, and
perhaps provide enough surplus to heat
those little hot moist towels that
stewardesses like to proffer. |
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The rotors would have to be positioned so the hulls didnt cross the equator. (Coriolis effect creates rotations in opposite directions in each hemisphere.) I suggest switching Kiritimati for Ascension Island, which is close to the centre of the South Atlantic. Hulls would circle from West Africa to Brazil |
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If the system has a fixed centre of rotation, then I guess there wont be any Coriolis effect whilst the hulls are travelling precisely East-West, but when their motion has a north-south component, I reckon the Coriolis effect should give them a kick up the backside. (In the spirit of all halfbaked ideas, I wait to be corrected.) |
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The size of the force would be small, but if its applied over a large enough distance - as in this case - the result might be significant. Would the energy supplied be equivalent to getting your trolley dollys hot and moist in the towel department? I do hope so. |
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I'm still not convinced, even for the
north-south-moving cars. But I may be
misunderstanding the Coriolis effect.
So, if I have a carefully-balanced
turntable and I live in the northern
hemisphere, it'll start rotating relative
to (say) my house? Would this work
with a single Corioli, or do you always
need two of them?
As an
aside (and
since I can't get my head any further
around the Coriolis effect), doesn't the
whole hot-moist-towel thing strike
people as odd? Is it a modern residuum
of some ancient heraldic act? |
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Coriolis always does my head in, so I wouldn't be hugely surprised if I've made a terrible gaff, but... |
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The Coriolis effect is so small it only has a measurable impact on things moving on a global scale, like weather systems. If your balanced turntable was the size of the South Atlantic, and you got it moving initially, then yes, I reckon the Coriolis effect would continue to turn it, if there was negligable friction. |
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Can anyone explain why not? |
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Hot towels... why heraldic? |
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// if there was negligable friction // trouble is, the hulls in the water are likely to cause considerable friction, so I suspect that any effects Mrs Coriolis could create will be quickly extinguished. |
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Move the centre back to Kiritimati [basepair]. |
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I have to ask - which way would the water go down the plugholes in the on-board facilities? |
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That's a damn fine name for the idea. Might I suggest adding '-atron' or '-ajig' to the end? |
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Would this qualify for the water speed record? |
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Currently this is a mere 511 kph. |
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I think the water speed record would
indeed be broken. I'm sure that
someone with access to a calculator and
a pi can figure it out.....
Also,
investors will be glad to hear that I've
come up with a better embarkation/
debarkation system. Instead of
progressively smaller "access rotors" at
each port, we just make the two hulls
on the arms of the main rotor circular
(ie, discy), and have them spinning on
their own pivots at the ends of the main
rotor. If the main rotor is spinning
clockwise, the hulls must spin
counterclockwise. Then, as each hull
sweeps past a coastal port, it will
effectively 'roll' along the coast rather
than just sweeping by. This should
greatly simplify boarding and
deboarding.
I think what is
really needed here is an illustration of a
suitably diagrammatic picture image,
but I hope you get the point. It's be a
bit like one of those fairground rides
where the circular cars spin as they
travel around on a larger turntable.
Only this would be bigger and we could
charge more than £1 per ride. |
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The Corliolis effect is, in essance, a phantom force. It is the relative effect on the direction of force that results from a spinning object. Example: A kid on a clock-wise merry-go-round throws a ball straight across the circle but the merry-go-round is spinning fast enough so that her friend (sitting, say 120 degrees, to the left) can catch the ball. The two friends see the ball "curve" since they are in the system. Any observer would see the ball travel in a straight line and see the friend rotate into position to catch the ball. We are on a big merry-go-round (Earth) and don't notice (normally) that it is spinning so weather and other moving masses appear to "curve" when moving instead of us moving into it. Water or weather (or whatever) traveling in the northern hemisphere will appear to move clockwise and in the southern hemisphere it will apper to go counter-clockwise. If we were watching from space it would appear to go straight. Weather has a lot of other forces associated with it also. Its a relativity dealie. Since it is not a real force I doubt it would be able to power the machine. |
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Why not build one of these on land? Imagine being able to reach New York from L.A. or Paris from Belgrade in a fraction of the time it now takes. There could be lots of smaller circular land routes. Build a huge track for it to rest in and it would likely cut down on the friction associated with the water surface. |
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I like the Coriolis aspect - thank you, [Stoo] for bringing
this up. I like it even better after learning about the
Phantom Force aspect. I applied to be in the Phantom
Force, but I was too heavy. |
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I assume the two ends of this are floating on water? Or
maybe not - too much friction. I wonder if the thing is
large enough that it could be powered by the difference
in tidal forces between the two arms. |
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Finally, where is [Worldengineer]? Insanely strong
materials, gargantuan rotating things ... what more does it
take?? |
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//The Coriolis effect is, in essance, a
phantom force.//
I suspect that
this is true, and that you're
right.
But what if one could
arrange to have only one Corioli? |
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I supose that if you were above the equator and had a floating centrifuge that it might be possible to move somewhat linearly and have the arm appear to move in a circular fashion, but I'm not quite sure how it would work out. I think that might defeat the purpose of having the arm spin. I'm not an expert on Corliolis effect but I used to study a lot of oceanography for NOSB a long while back and I remember some of the research I did on the topic though. |
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So the hulls are spinning at the same speed as, but in the opposite direction to, the main rotor. Sort of like little wheels with a point of contact on land. |
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When the hull is rotating, the part that is nearest the centre of the rotor will be travelling at twice the speed of the rotor relative to the water. |
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The water speed record will be smashed; noisily. |
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Any difference in the centralization of the hub could be compensated for by having the arm telescope. The money saved on moving the island could be spent on recreational facilities for passengers...this is probably too fast for fishing, damnit. |
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[Denholm] - Quite right and well put. I
think the acceleration/decelaration
cycle could be marketed as a plus. We
will, of course, have to modify the in-
chair cup-holders
accordingly.
[Normzone] the
telescoping idea is ingenious, but it
would mean you'd be running an
unbalanced centrifuge, which is never a
good idea. It might rip Kiritimati right
off its mountings.
However, there
is a third option. If (say) Japan is a few
tens of miles outside the radius of the
rotors, just lengthen the rotors by a few
millimetres on every revolution, and
ensure that the rotating passenger cars
have an abrasive surface. Soon enough,
the coastlines of the US, southern
Alaska and New Zealand will have been
eroded until they are the same distance
as Japan from the hub. They will also,
of course, attain crescent shapes ideally
suited to boarding and disboarding. A
win-win situation. |
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I used to work for an outfit that built centrifuges the size of automobiles - if you built the bearings and supporting structure tough enough, off-balance loads could be tolerated. But it might get noisy. |
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How big are the hulls? The marketing chaps need a feel for the acceleration and decelaration involved. |
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The hulls don't actually have to float in the water. If you make them a mile wide, they could be ground effect gliders, flying relatively close to the water. The stiffness of the arms could be augmented by an airfoil shape to help keep it from sagging. |
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Couldn't the extreme temperature difference between the Equator and North Pacific be harnessed somehow to provide energy? |
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And I don't believe [TheAC]'s assertion about the coriolis Phantom force bit anyway (my lack of actual knowledge on the subject leads me to suspect that the large lump in my mouth may be my foot, but what the hell, I'm talking out my ass anyway, that's a good place for it for a while.) to wit: when seen from space, clouds actually do spin; it's the satellite pictures that show us that in the first place. My oceanography professor asserted that the coriolis effect is real, but miniscule, so it only effect things easily pushed, like water vapor in the atmosphere. |
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And I hope you don't bump into the space elevator, if they ever get that thing up. |
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Hello everybody am new,
Just a thought with the sheer size of this thing would the resulting centerfugal force produced by this be able to shift the earths orbit ? Or slow its spin ?
As for the getting on/off part, why not just have a boat or group of boats full of people get semi scooped up as the arm spins by ? |
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Stand in the corner, EDJ, with a comment like that! I mean, what the friggin' hell? |
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/would the resulting centerfugal force produced by this be able to shift the earths orbit ? / - What a great notion! If you really got it going it should slow the Earth's rotation, no? It would be nice to park my house at about 7 AM. |
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Environmental concerns aside, I've always wanted to run for world dictator on the thirty hour day platform. If this slows the rotation, that would be helpful to my campaign. |
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I figure two more hours for work, two more for sleep, and two more for play. |
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//How big are the hulls?// Much, much
bigger.
//Coriolis also affects things like
artillery shells, while they are in flight.
It's a real force// I think that when
[TAO] called it a 'phantom force', he
meant that the apparent force is simply
the result of the interaction of other
forces (just as 'centrifugal force' is really
just a reaction of something against
being accelerated in a circle.)
So, I
can well believe that it can't be used to
extract power from something with a
static axis. I could be wrong though -
just show me a turntable that turns
spontaneously.
//Would there
be a counter-reactive force on the
spinning of the earth due to gyroscopic
forces?// I'm not sure what this means.
I guess there would two effects: (a) In
spinning up the rotor, you must also be
tending to spin the earth the opposite
way about the same axis, which would
augment, decrease or otherwise interact
with its existing rotation. But since the
earth is a lot more massive than the
rotor and has a somewhat larger
diameter, this effect would be
negligible (and would be reversed if you
slowed the rotor back down again).
(b) Gyroscopically, I can't imagine that
having a few thousandths of a percent
of the earth's current mass spinning
differently is going to have much of an
effect either. Presumably much greater
masses of atmosphere do all kinds of
weird twisty dances without anything
awful happenning. |
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Um... It'll be a big propeller that will knock the Earth out of its orbit, right? |
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[UnaBubba] Ooops - I just accidentally
deleted your anno instead of adding my
own. My apologies - no malice
intended.
But regarding the
effect on the earth's rotation, I am quite
happy to reduce the total mass of the
in-chair cup-holders if this will help.
Weight could also be saved on the
stewardesses uniforms. |
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There's a rumour going round the marketing department that the speed is huge and the "g forces are awesome man". |
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There's a tipping point coming. I can see the fear in their faces - careers are in the balance - they need reassurance. |
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Can we announce the IPO yet? |
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"Kirimatecentrifugomobile Corporation
wishes to deny rumours that the
application of Symmetricaligned™ G-
forces during transit can greatly reduce
the appearance of cellulite. These
rumours are based on the
unsubstantiated testimony of
passengers and have yet to be
scientifically validated."
There, that
should take care of things. |
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I think a robust denial of miraculous
beautifying effects should have the
same effect as the robus denial of mis-
deeds by politicians. Relax and invest. |
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//But - our stock options?// |
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It's all in the timing, what we don't tell them is that we are running the scientific investigation, the results of which will be released to the media with much hype and fanfare as soon as we've found the evidence we want...I mean as soons as the apropriately validated results present themselves, scientifically. |
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We ride the 5 day hike in the stock price, and the smart ones bail out to live on an island somewhere in the mediterranian before it all goes belly up. |
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Will it still have yellow LEDs? |
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There will be yellow LEDs aplenty. Fear
not. |
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Don't live on an island - some bugger will build a supersonic centrifuge thingy on it (after nuclear weapons testing of course). |
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I think the Med ought to be pretty safe
- wrong shape. Although living under
the flight-path of the Cypro-Spano-
pault could be a tad risky. |
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I was thinking that the med would be 'crumply' enough that no-one would want to build one of these things. Somewhere in the Greek archipelago would be quite nice, or tucked out the way either side of Italy. |
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Keep away from the French end - they might resume atmospheric testing at any moment. |
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Regarding embarking and disembarking (I hear you can get this done to noisy dogs):
What if, instead of rotors we had one giant disc. Then specially designed cars, with wheels capcable of moving very fast in reverse, could be dropped on to the rotating disc. The cars inertia would mean that it was initially not moving in relation to the point of origin, but would be going very fast in reverse in relation to the disc. Gradually applying the brakes would bring the cars disc-relative speed down to zero in a nice smooth manner. |
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Disembarking would be this process in reverse (ie reverse the car until it was not moving in relation to the destination) and then drop off the edge of the disk. |
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Destinations outside of the disc's radius could be reached by not putting the car in reverse and just dropping off the edge on to precisely positioned ramps and stunt jumping to the new destination. Kind of gives a new meaning to 'off ramps'. |
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Why don't we just set like a giant magnet ring in the ocean instead of having the hulls resting in the water that would really cut down on friction. Of course, then we'd have to make sure that the cabins are protected from magnetism. |
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And, on the bottom of the arms, have electric shavers, so that any marine mammal in the whole ocean can just come up for a free haircut. |
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Hey, marine animals have to pay, too! |
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think it went tits up on wall street today |
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//No-one has pointed out how we're
going to power this thing.//
I
respectfully refer the annotator to the
text of the idea above, where he will
find that this problem has been
adequately addressed. |
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could we please address the problem of the many thousands of endangered species of seabirds that this gizmo (and I use the word advisedly as he is one of my favourite halfbakers) may possibly decapitate. |
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for the above read - insanely jealous |
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//Could we please address the problem
of the many thousands of endangered
species of seabirds that this gizmo may
possibly decapitate?//
Obviously
any large scheme such as this will have
its fringe benefits. The on-board
kitchens will be of the highest standard. |
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I will, with respect, quote from the
idea as posted above, for the hard of
reading:
"solar powered, or run
from an extension lead to the nearest
continental outlet."
|
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Is that where they get continental breakfasts from ? |
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I don't know. But presumably anyone
who lives on an island is incontinental. |
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well, I had a nasty experience but it was a false alarm. |
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[SALARM evaluates the string S as an expression if X evaluates non-zero. The return value is set to the result of evaluating expression S. If X evaluates to zero, S is not evaluated and the return value is zero] |
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The fall Salarm lines are out ? |
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Oh [normzone] I can see ideas (puns actually) forming...Intercontinental Ballistic Breakfast....nahh maybe not. |
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It is very bad form to mutter whilst
forelock-tugging. And I suspect we can
do without that third wire (and perhaps
even the second one). The reason that
the earth wire is called the earth wire is
that it's connected to the earth. |
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Unlike a few Halfbakers I could name. |
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Not you, [Basepair], you are real connected. This is a very goood idea. Nice man, [Basepair]. <Backs away, tugging forelock and looking for a rock.> |
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It seems to me you run a fair chance of having poor little Kirimati Island torque down into the seafloor, leaving everybody on it thoroughly screwed. |
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Once you get up to speed, you could use a Coriolis-oid drive that I think might work. Install sliding weights in each arm. When you pull them in toward the hub, the rotation speeds up, in the old 'conservation of angular ice-skater' bit. If you let them slide back out, the rotation slows back down, of course. It has seemed to me that if you were to give them a very strong push outward, rotation would somehow be . . sped . . up . . .. No, now that sounds crazy. |
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I'd better go check my connection. |
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//It seems to me you run a fair chance
of having poor little Kirimati Island
torque down into the seafloor, leaving
everybody on it thoroughly screwed.//
Au contraire! A simple
modification of this scheme will in fact
work to Kiritimati's advantage *and*
ensure the long-term viability of the
Kirimaticentrifugomobile. Here's
how.
First, we dig a series of very
deep mine-shafts around the edges of
the island. The shafts are not vertical,
but helical, spiralling around the island
as they descend, and centred on the
middle of the island where the hub is
located. Each shaft is about 10m wide
and they are spaced 10m apart at the
surface. When the last shaft has been
completed, the island of Kiritimati will
effectively become the head of one
giant bolt.
Now, when the rotor is
first spun up to speed, the reaction
torque will (as noted) tend to twist the
island. Assuming we have chosen the
correct direction of rotation, the result
is that Kiritimati will actually screw itself
*out* of the ground and rise above sea
level. This will be of considerable
benefit to the inhabitants, who are
currently concerned about sea-level
rises which threaten to swamp 50% of
the island.
Once the rotor is up to
speed, the torque needed to maintain
rotation wil be much lower, and the
island should stop unscrewing itself and
remain stable in its new elevated
location.
If, however, the rotor is
ever stopped, the braking force
(presumably applied by regenerative
braking, using the drive motor) would
have the reverse effect, and will actually
screw the island right back down into
the ever-rising waves.
Thus, we
can hand over management of the rotor
to the Kirimatinis, safe in the
knowledge that the service will be
impeccably maintained for generations
to come. |
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Very clever. Is that a metric thread, then, to ISO standards? |
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Once you get it all going, and Kirimati is up above the ocean, the locals may just pour in a bunch of LocTite, or whatever thread-lock formula is available at Betio Hardware, and not have to worry about it screwing down again. If they do too much mucking around with it, you'll have to Helicoil the whole island, which might require a custom order. |
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// the locals may just pour in a bunch
of LocTite// That, I have to admit, is a
flaw in my plan. However, a quick and
fruitless Google search for Kirimati +
Loctite suggests that it is unavailable on
Kirimati itself. It is available elsewhere
in Kiribati, but (a) I doubt that the
required quantities are readily available
and (b) based on the current population
of Kirimati, and assuming complete
participation in the Luddite rebellion, it
would take them approximately 178
years to open all of those teeny little
tubes. |
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We're forgetting precession. Combine the angular momentum vector of the spinning Kiritimati widget with the spinning of the Earth and you get a broken erection. |
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//We're forgetting precession//
Denholm, Denholm, Denholm - rest
easy. It's all taken care of. At the
opening ceremony we'll have a simply
HUGE precession. Kirimati high-school
marching band, majorettes, jazz band,
floats, the works. No expense will fail
to be spared. We might even get some
of those.....ah. Hang on.
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OK. Spoke to the financiers and they
were actually quite keen on a second
rotor mounted on the same shaft but
higher up and spinning the opposite
way. We can use it for first-class
passengers. Should cancel out the
precession, according to the back of my
digital envelope. |
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I was under the impression that the direction of torque was just a fancy term for clockwise or counter-clockwise. Unless the island or central rotor housing was threaded then it would just stay in place. If it was threaded then just thread it the other way so a clockwise rotation would lift it up. |
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As for the sinking islands, if the hulls were angled out a bit as to cause a wave heading outward and if the device was going fast enough, then a giant wave could be created that would flow outward. Water would be drawn away from the center, thus saving Kiribati and effectively screwing the 100s of millions of coastal inhabitants of Western N.A. and Eastern Asia. |
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//Unless the island or central rotor
housing was threaded then it would just
stay in place.// Errr, see the above
annotations. Not only was this
proposed several anno's ago, but the
drilling rigs are currently working
around the clock.
We
considered the wave option, but then
we considered our investors. |
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I did read the above annotations and wanted to point out that the direction of torque was irrelevant in response to baconbrain's anno. Unless the machine was threaded (and for what purpose, other than what you had said after his anno, I don't know) then the torque direction would have no bearing on the fate of the island. |
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//"solar powered, or run from an extension lead to the nearest continental outlet."// |
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I have a better idea, borrowing from another half-baked idea on the site. Why not use the rusting-out nuclear boats in the world (mostly Russian) and use their nuclear reactors to power the Kiritimaticentrifugomobile.
Oh and how noisy is this thing going to be? I have yet to see a good answer on this subject...
PS: This thing deserves croissants just for the name alone. |
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Excellent. A good, big precession to quieten those mealy-mouthed naysayers. |
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Get some celebs along as well for the inaugural "first class lounge spinning the opposite way" thing. |
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"Oh and how noisy is this thing going to be?" |
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I think bits of it will exceed Mach 2. This is a selling point of course. |
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In other words, people in the middle of Africa will hear strange, booming noises. The Elephants will hear noises far beyond the range of human hearing, in low sound waves, and go crazy. People will blame the Norse gods. |
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// I did read the above annotations and
wanted to point out that the direction of
torque was irrelevant in response to
baconbrain's anno//
Ah, fair point,
TAO, and my apologies. But
nevertheless, I think the thread concept
does have its advantages, even if it only
solves the problem which it creates. |
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//I think bits of it will exceed Mach 2.
This is a selling point of course.//
Indeed it is. In fact, I believe that
Mr. Gilette has already cottoned onto
this idea, having produced a razor
which he claims attains Mach
3.
A fringe benefit of the
sonic booms, incidentally, is that there
will be no need to publish timetables or
announce arrival and departure times*.
Anyone with easy access to an elephant
will be able to tell when the next
passenger hull is
approaching.
*[Edit] - that
should, of course, read "arrival-and-
departure times". |
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That was the 10:13 and you've just missed it. |
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Ah, but this is where the elephants
come in. They are allegedly sensitive to
low-frequency noise carried through
the ground, and this ought to travel
faster than sound in the air and also
faster than the hulls, hence giving
sufficient
notice.
Alternatively, we run
the rotor fast enough that the sonic
boom of one arm/hull arrives just
before the *next* hull arrives. |
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So when my elephant starts to shuffle around uncomfortably, I think the next hull is arriving.
What if she just needs to go pee?
What if I'm standing behind her when the sonic boom arrives? |
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This is where the reality TV show "Can you catch the Kiritimati" comes in! If you're standing behind your elephant when it has to pee, not when the Kiritimaticentrifugomobile is coming, then that's all part of the show! If you manage to konw that the hull is coming and can make it aboard, you win a prize... the prize? A small plastic anti-rain garment so that you can be protected when your elephant isn't just feeling low sound frequencies. You must compete multiple times to complete the set of clothes. |
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Back to those aliens - what are we going to tell them with their long-latency telescopes? |
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"Help! Our planet is run by stupid people!" |
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//What if I'm standing behind her when
the sonic boom arrives?// Well, in that
case, it is highly unlikely that you would
be in a fit state to be allowed on the
Kirimaticentrifugomobile anway, so I'm
afraid that passes beyond the remit of
KiriCorp and becomes, frankly, a matter
between you and your
pachyderm.
//This is where the reality TV show "Can
you catch the Kiritimati" comes in!//
KiriCorp's lawyers will be in touch
shortly, Mr4361. Either you are as
smart as the KiriCorp promotional team,
or you have had unauthorized access to
corporate information.
//Back
to those aliens - what are we going to
tell them?//Well, we will start by
broadcasting KiriCorp's standard
disclaimer. Given the inevitable time
delay due to the speed of light, plus the
slow rate of transmission, plus the
considerable length of the document
itself, that ought to give us about 20
years to plan our next move. |
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...or perhaps we could simply transmit
"Ceci n'est pas un
Kirimaticentrifugomobile." ?
Did you have something else
in mind? |
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Hey, man, that was our money! Frickin' aliens! Now how we gonna build the Kirimaticentrifugowhatzit, man? |
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*shhh* Let us not alarm the investors.
We can actually crem the necessary
funds from Island ScrewUp, inc., a
sister-company which has been
developed exclusively to promote the
concept of screwing low-lying islands
upwards out the the crust to protect
them against rising sea-levels. It'll all
work out in the end. |
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//KiriCorp's lawyers will be in touch shortly, Mr4361. Either you are as smart as the KiriCorp promotional team, or you have had unauthorized access to corporate information.// "Can you catch the Kiritimati" Has three K sounds. Therefore it is superior to anything your promotional team in advertising's dungeon of moral decay can come up with. It also has alliteration. |
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I think you'll find that "having three K-
sounds" and "alliteration" are pretty
much one and the same thing. (Our
corporate dungeon of moral decay has
an extensive library of language
reference books.) |
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"Did you have something else in mind?" |
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Invest your galactic mega-dollars here. |
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[po] I know - I was giving him/her the
naive benefit of the doubt (cute cuddly
koalas have three k sounds as
well).
Denholm - aliens have
a very bad reputation on the investment
front. This is primarily because it is
very very difficult to tell a counterfeit
galactic mega-dollar from a real one,
and they know this. |
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I suppose four k sounds would be better, then? I wasn't thinking along those lines hehe. Can you Catch the Kiritimati Contest!
Oh, and real Glactic Mega Dollars have the Orion constellation formed in electrons hidden within the polysynthetic fibers. |
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//real Glactic Mega Dollars have the
Orion constellation formed in electrons
hidden within the polysynthetic fibers./
/
Yes, you know that, and I
know that. But try convincing your local
branch of NatWest of that. |
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Yes [po], 3k’s is pretty worrying, but six years ago 1k less had everybody really anxious. I heard them all going around mumbling, “Why 2k, why 2k?” |
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I am shamelessly bunning this idea in
recognition of the outstanding standard
of the annotations. |
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"...shamelessly bunning this idea..." |
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Nooooo...that's insider trading. Instant 10 years. |
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We need more (k)s for the
investment procurement
division. I think 401(k)'s should
do it. |
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If only this outstanding standard was standard around here. |
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I'm surprised nobody thought of the foucalt's pendulum effect. If we synchronize this thing to some multiple of 24 hours per rotation, and spin counter to the Earth's rotation, we can save a bit on electricity bills. |
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We may also be able to take advantage of tidal effects. Maybe arrange it so it rides the rising tides "downhill" as the height of the ocean changes between East and West. |
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Funny that fishing was mentioned. It's the first thing I thought of (and the first time I've seen this idea).
If one could walk out on top of it aways somewhat close to the island, one could cast a line in the water and troll all day long.
A makeshift hut, some coconut rum, a radio and a cooker for the catch would make a superb vacation. |
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Like this idea. Superb. [+] |
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Wow - that was a trip down memory lane. Some of those posters are no longer around. It would be interesting to reengineer this idea and see how the two resemble each other. |
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Ditto, but this is a true great halfB idea. Wacky, impossible, but scientifically backed up, hilarious and clever. |
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Misread the speed as 25km/sec... which is worryingly close to escape velocity. |
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//Misread the speed as 25km/sec... which is worryingly
close to escape velocity.// |
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Escape velocity on Earth is about 11km/sec, unless you are
starting in Milton Keynes. I wonder if the N-Prize teams
know of this.... |
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And nice illustration, hob. |
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Jutta - a question: the drawings are hosted on the HB?
How does one (ie, me) illustrate ideas? |
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It's explained in the help file. Basically, the halfbakery does not support author-controlled image uploads as self expression (which is what people generally ask for). Instead, some people have managed to convince me that they know what they're doing, and get to doodle all over everybody's stuff. I do want more of those, but I've been also dragging my feet on vetting. |
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based on .001 rpm and 8000km diameter, thats a circumference of 25,000 km.
1000 minutes it would take for 1 revolution so thats about 16 hours.
25000/16=1570km/hr or about 1000mph!!!
if it traveled at a slower pace of say 50mph or about 80km/hr for embarking reasons that would mean a cross trip from say LA to tokyo of about 156 hours or 6.5 days, slightly slower than a nonstop flight there,lol.
Mind you even at 1000mph the g force is a mere 0.021632 m/s² so the centripetal force is almost negligible. |
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Excellent - just enough hint of centripugal force to be
interesting. Large aquaria could be placed in each hull, with
fine markings to illustrate the lateral force. |
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The arms, if wide enough and enclosed, could be used for
playing bowls - the combination of centrifetal and Coriolis
force might be just enough to be make the game interesting. |
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I don't know if I'd ever read this idea before, somehow,
though I'd seen the title for sure. I like it. |
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// Kiritimati is a small island currently located bang in the
middle of the Pacific // |
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It's also pronounced like "Christmas", not the silly
pronunciation its name looks suggests to English speakers.
It's actually a transliteration of Christmas. |
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//It's also pronounced like "Christmas"// This, I suppose, is
what happens when you let natives loose with the English
language. |
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[Denholm], this idea is clearly from the brain of a madman, or
perhaps a tortured genius. So, yup. |
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I'm happy ... you should be too ... eternal {+} |
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