Does that include the cost of either coming in to base to refuel or maintaining and using ships to carry fuel in that have to go back to base to refuel? Or the strategic advantages of not having to refuel just certain ships like submarines at known ports? Because they don't have to do that for the whole fleet.
OTOH we could be green and go back to sails. ;^) Not for all the ships, just the real big ones, LOL!
The scientist holding up the beaker of water and saying this could run a city for a year or something like is an old stock cold fusion scifi line. I just forget how much it's based on numbers.
I saw a thing where Russian scientists had found at Chernobyl that some of the lead shielding had been turned to gold through radiation exposure. Not much I suppose and from what they said the gold was strongly radioactive.
AWOL:
SlightIy OT: I once read an essay (it may have been by Primo Levi) about not smothering a petrol (or I guess any flammable fumes or gas) leak with a CO2 extinguisher - the rush of ice crystals through the nozzle, and the drying effect on the air can cause static charges to build up and spark.
Like the dryness of acetylene when it comes from the tank. Can be quite sensitive to static and create - surprises.
I do wonder how they managed to use hydrogen for balloons back in the day. They must have had some method of hydrating the gas when filling those blimps.
AWOL:
SlightIy OT: I once read an essay (it may have been by Primo Levi) about not smothering a petrol (or I guess any flammable fumes or gas) leak with a CO2 extinguisher - the rush of ice crystals through the nozzle, and the drying effect on the air can cause static charges to build up and spark.
Like the dryness of acetylene when it comes from the tank. Can be quite sensitive to static and create - surprises.
I do wonder how they managed to use hydrogen for balloons back in the day. They must have had some method of hydrating the gas when filling those blimps.
This reminds me of a sad story from a few years ago about a hair dresser having a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the passenger compartment of her vehicle which exploded and killed her, probably because of an open source of flame...
you have to wonder what concentration her bottle of bleach was!
On the turkey farm we used "Oxonia", a mix of 33% hydrogen peroxide and 33% peracetic acid to clean, sanitise and dissolve crud in our drinker system.
That was nasty stuff, even diluted 25:1 it burnt skin and you couldn't wash it off.
The guy who owned the place set fire to a paper water filter with it!
Like the dryness of acetylene when it comes from the tank. Can be quite sensitive to static and create - surprises.
It is sometimes hard to figure out some peoples' thought processes. "Let me think - what is it that allows me to stick a balloon to the wall, and what is it that causes my welding torch to ignite?"
Ethyne-deniers are simply Darwin Award fodder.
Back when I still had a model aero diesel engine, I was mixing fuel, 20% castor oil, 70% methanol, 10% ether, I knocked over the ether, mopped it up with a rag, left the rag on the bench...
After a while I was feeling a little "funky" and a goof I know open my shed door just as he lit a fag.
I remember this whoosh and boomph, buuga-lugs got blown across the yard and the walls of my shed has a distinct "bow" to them.
Got my first radio control a bit after that and sold my control line engines that couldn't be upgraded to have a throttle.
The heat generated from pressurized hydrogen escaping its container is enough to ignite it
Is that correct, I would have thought quite high temperatures might be needed?
You could ignite a hydrogen air mixture by compressing it, a spark would not be required.
Maybe hydrogen igniting when escaping a container could be an effect related to both temperature and pressure?
For some fun ]
Fill a bucket half full with soapy water. Take an oxyhydrogen torch and adjust for a good flame. Turn the torch off without changing the mixture. Place the torch head in the bucket and pass the gas mixture through the water to produce bubbles. Once you have a good bucket full of bubbles turn the gas off and remove the torch.
Now using a lit taper on a very long pole ignite the bubbles.
Be ready for a very big bang.
It is best to do this outdoors.
If done in a large indoor space, say an aditorium or lecture hall, you can expect suspended roof tiles to be blown out of place.
Definitely don't do it in an ordinary room it could easily blow the windows out and perhaps much worse.
That's gung-ho! Making your own hydrogen with zinc and HCl is way more dangerous than getting a cylinder of gas.
When I've built hot air balloons, we've chased them for over an hour, retrieved, refilled, relit and relaunched them!
Some of them covered over 80km in a single flight.
As I mentioned in another thread I've been working on a tiny glider controlled with an Arduino.
Now I live in the city again I've had to stop development for a while, that and summer/fire ban season is here again.
