Suspension of Disbelief.

saber964 wrote:Not quite that bad I remember a scene in Apollo 13 were Lovall was going on about the LEM's navigation computer having 1800 lines of code, my wrist watch has more computing power.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I've got more than 1,800 lines of code up on one screen as I write this--and that's just one file of many in the program. How is that supposed to be impressive??

cthia wrote:You have to whisk yourself back in time. It was impressive. You have to consider the AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer) was a 2 MZ 16-bit machine with 2048 words RAM. Juggle your 1800 lines of code on that! You won't be running another program with, either! And if your coding skills isn't extraordinaire... forget about the 1800 lines of code.

And the Apollo Guidance Computer was programmed in assembly language. Most programmers today don't ever use assembly language once they are out of school (assuming they had to take it).

cthia wrote:You have to whisk yourself back in time. It was impressive. You have to consider the AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer) was a 2 MZ 16-bit machine with 2048 words RAM. Juggle your 1800 lines of code on that! You won't be running another program with, either! And if your coding skills isn't extraordinaire... forget about the 1800 lines of code.

There was an article I read once about someone involved in programming the sprint anti-ballistic missile. It was operational in 1975 (developed in the late 60s) and had 100g acceleration and a nuclear warhead optimized for neutron flux designed to kill re-entry vehicles in the upper atmosphere while running at mach 10, with a maximum flight time of 15 seconds from the time the explosives blew the blast door open.

They had no loops, they unrolled everything. Software was totally optimized for speed and the tiny memory and minimal CPU of the computers used (which were designed to keep working after nukes went off in the general vicinity). It was a very different way of writing code.

I wish I could find it again.

Vince wrote:

saber964 wrote:Not quite that bad I remember a scene in Apollo 13 were Lovall was going on about the LEM's navigation computer having 1800 lines of code, my wrist watch has more computing power.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I've got more than 1,800 lines of code up on one screen as I write this--and that's just one file of many in the program. How is that supposed to be impressive??

cthia wrote:You have to whisk yourself back in time. It was impressive. You have to consider the AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer) was a 2 MZ 16-bit machine with 2048 words RAM. Juggle your 1800 lines of code on that! You won't be running another program with, either! And if your coding skills isn't extraordinaire... forget about the 1800 lines of code.

And the Apollo Guidance Computer was programmed in assembly language. Most programmers today don't ever use assembly language once they are out of school (assuming they had to take it).

Absolutely.

I know assembly and still use it. Though the cases where its needed speed over C has dwindled over the years. But sometimes you have to call in the SWAT team.

That's why your programming skills have to be extraordinaire. A less accomplished programmer would deliver the same capabilities of the AGC in twice the number of lines of code or more. And resources just couldn't handle that back then. Tight code or no code, that is your option. 1800 lines of code on a 2 MHZ machine, had to run as fast as possible, or trying to guide something would have been laughable.

It would have been akin to using BASIC to program PAC MAN. Reverse stick to run and seconds pass before your PAC MAN responds - sudden death.

cthia wrote:The basic course is called...

Statics - Study of forces acting in equilibrium on rigid bodies.

Pass it, then comes the wind up and the pitch...

Strength of Materials (simply Strength to students) you keep the assumption of bodies in equilibrium, but you drop the "rigid" assumption. Because, well, life moves. Cables stretch, buildings sway, joists bend, etc.

Strength is anything but basic. It is a very difficult course to grasp and pass. More students flunk Strength than any other engineering course. It's a grave digger. A career changer. There's a joke - Strength is a very strong course as strong as the strength it teaches. It has to be, because it is the most dropped course! lol

You can take mechanics before statics. Or simultaneously.

One, Statics is not correct. Statics is not required unless you are designing a buildings complete structure. In this case, one only has to understand that a hollow structure uses less material for the same strength. Statics is nothing except: can you add and do basic algebra. Rather mechanics is required for basic structures. Section Modulus, Buckling, and deflection. Any high school kid can grasp Mechanics if they are willing to read. Nothing difficult to it. Open Eishbach and read in the super simple sense. Well, the most basic of understanding of calculus is required for deflection curves, if one does not just ignore that aspect entirely as structures this aspect does not matter one iota. Rather only total deflection is required. Don't have to calculate a thing, just look up your common beam in tables.

Heck, back in my youth, I took Statics, Mechanics, Strength of Materials Science, Circuits and some gen ed class which I forget which, all in the same quarter. Easiest was Statics/Mechanics. Memorize a few equations and the rest is simple if you can do addition and basic algebra that is. Mat Sci, just requires the ability to read and memorize. All three classes are easy B+/A- territory without much sweat. If one actually studied, easy A.

And what piss poor college has student engineers failing Mechanics? Dynamics? Sure. Calculus? Sure. Differential Equations? Sure. Mechanics? Uh, no. Most All the failed engineers vanish before Mechanics class. They vanish during Calculus. At least Dynamics course is hard. Mechanics is easy. All you have to do is follow the yellow brick road of easy algebra. Not quite as easy as plug and chug Thermo or Statics, but damned easy.

I think the class you are thinking of where quite a few so called engineers fail is Machine Design when you have to combine, Statics, Dynamics, Vibrations, Fatigue, and Strength of Materials, often including Materials Science along with Heat Transfer. Now that is hard as there are so many iterations that one simple mistake can doom you, as creating a WAG first, is pretty tough as there are a huge number of variables.

Standard Commercial Building Architecture is lead pipe simple. Anyone can do it. All you have to do is follow spec. It is bloody foolproof. Sure, there are a few exceptions such as large atrium's with suspended catwalks, and curving stair, or curved glass facades, but otherwise... Lead pipe simple. Why architects still have a job is quite puzzling to me. It should be automated by now. Today all they basically do is just hit "print", then rubber stamp the same damn drawing day after day that often they never even drew or calculated with a minor tweak here and there and get paid handsomely for it. Spend far more time on traffic control, logistics, and HVAC, than they do the actual structure of the building. Of course the other half of their time they spend as expensive interior designers.

Relax wrote:

cthia wrote:The basic course is called...

Statics - Study of forces acting in equilibrium on rigid bodies.

Pass it, then comes the wind up and the pitch...

Strength of Materials (simply Strength to students) you keep the assumption of bodies in equilibrium, but you drop the "rigid" assumption. Because, well, life moves. Cables stretch, buildings sway, joists bend, etc.

Strength is anything but basic. It is a very difficult course to grasp and pass. More students flunk Strength than any other engineering course. It's a grave digger. A career changer. There's a joke - Strength is a very strong course as strong as the strength it teaches. It has to be, because it is the most dropped course! lol

You can take mechanics before statics. Or simultaneously.

One, Statics is not correct. Statics is not required unless you are designing a buildings complete structure. In this case, one only has to understand that a hollow structure uses less material for the same strength. Statics is nothing except: can you add and do basic algebra. Rather mechanics is required for basic structures. Section Modulus, Buckling, and deflection. Any high school kid can grasp Mechanics if they are willing to read. Nothing difficult to it. Open Eishbach and read in the super simple sense. Well, the most basic of understanding of calculus is required for deflection curves, if one does not just ignore that aspect entirely as structures this aspect does not matter one iota. Rather only total deflection is required. Don't have to calculate a thing, just look up your common beam in tables.

Heck, back in my youth, I took Statics, Mechanics, Strength of Materials Science, Circuits and some gen ed class which I forget which, all in the same quarter. Easiest was Statics/Mechanics. Memorize a few equations and the rest is simple if you can do addition and basic algebra that is. Mat Sci, just requires the ability to read and memorize. All three classes are easy B+/A- territory without much sweat. If one actually studied, easy A.

And what piss poor college has student engineers failing Mechanics? Dynamics? Sure. Calculus? Sure. Differential Equations? Sure. Mechanics? Uh, no. Most All the failed engineers vanish before Mechanics class. They vanish during Calculus. At least Dynamics course is hard. Mechanics is easy. All you have to do is follow the yellow brick road of easy algebra. Not quite as easy as plug and chug Thermo or Statics, but damned easy.

I think the class you are thinking of where quite a few so called engineers fail is Machine Design when you have to combine, Statics, Dynamics, Vibrations, Fatigue, and Strength of Materials, often including Materials Science along with Heat Transfer. Now that is hard as there are so many iterations that one simple mistake can doom you, as creating a WAG first, is pretty tough as there are a huge number of variables.

Standard Commercial Building Architecture is lead pipe simple. Anyone can do it. All you have to do is follow spec. It is bloody foolproof. Sure, there are a few exceptions such as large atrium's with suspended catwalks, and curving stair, or curved glass facades, but otherwise... Lead pipe simple. Why architects still have a job is quite puzzling to me. It should be automated by now. Today all they basically do is just hit "print", then rubber stamp the same damn drawing day after day that often they never even drew or calculated with a minor tweak here and there and get paid handsomely for it. Spend far more time on traffic control, logistics, and HVAC, than they do the actual structure of the building. Of course the other half of their time they spend as expensive interior designers.

You know of an engineering discipline where Statics isn't required?

Engineering Mechanics is one of the core courses that all engineering students must take. Broadly, mechanics is broken into topics: Statics and Dynamics. Statics and Dynamics comprise mechanics.

At NCSU Statics was taken first. It was a prerequisite of Dynamics and both were prereqs of Strength. But of course it was. It laid the foundation of Strength. And yes, if you received permission, you could take Dynamics and Strength simultaneously, if you could handle it. I took both calculuses the same semester because I already knew it. Not recommended, but yea. Don't know many engineering students who flunked calculus. And at my Uni, you had to teach yourself. Prof. Tucker was a genius but he couldn't teach. Most engineering students I knew were prepared for the math. Heck, my High School calculus was more demanding. The thing here, is not to highlight exceptional students like yourself lol. The university is in the business to prepare, teach and graduate all students. Not just a subset of. To do that, you arrange the courses in a logically systematic and agreeable fashion as possible, as plain stupidity is going to hinder and weed out many students anyways.

Machine Design? The students at your school survived to reach that before dropping? Geniuses! Strength whittled them out long before that at NCSU. lol

No, Strength was the beotch at NCSU. Where the classes began with a roll of so many students they were held in the auditorium of >300. Whittled down to less than 50 - 75 in a few weeks. Moving in a classroom by final drop period. The begin of semester classes were so large because of limited slots and repeat students.

That was typical at NCSU, don't know about your school.

Quarter system you say? Then your feat was even more impressive. lol

Architects are still much needed. They design the pretty buildings. The state of the art designers. But of course you were just kidding because the best Architects are among the best Engineers. At least I hope you were.

My boss owes me cash...

http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/chinas-n ... th-1229597

This is what you get for watering down Engineering disciplines.

Relax wrote:For an RD to get to a 0-0 intercept with 0 initial velocity at 70Mkm, it requires under 30 minutes.

Home Fleet had what? An hour? Solon, had either 30 minutes or an hour plus depending on how you wish to describe the battle space.

Getting RD's to a 0-0 intercept under both scenarios is quite easy.

Both offensively and defensively, you don't need zero-zero intercepts for the Mistletoe platforms. And Manticoran doctrine was against having zero-zero intercepts with Ghost Rider drones, although Michelle Henke has been observed (on at least two occasions) to say it's stupid and they should leave some RD's 'parked' to keep close eyes on things anyways.

Defensively, if you're trying to get Mistletoe RD's into position to counter hostile pods, simple fly-bys would have sufficed. The only prime factor is balancing the stealth versus drive strength.

Look at all the raids Eighth Fleet had conducted, and every single Republican system said more or less the same thing "would be nice if we could hit those damn RDs, but nothing we have can even get close to them, let alone detect them"

Saturate your Mistletoe RDs with a bunch of other RD's that are all going flat-out, sacrificing some of their stealth (after all Haven already knows Manty RDs are ridiculously stealthy and fast), and Haven (or any other pod-rolling navy) wouldn't even try. By the time your Mistletoe platforms start detonating, it's already game over for any pods you had deployed. The only pods that might survive a Mistletoe strike would be flatpacks or otherwise still inside the wedge (and its protective rad screens)



Offensively using Mistletoe, as long as Manty/Grand Alliance doctrine, continues to dictate sending a few tin cans in ahead of the main strikes. Then you just load the tin cans a few Mistletoe drones in addition to the standard Ghost Rider drones they're based off (since iirc, Mistletoe drone = Ghost Rider drone without sensors and a great big nuke or laser head instead. Identical stealth characteristics)

Tin cans come out of hyper, immediately go into stealth mode while deploying standard Ghost Riders to get mapping everything possible. Assuming it's two destroyers, both launch their Mistletoe platforms the day before the strike, the second DD hypers out to relay, and the remaining DD controls both sets of Mistletoe guiding them into positions of maximum coverage. After the main battle fleet(s) arrive, the fleet CO can then order exact Mistletoe targetting (such as hitting all three Moriarty platforms at once in Lovat).

Somtaaw wrote:Both offensively and defensively, you don't need zero-zero intercepts for the Mistletoe platforms. And Manticoran doctrine was against having zero-zero intercepts with Ghost Rider drones, although Michelle Henke has been observed (on at least two occasions) to say it's stupid and they should leave some RD's 'parked' to keep close eyes on things anyways.

Defensively, if you're trying to get Mistletoe RD's into position to counter hostile pods, simple fly-bys would have sufficed. The only prime factor is balancing the stealth versus drive strength.

Look at all the raids Eighth Fleet had conducted, and every single Republican system said more or less the same thing "would be nice if we could hit those damn RDs, but nothing we have can even get close to them, let alone detect them"

Saturate your Mistletoe RDs with a bunch of other RD's that are all going flat-out, sacrificing some of their stealth (after all Haven already knows Manty RDs are ridiculously stealthy and fast), and Haven (or any other pod-rolling navy) wouldn't even try. By the time your Mistletoe platforms start detonating, it's already game over for any pods you had deployed. The only pods that might survive a Mistletoe strike would be flatpacks or otherwise still inside the wedge (and its protective rad screens)

Well I'm not sure the RD's that Haven couldn't lock up were as close as 30,000 km. You appear to need to get in to at least laser-head standoff range before you start getting soft kills on towed pods.

So you might have to drop your accel a fair bit as you get close to slip in that closely.


And if they see the RDs inbound like that, knowing that Mistletoe exists, I assume they'd flush their rolled pods before the RDs reached detonation range. So unless you've got time to sneak them in undetected (not just stealthy enough to avoid getting fire control locks, but undetected) the primary result is likely to be forcing an early launch rather than wiping out pre-rolled pods. And you could force an early launch by launching your own missiles; no need for Mistletoe.

Though it probably takes fewer RDs to provoke a launch than it would missiles - since the missiles are easier targets and you'd need enough of them that the enemy would assume they'd be likely to reach prox-kill range.

Also, if you could get the RDs to match vectors with the enemy then they've got a loiter cability. You can save them in case the enemy deeply stacks pods again and try again for a preemptive soft kill. You might even risk a pause in your own fire, to start building a pod stack, in the hopes you'd lure the enemy into matching your actions. Then preempt their launch with Mistletoe and follow up with your Alpha Strike.
(Of course if they know there are potentially armed RDs hanging around they'll keep their stacking down by firing every pod roll or two; thus denying you time to stack)

If you can force people to do things like run a 10 minute ballistic segment by threatening their pods that is a big win. Accuracy degrades enormously (due to reasons) and a long range duel is going to help the side whose missiles are notably better at long range attacks. Which isn't Haven.

Relax wrote:KZT wrote:

You know what architects and structural engineers do with ridiculously strong materials? They make things much thinner and more open.

Tenshinai wrote:
Not if the material NEEDS a certain "thickness" to achieve that ridiculous strength.

I suggest opening a very basic mechanics of engineering book from ANY publisher combined with a materials properties book from ANY publisher at your elbow.

The only reason said walls might be thick, is because it costs more to make cylindrical hollow columns than to make them solid due to the cost of the material(energy prices in the Honorverse are absurdly low), is negligible compared to the cost of labor. I highly doubt this as it only takes one person making a machine to make a hollow column and every construction company will be forced to either make their own equivalent machine or buy an equivalent machine as it means everyone else with said machines can not only under bid you at the outset, but can also build faster, as transportation costs are less and less time, along with installation costs less along with less time. Gets back to labor.

Keep laughing little boy. The kind of material i referred to already exists in reality. It´s just not used in construction, yet. Still, as others mention, even common concrete can be used in similar ways for a number of reasons.

So, your howling laughter is basically just showcasing yourself as ignorant and stupidly arrogant.

cthia wrote:Architects are still much needed. They design the pretty buildings. The state of the art designers. But of course you were just kidding because the best Architects are among the best Engineers. At least I hope you were.

No, I am not kidding. Architect as an Engineer is nothing but interior design with a fancy degree.

PS. Mechanics is all about the study of singular beams. Statics is all about summation of forces on a structure. Statics tells you nothing about what makes the most efficient use of material in a beam to withstand the forces.