Technip adapts production process to new-generation umbilicals | 30ton Welding Turning Rolls

Knutson’s unit lived in the jungle for two or three months at a time and ate C-rations. He said he would dream about McDonald’s cheeseburgers, fries and chocolate shakes.

He said when he first was drafted, he volunteered to go to one training school after another. “I tried to do that for my entire tour but didn’t quite make it,” he said.

C. Martin Croker, voice of Zorak and Moltar and lead animator of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, has died suddenly at 54.

Getting Faith into water proved nearly as challenging as building the boat. The Ohio River, located about 150 miles away, was the nearest suitable connection to waterways leading to the Gulf of Mexico. It took the Wests a month to find a towing company able to execute a hair-raising one-day slog along highways and back roads. "The trailer was about an inch off the ground," West says. "It rubbed the ground every so often."

This launcher is about as long as the deepest well hole ever drilled, and therefore represents the longest launcher which can be installed vertically by present technology. If it were made longer to decrease the power requirement or increase the payload size it would have to be installed up a mountainside at an inclination of perhaps 30 to 45 degress. This would increase mass and energy losses due to the lengthened path through the atmosphere.The cost of the launcher itself in terms of installed copper, steel and concrete would be only 24 million dollars. But a device to store 76 gigajoules by conventional technology (generators and capacitors) would cost 11 billion dollars. This estimate may not be very meaningful, because it is based on cost estimates for quantities of capacitors which have never been manufactured before, but even at half the price, the investment would be formidable. The energy cost of the launch would only be about 65 cents per pound, but amortization of capital would add 10 to 20 dollars per pound, even if the launcher were used continuously, day and night, every 12 minutes.Actually, it is more useful to think in terms of power compression rather than energy storage. The reference launcher could be operated by storing energy from one single large (1,000 megawatt) power plant for 1.5 minutes, and releasing it in 1.5 seconds, a 60-fold compression. Perhaps sixty power plants could be tapped simultaneously during off-peak hours by using superconducting transmission lines. On the other hand, if the power requirement were reduced by a factor of 60, there would be no need for energy storage at all. This could be done either by making the launcher 60 times longer (468km), or by making the vehicle 60 times smaller (17kg). Neither alternative is reasonable. A compromise might be to apply a factor of the square root of 60 to each: a 60km long launcher with a 129kg vehicle. Unfortunately this launcher would be too long even for installation up a mountainside, and the payload ratio of such a small vehicle would be very poor.There does, however, appear to be a solution to the energy storage problem. If the entire drive coil system of a mass driver is made superconducting, as well as the bucket coils, enough energy can be stored inductively by charging the system with current. It is then merely necessary to quench the current in each individual drive coil as the bucket passes. This loses some of the energy efficiency of a push-pull capacitor system, but the loss is more than offset by eliminating capacitor feeder line losses. A preliminary calculation indicates that a “quench gun” of this type of 12-inch caliber, only 1 km long, would store enough energy to launch a 20kg vehicle to 10.5km/s at an energy conversion efficiency of 80%, at an average acceleration of 5,600 gee.There are technical problems to be solved, of course, but not any of a fundamental nature. The benefit-to-risk ratio of the enterprise certainly justifies an immediate, serious study. The possibility of launching cargo into space at a cost approaching about one dollar per pound by using off-peak electric power has mind-boggling consequences. To name only the most obvious: we could dispose of nuclear waste by launching it out of the Solar System; we could begin constructing solar power satellites; and we could establish fueling stations in low Earth orbit where Shuttle travellers would take on fuel and reaction mass for the trip beyond: to geosynchronous orbit, to the Moon, and to L-5.

CLEAR LAKE — When Jim Knutson drove a tank retriever during the Vietnam War, he faced two foes: the Viet Cong and the jungle.

“In the 1960s and early 1970s the country was torn apart at the seams by the war. When we came home, we were told to change into civilian clothes before we left the San Francisco airport,” he said.

The only people who would criticize Obama for doing something unconstitutional is the Republicans, but the establishment Republicans aren’t about to complain about Obama going after ISIS.

They went through boot camp together and were in Vietnam at the same time with different units in close proximity, but never saw each other.

As I’ve shown repeatedly in the past, from Chicago to New York City, the police unions are better represented on the city council than the Democrats–and the city councils are 90% Democrat.

The military can fight battles and win wars, but it is the political  establishment that must win the subsequent peace. As recent history shows, our current generation of politicians has a very poor track record with its side of the bargain.

"…there is a way to counter extremism that’s potentially as effective as it is unpopular. It’s a social and intellectual strategy that aims to undermine the religious beliefs that motivate jihadists—and one of the most controversial set of ideas to emerge in the West in the last quarter century: New Atheism.