WolfKeeper's New Writeups

Obituary test (how-to)

2011-06-13T20:35:34Z

The obituary test is a test you do prior to doing any activity.

The test is asking yourself the question: "How would this look if I died while doing it?"

if people, when hearing of the circumstances, would say "you poor sod" then you may do the activity

if people would say "what an idiot!" then:

DO NOT DO THE ACTIVITY!

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door. (idea)

2009-06-26T13:12:52Z

"Come in?" he said

"Hi, I'm just making a coffee, do you want one?" said his wife.

Aeolipile (thing)

2007-10-17T18:57:17Z

What is an aeolipile?

According to many sources the aeolipile is a steam engine, or a jet engine; but it has also been described as a rocket-like reaction engine.

Clearly it's a steam engine, because it's driven by steam.

And equally clearly, the aeolipile is pushed around by the reaction to emitted steam, so it's a reaction engine as well.

And because it's reacting to the steam jets, it's also a jet engine.

But what's a rocket-like jet engine?

It's a rocket.

Consider the fact that the propulsive force is created solely from the propellant that is held in a tank in the device. Consider also that the propellant is formed into a jet which pushes it around. Thus it can be seen that the aeolipile is a hot water rocket engine on a bearing.

Just putting a rocket on a bearing doesn't make it not a rocket, in the same way as putting a jet engine on a bearing doesn't make it not a jet engine. As…

The heat death of the Universe (idea)

2005-07-02T03:19:15Z

No! The universe started with a Big Bang and will not end in a cold, dead whimper!

Astronomers now believe that the expansion of the universe is increasing. They call the cause zero-point energy or Einstein's cosmological constant, or dark energy. It's not well understood, but they assume it will continue this way, always accelerating. So, it's natural to think that our universe will get colder and colder until everything stops moving.

We're not that lucky! There's an idea by Robert Caldwell and his colleagues Marc Kamionkowski and Nevin Weinberg called 'The Big Rip', and it seems much more likely.

To understand this, consider that there's an edge to the universe. It's not an edge like a waterfall. It's called the 'observable universe'- at a certain distance away the expansion of space gets so fast relative to say, the Earth, that not even light can make it from there to the Earth- the space in between is expanding so fast that the distance increases by more than 299,792.458km per…

Cartercopter (idea)

2005-01-12T17:10:08Z

Getting there

At some time or other, most of us have had to "get to the airport" 'to catch a plane'. Have you ever wondered why this is? Why is an airport always so far away? Why can't the plane catch us?

Well, naturally, it's partly because an airport needs a runway, which is 'a big thing', something that big pretty much has to be out of town.

Those rich b********!

On the other hand- consider that rich people have these handy gadgets called 'helicopters' that are much more flexible; they can take off and land much closer to where they live, and they only need a comparatively tiny helipad to do this.

So, why do us poor non-millionaires have to use a runway? Well, helicopters are expensive to buy, and expensive to run, and they have poor range on a full tank of fuel. That means that taxi services have never really taken off- the ticket price is too high and we are lumbered with having to use these cheaper, but more awkward, fixed wing aircraft.

Why…

Skylon (thing)

2004-03-23T14:02:24Z

Skylon is a serious and plausible design for a new class of aeroplane- an aeroplane that would be able to fly into orbit, and return, completely intact. Skylon is a clever near-term design for doing this.

Historically, getting into space has required something called 'staging'. Staging is when empty parts of a rocket are dropped off during the flight to save weight- so that the rocket and its payload can go on to make orbit- otherwise the rocket would be too heavy.

This staging causes a number of problems, it turns out that it is difficult and expensive to recover and reuse and reassemble the parts. Some relatively practical looking designs that stage exist, but at the end of the day, it pushes up costs and makes spaceflight much more expensive (see costs of launching to orbit to see why it isn't inherently expensive).

Clearly if it was possible to make orbit without staging then it would be much better.

The Skylon design promises to takeoff, from a specially…