2 Likes
Just took a glance, Panamax is sooo limiting cause it is so old and narrow. I was on the Galvaston Bay for Sealand and it was the first time on a ship with a slow speed diesel. Everything was massive. The ship was built under contract at Hyundai, I was shocked cause they were known in the states as making very small cars. They were having problems with the head bolts breaking, resulting with the head being damaged by gas blow by.
Man may have made the aux diesels. Not sure.
Yanmar made the emergency generator, That I remember cause the 1st engineer would throw a fit and curse Yanmar during any maintenance. "I gotta remove that that that and that just to get to this!!!! F%#*ing Yanmar!!!!!"
Other fun moments: "What the %$^& is an eccentric shaft?" That was the cool thing was seeing how different Europeans and Americans are when it comes to engineering. Especially the desalinization plant, I thought using layers of stamped steel was sheer genius.
I always thought the used standard cylinder modules and just used so many cylinders for the required hp. In our case it was 7 cylinders for 30,000 hp for x knots. Obscure US measurements I know:)
Checked out the MAN website, that company is HUGE!
Europeans seem to use cabover trucks exclusively where in the states they are rare.
We did have some guys from MIT take measurements to see if they could improve eficiancy, They said maybe a heat exchanger somewhere might but not by enough to justify it.
1 Like
^This
Subscription based models are all the rage in business and this is no different with the automobile industry. We are moving towards a subscription based/time share model, which will then, ultimately, lead to a situation where the private ownership of vehicles will be cost prohibitive. There is no need for the government to confiscate our vehicles; they need only create the conditions where ownership is no longer tenable. The government need not round us up and put us on a collective, urban area, or gulag; they need only deprive us of our mobility.
You are spot on with the federal, state and local tax situation, too. State taxes are creeping up to bridge the gap, not just from decreasing road (fuel) tax receipts, but from a whole host of Federal mandates. Unfortunately, most folks aren't paying attention, because state and local taxes are deductible. On the other hand, some federal politicians see these deductions as a cost, which must be controlled, while others see this as an area where their political control needs to be asserted. Both seem to agree that state and local tax deductiblity needs to be done away with, so cars won't be the only thing getting more expensive.
These issues are fraught with politics and BIG money and the folks who are making the decisions couldn't possibly care less about the merits of any particular technology, or what the best solution actually is. Do not be mistaken, this is all about money, (political) power and control. Unfortunately, this in not an isolated incident. this same pattern repeats in finance, banking, medical, insurance, education, you name it ... not even light bulb manufacturers are free to build and sell those products which the market demands. I sincerely hope that I am wrong, but I am afraid that we are on a very slippery slope, indeed.
EDIT:
To clarify, I personally have no concerns about some of the new nuclear designs. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that the molten salt design is a quite old, and has a proven safety record. And, although these designs are being built elsewhere in the world, when is the last time that a nuclear plant was opened in the USA? Thirty years ago, forty? I confess that I have not researched that question, but it certainly has been a very long time. The issue is the fact that the EPA is being run largely by people who are members of the church of de-industrialization. Secondarily, the courts have granted standing to the Marxists who have infiltrated the "environmental" groups, who claim to speak for all Americans. To cut to the chase, building a nuclear plant in the USA today is not politically viable and if attempted, it will be attacked on all fronts.
Meanwhile, we are ramping up the production of electric vehicles. My question is, "Where the feck is the electricity going to come from?!?!?!" Shall we all tie kites to our bumpers and hope for a thunderstorm?
2 Likes
You lost me at "Nuclear power is right out". I'm not sure what your exact complaints and issues would be, but there are plenty of modern designs being built all over the world in everywhere from France to China that use fuels with low proliferation risks and short radioactive shelf lives after they are spent. A thorium breeder reactor with a working fluid of molten salt is probably the safest and most economically viable solution on the drawing board as far as nuclear goes so if you can come up with a better mass power generation solution then that hats off to you.
As far as the overall problem OP is talking about. Its nearly always more efficient to use high energy fuel at a large scale to generate power for many lower efficiency devices. That's where electric cars are best suited. If the power they require can be generated efficiently and their batteries can be made longer lasting and less toxic they are a more practical solution that I.C. years down the line. Right now otto and diesel cycles are king.
Driving Electric cars basiclly is envoirement friendlly.
However the power used for re-charging those batteries can either be green or grey.
Well I guess we shouldn't be surprised that electric cars are being pushed so hard. Since we wasted 1.7 Trillion dollars on a fighter jet that is useless.
I thought you were going to keep that crap out of this thread... ?
1 Like
So your saying that google didn't spend money on a jet fighter that tanked?
I love a good propaganda thread!
We should have one every month or so.
So if this is propaganda 1, will the next one be propaganda due?
1 Like
American currency. The new toilet paper? Or up and coming fire starting material. Just kidding btw.
So seeing as this thread was fun despite the trolling, thank you all for cooperating. It's good to see that the forum has evolved to a situation where personal attacks and namecalling is not an obvious method any more.
Now serious for a sec: so ok it was a baity titel and we all had fun, but the object in general should be to post threads with some degree of substance to discuss on a quantifiable level. Everybody can make meta-arguments. I've myself counted about a dozen produced by myself in this thread. It's fun and we should not deprive ourselves of trolling, but we should not make it into the main focus of this forum, even though we have proven that we can keep it civil and entertaining.
I'm going to close this thread now. Some points brought up somewhere along the line in this thread may warrant a thread of their own though, so feel free to pick up discussions on certain topic, but keep them specific, concrete and quantifiable. We've had fun, but we should now return to regular course of things.
Cheers.
7 Likes