The Very Many Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XXXII

[Cutlass]

What do Americans eat at Christmas?

There are a variety of choices, and many families do different things. 2 of the most common are a turkey dinner or a baked ham dinner.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Pun answer: A renter who got left behind when everybody else moved out.

Real answer: As hobbsyoyo says, it's just the way the British pronounce "lieutenant."


Yep. Here we pronounce it "loo-ten-ant."


There's an episode of the old documentary series "The Story of English" that talks about that. There really was a time when that spelling made perfect sense because the pronunciation was quite different.

We say lootenant too.

 

[Commodore]

It's leff-TEN-nunt, anyway. Saying it differently makes it sound weird.

What is the origin of that pronunciation though? A quick search turns up results that says it may be the result of a misinterpretation of the "u" as a "v" long ago, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That's a funny way to pronounce it.

 

[Arakhor]

What is the origin of that pronunciation though? A quick search turns up results that says it may be the result of a misinterpretation of the "u" as a "v" long ago, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.

That seems reasonable, but I have no idea. It is however one of the few occasions that Americans actually pronounce a word more faithfully to its origins than the British do.

 

[Zkribbler]

That seems reasonable, but I have no idea. It is however one of the few occasions that Americans actually pronounce a word more faithfully to its origins than the British do.

I'll have to ask Don Quicks Oat and Don Jew On.

 

[Arakhor]

I'll have to ask Don Quicks Oat and Don Jew On.

You really think we pronounce those words like that?

 

[EgonSpengler]

Scenario: A space station with a habitat ring or hoop that rotates to produce artificial gravity by centrifugal force. As I understand it, the ring or hoop needs to have a certain minimum diameter to avoid the unsettling sensation you would get when your feet are moving faster than your head. I imagine it feels like a combination of vertigo and standing on a slanted floor. Perhaps a sailor who hasn't gotten his land-legs back yet. There's a point - a diameter of the spinning ring - when your brain can no longer detect the difference, and it just feels as though you're standing on a flat, unmoving floor.

So here's the question: Is there a name for that? Either for the minimum diameter needed to fool your brain into thinking that you're standing on a flat, non-spinning floor, or for the sensation itself?

I imagine the velocity of the spin matters too, where we need to spin the thing fast enough to emulate 1 gravity (or whatever a healthy minimum gravity is for humans living long-term in space, I dunno what that might be).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I would recommend Space Settlements: A Design Study by NASA if you find this topic interesting. It's written in plain English and is very enjoyable if you are into science, technology and space. If you can find an original printing, get that as it has beautiful full-color illustrations that were downgraded to black and white in later printings.

They do not give names to the minimum diameter/spin rate of space stations but they do call this artificial gravity 'psuedogravity' and they also point out that it is the Coriolis force that causes the disorientation you asked about. I have never seen a name given to the diameter/spin rate either though you could just as easily call them 'critical diameter' or 'critical spin rate' in these discussions and everyone would know what you mean. Of course the critical diameter and spin rates depend on each other although there is some dimension for which any decent spin rate will cause disorientation.

Basically, the larger the diameter of your habitat, the slower you need to spin it to create psuedogravity. This helps because the slower you spin, the less of an effect that coriolis has. Plus, the lower your spin rate, the less you are stressing the materials used to make the habitat. This is important because the less stress it's under, the less you have to reinforce it, the less mass you need to send to space at $10,000 / lb. A side benefit is that larger habitats have longer lines of sight which dramatically decrease the claustrophobia aspect of living in a tin can.

We do not know what level of gravity is sufficient for normal human development and life. We have a decent (though thoroughly incomplete) picture of how bad 0 g is but we have no data on 0 < g < 1. The ISS was originally intended to have a spinning section which shrank over time until it was omitted entirely. That's a shame because it would have been one of the most useful science laboratories ever made.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

In addition, the larger your habitat, the more robust it is. You're never going to build a habitat that doesn't leak at some rate, but the larger your habitat volume, the less the leak rate matters because there is so much gas in it that holes can be found and patched a long time after they've started with negligible losses. Plus, a larger habitat provides better radiation and micrometeor shielding. Basically, bigger is pretty much always better though launch costs will be tremendous until fully reusable vehicles become mainstream.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm thinking about this for a sci-fi story. The space station in question would have been constructed in space, and I'm thinking about making it really effing huge. I figure that once we can manufacture factories and robots in space, the raw materials available from asteroids mean you could make something like Starfleet's Earth headquarters from the Star Trek movies. That thing's like the size of Manhattan Island, but on a Solar-system scale, Manhattan Island is barely the head of a pin.

For the spaceships, I'm thinking about something like The Expanse novels and television show, where they generate artificial gravity by constant thrust, and the direction of travel is their vertical axis. So spaceships are more like buildings than like ocean-going ships. The authors of The Expanse used a little magic hand-waving to explain the existence of a drive system that doesn't use fuel. I'll probably have to do that, as well. I haven't come up with anything better. I'm not going after "hard" sci-fi anyway. More like "firm, yet supple sci-fi" (e.g. Aliens).

I'll look for that NASA thing, though. It sounds cool and may give me some ideas I haven't thought about yet.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Has anyone contacted their Congressperson to take a stand against the FCC's rollback of net neutrality? I just did but I'm not sure it will do any good because AFAIK this issue isn't actually before congress right now and they aren't going to bring it up.

I'm thinking about this for a sci-fi story. The space station in question would have been constructed in space, and I'm thinking about making it really effing huge. I figure that once we can manufacture factories and robots in space, the raw materials available from asteroids mean you could make something like Starfleet's Earth headquarters from the Star Trek movies. That thing's like the size of Manhattan Island, but on a Solar-system scale, Manhattan Island is barely the head of a pin.

For the spaceships, I'm thinking about something like The Expanse novels and television show, where they generate artificial gravity by constant thrust, and the direction of travel is their vertical axis. So spaceships are more like buildings than like ocean-going ships. The authors of The Expanse used a little magic hand-waving to explain the existence of a drive system that doesn't use fuel. I'll probably have to do that, as well. I haven't come up with anything better. I'm not going after "hard" sci-fi anyway. More like "firm, yet supple sci-fi" (e.g. Aliens).

I'll look for that NASA thing, though. It sounds cool and may give me some ideas I haven't thought about yet.

I'm pretty sure you can find free e-versions online as well as it was a government publication with mass distribution. They have some very interesting space station configurations that I never thought of, like nested sets of barbells and other weird configurations. They also list the formulas needed to derive parameters of your design (like how big it needs to be for 1g, how much usable volume at 1g a given shape will give you, etc) though you can skip those while reading and be none the worse.

They even go into detail into how much mass you will need to launch, how the station should be divided up for different uses, labor estimates (though they are based on 1970's levels of productivity and workforce participation) and so on. It's a very thorough book and it's actually pretty short given all that it covers and it has tons of illustrations (both technical and purely aesthetic). Hell they even have charts showing how thick of an atmosphere the moon will have after they build this space station since their method of construction depends on launching mass off the moon. Given how small the moon is, normal industrial processes and rocket launches on its surface will actually build up an atmosphere on it very quickly.

The Expanse did a decent job overall. It's not hard sci-fi and they do use hand waiving but for the most part it isn't terrible. There was one scene where they are orbiting one of Jupiter's moons and they throw the ship 'into reverse' to go backwards in their orbit to avoid a probe. That was hilariously bad but then again, if you had a ton of thrust you could actually do that.

And to be fair I read a series science book that made a case for colonizing Titan and the whole argument was based on humanity developing a reaction-mass-less propulsion system which was laughable and undermined the whole book in my opinion. So the Expanse is only as bad as some mainstream science books.


Anyways, that book is exactly what you're looking for if you need research material to make your story scientifically plausible.

Also to give non-thrusting spaceships psuedogravity, you just tumble them end over end. If the ship is long enough then Coriolis won't be a huge problem and the decks will experience some g level and you can arrange the decks like stories in a building rather than the way they are laid out traditionally in ships. Or you tether two small ships together and spin them and then your deck orientation will be driven by which way you intend to spin them. Travel times in space are long enough that you would want to set you decks up so that they make sense in a spinning psuedogravity environment and not how they make sense in 0 g or under thrust (unless you are using constant thrust to make psuedogravity).

You should note that if you are using thrusting acceleration to provide g forces, you are going to have very short transit times. 1 g of acceleration gets you across the solar system in a very short amount of time. It also takes an enormous amount of fuel. Basically the only time I've ever seen 1 g accelerations used for serious space craft design are for interstellar voyages because it would be massive overkill within the solar system unless you have fantastically advanced propulsion systems.

If you would like a rundown on realistic and near-future propulsion systems, copy this over to the space cadet thread and I'll do a write up.

 

[Commodore]

It is however one of the few occasions that Americans actually pronounce a word more faithfully to its origins than the British do.

Could be because the word is of French origin and it was French military advisors that were training our armies during our war for independence. My guess is the French advisors disabused us of any traits reminiscent of the British military and molded the colonial militias to mirror the French military and that would have included pronunciations of military ranks.

Now I'm imagining some poor colonial recruit getting beaten by his French drill instructor for pronouncing "lieutenant" as "leff-ten-nunt" while also being called an uncultured swine.

 

[Traitorfish]

The British have been pronouncing it as they do since at least the 13th century, though, and originally spelled it to match. The contemporary spelling is an eighteenth century affectation; the difference is that the British officer class eventually abandoned the affected pronunciation while the Americans retained it, which might itself simply be down to the fact there weren't many lieutenants in North America before 1754- the colonial militias didn't consistently include ranks other than colonel and captain- so the novel pronunciation was accepted as it was, without the counter-weight of lower-class habit.

As Commodore says, the French influence probably helps; no better way to pick up aristocratic Francophile affectations than exposure to affected French aristocrats.

 

[Arwon]

It's leff-TEN-nunt, anyway. Saying it differently makes it sound weird.

Your Navy says it differently.

(for the record - in Australia the Navy always says l'tenant or maybe loo-tenant while I believe the Army and Air Force vacillate between that and the more common lef-tenant. I don't think we use lootenant over l'tenant very much, but maybe some people do.)

 

[Cutlass]

That seems reasonable, but I have no idea. It is however one of the few occasions that Americans actually pronounce a word more faithfully to its origins than the British do.

You've clearly never heard the guys on Top Gear pronounce the car brand name Yag-U-Our.

 

[Cutlass]

Has anyone contacted their Congressperson to take a stand against the FCC's rollback of net neutrality? I just did but I'm not sure it will do any good because AFAIK this issue isn't actually before congress right now and they aren't going to bring it up.


I'm pretty sure you can find free e-versions online as well as it was a government publication with mass distribution. They have some very interesting space station configurations that I never thought of, like nested sets of barbells and other weird configurations. They also list the formulas needed to derive parameters of your design (like how big it needs to be for 1g, how much usable volume at 1g a given shape will give you, etc) though you can skip those while reading and be none the worse.

They even go into detail into how much mass you will need to launch, how the station should be divided up for different uses, labor estimates (though they are based on 1970's levels of productivity and workforce participation) and so on. It's a very thorough book and it's actually pretty short given all that it covers and it has tons of illustrations (both technical and purely aesthetic). Hell they even have charts showing how thick of an atmosphere the moon will have after they build this space station since their method of construction depends on launching mass off the moon. Given how small the moon is, normal industrial processes and rocket launches on its surface will actually build up an atmosphere on it very quickly.

The Expanse did a decent job overall. It's not hard sci-fi and they do use hand waiving but for the most part it isn't terrible. There was one scene where they are orbiting one of Jupiter's moons and they throw the ship 'into reverse' to go backwards in their orbit to avoid a probe. That was hilariously bad but then again, if you had a ton of thrust you could actually do that.

And to be fair I read a series science book that made a case for colonizing Titan and the whole argument was based on humanity developing a reaction-mass-less propulsion system which was laughable and undermined the whole book in my opinion. So the Expanse is only as bad as some mainstream science books.


Anyways, that book is exactly what you're looking for if you need research material to make your story scientifically plausible.

Also to give non-thrusting spaceships psuedogravity, you just tumble them end over end. If the ship is long enough then Coriolis won't be a huge problem and the decks will experience some g level and you can arrange the decks like stories in a building rather than the way they are laid out traditionally in ships. Or you tether two small ships together and spin them and then your deck orientation will be driven by which way you intend to spin them. Travel times in space are long enough that you would want to set you decks up so that they make sense in a spinning psuedogravity environment and not how they make sense in 0 g or under thrust (unless you are using constant thrust to make psuedogravity).

You should note that if you are using thrusting acceleration to provide g forces, you are going to have very short transit times. 1 g of acceleration gets you across the solar system in a very short amount of time. It also takes an enormous amount of fuel. Basically the only time I've ever seen 1 g accelerations used for serious space craft design are for interstellar voyages because it would be massive overkill within the solar system unless you have fantastically advanced propulsion systems.

If you would like a rundown on realistic and near-future propulsion systems, copy this over to the space cadet thread and I'll do a write up.

In the old scifi classic The Mote In God's Eye the ships had fusion-reaction drives which provided Gs while in motion, but spun the ship for them while the ship wasn't under acceperation. But as the ship would be narrow for it's length, that would give you serious Coriolis effects.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Given how small the moon is, normal industrial processes and rocket launches on its surface will actually build up an atmosphere on it very quickly.

Now I'm curious: How plausible are Ben Bova's Grand Tour novels, given current knowledge and tech and what we could probably do in the next few decades?

(assuming of course that we don't get a genius like Dr. Kris Cardenas to come up with nanotech capable of building diamond spaceships)

Could be because the word is of French origin and it was French military advisors that were training our armies during our war for independence. My guess is the French advisors disabused us of any traits reminiscent of the British military and molded the colonial militias to mirror the French military and that would have included pronunciations of military ranks.

Now I'm imagining some poor colonial recruit getting beaten by his French drill instructor for pronouncing "lieutenant" as "leff-ten-nunt" while also being called an uncultured swine.

There's an extra syllable in French, or at least that's how I was taught: "li-eu-ten-ant".

 

[hobbsyoyo]

In the old scifi classic The Mote In God's Eye the ships had fusion-reaction drives which provided Gs while in motion, but spun the ship for them while the ship wasn't under acceperation. But as the ship would be narrow for it's length, that would give you serious Coriolis effects.

You're right, that was a scenario I didn't consider and it would definitely be the way to operate if you could have a fusion drive that could produce 1g of thrust. That's actually unlikely to be honest because the appeal of a fusion or fission powered ship isn't the thrust (which wouldn't come close to parity with weight) but the very high efficiency. And yeah, at 1g of acceleration you would be looking at very short thrust times unless you were covering the distance between stars.

If the crew was small enough that you could fit them on a few decks, it would also make sense to tumble the ship end over end to take advantage of the longer moment arm about that spin axis. This would require active control to maintain as the ship would try and tumble itself into a lower energy state barrel roll spin (which doesn't require active control to maintain) but it would be easier on the crew.

Now I'm curious: How plausible are Ben Bova's Grand Tour novels, given current knowledge and tech and what we could probably do in the next few decades?

(assuming of course that we don't get a genius like Dr. Kris Cardenas to come up with nanotech capable of building diamond spaceships)

Very plausible. It's part of my zeal for my field of work, I want to help make that vision a reality because it's within reach.

The broad strokes are within reach with current technology. Things like fusion drives and nanotechnology would bring down the cost of space activities but they are not necessary technologies in the sense that you can build a space fairing society without them. Right now the gating item in this whole space endeavor is money. The major technical challenges are solved or are likely solvable with sustained effort but the cost of space access is so high that it forms this impossible barrier to entry for companies and governments to go out and do big things in space.

The cost of launch is beginning what I hope is a large and sustained downward trend. Love or hate SpaceX, they have lit a fire under the launch market where suddenly all of these huge corporations and governments are going back to the drawing board to meet their already market-bottom prices. As reusable rockets become more capable and numerous, launch prices will drop further. Once the problem of high launch cost is solved, the rest will follow at an astonishing pace.

 

[Arakhor]

Your Navy says it differently.

Really? The Royal Navy is the branch with the highest reputation, patronised by the Royal Family etc. I'd be very surprised if their officers started saying loo-tennunt at all, let alone on a regular basis.

You've clearly never heard the guys on Top Gear pronounce the car brand name Yag-U-Our.

Jag-you-uh, maybe, but I'm hardly going to go in to bat for random TV personalities, particularly ones I don't even watch.