Humor Random Comments Thread

[Artlav]

Huh? I'm not sure I've ever seen a phone, landline or cell, *without* letters. Decades before I was born, US cities used to have named telephone exchanges, where the first two or three digits were given a mnemonic, e.g, "Operator, get me CAstle 2-6417", meaning 222-6417. Letters on telephone dials goes back to *looooong* before cell phones or texting ever existed.

For USA, i totally agree, but here in USSR and then Russia, it was something completely unheard of until the 90s when imported phones started to appear.

 

[Fabri91]

Same here, I believe. Only recent phones have letters associated to the numbers, and this is more because it is possible to send SMSs through the landline, rather than to have "lettery" numbers like you do in the USA.

@Topic: Asimov really really liked the word "atomic".

 

[Urwumpe]

In some hours, the remains of the Hurricane Katia will pass over my place. A train derailing in southern Germany is already attributed to this rare weather phenomena.

 

[Turbinator]

For USA, i totally agree, but here in USSR and then Russia, it was something completely unheard of until the 90s when imported phones started to appear.

Woah, it is so strange to look at telephones with no letters on the keypad. I always assumed this was a normal thing that everyone had ever since phones existed.

 

[Urwumpe]

Woah, it is so strange to look at telephones with no letters on the keypad. I always assumed this was a normal thing that everyone had ever since phones existed.

Here in Europe, the classic impulse dialing system was more common than frequency dialing, thus the rotating things dominated until the late 1980s.

 

[Artlav]

Imagine this.
High over the ocean, walking on top of a zeppelin.

Same zeppelin in construction.
Amazing piece of engineering.

Why scrap it?
Why not build similar machines now?

 

[APDAF]

Too true Artlav, too true.

 

[jedidia]

Woah, it is so strange to look at telephones with no letters on the keypad. I always assumed this was a normal thing that everyone had ever since phones existed.

I didn't even know phones with letters existed... :lol:

 

[Turbinator]

That is a space shuttle launch in the background.

 

[Urwumpe]

Why not build similar machines now?

Because the same company that built them once does now build better modern semi-rigid ones.

They are maybe smaller than the huge old ones, but still a great sight, especially on the ground. We had one of them at the local airport for certification at the German Air Traffic Agency, you could see the white giant already long before you saw the rest of the airport.

Only 75 meters long, compared to over 270 meters for the old rigid ones. But don't believe that this is small. Even a Beluga looks small next to it.

 

[Turbinator]

Why scrap it?
Why not build similar machines now?

Just last month, Canada ordered a few hybrid airships from a British company called Hybrid Air Vehicles. They will be about 6 stories high. They are huge hybrid air vehicles - due to begin construction in 2012 - will be able to fly at speeds near 290 km/h and carry at least 50 tonnes of cargo, nearly double the payload of a fully loaded C-130 Hercules.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/ca...Canada+North/5362626/story.html#ixzz1XgBRgMaq

And more great reading here: http://www.journalofcommerce.com/article/id30941

Canada has many mega construction projects happening in the Arctic. Gold Mines, Damon Mines, Rare Earth Metal mines, Oil Sands and Hydro Dams. As well as remote communities that live in the Arctic. There are no roads leading there. There are only two ways to transport equipment and supplies there. By air, and by trucks during the winter on ice roads. These are roads that are created when lakes and rivers freeze in the winter, creating usable roads. Therefore, these airships make sense in Canada's Arctic.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Why not build similar machines now?

Commence the awkward silence whenever you want.

 

[ky]

Commence the awkward silence whenever you want.

Hydrogen is flammable, Helium is not. Plus the skin and the coating of the paint on the Hindenburg made it extremely more flammable.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Hydrogen is flammable, Helium is not. Plus the skin and the coating of the paint on the Hindenburg made it extremely more flammable.

They may not be flammable, but they're not exactly hole-proof either, are they?

 

[Turbinator]

A hole would not cause a catastrophic failure, it would just sink to the ground. In addition they are able to detect a pressure difference, and start an emergency descent.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

I'm not going to lie, I like the idea of blimps/zeppelins, but the fact that all they are used for nowadays is advertisements at sporting events doesn't exactly preach to me about their safety, if they were truly safe they'd be using them for transport of some kind, wouldn't they?

 

[Urwumpe]

Hydrogen is flammable, Helium is not. Plus the skin and the coating of the paint on the Hindenburg made it extremely more flammable.

Not really, the old theory that the paint was like solid rocket fuel is pretty wrong, later tests with the skin material actually showed that the skin burned slower with paint than without.

It was just not flameproof, but that was a minor problem. The fire spread with the hydrogen and at the speed of the hydrogen combustion.

 

[ky]

They may not be flammable, but they're not exactly hole-proof either, are they?

Well true, but the possibility of a random flame causing a hydrogen fuel cell to explode isn't high, probably like 1 in 5000.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Well true, but the possibility of a random flame causing a hydrogen fuel cell to explode isn't high, probably like 1 in 5000.

Yes, but as I said before, they can't truly be as safe as you make them out to be, otherwise they'd be getting used much more, and for more important purposes than advertisement.

 

[N_Molson]

A hole would not cause a catastrophic failure, it would just sink to the ground. In addition they are able to detect a pressure difference, and start an emergency descent.

And, even the Hindenburg was designed to survive that easily : there are several different compartiments inside a balloon, very much like a submarine. If one fails, they drop some water ballast to compensate and can take their time to land safely.