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You said it in your post. That's for space use, we are talking RTGs suitable for terrestrial use and that requires heavier construction, shielding etc. We're also talking about putting these things in submarines, a closed, very hostile environment in intimate association with people (if...

It wasn't really weird, it all comes back to the same basic cause - budgets. The problem that hit from the late 1950s on was that there were a huge number of projects going down, all of which were absolutely essential. There was a major crisis in naval aviation and it was really questionable...

PART FORTY (Note: Approval for the republication of this work on The Sietch has been granted by the author.) The Phlegethon Bridge, Dysprosium Highway, Hell “Well, its not boiling blood.” Captain Keisha Stevenson looked at the scene through her electro-optics. It was one of almost pastoral...

Probably every permutation of actions imaginable. Ranging from denial to paralysed fear to "let's party like there's no tomorrow (because there isn't)" Democrats will start to impeach PDJT for collusion with the asteroid. Last day, go down to my deep bunker, sit on the throne, put my head...

One of my colleagues has been looking at this class of system and for land use it seems to have a fair level of potential. The problem is that it has a major disadvantage in that it is one of those "ebil nooklir def mashines" that will kill us all. It's almost impossible to get any nuclear...

That's very interesting, thank you. I must look further into that. I have a limited interest in civilian power systems but its primarily in generating baseload power for grids. We're looking at outputs there of 600MW to 1.8 GW, way above military requirements. The primary issue with military...

Rickover's basic driver in this area was that he understood that if there was a major reactor accident on one of his nuclear submarines, the public reaction would probably kill the submarine fleet. Thus, he always went for the safe option. Having said that we did look at several alternate...

Different environment. Those are sudden catastrophic events. In a submarine (or surface ship) we are looking at literally a lifetime's daily hard service in hostile conditions surrounded by people who have an unnerving talent for breaking things. Under those conditions the RTGs degrade. RTGs...

That's a very interesting way of looking at things. One of the problems on warships is providing exercise facilities for the crew, not least because these days the crew remain below decks most of the time. So, its likely that things like exercise bikes will be on board for that reason so...

It's a good question and I can see some applications (midgets especially) where it might be useful. Might not be an exercise bike per se but a foot-pedal design that could be operated while the midget was on the bottom would be worth looking at. A midget wouldn't have the space for anything...

That's more or less how a modern submarine battery works. Normally one has two or three (these days usually three) battery banks, one forward, one central, one aft and the control system switches between them so that the charge on all the cells remains roughly equal. That really is critical...

It has been looked at (almost everything one can think of has been examined by somebody - one of the things that makes my job really fun) but the problem is that the amount of charge that can be generated that way will only be adequate to slow the aggregate discharge rate - in other words, put...

The problem is though that it cedes the initiative to the opposition and leaves the fleet open to attack when said opposition has all its pieces in play. Also, without long-range surveillance, it will be hard for the defending fleet to know when the attacks will come, from where and when. I've...

Why? Vegans can be great. Especially spit-roasted with rock-salt and chili-pepper. (Free virtual beer to anybody who gets the reference . . .)

PART THIRTY-NINE (Note: Approval for the republication of this work on The Sietch has been granted by the author.) Outer Ring, 7th Circle of Hell The voice was urgent, omnipresent. Corporal Tucker McElroy! Do you hear me? I hear you! McElroy screamed back in his mind. It wasn't because he...

This is actually real. The problem is that nuclear reactors don't scale in cost or power output very well. Back in the 1960s, we built what was supposed to be a nuclear-powered equivalent to an SSK, i.e. a small, inexpensive hunter-killer that had a scaled down nuclear powerplant. For a brief...

Heavens to Murgatroyd yes!!! Running a combined SSN and SSK fleet is actually a very good idea; the two types are complementary and each brings something to the table that the other lacks. In an ideal world, that's what we would do - and in fairness the USN actually did that right up to (IIRC)...

Fair comment; my apologies. Virtually everything I do in my life is hooked to military equipment somehow.

Absolutely no argument there. Not just overreliance on our drones though; a blind assumption that other people won't either build better ones or think of really interesting counters to them. We've already lost one top-line drone when its flight system was hacked.

Alas poor demons . . . . This is the trouble with a static society; they get to be unable to understand that other societies may not be static. The US is beginning to develop this problem now; the US as a society is so used to having an overwhelming technical edge and combine that with a bland...