I realise this is a bit early to go off at a tangent, but may I once again politely remind you who the blog belongs to? Yes, I thought that might settle you down.
Brian May! The guitarist from that band Queen, whom I never really cared for, is actually a graduate astrophysicist, which means he is, at the very least, hot stuff at mathematics. And also a dead ringer for Ol' Ize*.
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| Brian, minus guitar |
Okay, let us now prevail on the monorail. I refer you to Ol' Ize's Third Law, which states that, for every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Okay, let us now skip wildly off-course as I refer you to Project Orion.
This was a concept put forward whereby a spacecraft would be accelerated up to relativistic speeds, using "pusher-plate" technology. Essentially, the spaceship would be accelerated by detonating small nuclear devices behind a giant metal plate. This is where Sir Isaac comes in; the explosion propels the spaceship forward, and to increase the velocity you merely (!) blow up another device. Halfway to destination you flip your spacecraft around in order to decelerate.
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| Ol' Ize, minus telescope |
Above the pusher-plate is a set of shock-absorbers and another layer of dense, absorbent material, in order to prevent excessive amounts of kinetic energy being transmitted to the rest of the hull. Now, if this particular vehicle is unmanned and thus computer-controlled, you can subject it to G forces that would render humans into a thin red smear. You could, however, deliver a cargo payload to lunar orbit to the mass of, oh, say 150 tons, in a matter of hours.
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| Clearly, some people have put a lot of thought into Proj Orion ... |
If your spacecraft is manned then you have to be a lot more careful and gradual in the acceleration; thin red smears, after all, are likely to have litigious surviving relatives. Yet even so, with gradual acceleration you could still get up to a fraction of lightspeed and not only carry out manned exploration of the solar system, but achieve interstellar flight also.
None of the technology involved is speculative, needs exotic materials nor vanishingly rare fuels and, indeed, an Orion spacecraft could have been built from the Sixties onward.
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| Remind you of anything? We'll revisit this, too. |
I shall continue to regale you with more of Proj Orion, at a later date.
Now then, having conquered the stars, let us turn to a less high-flown subject that nonetheless remains dear to your modest artisan's heart: beer.
Plum Porter
Darling Daughter, as a student, might be expected to favour the very cheapest of beers.
Yet no! She quaffeth not the generically branded lager from Asda that retails at £1.17 per can. Rather, has she not been holding forth on Facebook about the wonders of "Plum Porter"? Yes she has, it was a rhetorical question, I didn't expect an answer.
Conrad is curious. I mean, yes I am odd, but I also wonder what this PP is, exactly.
Thanks, Art. Don't give up your day job
How many damsons does a dram demand? Does it really have plums in it? How about ground-up railway employees?
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| A Plump Otter. Close enough |
A Momentary Lapse Of Reality
I have missed out on the Pub Quiz of late, what with being sorely ill, and then having my partners abandon me for Nineveh-on-Thames (or "London" if you must). Last night also marked my first beer in over a week, thanks to my medicine. The warnings about consuming alcohol whilst also taking the Diddy Deadly Drops of Doom hinted darkly that you would spontaneously combust, if you dared.
Anyway, one of the questions was about "Hello Dolly", which is not about the sheep that got cloned. I couldn't tell you what it is about because it's a musical, and I hate all musicals, and I guessed that the answer was "Barbara Streisand".
Surprise! Rather to my regret, I was correct. This will no doubt have echoes at a later date.
Surprise the second was a guess Rosie made about what game is played at some venue or other. Phil, our sporty specialist, was at the bar so couldn't advise.
"Tennis," guessed Rosie.
Correct!
Mind you, we still didn't win.
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| Hello, Dolly. Kind of. |
That's all for tonight, folks. Chin chin!
* I can call him that as we're such terrific chums
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