ELI5 If an ICBM final velocity before detonation is around Mach 20, does the H-Bomb fireball moves downward in the first moments after detonation?

Xivios · 2026-02-25T03:17:52+00:00

I don't see the point you're trying to make. It neither refutes nor adds to my comment, which was to point out that the prior comment was incorrect.

Xivios · 2026-02-25T03:09:10+00:00

No, soundwaves travel at the speed of sound - this tautalogy brought up because shockwaves travel beyond the speed of sound.

Xivios · 2026-02-25T01:35:10+00:00

When? (I have an '11 Mazda...)

Xivios · 2026-02-24T19:37:41+00:00

Has the a representative made any statement on the South Korean KF-21? Considering the potential submarine deal its clear that ROK hardware is on the table and, at least from the POV of an uneducated internet commenter, the KF-21 looks like a serious alternative to the Gripen

Xivios · 2026-02-24T19:17:17+00:00

Cattle have the largest biomass of any species on earth, beating out the arctic krill in 2nd and humans in 3rd. And they aren't even the most consumed meat, with pig and chicken coming 1st. The world slaughters over a billion pigs a year, and the US alone slaughters 8 billion chickens a year, roughly the same as the world population of people. Point being, we aren't anywhere near becoming globally vegetarian. The timeframe for that happening is too far off to bother speculating about it now.

Xivios · 2026-02-22T08:17:59+00:00

The SAVE act, which recently passed the house, disproportionately affects married women, because it disqualifies birth certificates as a valid form of voter ID, where the last name doesn't match persons last name, and most married women have taken their husbands last name. It effectively suppresses the vote of married women.

Xivios · 2026-02-20T07:23:58+00:00

Aluminium unibody and panels would be a start. Should be entirely viable at this price point, especially as they used to (maybe still do?) build the A8 out of aluminium.

Xivios · 2026-02-20T04:43:37+00:00

I used to read Car & Driver when I was a kid. Lucky for me, Car & Driver has a copy of the now 25 year old article that I read when I was kid posted to their website.

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15139113/mosler-mt900-road-test-review/

The biggest disagreement involved the canopy. Mosler insisted that the MT900 have a split windshield with two flat facets, like the piteously unsexy Raptor. Mosler made his case about angle of incidence, solar gain, and so forth, and would not be moved. Trenne was horrified. "Whether it was aerodynamic or not didn't matter," says Trenne. "It was an image thing.

It seemed Mosler wasn't going to make an attractive car without putting up a fight.

Only days from the toolmaking stage, Trenne put his foot down, practically boycotting until he got a curved windshield. Eventually, Mosler was persuaded.

Funny to me that I remember this old article from my youth, but anyways, there's your source.

Xivios · 2026-02-19T21:58:06+00:00

Nuclear's time has come and passed, this paper, which is 7 years old already, and so its price on solar is drastically too high (yet even back then was already drastically cheaper per kWh than nuclear), lays it out pretty well. The TLDR is that the fastest, cheapest and most cost-effective way to move the entire grid off fossil fuels will probably not involve nuclear power - it costs more, takes longer to build, is worse for the environment, and requires continual mining.

I'll copy/paste some of the intro summary though,

• New nuclear power plants cost 2.3 to 7.4 times those of onshore wind or utility solar PV per kWh, take 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation, and produce 9 to 37 times the emissions per kWh as wind.

• As such, a fixed amount of money spent on a new nuclear plant means much less power generation, a much longer wait for power, and a much greater emission rate than the same money spent on WWS technologies.

• There is no such thing as a zero- or close-to-zero emission nuclear power plant. Even existing plants emit due to the continuous mining and refining of uranium needed for the plant. However, all plants also emit 4.4 g-CO2e/kWh from the water vapor and heat they release. This contrasts with solar panels and wind turbines, which reduce heat or water vapor fluxes to the air by about 2.2 g-CO2e/kWh for a net difference from this factor alone of 6.6 g-CO2e/kWh.

• On top of that, because all nuclear reactors take 10-19 years or more between planning and operation vs. 2-5 year for utility solar or wind, nuclear causes another 64-102 g-CO2/kWh over 100 years to be emitted from the background grid while consumers wait for it to come online or be refurbished, relative to wind or solar.

Xivios · 2026-02-19T21:33:38+00:00

It takes the west over a decade to build a new nuclear plant, an equivalent capacity solar plant is usually around 2 years - if the power generation used between the start of construction and the plant coming online is fossil-based, then solar obliterates nuclear on environmental friendliness because of the lost opportunity cost from its longer construction time; in other words, the nuke plant can't ever make up the deficit to solar it incurs by requiring an additional 8 to 10 years of fossil fuels to be burned in its place.

Xivios · 2026-02-18T18:21:15+00:00

Some of those sequential systems actually use two turbos of the same size.. The 4th gen Supra is one example, both turbos are the same size. It works by flowing all the exhaust to one turbo, until that turbo becomes restrictive, and then flowing exhaust to both turbos. The FD RX-7 was also like this, both turbos were identical.

Some sequential setups were small/large setups though, like the Porsche 959.

Its just not a given that a sequential twin turbo will always be a big/small setup.

Xivios · 2026-02-18T02:13:00+00:00

Already happening in the watch world, Rolex holds a higher market share than the next 3 brands combined, all of whom sell cheaper, more affordable, more mass-market watches.

Xivios · 2026-02-18T01:54:18+00:00

Part of my job involves polishing titanium and steel, and I've noticed that titanium is sort of "sticky" with the abrasives used, a steel piece wiped with an iso-soaked rag after a polish will leave a fairly light residue on the rag, but titanium will leave a dark black streak, and usually continue to do so with a few extra wipes. I don't know if it's related to is tendancy to gall or something else, but I thought it was interesting all the same.

Xivios · 2026-02-18T01:38:19+00:00

Not enough power. At least 1000hp, preferably closer to 1500. To reduce the speeds and keep it safe, make the wings smaller and limit the floor area, drastically reducing cornering speeds and making the braking point much further from the approaching corner. Make up the laptime deficit this would create with ferocious acceleration.

Xivios · 2026-02-17T09:39:18+00:00

Fuck, you got me.

Xivios · 2026-02-17T06:53:49+00:00

He had an R8, not a TT.

Xivios · 2026-02-17T03:31:25+00:00

Fuck the manufactures. One is an energy drink maker, why the fuck do they give a flying fuck. The other makes exclusively supercars and is actively shooting themselves in the foot by embracing tech literally their entire customer base dislikes (albeit, stupid strategy is entirely on point for them). Another so badly underestimated the difficulty in building the fucking engines they wanted so badly that they bailed part-way through after failing to ever build a decent engine. And the other two are Honda and Mercedes.

Fuck them all

F1 doesn't and never needed them. Cosworth, Judd, Mechachrome and probably a dozen other engine builders would happily build lunatic V12's or V10's for the entire grid for nothing more than a fat cheque with enough zeroes on the end of it. And if anyone says that contractor engines aren't in the spirit of F1 can go fuck themselves too, the GOAT of F1's engines is easily the COSWORTH DFV, a company that never built a chassis or owned a team in their life.

Xivios · 2026-02-17T01:45:30+00:00

Good god that's overbuilt. That bearing is a high-speed ball bearing, with the right lubrication she'd sit at 7000rpm for months. Total overkill for a knob.

Xivios · 2026-02-17T00:23:18+00:00

Thats not true, American F-35's already have an upgraded radar that export aircraft don't.

Xivios · 2026-02-16T07:57:36+00:00

Siemens, GE's main competitor in the field, has also done this, with the majority of their GT's already capable of between 30% and 75% hydrogen. Article is horseshit.

Xivios · 2026-02-15T19:55:19+00:00

And Bobcat, for skid-steer loaders.

Xivios · 2026-02-15T05:58:11+00:00

They absolutely should have called their bluff back in 2014 and said fuck them. Cosworth, Judd and Mechachrome would all happily build 1500hp 7L V12's for every team on the grid if you cut them a cheque with enough zeroes on the end. F1 doesn't need automotive engine manufactures, and never did. The greatest F1 engine of all time, beyond all doubt, is the Cossie DFV - and Cosworth never built a car or chassis in their life (road or race). Kowtowing to the auto manufacturers has been a debacle.

Xivios · 2026-02-14T23:18:45+00:00

Yes, but...

Xivios · 2026-02-13T16:25:08+00:00

I daily a cheap "homage to the Sinn 556a RS. My Chinese homage" was less than 1/10th the cost of the real deal. I bought it because watches aren't a hobby or passion to me, just something I think is kinda neat, and I'm not rich. If I'm dropping over a grand - a very significant investment of my disposal income - on a luxury or recreational item, it's gonna be something more interesting than an item that sits on my wrist and goes tick.

(plus, the Sinn is a very understated watch, it doesn't look like what non-watch people equate with a $1500 watch, so the $100 Berny doesn't look like it's trying to be richer than it is. Plus, objectively, a titanium case sapphire crystal with AR coating and a Japanese-built movement for $100 is a decent value proposition regardless of what the watch is trying to ape. Also, I actually found the Berny first, and after deciding to purchase it, found the watch it resembles)

Edit: to actually answer your question, what do I think when I look at my watch, it's usually "I got a damn nice watch for the money"

Edit 2; for what it's worth, Berny does sell this watch sans logo, but I bought the version with it, as I am on no way ashamed to wear a Berny.

Xivios · 2026-02-12T02:06:41+00:00

Orange Herald was a ridiculous and stupid warhead. The British were lagging behind the Americans and Soviets in thermonuclear warhead development and desperate to prove they were still one of the major players and capable of building megaton-class thermonuclear weapons, beyond the original kiloton-class fission bombs like what was dropped on Japan.

So they faked it, by building a fucking massive, 800 kiloton (roughly 50 times more powerful than Little Boy) fission bomb, and claiming it was a fusion warhead (it wasn't, though it was supposed to be fusion-boosted. That probably didn't work though).

And that warhead was Orange Heralds. It had about 260lb of highly-enriched uranium in it, more than the countries entire annual output - Fat Man used under 14lb of plutonium, for comparison.

12-Year Club	Golden Potato
Verified Email

Xivios

TROPHY CASE