prop formula

[DaveL322 at comcast.net]

......and abundantly allitervative as welll............

-------------- Original message -------------- 

> Here we are in an event which could easily be mistaken for highly technical in 
> nature ... but it's really an aerial beauty contest. 
> 
> Feeling foolishly philosophical 
> 
> Dean Pappas 
> Sr. Design Engineer 
> Kodeos Communications 
> 111 Corporate Blvd. 
> South Plainfield, N.J. 07080 
> (908) 222-7817 phone 
> (908) 222-2392 fax 
> d.pappas at kodeos.com 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: discussion-request at nsrca.org 
> [mailto:discussion-request at nsrca.org]On Behalf Of Jeff H. Snider 
> Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 12:03 AM 
> To: discussion at nsrca.org 
> Subject: Re: prop formula 
> 
> 
> I don't want to try and decide what portion of any endeavor is art 
> and what is science. The Wright brothers were dilettantes very short 
> on art but long on luck. Any less lucky and physically talented 
> people would have failed to fly that contraption of theirs. A great 
> deal of money and time was recently spent demonstrating that fact, 
> unfortunately for all the people involved. (If you ever have a 
> chance to visit the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport NY, along with 
> a huge and wonderful display of aviation history there's an infectious 
> undercurrent of distain for all things Wright.) 
> 
> I'm in favor of art, and I believe a good scientist is just a kind 
> of artist who keeps good notes and follows a very strict methodology. 
> What I said was "Maybe by then science will have more fully displaced 
> art." Meaning with a full molecule-by-molecule simulator a scientist 
> could create and test a new airfoil in under a minute, instead of 
> weeks painstakingly crafting a model and testing it in a wind tunnel, 
> so we can accumulate a lot more facts and rely less on intuition. 
> Science never eliminates art, but I'd rely on facts and technology 
> in place of guesses any day of the week. 
> 
> I haven't in fact seen a good Analog Engineer. I didn't know they still 
> existed. But then I've been a software guy too long and all that 
> hardware stuff just appears on the loading dock courtesy of FedEx. 
> Nobody actually builds it, do they? 
> 
> I am indeed flying Intermediate next season. I'm desperately trying 
> to remember all the maneuvers in the correct order before competing 
> this weekend at BARKS. Thank heaven for the simulator. It has 
> paid for itself in YS 30% fuel alone by now! 
> 
> -Jeff 
> 
> P.S., 
> In terms of progress and a by-the-molecules simulation of air, the 
> numbers don't leave much room for error. Take the number of molecules 
> in a liter of air (3e22), the radius of the space a molecule has 
> to itself at an instant of time (30 angstroms), the speed of the 
> molecules (3e12 angstroms/second), and you find the need to do 3e33 
> calculations per second. Today we can do 3e9 calculations per 
> second, so we need to get our computers 1e24 times faster to compute 
> this liter of air in realtime. Of course it takes more than one 
> calculation per molecule, and conversely of course really smart 
> algorithms can reduce the number of necessary calculations by maybe 
> a factor of billion. But just to keep things simple, if computers 
> double in speed every 18 months, and it takes 80 doublings to reach 
> 1e24, that's 120 years. If I'm off by a factor of a billion, it 
> takes 75 years. And unless we forget the "supercomputers", the 
> supposed fastest in the world was running at 36 teraflops in 
> September: 1000 times faster than today's desktop computers, meaning 
> the scientists get there 15 years ahead of us desktop computer guys. 
> If I live to be a really old scientist, maybe I'll see it happen. 
> For now I'm just trying to leave myself enough space for a half 
> decent cobra with half rolls and get my outside loop to end anywhere 
> near the same altitude where it started. 
> 
> P.P.S., 
> To take the fun out of a seemingly silly assertion and simultaneously 
> demonstrating my analytical bent one last time: Supposing I stretch 
> my fuel to get 60 minutes flight time out of a gallon (this is a 
> 140DZ we're talking about), and supposing I get a great deal of 
> $16.50 per gallon on my fuel (this is YS 30% fuel we're talking 
> about), I only need to have flown 12 hours on the simulator to equal 
> its cost in fuel. I would guess I average at least 20 minutes a 
> day, so it pays for itself in fuel alone in 36 days. 
> 
> 
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