dieseltaylor

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Michelin-Historical-Map-102-Normandy/dp/2067002627 About £3 for Juin/Aout 1944 and shows the flooded areas. Also marked are the invasion beaches etc. and movements. In that respect Snake Eyes clean copy might be very useful for areas other than the flooded.

Russian infantry would fire at a tanks vision ports as after a while the number of replacement vision blocks would run out and the German tank would become more and more blinded. Of course you do have to be a bit nutty to be that close - unless you are a sniper or have an ATR<

c3k http://northirishhorse.net/articles/13-2.html You can also read of the downed fighter and the luck when machine gunning tanks from the air! : )

Ease of play is generally reckoned to be a selling point. Command lines would have been a whole lot simpler, this seems complication ["realism"] for complications sake. Different colours for different levels would have accomplished the same effect. I am quite surprised at this design decision.

Wow - what manuals that Maggie. I am impressed you have it to hand!

Missing. There's a thought. I know of a 75mm missing a destroyer [as in a ship] at a couple hundred of metres. Of an 88 missing a raging Churchill coming across a causeway. When I say raging I think it tops out at 15mph.

I am working my way through http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_171.shtml I am enjoying it. Good stuff. Particularly interesting was Regarding alternative power - well one of the solutions might be storing the hydrogen gas when there is oversupply to burn in generators if sufficient is derived from the wind. However I think the US has figures for days of sufficient wind when calculating their figures. It is a matter of looking at base load and what can be stored from fluctuating sources. Though sunshine has a pretty good availability record which could be harnessed. And anyone familiar with Spain will wonder how much energy they are saving by solar heating water from their roofs. Compare this to the US where I suspect the idea is very much less common even in similar latitudes. Less power used less needs generating.

If we get away from the "little" England approach to considering power production : I understand other countries have superior sunshine hours and more land than the UK so in general perhaps it is a matter of choosing what makes the most sense for each country. As a fundamental rule though I believe in having some redundancy in the system so that areas can exist without total reliance on National grids. Generating hydrogen as a fuel would make renewable electricity more functional than purely electrical generation and the need to balance load.

Todays news. What is interesting in this is that India has one of the largest stocks of thorium and is also about to run a thorium reactor. Curious !?

Shooting range statistics do read well and there are plenty of RL anecdotes where what should have happened did not even at very short ranges. So the exceptional results are the number of first round hits during battle where a continual high rate might be significant. The other area of interest is how much does obscuration feature in the game engine for assessing chances to hit. Mind you I am not going to worry about it yet - I have to learn to play first.!

I bought a gaming keyboard* with three blocks of 6 G function keys to map too after I had seen the CMSF demo game - not wanting to learn any bad habits I did not play it. When I understand the game better I will probably map to them! *LoGitech G11

First shot hits are interesting. A function of how long in view for the target to be acquired and if moving how fast and in what direction, and crew quality/ training. It will be interesting to see the stats, not to difficult in WeGo to note them.

I suppose the irritation is compounded as we remained loyal to the true faith, WW2, and these heretics are engaged in a nose-rubbing ceremony. Which is of course disrespectful. We shall beat their arses in RoW VI.

Tsk tsk, Of course I read it. And as I get the New Scientist each week its not like I have no clue. OM - if you read it then you will see that the total chosen was simply based on current usage and explored the situation from there. If you prefer the author might have said I will assume 33% of current usage and extrapolated from there - but then no doubt some bright spark is going to start talking of why restrict nuclear power to 33%!! : ) I am sure we can argue parts of the general thesis, and then I will ask what do YOU think the worlds power demand will be in 10 years time. I agree some of the assumptions made seem to be based on current technologies and we all know how quickly science will move us on to newer less waste producing forms. I cannot argue the specialist mineral aspects as I do not know enough. Thorium reactors are fine in theory unfortunately the details have not yet been ironed out. AFAIR the first thorium reactor lasted 4 years before being mothballed because the highly specialist steels used were not up to the corrosion of the process. But thorium is very much back in favour and perhaps this year India will have the first commercial one operating. Given though the time-lags in some countries I would imagine it is going to be 20-30 years before this design makes serious in-roads to the power generation spectrum. SO 51 years and counting : ) The point that Abbot highlights on rare minerals may be a problem however advances in nano-technology - and things like the glass like steel - may actually solve that particular niggle . However there is plenty time likely needed to resolve that. There is also how often new facilities would be required to be built to replace old reactors, and the area required. Capture of solar energy has a lot to be said for it still as it can be captured pretty nearly everywhere during the day. WIndows can capture energy, roof tiles can etc with current technology - perhaps not commercially yet but then these things take time So overall it does make sense not to ignore the simpler solutions whilst waiting to see if thorium reactors will be successful in a commercial way.

Agree : ) blank space to meet minimum character requirement : )

Kind of interesting to see what the limitations are and realise that other sources HAVE to be used: PhysOrg.com) -- The 440 commercial nuclear reactors in use worldwide are currently helping to minimize our consumption of fossil fuels, but how much bigger can nuclear power get? In an analysis to be published in a future issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE, Derek Abbott, Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia, has concluded that nuclear power cannot be globally scaled to supply the world’s energy needs for numerous reasons. The results suggest that we’re likely better off investing in other energy solutions that are truly scalable. As Abbott notes in his study, global power consumption today is about 15 terawatts (TW). Currently, the global nuclear power supply capacity is only 375 gigawatts (GW). In order to examine the large-scale limits of nuclear power, Abbott estimates that to supply 15 TW with nuclear only, we would need about 15,000 nuclear reactors. In his analysis, Abbott explores the consequences of building, operating, and decommissioning 15,000 reactors on the Earth, looking at factors such as the amount of land required, radioactive waste, accident rate, risk of proliferation into weapons, uranium abundance and extraction, and the exotic metals used to build the reactors themselves. “A nuclear power station is resource-hungry and, apart from the fuel, uses many rare metals in its construction,” Abbott told PhysOrg.com. “The dream of a utopia where the world is powered off fission or fusion reactors is simply unattainable. Even a supply of as little as 1 TW stretches resources considerably.” His findings, some of which are based on the results of previous studies, are summarized below. Land and location: One nuclear reactor plant requires about 20.5 km2 (7.9 mi2) of land to accommodate the nuclear power station itself, its exclusion zone, its enrichment plant, ore processing, and supporting infrastructure. Secondly, nuclear reactors need to be located near a massive body of coolant water, but away from dense population zones and natural disaster zones. Simply finding 15,000 locations on Earth that fulfill these requirements is extremely challenging. Lifetime: Every nuclear power station needs to be decommissioned after 40-60 years of operation due to neutron embrittlement - cracks that develop on the metal surfaces due to radiation. If nuclear stations need to be replaced every 50 years on average, then with 15,000 nuclear power stations, one station would need to be built and another decommissioned somewhere in the world every day. Currently, it takes 6-12 years to build a nuclear station, and up to 20 years to decommission one, making this rate of replacement unrealistic. Nuclear waste: Although nuclear technology has been around for 60 years, there is still no universally agreed mode of disposal. It’s uncertain whether burying the spent fuel and the spent reactor vessels (which are also highly radioactive) may cause radioactive leakage into groundwater or the environment via geological movement. Accident rate: To date, there have been 11 nuclear accidents at the level of a full or partial core-melt. These accidents are not the minor accidents that can be avoided with improved safety technology; they are rare events that are not even possible to model in a system as complex as a nuclear station, and arise from unforeseen pathways and unpredictable circumstances (such as the Fukushima accident). Considering that these 11 accidents occurred during a cumulated total of 14,000 reactor-years of nuclear operations, scaling up to 15,000 reactors would mean we would have a major accident somewhere in the world every month. Proliferation: The more nuclear power stations, the greater the likelihood that materials and expertise for making nuclear weapons may proliferate. Although reactors have proliferation resistance measures, maintaining accountability for 15,000 reactor sites worldwide would be nearly impossible. Uranium abundance: At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years. (Viable uranium is the uranium that exists in a high enough ore concentration so that extracting the ore is economically justified.) Uranium extraction from seawater: Uranium is most often mined from the Earth’s crust, but it can also be extracted from seawater, which contains large quantities of uranium (3.3 ppb, or 4.6 trillion kg). Theoretically, that amount would last for 5,700 years using conventional reactors to supply 15 TW of power. (In fast breeder reactors, which extend the use of uranium by a factor of 60, the uranium could last for 300,000 years. However, Abbott argues that these reactors’ complexity and cost makes them uncompetitive.) Moreover, as uranium is extracted, the uranium concentration of seawater decreases, so that greater and greater quantities of water are needed to be processed in order to extract the same amount of uranium. Abbott calculates that the volume of seawater that would need to be processed would become economically impractical in much less than 30 years. Exotic metals: The nuclear containment vessel is made of a variety of exotic rare metals that control and contain the nuclear reaction: hafnium as a neutron absorber, beryllium as a neutron reflector, zirconium for cladding, and niobium to alloy steel and make it last 40-60 years against neutron embrittlement. Extracting these metals raises issues involving cost, sustainability, and environmental impact. In addition, these metals have many competing industrial uses; for example, hafnium is used in microchips and beryllium by the semiconductor industry. If a nuclear reactor is built every day, the global supply of these exotic metals needed to build nuclear containment vessels would quickly run down and create a mineral resource crisis. This is a new argument that Abbott puts on the table, which places resource limits on all future-generation nuclear reactors, whether they are fueled by thorium or uranium. As Abbott notes, many of these same problems would plague fusion reactors in addition to fission reactors, even though commercial fusion is still likely a long way off. Of course, not many nuclear advocates are calling for a complete nuclear utopia, in which nuclear power supplies the entire world’s energy needs. But many nuclear advocates suggest that we should produce 1 TW of power from nuclear energy, which may be feasible, at least in the short term. However, if one divides Abbott’s figures by 15, one still finds that 1 TW is barely feasible. Therefore, Abbott argues that, if this technology cannot be fundamentally scaled further than 1 TW, perhaps the same investment would be better spent on a fully scalable technology. “Due to the cost, complexity, resource requirements, and tremendous problems that hang over nuclear power, our investment dollars would be more wisely placed elsewhere,” Abbott said. “Every dollar that goes into nuclear power is dollar that has been diverted from assisting the rapid uptake of a safe and scalable solution such as solar thermal.” Solar thermal devices harness the Sun’s energy to produce heat that creates steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity. Solar thermal technology avoids many of the scalability problems facing nuclear technology. For instance, although a solar thermal farm requires a little more land area than the equivalent nuclear power infrastructure, it can be located in unused desert areas. It also uses safer, more abundant materials. Most importantly, solar thermal can be scaled to produce not just 15 TW, but hundreds of TW if it would ever be required. However, the biggest problem with solar thermal technology is cloudy days and nighttime. Abbott plans to investigate a number of storage solutions for this intermittency problem, which also plagues other renewable energy solutions such as wind power, in a future study. In the transition period, he suggests that the dual-use of natural gas with solar thermal farms is the pathway to building our future energy infrastructure. More information: Derek Abbott. “Is nuclear power globally scalable?” Proceedings of the IEEE. To be published. © 2010 PhysOrg.com

Having had three doctors [by marriage] in the family I am can faithfully report they are as flawed as the next person. And yes it is a struggle getting qualified and I suspect UK doctors work as hard as US doctors to qualify. And yes they do protect either actively or passively doctors who are going wrong. And I suspect nobody likes to rock the boat when cash is around. AB I see you are complaining that the US advertising industry is peddling unwise adverts to unwise people! Can this be a democratic right being assailed : 0 It is a sorry can of worms the US health industry. It would be nice to see the doctors take on the lawyers in a trial of strength to get tort reform. If necessary and the doctors withdrew cover for lawyers they could become folk heroes over night : )

My solution is for the US and Europe to launch a raid on the approximately $10 trillion of private money which is held through tax-havens. View it as a re-run of the Disoolution of the Monasterys by Henry VIII. Conveniently this will also destroy those tax-havens and recover much criminal loot. The money of course does not actually sit in the Cayman islands in a large hill but is laundered through NY and London. Therefore any money requiring to go off-shore - that is say Euro-Bonds sold to raise cash will be blocked from transfer out. Holders of bonds or deposits, shares etc where the ownership is not a named individual will have to attempt recovery through the courts showing the source of the investment funds is legal. In my view widows and orphans rarely keep their money in off-shore entities and I believe that this move will actually inconvenience very few. There is the possibility of legal challenges but once the arguments have been made I am confident that some retroactive legislation will clear up any loopholes.

You do know that the fine country of Australia was the home of a bogus medical journal recommending drugs. AFAIR as I can recall it is somewhere buried here in the Forum. You may have noticed my concerns for the health of America, and the stupidity of some of their officials - I may have an answer. The US is busy poisoning itself both in brain power and general health!!!!!! http://www.gizmag.com/pesticides-food-iq-children/18583 See here for a variety of other chemicals that have been subject to research and shown to have dangerous health effects. http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/home.action

I should think the remotely flown/ or independent drone fighter should be ready by then. : )

JonS - you should have mentioned Takrouna earlier. I might see if I can arrange at least one serious battle : )

lemomn - I agree with you in that it seems an unlikely hit because of the trees /undergrowth tight each side. However as I not trained on bazooka, PIAT, air to ground rockets, gun damage, I cannot be categoric. I must admit I would have thought a penetrating rocket would make a big mess with its HE once. Also I would be unable to tell which nationality fired the rocket but fortunately the person who annotated it could. : ) Wiki http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/AAF-H-DDay/index.html And yes this is the famous claim for tank-busting HMGs

Good thing this is not UK domiciled jcmil : ) And you are not apparently in the UK for that matter.

http://www.battleofnormandytours.com/photos-op-luttich.html Nice photos. Note pavement, widths of roads, etc

I think I can see an element of confusion. Firstly as pointed out previously averages can only take you so far. What is BF and players are most interested in is what is the likelihood of a single CAS mission destroying a tank and given the Mortain sortie rate the answer must be vanishingly small - but not impossible. There are a couple of other points. The OR was a collated report from two teams one for the Army and one from TAC airforce and one cannot but help wonder what training there was, and if vested interest in the results was a factor. One only has to look at the death of Wittman to see how "easy" it is to establish the facts. One thing I can be fairly dogmatic about is that the TAC would not be understated as the damage would be different from ground force kill. It is possibly overstated as rockets may well hide evidence of prior kill by a penetrating round.