I would like to see this succeed, and after seeing this video I have a bit more optimism, but it's still a lot of hurdles to overcome. And if they have an accident (release timing error > 1ms), will do major damage to their launch chamber, probably taking months of repairs to recover from. Whereas SpaceX is almost proud of their rocket failures...

I was pessimistic a few months back, after seeing Thunderfoot's "busted" videos about Spinlaunch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ziGI0i9VbE ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibSJ_yy96iE ; but his analysis is much more "armchair" whereas Brian was actually there on-site and has more (previously unpublished) information.

Scott Manley also did a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0&t=4s
but it's more of a "how it works" and has a lot of overlap of info with the above Real Engineering video.

a real engine just an air pump. The combustion is what gives the air the force needed to move the cylinder.

This is the same thing, but because it's paper it only needs a bit of forced air, so if you were a mouse, you could put this in your tiny mouse car and work a little pump to drive around....

very impressive!

Even though it's gimmicky, I'll keep playing my Bulletstorm and maybe Crysis 2 (you know, a real engine). These games also don't need to suck the U.S. Military Industrial Complex's Dick at every turn.

I'm so tired of military shooters and even sci-fi shooters (and that includes Crysis, but Crysis saved itself with an amazing engine and sandbox gameplay, "an Oblivion FPS") that have to have their military command and objective structure, copying each other, not too mention they all come out from basically the same three companies...

I still think the engine to beat is the Crysis or Crytek's engine. To me it would be great for everything from RPGs to puzzlers, but they don't have the toolset like Unreal does. You can look at the top FPS games across the board and all of them but Bulletstorm have a military oriented gameplay or mechanic driving it. To an old-school gamer it's incredibly frustrating to have such a bland choice of games.

They are ALL the same except for textures, voice work, animation, and what comes out the tip of the big pointy thing. Exciting... I'd rather play Crysis I over again and again, or Portal, or Half-Life 2... Sorry, but Halo goes in with the ad nauseum group.

This is why open source is the REAL engine to the advancement of the arts, and not copyright and trademark.

LOL! Oh, come on, JD. Stupiest video ever? EVER? Personally, I enjoyed the video. Love thinking about stuff like this hearing what others think up. This is a pretty horrible disaster, and I have no doubt there are millions and millions of armchair engineers (and real engineers) around the world who have both good and not-so-good ideas on how to solve it. I wouldn't diss or belittle any of them their noble, well-meaning, and often frustrated efforts and ideas. That said, I wonder if the benefits of Venturi effect (lower pressure of increasing fluid flow) when inserting the dreidel outweigh the adverse effect of Pascal (fluid at rest acting on the much larger surface area of the cone) when the dreidel is fully inserted. Not an expert, just thinking out loud.

Idiots? Basic concepts of physic? Really? REALLY?

You're right the sea floor isn't like rock, but it's not like they just jammed a pipe a few feet into the seabed and called her good. That well is likely many thousands of feet below the seafloor (lined with pipe the whole way). While it undoubtedly passes through layers of porous rock, that oil has remained where it is for millions of years under impermeable (to the oil) rock. If it wasn't impermeable, the oil wouldn't be there.

I have no idea what the pressure of the oil is, but, as you said in your comment, it's the differential pressure that matters. The BOP would not explode. No effin' way. It's not the same as Popeye putting his finger in Bluto's gun barrel and the barrel blows up like a balloon 'til it explodes in poor Bluto's face. Pascal's Law just doesn't work that way. And although you used it as an example, rather than an estimate of well pressure, 400 PSI ain't shit. If you were bemoaning the total pressure on the inside of a pipe with relatively large surface area, be rest-assured that people smarter than us long ago figured out appropriate pipewall thickness/diameter ratios for anticipated operating pressures for a given material (with slide-rules and shit). The current devastation notwithstanding, imho, it's not due to a pipe rupturing (at the seafloor). 5000' of oil head is lighter than 5000' feet of water head, so the pressure difference of a cap at the BOP would be even lower. I'm on my second glass of Cuvee, so I may have that exactly backwards. W/E.

The cement thingy... LOL! I hope you were just being smarmy, because unless you're using super Star Trek Horta cement or something, the only way I can think of to stop the flow after cutting off the BOP (short of relief wells) is to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.


>> ^joedirt:

Stupidest video I've ever seen on the sift.
Do you idiots have any basic concepts of physics? Seriously, 21" pipe, 66 in^2, 5000 psi (maybe 400psi relative to water pressure). First of all, the sea floor there isn't like rock, secondly the BOP would explode if they plugged the leak (and is probably already leaking), thirdly, the sink a ship on it is better solution then some idiot sitting around with a hose and sticking his thumb in it to come up with ideas.
If they thought the oil wouldn't leak out from somewhere else, they would just cut off the BOP and get a giant bag and start pumping down cement down to cover the sea floor around the well head.

Ahh yeah, you can also print models in ABS plastic, metal, and some special rubber like materials.
The coolest thing I ever saw printed was a combustion engine, that was printed with water soluble joint spacers so that when you dissolve them it actually works like a real engine, pistons going up and down, and it was only 5cm x 5cm