It's only 12,000kms from your place to Sydney or Brisbane, you're practically next door. An L.A. stopover on the way sounds plausible though.

This video contains disingenuous information. Those statistics are completely false.

@chingalera It's working a lot better than the current USA situation. Here's a few legitimate facts relating to the content in that video.

1. You can still buy guns (pistols, rifles, shotguns), just not the ridiculously unjustified mass human slaying variants.
2. It's better controlled with systems setup to decrease the chance of consistently unstable minds getting hold of guns of any type.
3. Gun homicides were increasing leading up to the gun control (1996), from that peak to now, it's about a 59% drop.
4. 1996-2006 about 65% drop in gun suicides.
5. Robberies involving guns dropped significantly.
6. There was no increase in home invasions.
7. In the 10 years leading up to the gun control there were 11 mass shootings.. since gun control went into affect, there have been 0.

Homicide weapon statistics (image): Guns vs Knives from 1989/90 to 2006/7
Quick answer: 50% drop for guns, 30% rise for knives
http://aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide/weapon.html

"A 2011 letter published in the British Medical Journal by Simon Chapman, a professor of public health from the University of Sydney, observed that the U.S. had 14.4 times the population of Australia but 141 times as as many deaths from firearms in 2008 as Australia and 238 times the rate of firearms-related homicide."
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2012/12/20/gun-control-searching-down-under-for-change-to-believe-in/
If the current ratio's are even remotely similar to this quote, then Americans can't say jack about the Australian statistics.

@charliem Good links mate.

Upvote for the 'Lies' tag.

spoco2 said he was taking them outside in cups - I meant it's best not to do that if it were a Sydney funnel-web. They're all bitey ouchy.

Unless it's a Sydney funnel-web spider. It's best not to handle them...

I'm trained by the AMEB (Australian Musical Examinations Board). I learned more from this video, than a year with them at the Sydney conservatorium. They unfortunately made me, make learning music a chore. I had too many a heated conversation with instructors. It never felt like joy.
Oscar Paterson makes me want to learn again, what a difference a teacher makes.

*promote

>> ^deathcow:

They must be talking about using space to get from Europe to Australia, as friction is a real bitch otherwise.

Possibly, although I think its somewhat more likely they'd just be flying at very high altitudes where the atmosphere is very thin.


From what I read on wiki it seems the engine is basically rocket/turbine hybrid. They use liquid hydrogen as fuel but instead of storing oxygen they suck it out of the air. The problem the cooling fixes seems to be related to supersonic airflow. Turbine engines need subsonic airflow to work properly so they use a ram, a cone on the front of the turbine, to slow the airflow before it enters the engine. This heats the air entering the engine up a lot, hot air takes up more space and so its difficult to get enough oxygen to the hydrogen fuel. Cooling the air after it passes over the ram lowers the air pressure and allows more air to pass through the engine. Scramjets approach this problem a different way in that they can operate with supersonic airflow, although they have the limitation of not working subsonic.

Anyway. Its quite fascinating. I don't think we'll be seeing commercial aircraft using this technology anytime soon though. I'd be pretty nervous about flying on something that is basically rocket powered. Space tourism maybe? If it can fly to high altitudes with the turbine and then switch seamlessly to using onboard oxygen it could be a much more efficient way of getting into space without using onboard oxygen the whole way up.

Oh, and RIP Concorde. I used to go to school under their flightpath out of Heathrow. 11am on Wednesdays they used to rattle the windows passing over.

This will be awesome if I ever move to London and decide to buy a summer home in Sydney.

>> ^Ickster:

Technological questions aside, the economics will likely never work for scheduled flights. Concorde was scrapped because it was a money loser, not because it didn't work. I don't see anything here that suggests a ticket on this thing wouldn't be astronomically expensive.


Actually this is wrong. The Concorde did lose money at first, but then they did a survey asking people how much they thought a ticket from NYC to London on the Concorde would cost, and the results of the survey was that everyone thought it was more expensive than they were actually charging. So then they decided to charge a lot more for the tickets and market it as a "luxury" flight. This gimmick was successful - it became more profitable than any other division of BA.

It was retired after the famous crash while taking off in France. Even though that was it's only crash, after long investigation, and decline in first class passengers, they never brought it back.

I'm glad that many of them made it to museums, because the Concorde was a phenomenal piece of engineering.

I have no idea how well this Reaction Engine will work, but I hope to see it succeed.

>> ^bmacs27:

Alan Bong or Alan Bond? Those two names have very different connotations.


Thanks for catching my typo. I'm sure Mr. Bong would be a lot more fun guy to hang with, though!

Your video, 4.5 hr flight from London to Sydney, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^spoco2:

He did not explain things particularly well.
He said it was a pre-cooler, it showed that it could cool air from +1000C down to -150C in 1/100 sec which is pretty amazing. And he said that this was cooling air going into the engine down to that temp...
However he never explained the problem this was solving. What temperature is air usually going into the engine? Why does it need to be cold? What happens if you don't cool it?
Just a poorly written piece, did not lay out Problem->Solution very well at all.
By the sounds of it, it's pretty amazing tech, just wish this were better at explaining it.


my guess would be cold air is denser, which means the engine can produce more thrust and is therefore more efficient. Just a hunch.

Space - whatever. Sydney to London in 4.5 hours - awesome!

Ok, I've only watched one episode, but the similarities were overwhelming to me. How is it different?
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
Hey thanks for reminding me I've been meaning to check out The Games. Just watched a couple of episodes and it's really pretty fantastic. I'm not sure Twenty Twelve can be accused of ripping them off any more than, say, The Thick of It could be said to have ripped off Yes, Minister; but there are a lot of similarities. Now I just wish there was a Beijing version.
In reply to this comment by kymbos:
Two things about Twenty Twelve:

1. It's a rip off of an Australian comedy set before the Sydney Olympics. The creators pitched it to the BBC, who passed then made one exactly the same.

2. It's not very funny. It's like a who's who of b-grade British comedic actors.

Will have a look at Him & Her if it's any good.

Hey thanks for reminding me I've been meaning to check out The Games. Just watched a couple of episodes and it's really pretty fantastic. I'm not sure Twenty Twelve can be accused of ripping them off any more than, say, The Thick of It could be said to have ripped off Yes, Minister; but there are a lot of similarities. Now I just wish there was a Beijing version.
In reply to this comment by kymbos:
Two things about Twenty Twelve:

1. It's a rip off of an Australian comedy set before the Sydney Olympics. The creators pitched it to the BBC, who passed then made one exactly the same.

2. It's not very funny. It's like a who's who of b-grade British comedic actors.

Will have a look at Him & Her if it's any good.

Two things about Twenty Twelve:

1. It's a rip off of an Australian comedy set before the Sydney Olympics. The creators pitched it to the BBC, who passed then made one exactly the same.

2. It's not very funny. It's like a who's who of b-grade British comedic actors.

Will have a look at Him & Her if it's any good.