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<DIV>......and abundantly allitervative as welll............</DIV>
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<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">-------------- Original message -------------- <BR><BR>> Here we are in an event which could easily be mistaken for highly technical in <BR>> nature ... but it's really an aerial beauty contest. <BR>> <BR>> Feeling foolishly philosophical <BR>> <BR>> Dean Pappas <BR>> Sr. Design Engineer <BR>> Kodeos Communications <BR>> 111 Corporate Blvd. <BR>> South Plainfield, N.J. 07080 <BR>> (908) 222-7817 phone <BR>> (908) 222-2392 fax <BR>> d.pappas@kodeos.com <BR>> <BR>> <BR>> -----Original Message----- <BR>> From: discussion-request@nsrca.org <BR>> [mailto:discussion-request@nsrca.org]On Behalf Of Jeff H. Snider <BR>> Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 12:03 AM <BR>> To: discussion@nsrca.org <BR>> Subject: Re: prop formula <BR>> <BR>> <BR>> I don't want to try and decide what portion of any endeavor is art <BR>> and what is science. The Wright brothers were dilettantes very short <BR>> on art but long on luck. Any less lucky and physically talented <BR>> people would have failed to fly that contraption of theirs. A great <BR>> deal of money and time was recently spent demonstrating that fact, <BR>> unfortunately for all the people involved. (If you ever have a <BR>> chance to visit the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport NY, along with <BR>> a huge and wonderful display of aviation history there's an infectious <BR>> undercurrent of distain for all things Wright.) <BR>> <BR>> I'm in favor of art, and I believe a good scientist is just a kind <BR>> of artist who keeps good notes and follows a very strict methodology. <BR>> What I said was "Maybe by then science will have more fully displaced <BR>> art." Meaning with a full molecule-by-molecule simulator a scientist <BR>> could create and test a new airfoil in under a minute, instead of <BR>> weeks painstakingly crafting a model and testing it in a wind tunnel, <BR>> so we can accumulate a lot more facts and rely less on intuition. <BR>> Science never eliminates art, but I'd rely on facts and technology <BR>> in place of guesses any day of the week. <BR>> <BR>> I haven't in fact seen a good Analog Engineer. I didn't know they still <BR>> existed. But then I've been a software guy too long and all that <BR>> hardware stuff just appears on the loading dock courtesy of FedEx. <BR>> Nobody actually builds it, do they? <BR>> <BR>> I am indeed flying Intermediate next season. I'm desperately trying <BR>> to remember all the maneuvers in the correct order before competing <BR>> this weekend at BARKS. Thank heaven for the simulator. It has <BR>> paid for itself in YS 30% fuel alone by now! <BR>> <BR>> -Jeff <BR>> <BR>> P.S., <BR>> In terms of progress and a by-the-molecules simulation of air, the <BR>> numbers don't leave much room for error. Take the number of molecules <BR>> in a liter of air (3e22), the radius of the space a molecule has <BR>> to itself at an instant of time (30 angstroms), the speed of the <BR>> molecules (3e12 angstroms/second), and you find the need to do 3e33 <BR>> calculations per second. Today we can do 3e9 calculations per <BR>> second, so we need to get our computers 1e24 times faster to compute <BR>> this liter of air in realtime. Of course it takes more than one <BR>> calculation per molecule, and conversely of course really smart <BR>> algorithms can reduce the number of necessary calculations by maybe <BR>> a factor of billion. But just to keep things simple, if computers <BR>> double in speed every 18 months, and it takes 80 doublings to reach <BR>> 1e24, that's 120 years. If I'm off by a factor of a billion, it <BR>> takes 75 years. And unless we forget the "supercomputers", the <BR>> supposed fastest in the world was running at 36 teraflops in <BR>> September: 1000 times faster than today's desktop computers, meaning <BR>> the scientists get there 15 years ahead of us desktop computer guys. <BR>> If I live to be a really old scientist, maybe I'll see it happen. <BR>> For now I'm just trying to leave myself enough space for a half <BR>> decent cobra with half rolls and get my outside loop to end anywhere <BR>> near the same altitude where it started. <BR>> <BR>> P.P.S., <BR>> To take the fun out of a seemingly silly assertion and simultaneously <BR>> demonstrating my analytical bent one last time: Supposing I stretch <BR>> my fuel to get 60 minutes flight time out of a gallon (this is a <BR>> 140DZ we're talking about), and supposing I get a great deal of <BR>> $16.50 per gallon on my fuel (this is YS 30% fuel we're talking <BR>> about), I only need to have flown 12 hours on the simulator to equal <BR>> its cost in fuel. I would guess I average at least 20 minutes a <BR>> day, so it pays for itself in fuel alone in 36 days. <BR>> <BR>> <BR></BLOCKQUOTE></body></html>