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Writing a short story; info about naval rank structure and particle physics?


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Writing a short story; info about naval rank structure and particle physics?
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Enki
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
 
2009-08-11, 22:42

Quote:
Originally Posted by 709 View Post
Unless I'm not getting what your saying exactly (entirely possible), wouldn't a third coordinate be needed to measure "vertical?"

Let's say we have GC > Sol as our home vector, then any perpendicular angle starting at GC as our vertical vector. Wouldn't we need some sort of reference as to what angle vertical starts at? I could either be 1000 parsecs above or beneath Sol and I'd still have the same coordinates wrt to the horizontal and vertical vectors if I didn't have some other coordinate telling me I was over or under our system.

Does that make sense?

Basically we need another horizontal marker intersecting the Sol/GC point at a 90 degree angle.

I doubt we could use the galactic disk as a value, since the absolute edge/center of that probably couldn't be defined (and wouldn't work anyways if we wanted our system to be a 0 data point), so what could be used? Ideally it'd be something "fixed" like the GC, but since that's impossible, would something like Earth's orbit be a decent marker? Neptune's? The Kuiper belt?

I don't know. I'm wondering.
You aren't getting it, there already is a "vertical" handling coordinate in there, but it isn't "pure vertical".

Look at a globe. Now take a look at the Equator/Prime Meridian junction. That is located at 0º; r-3965mi; mark-0º

Now if we only count up while moving along the surface counter-clockwise (Eastwards), looking down from a vantage point over the North Pole, there are 360º all the way around the circle ending back at the same Zero point.

The radius is how far we are from the center of the Earth (as an oblate spheroid the Earth bulges at the equator and even there isn't perfectly circular so it is only an approximation).

The mark is just a way of disambiguating the second angle from the first. If we count upwards (Northward) while moving along the surface counter-clockwise, seen from a vantage point over Kansas, we can follow the Prime Meridian around, over the top back down the 180º longitude meridian, under the bottom and back up to the equator passing through the full 360º

As long as you define a single vector anywhere, you have the starting vector for both angles, horizontal and vertical, then you add the radial distance from the vector origin and have a fully disambiguated 3D Polar Coordinate system. It's just a simple 3D version of the 2D geometric unit circle.

The strict use of counter-clockwise winding is a convention that makes the math easier when comparing vectors. It also is consistent with the Right Hand Rule (related to righty-tighty for screws) for torques which can make the math easier for crossing orbits and determining how much energy is necessary to pull it off. If you number clockwise, then you would need to use everything else clockwise too and apply the left hand rule which makes me go cross eyed even though it is only a mirror image relation.

We Earthlings are stuck with the current whacked out lat/long convention as the English were the first to solve the problem of how to measure longitude at an arbitrary point on the globe and decided their own Greenwich Observatory should be 0º. No. Matter. What. The center of God's Earth. So they decided to count outwards in both directions, rather than all the way around once. They then wrote that part of the navigation book and we are stuck with it. Latitude had been figured out much earlier and the equator was already established as equidistant from the poles, so those whacky English couldn't make things any worse than what they did.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2009-08-11, 23:50

Ahhhh. Now I get it.

That makes total sense.

For some reason I was fixated on having a designated "equator," but your way is much more logical and elegant.
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Kraetos
Lovable Bastard
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2009-08-28, 22:20

Question: during general quarters, where does the engineering officer stand watch? I imagine it would be either engineering or CIC.

My Dad was an electrician's mate on the Enterprise in the 70's, and he says he never once saw the chief engineering officer in engineering during general quarters, so we're assuming it's CIC.

Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.
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Anonymous Coward
Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2009-08-28, 22:56

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraetos View Post
Question: during general quarters, where does the engineering officer stand watch? I imagine it would be either engineering or CIC.

My Dad was an electrician's mate on the Enterprise in the 70's, and he says he never once saw the chief engineering officer in engineering during general quarters, so we're assuming it's CIC.
Regarding submarine operations, I do not remember seeing the Engineering Officer in the engineering spaces during general quarters. In the officer watchstation hierarchy, the Engineering Officer of the Watch is a relatively junior watchstation. In any case, the Engineer would not assume the Engineering Officer of the Watch.

I'm not sure if the Engineer would stand watch. The Commanding Officer may wish to leave him available to go to the engineering spaces in the case of an emergency. It is possible for the Engineer to be assigned the Officer of the Deck watch if he is recognized as a particularly good boat driver. So, I guess my answer is that the Engineer may not necessarily be assigned a watchstation.

As an example, I was normally an engineering watchstander. However, on my first boat, during General quarters / battlestations, my watch was on the Conn (equivalent to the CIC) as something called a "Time-Frequency" plotter, which is related to sonar information.
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Enki
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
 
2009-08-29, 00:05

From my experience, the CV/CVN engineer would either be in Main Control (he has a captain's chair there), or in Damage Control Central. Likely walking between the two as he saw fit. Main Control is essentially the reactor control room and DC Central is just what it sounds like, a small room with schematics of the ship & equipment. On a USN ship it is usually in the vicinity of Main Control rather than CIC/CDC.

On a small ship the engineer may be a TAO as well so potentially on watch there.
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Kraetos
Lovable Bastard
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2010-02-26, 23:38

What would happen if a powerful charged particle beam (like a phaser) hit a depleted uranium railgun round moving at roughly .2c head on? Would it vaporize or explode? Or both?

Last edited by Kraetos : 2010-02-26 at 23:58.
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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2010-02-26, 23:49

My guess is you'd have a cloud of vaporized DU particles moving towards you at .2c.
A missile or other explosive projectile might be cooked off, but a slug wouldn't explode necessarily.

You'd still face a potential impact, but shielding might stand up to teensy tiny particles where it would never handle a larger solid mass.
IIRC, ISS and Shuttle are rated for MicroMeteoroidOrbitalDebris up to about 1.2mm diameter at tens of thousands of kph.
Plenty of pitted windows from grain of dust/sand stuff at those speeds. Bigger stuff is a serious hull breach hazard.

Caveat: I have not tried this.

All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2010-02-27 at 00:02.
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