This has actually been done, although normally air is pulled out of the wheel and not in (since you normally want to draw hot air out of the engine bay more than you have brake cooling issues). Advantages are slim versus ducting, and they do add weight. Here’s an example:

I know this is a bad image, but it shows the two intended configurations of the QE class:

The whole idea of this thing is to drop launch costs for small (<200kg) satellites from $50m to $15m (potentially as low as $12m), comparing with the current incumbent Pegasus. If this launch were a success, the program would have already broke even on development costs. Two successful launches now will break even.…

In my original post, I basically stated that a certain type of policy exists, which the person I was replying to may not be aware of. I did not promote the policy as something I personally support or believe, and I included the caveats that policy may not align with action, and that policy can fail. You then…

I think that we can be certain that nearly every developed country has undertaken advanced design studies of practically every type of weapon of mass destruction, so no ally of Japan would necessarily have to “lose” some documents nearby. These design studies are often required to develop any sort of defensive…

“They” being Japan or “they” being Iran?

Perhaps you’ll have to explain your reasoning to me. I stated their policy, and then stated policy can fail, that public policy may differ from internal policy, and that we can in no way trust them to maintain their policy. In what way to I believe we should “trust them”?

By no means do I believe we should just assume that Iran’s plan is to maintain a low latency. That’s not a game of chicken I want to play. Generally we have no option, diplomatically, but to assume the worst. But academically the only rationale you need to pose a question is that it be interesting.

No, I don’t. If we could trust other nations to conform in the future to their policies of today, we would not need professional diplomats, we would not need professional soldiers, and certainly we would not need to maintain stockpiles of weapons. Indeed, expecting others to not conform with their own policy is the…

I’m in no way suggesting that we assume the best behavior of others as a matter of policy. Indeed, we should assume the worst, which is why countries scale back to a minimum deterrent as opposed to a total abolition of nuclear weapons. The issue is that NATO policy includes first use and the use of tactical weapons as…

Iran’s policy has been interpreted by some to be aimed at maintaining a very low nuclear latency, as opposed to the actual possession of the weapons. The threat of developing nuclear weapons can be a bigger diplomatic chip to carry than actually possessing them; as long as they don’t actually have weapons right this…

There’s a reason I included a caveat.

There’s a reason why some of the nuclear-armed nations - China and India - maintain what is known as the minimal credible threat. The size of their nuclear arsenals are dictated by the minimum number able to make the cost of a first-strike unacceptably high. The only scenario in which they would be used is if their…

Given an appropriate transmission, power is everything. If you have the right power, and an appropriate transmission, you can make whatever torque you need at the wheels, at the speed you need it. The power tractors need is very low, because they’re usually limited by maximum tractive force, as opposed to power.

It is a high-school dynamics exercise to show that a vehicle accelerating at a constant power will have infinite acceleration at zero velocity. That is to say, available torque is infinite and you’re ultimately limited by your tractive effort. Hence “tractor”, a device used to produce a large tractive effort, as…

Just here to give an idea of scale. Canada has two major fighter bases: CFB Cold Lake, and CFB Bagotville. Using CFB Alert as a point in Canada’s northern frontier, where intercepts of Russian aircraft are increasingly common, Alert is 4000 km from Bagotville. Oslo, Norway, is just a 25% further trip, 5000 km. To put…

A complete dyson sphere cannot absorb all light; that is not thermodynamically possible. It would re-emit light at a longer wavelength.

dummy lightweight democratic frontrunner campaigns in a van (stupid!)

You’ll note above that the entire oven is rotating (since its very easy to spin a liquid into a parabola, but very hard to grind a surface to that shape). Part of that time might be involved in maintaining its precise parabolic shape as the glass solidifies.

Well, had a guy at the controls of a computer that steered every axle individually one would hope. I can’t imagine a job that would be simultaneously both as monotonous and as difficult as doing that manually.