dennis@home wrote:
"Anthony Frost" wrote in message
...

Both ideas have been discussed and work. The military *are*
interested in using ground based lasers to illuminate solar panels
on their satellites.

Do you really think military satellites rely on solar power and
batteries? Why do you think they have booster rockets to get rid of
them when they are end of life?

I do think that 90%+ of them use solar power and batteries because that
is how they work. They have "booster rockets" as you call them to make
sure they re-enter in a destructive manner over a nice wide bit of sea
rather than take a chance of bits landing relatively intact over hostile
territory.

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is what I'm
guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power radar and have
enough trouble with drag from the large antenna panels without adding
huge solar panels. They are also almost exclusively Russian, the US has
never orbited a working reactor so far and tries to avoid RTGs for
political reasons, and they've managed to drop one on Canada and one on
South America by accident when end of life orbit changes have taken
place in the wrong direction.

Anthony, MBIS

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
dennis@home wrote:
"Jules" wrote in message
news
That doesn't sound particularly stable, though (even more so with using
landfill waste) - or is there a hidden "wait 20 years" step prior to
building? (Which isn't necessarily a problem, *providing* politicians
can
get their act together and start thinking beyond 2-3 years into the
future)


Stability is easy just drive some piles.. its cheap these days.
Not necessary. Building earth banks is well understood technology. Since
the days of the steam train..

Its how to build on landfill after a year or two for people to forget it was
a tip.

dennis@home wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

And it is really cheap.

I estimate that at 7 houses to the acre,

Where do you live?
I estimate 20 homes to an acre at least.
Seven to an acre is real high end stuff around here.


Really? Ive got an acre of back garden here, and I would not think that
you could fit, with access roads, more than abut 7 'townhouses' on it.

Its 120 meters by 30 meters roughly.. If each house is 20 meters wide,
and twenty meters deep with a 10 meter back garden, that means 6 houses
would fill it without the access roads at all.

I cant imagine what sort of rabbit hutches go at 20 to the acre..

one acre is 4,000 square meters..if you are going 20 to the acre, that
is 200 square meters per house.. 2000 sq ft including parking and access
and garden..a mere 10x10 meter house, with 5 meters of frontage and 5
meters of back..yeah I suppose you can get a small 3/4 bed house on
that..with a postage stamp garden.

I must say I'd be inclined to do the outlined development as 3 storey
houses with NO garden.just large balconies...since you have to leave a
substantial area of land free for water management, that gets to be a
communal space as it were. I was really thinking of very upmarket and
exclusive stuff..

Anthony Frost wrote:
dennis@home wrote:
"Anthony Frost" wrote in message
...

Both ideas have been discussed and work. The military *are*
interested in using ground based lasers to illuminate solar panels
on their satellites.

Do you really think military satellites rely on solar power and
batteries? Why do you think they have booster rockets to get rid of
them when they are end of life?

I do think that 90%+ of them use solar power and batteries because that
is how they work. They have "booster rockets" as you call them to make
sure they re-enter in a destructive manner over a nice wide bit of sea
rather than take a chance of bits landing relatively intact over hostile
territory.

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is what I'm
guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power radar and have
enough trouble with drag from the large antenna panels

Eh? In a vaccuum?

without adding
huge solar panels. They are also almost exclusively Russian, the US has
never orbited a working reactor so far and tries to avoid RTGs for
political reasons, and they've managed to drop one on Canada and one on
South America by accident when end of life orbit changes have taken
place in the wrong direction.

Anthony, MBIS

dennis@home wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
dennis@home wrote:
"Jules" wrote in message
news
That doesn't sound particularly stable, though (even more so with using
landfill waste) - or is there a hidden "wait 20 years" step prior to
building? (Which isn't necessarily a problem, *providing* politicians
can
get their act together and start thinking beyond 2-3 years into the
future)

Stability is easy just drive some piles.. its cheap these days.
Not necessary. Building earth banks is well understood technology. Since
the days of the steam train..

Its how to build on landfill after a year or two for people to forget it was
a tip.


I am not talking landfill.

Landfill is a completely different kettle of fish,

It takes considerable time to settle, and it may outgass, and give of
hazardous chemistry for may years, as ell as subside inhomogeneously.


Nuclear waste is of course far more suitable ;-)

On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:32:03 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
That doesn't sound particularly stable, though (even more so with using
landfill waste) - or is there a hidden "wait 20 years" step prior to
building? (Which isn't necessarily a problem, *providing* politicians can
get their act together and start thinking beyond 2-3 years into the future)


Oh dear. You had better tell the people that make motorways that their
embankments are all in danger of sliding into the cuttings, including
the custom service station (complete with petrol/Diesel tanks)..;-)

I can assure you that by the time a few 50 ton tracked vehicles have
spread and smoothed the soil around, its stable.

Even on soils such as heavy clay? I'm just thinking of how many houses
I've come across with cracks in the walls because the underlying soil's
shrunk over the years and so everything's shifted slightly...

(Hmm, how much does a typical two-storey brick house actually weigh
anyway?)

I notice the new Great Barford bypass has had several patches applied to
it in recent weeks to get rid of lumps and troughs where the underlying
ground's shifted - good job that wasn't a housing estate instead :-)

And look what you get..houses with a view overlooking a tranquil lake,
all hung about with willows, suitable for summer bathing, fishing and
boating. Or even winter skating...

Or even summer skating if some of the doomsayers are right

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is what I'm
guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power radar and have
enough trouble with drag from the large antenna panels

Eh? In a vaccuum?

Define a vacuum. At what height do you think there is one?

cheers,
clive

Jules wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:32:03 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
That doesn't sound particularly stable, though (even more so with using
landfill waste) - or is there a hidden "wait 20 years" step prior to
building? (Which isn't necessarily a problem, *providing* politicians can
get their act together and start thinking beyond 2-3 years into the future)

Oh dear. You had better tell the people that make motorways that their
embankments are all in danger of sliding into the cuttings, including
the custom service station (complete with petrol/Diesel tanks)..;-)

I can assure you that by the time a few 50 ton tracked vehicles have
spread and smoothed the soil around, its stable.

Even on soils such as heavy clay?

Thats a lot more stable than sand.

I'm just thinking of how many houses
I've come across with cracks in the walls because the underlying soil's
shrunk over the years and so everything's shifted slightly...


Trees mainly. Modern building control knows how to cope with that..the
foundations simply go down a meter plus thats all. The stuff that cracks
is mainly laid either over something really bad, or has 6 inch deep
strip foundations. If you add some steel to strip foundations you end up
with a reinforced concrete beam that may go up and down, but won't crack
on you.

Add a raised block and beam concrete floor, and there's even room for
the flood to go underneath :-) It will take any amount of heave without
floor buckling too.

The only subsidence that occurred with MY earthnmoving games, was when I
buried large amounts of BIG rubble from the old house..gradually the
soil slipped in between the lumps of brick and stuff, and the ground sank.

The dais I built from subsoil pulled out of the pond - good wet blue
clay - has been rock solid.
You need to be careful of certain types of material

- organics will shrink on decomposition, so strip your topsoil first,
and save it for gardens afterwards, plus no rubbish please.

- material with voids in it will be subject to subsidence. You may THINK
a base of crushed limestone is great, but you had better crush it
properly, otherwise soil seeps into the cracks in time.

- anything that goes limp in water is an issue - sand is very unstable.

- slip angles must be carefully assessed if you don't want an Aberfan on
your hands before vegetation stabilizes the slopes.


But this is known stuff.

another thing that you can take advantage of, is that you could - since
you are building soil up anyway - simply pile it up somewhere, so all
the cable and pipe laying is done at surface level, and build your
foundations straight on top of the flood plain, and then fill it all up
with topsoil AFTERWARDS. Its a relatively quick job to fill a hole with
a digger.


(Hmm, how much does a typical two-storey brick house actually weigh
anyway?)


Massive. Hundreds of tons

I notice the new Great Barford bypass has had several patches applied to
it in recent weeks to get rid of lumps and troughs where the underlying
ground's shifted - good job that wasn't a housing estate instead :-)


You don't have 30 ton trucks bouncing on it. And if its sagged its been
badly engineered in the first place. Road building starts with soil, and
then there is a layer of crushed limestone applied as a load
spreader..then the top surfaces are pushed over that. If you skimp on
the limestone..it WILL collapse due to soil spreading.



And look what you get..houses with a view overlooking a tranquil lake,
all hung about with willows, suitable for summer bathing, fishing and
boating. Or even winter skating...

Or even summer skating if some of the doomsayers are right


Yup./

Clive George wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is what I'm
guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power radar and have
enough trouble with drag from the large antenna panels

Eh? In a vaccuum?

Define a vacuum. At what height do you think there is one?


Effectively at about 60 miles up..

cheers,
clive

Tony Bryer wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:07:19 +0100 The Natural Philosopher wrote :
Really? Ive got an acre of back garden here, and I would not think that
you could fit, with access roads, more than abut 7 'townhouses' on it.

Its 120 meters by 30 meters roughly.. If each house is 20 meters wide,
and twenty meters deep with a 10 meter back garden, that means 6 houses
would fill it without the access roads at all.

Traditional 1930s semis are 8 to the acre. I would have thought that
the average town house had a frontage of 7.5m or so. Say 5m in front
of the house (parking), 9m house depth, 10m garden, 4.5m half width
of road and that's 19 to the acre.

'Kinaida.

No wonder they take drugs..

In message , at 13:07:19 on Fri,
27 Jul 2007, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
I cant imagine what sort of rabbit hutches go at 20 to the acre..

I think the current "standard" for inner cities is 24-40 per hectare,
which is 10-16 per acre. Classic 5-bed detached executive homes used to
be more like 4 per acre.
--
Roland Perry

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Clive George wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is what I'm
guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power radar and have
enough trouble with drag from the large antenna panels

Eh? In a vaccuum?

Define a vacuum. At what height do you think there is one?


Effectively at about 60 miles up..

There's a difference between "effectively" and "none". There's still drag on
low earth orbit stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit

cheers,
clive

On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:07:19 +0100 The Natural Philosopher wrote :
Really? Ive got an acre of back garden here, and I would not think that
you could fit, with access roads, more than abut 7 'townhouses' on it.

Its 120 meters by 30 meters roughly.. If each house is 20 meters wide,
and twenty meters deep with a 10 meter back garden, that means 6 houses
would fill it without the access roads at all.

Traditional 1930s semis are 8 to the acre. I would have thought that
the average town house had a frontage of 7.5m or so. Say 5m in front
of the house (parking), 9m house depth, 10m garden, 4.5m half width
of road and that's 19 to the acre.

--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk

Clive George wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is
what I'm guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power
radar and have enough trouble with drag from the large antenna
panels

Eh? In a vaccuum?

Define a vacuum. At what height do you think there is one?

Indeed. The camera and radar sats keep as low as they can, their
lifetime is governed in a large part by the amount of fuel they can
carry for reboosts. One of the reasons the ISS has furled one of its
solar arrays is to cut down the drag until the extra power is needed for
the European and Japanese labs, and that's orbiting a good bit higher.

Anthony

In article , Clive
George writes
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
. ..
Clive George wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is what I'm
guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power radar and have
enough trouble with drag from the large antenna panels

Eh? In a vaccuum?

Define a vacuum. At what height do you think there is one?


Effectively at about 60 miles up..

There's a difference between "effectively" and "none". There's still drag on
low earth orbit stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit

cheers,
clive


Cam.misc on a Friday afternoon eh?, never happens anywhere else for most
all people 60 miles up is a "sufficient" vacuum...
--
Tony Sayer

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...

Cam.misc on a Friday afternoon eh?, never happens anywhere else for most
all people 60 miles up is a "sufficient" vacuum...

I'm getting this via uk.d-i-y, where it appears a dyson isn't a sufficient
vacuum :-)

cheers,
clive

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I think I read recently that some houses in the Netherlands are built
to float. They have a bouyancy chamber, normally rest on separate
foundations, and rise between vertical rails if a flood arrives.

S.

That is...neat!


Of course you could build the whole housing estate on a giant raft...

It might add a new meaning to the term "sink estate", should the
buoyancy aid get a puncture. ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is what I'm
guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power radar and have
enough trouble with drag from the large antenna panels

Eh? In a vacuum?

Its not quite a vacuum in low earth orbit.
That's why the shuttle is useless for satellites as you need dangerous
boosters to get them into a higher orbit than the shuttle can manage.

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Clive
George writes
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
.. .
Clive George wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

The very few that rely on any form of nuclear power, which is what
I'm
guessing you think is involved, are carrying high power radar and
have
enough trouble with drag from the large antenna panels

Eh? In a vacuum?

Define a vacuum. At what height do you think there is one?


Effectively at about 60 miles up..

There's a difference between "effectively" and "none". There's still drag
on
low earth orbit stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wake/Low_Earth_orbit

cheers,
clive


Cam.misc on a Friday afternoon eh?, never happens anywhere else for most
all people 60 miles up is a "sufficient" vacuum...

There aren't many rocket scientists here today.. just a couple AFAICS.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

I am not talking landfill.

I was.. I suggested that you could get the mound by filling it with rubbish
rather than soil.
Much cheaper.


Landfill is a completely different kettle of fish,

It takes considerable time to settle, and it may outgass, and give of
hazardous chemistry for may years, as ell as subside inhomogeneously.


Nuclear waste is of course far more suitable ;-)

Well most of its predictably stable and safer than smoking or drinking too
much.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:08:02 -0700, wrote:

Doors could be atop dwarf walls where flooding occurs to low level
only. This would interfere with wheelchair access requirement though.

Which is precisely why almost all the requirements of Prat M should be
binned (along with Prat P)

Level access is, to the vast majority of the population a complete
abomination. Or, more simply put: If you're a cripple, then pay or
use your insurance payout to have your house converted, but don't
inflict your ****ty design 'improvements' on the rest of the
population.

I don't want sockets halfway up a wall, light switches in a similarly
stupid place and a door threshold that means the inside of the house
floods at the slightest hint of surface water outside. If I ever get
in such a state as to need any of the above will someone get me ****ed
and send me on a short stagger along a railway line.


--

In article , August West
writes
Matt writes:

Or, more simply put: If you're a cripple, then pay or use your
insurance payout to have your house converted,

Insurance payment? What insurance payment? The *vast* majority of the
disabled don't have any insurance payment.

If I ever get in such a state as to need any of the above will
someone get me ****ed and send me on a short stagger along a railway
line.

Why not just go an do it now?


What and cause some poor train driver nightmares.

Don't let him be "that" inconsiderate!...
--
Tony Sayer

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:45:02 +0100 someone who may be Matt
wrote this:-

If I ever get
in such a state as to need any of the above will someone get me ****ed
and send me on a short stagger along a railway line.

Not a fun suggestion, either for the driver or those who have to
pick up the bits afterwards.


--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

In article ,
CWatters writes

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
. ..
I thought it might be interesting to discuss this..

Issues as I see it revolve around preventing water ingress to parts of
buildings 'below high water mark' potential damage to foundations, and
ability of basic services, particularly sewage, to function in these
conditions.

No doubt the planners would object to all proposals for stilts, floating
houses etc simply because they wouldn't be "in keeping with the local
vernacular" :-)



Strangely, there is an estate being built at the end of my street that
was "designed" to be in keeping with the local vernacular, and bares
marginally more resemblance to the local vernacular as I do.



Adrian
--
To Reply :
replace "news" with "adrian" and "nospam" with "ffoil"
Sorry for the rigmarole, If I want spam, I'll go to the shops
Every time someone says "I don't believe in trolls", another one dies.

"David Hansen" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:45:02 +0100 someone who may be Matt
wrote this:-

If I ever get
in such a state as to need any of the above will someone get me ****ed
and send me on a short stagger along a railway line.

Not a fun suggestion, either for the driver or those who have to
pick up the bits afterwards.

Nitrogen. Cheap, painless and quick

Paul