Re: Remember "Bit-Slice" Chips ?

On Wed, 11 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 11/12/2024 16:17, D wrote:

  On Wed, 11 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
 

On 11/12/2024 09:58, D wrote:

steam turbine, sadly.

 Sigh... ok, a ship then! 😉

 Not only possible, has been done and is almost certainly the global freight and possibly passenger transport of the future.

 Yes! It would be a shame of subs and aircraft carriers would be the only ones to have this.

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There is an international group of shipping people looking into what stands in the way. Regulations mostly...
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The economics are somewhat unclear.  The rising cost of bunker oil has made cruising at lower speeds the optimal balance. With nuclear, uranium costs are negligible so full speed at whatever the weather will allow may be optimal leading to less ships being needed overall.
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Probably a large container or cruise ship could top out at 50mph (80kph) or so. So something like a 3 day  transatlantic crossing time.
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I think that is very acceptable as part of a holiday package.

It is fascinating how ancient these ideas really are. By pure chance, I once found an old family history in my fathers apartment typed up by my grandmother.
Apparently, together with those papers, where some old notes from her job. She used to be the secretary to some scientist at swedens first nuclear research program around 1954.
In those notes, I read speculations about nuclear powered ships and I think they mentioned aircraft, but ships for sure.
Here is an image of the "cave" where they had their research reactor:
https://www.kth.se/polopoly_fs/1.1300045.1701333137!/image/Reaktorhallen419.jpg
about 25 meter under the city campus of the royal institute of technology.