The British Rail flying saucer, officially known simply as space vehicle, was a proposed spacecraft designed by Charles Osmond
Frederick.
Purpose
The flying saucer originally started as a proposal for a lifting platform. However, the project was revised and edited, and by the time the patent was filed had become a large
passenger craft for interplanetary travel.
Design
The craft was to be powered by nuclear fusion, using laser beams to produce pulses of nuclear energy in a generator in the centre of the craft, at a rate of over 1000 Hz to prevent resonance, which could damage the vehicle. The pulses
of energy would then have been transferred out of a nozzle into a series of radial electrodes running along the
underside of the craft, which would have converted the energy into electricity that would then pass into a ring of powerful electromagnets (the patent describes using superconductors if possible). These magnets would accelerate subatomic particles emitted by the fusion reaction, providing lift and thrust. This general design was used in several fusion rocket studies.
A layer of thick metal running above the fusion reactor would have acted as a shield to protect the passengers above from the radiation emitted from the core of the reactor. The entire vehicle would be piloted in such a way that the acceleration and deceleration of the craft would have simulated gravity in zero gravity conditions.
A patent application was filed by Jensen and Son on behalf of British Rail on 11 December 1970 and granted on 21 March 1973.
The patent lapsed in 1976 due to non-payment of renewal fees.
Media attention
The patent first came to the attention of the media when it was featured in The Guardian on 31
May 1978, in a story by Adrian
Hope of the New Scientist magazine. There was a further mention in The Daily Telegraph on 11 July 1982, during the silly season. The Railway Magazine mentioned it in its May 1996 issue, saying that the passengers would have been “fried”
anyway.
When the patent was rediscovered in 2006, it gained widespread publicity in the British press. A group of nuclear scientists examined the designs and declared them to be unworkable, expensive and very inefficient. Michel van Baal of the European Space Agency claimed “I have had a look at the plans, and they don’t look very serious
to me at all”, adding that many of the technologies used in the craft, such as nuclear fusion and
high temperature superconductors, had not yet been discovered, while Colin Pillinger, the scientist in charge of the Beagle 2 probe, was quoted as saying “If I hadn’t seen the documents I wouldn’t have believed it”.
Last year, I saw at least one other person, proudly wearing their towel. This year? Nothing. I even made sure to take a walk out in the glorious sunshine on my lunch break, and didn’t
find even a single other towel-wearer. What is the world coming to, when you can’t even rely on a student town to follow these fun and important traditions.
More importantly, what will all of these people do if they find themselves without their toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat
spray, wet weather gear, space suit, etc.
I’ve got chests full of diamonds and a huge fortress of solitude in my singleplayer world. I’ve found the End Portal and I’ve got enough eyes to activate it. But why bother? Alone, I
don’t stand a chance against the Ender Dragon anyway: I’m just not that good a player. And it doesn’t matter how much time I spend enachanting all of my stuff, it’s never going to be
good enough.
So there’s no point. I’m sat here, alone, and I’m not achieving anything anymore. Sometimes I just want to delete the world and get it all over with. It’s not like anybody will miss
me.
Suppose I have a pair of 15x zoom telescopes (for example, I separated a pair of 15x zoom binoculars) and laid them end-to-end. Naturally there’d be some loss of field-of-vision when
looking through them both. But would the resulting zoom level be 152 (i.e. 225x)? Or 15*2 (i.e. 30x)? Or something else entirely? Or am I oversimplifying?
There’s a difference between having understanding and compassion for the men who are trapped in the Box and cutting them slack. After all, it isn’t as if the dude in the Box is giving
any slack to women, queers, transgender or genderqueer folks, or for that matter, heterosexual cisgender men who refuse to pretend to be Real Men. And cutting men slack is another way
of coddling them instead of helping them learn to let go of the Box and discover the freedom that comes from being who you are. Having compassion without coddling people is fierce.
It’s powerful. And it requires the ability to hold onto both the fact that the Box hurts us all and that it gives heterosexual cisgender men privilege.
This is my father. He’s dragging a tyre in the photo because he’s in training to do a sponsored walk to the North Pole, to
raise money for a charity called TransAid.
Apparently, tying a tyre to your waist and then dragging it around accurately simulates the effort required to drag a sled with all the provisions you need for a two-week journey
across the Arctic.
He’s 54, and he’s in spectacular physical fitness. Over the last few years I’ve seen him do sponsored hikes up Kilimanjaro and Everest, thousand mile cycles in ten days, marathons and
triathlons. I’m 24 years younger than him, and I’m not even slightly as fit as he is.
Was, sorry. Got to get used to saying that.
Yesterday, my dad was killed during a training exercise in Britain’s Lake District. He slipped on a patch of ice and fell 700 feet into a ravine. By the time the rescue helicopter had
arrived, he was already dead.
It seems unfair that he was ready to brave a trek to the North Pole – one of the most inhospitable parts of the planet – but what killed him was a slip and a fall up a hill just 50
miles from his house. A hill that he, and I, and my two younger sisters have climbed together, before.
Apparently I have to go and formally identify the body. Apparently I need to execute his will. Apparently I’ve got to organise a funeral. Suddenly my life has come to a standstill and
a different life has arrived to take its place. I’m suddenly thrust into a world of paperwork and of calling distant relatives. A world of grief and consolation. A world in which the
man I admired… the man I called “dad”… is no longer a part.
I feel woefully inadequate for all of these roles. I just want to phone up my dad and ask for his advice, and have him be there to help me, as he’s always been there to help me
before. But that’s something that I can never do again.
Reddit: call somebody you love today. You might not get another chance.
tl;dr: My dad was killed yesterday in a tragic accident. Call somebody you love today.
