My old man used to go on one year plus round the world flag flying tours, them was the days.
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Yes, but I think youâd agree that if the bits of a guided missile destroyer fail so seriously that it needs to return to port for repairs every 7 months then it hasnât been very well designed. The most complex things Iâve ever worked on myself are particle accelerators. They can be run continuously for months on end. They need real-time adjustment, and some minor repairs, but nothing so serious that you have to shut the whole facility down.
The discussion quickly shifted to the mental state of the crew. That was the same in Nelsonâs time.
VB
It feels strange to read something about âthe Britishâ that displays some decorum.
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maintenance regimes can be adjusted to keep a ship at sea but some of that maintenance will require the assistance of others. You would normally rotate a ship in and out of theatre to conduct, potentially alongside or with an in theatre depot vessel. If the crew were fully isolating and not able to be assisted then 270 or so days isnât a bad effort.
Merch vessels are far simpler and they have the space to carry the kind of spares you couldnât get on a warship and also have the internal space to conduct maintenance that would require assistance on a warship.
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Do you happen to know how well they work when sprayed with seawater for a few months? And yes, before you point it out, I am confident everyone involved in designing bits of that ship is aware of what seawater is and does but it really is murderous stuff for anything remotely complex.
Tons_of_fun
âCanât even begin to imagine how much the people on that thing hated each other after six months.â
Either this or they will all be dating each other.
We worried more about the effects of extreme levels of ionising radiation, near-breakdown electromagnetic field strengths, metal-melting laser intensities, vacuum requirements 13-15 orders of magnitude below atmospheric pressure, keeping large chunks of the machine superconducting (needs a substantial pumped liquid helium fridge) and not letting even the tiniest speck of dust get inside the thing (actually not that hard, assuming you start out clean and donât break the vacuum). Then thereâs the small matter of locking the lasers to the radiofrequency system with a pulse timing jitter of no more than a few hundred femtoseconds.
Believe it or not at one stage the US Navy was considering mounting one of these things on a ship, and relying on it to work when the Exocets (or their 21st century replacements) suddenly showed up on the radar Scientific Assessment of High-Power Free-Electron Laser Technology | The National Academies Press. I suspect that potential problems with seawater werenât their biggest worries 
.
VB
Theyâd be submarinersđ
HMS Queen Elizabeth â âhold my beerâ
My old man was in the MN from the end of the 40s to the 1960s - when they werenât cleaning something, they were painting it, and he was still moaning about it 30 years after he left the service. Beats my why the yanks let that thing get so scabby - not like thereâs much point using specialised AR coatings on big lumps of iron like thatâŠ
I doubt they thought this much about it, but there can be an issue with coping too well. If you come back all clean and tidy then some congressman representing a state far from the dockyards will ask whether the current regular maintenance budget canât be cut back, since clearly putting into port every 6 weeks isnât necessary after all.
VB
Thatâs a fair point - theyâre surprisingly heavily unionised still, and a high-employment level âmakeworkâ attitude is what still serves the 'states to some extent, instead of having a social security network.
Perhaps the state of it is why Biden has just upped the defence budget - buy more paint and painters ?
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That the builder has experienced a âmaterial delayâ on another job, so heâs coming, err, tomorrow 
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Do you mean mañana?
you sure he isnât on holiday?
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On this day, 1959: Monitor made a short film called Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum, about a burgeoning phenomenon; the audiophile.
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Talking to a mate of mine who runs a roofing company last week. They have a wait time of 36 weeks on some slates/tiles, there is also a shortage of timber.
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and the pubs have just reopened
Tell me about it, tried to buy a shed today, the company that we wanted to use already has a waiting list and isnât taking any more orders because their timber merchant canât guarantee lead times or prices. The next one on our list said delivery would be October at the earliest and the only people who could supply quicker than that were either shit or expensive, and often both.
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