Ray Van De Walker

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For the record, I consented for all my work here to be GPL when I began contributing. I see no need for a creative commons, or other license for my own work.

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Unspecified source for Image:Rigging1.png

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Rigging1 is from the out-of-copyright 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica; I'll try to put it back eventually, with an acceptable attribution. It's a professional illustration from the age of sail, and deserves to be here. Ray Van De Walker 18:35, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

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Island 3

I noticed you are the one adding the criticism section, and I have asked for a reliable source for it since it sounded really exotic (3mm thickness space habitat design that sustains 30 metric tons of its weight by chaining to other spheres?) I am sure that you have a source for it before you added that in, and you must have left it out by accident or absent-mindedly omitted to add it. Please discuss about it there, thank you. —Preceding signed comment added by MythSearcher^talk 15:36, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

*sigh* I did the calculations myself, assuming Eglin steel. I supposed that makes them original research, but the math was so easy... Oh well.

Emm... You are talking about 3mm of eglin steel supporting an average 0.9g mass of living structures, vehicles, water and air circulation systems, warming systems and radiation shielding? Giving an average nowadays supporting mass of buildings is 750~1000kg per m^2 per floor? And the safety factor of such structure is? —Preceding signed comment added by MythSearcher^talk 05:21, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

The useful criticism does not turn on my calculations (who cares, besides me?). It's whether resources for habitats will be scarce, and therefore priced in a market. If so, use of resources will be minimized, and Island 3 is very unlikely to be built. A less expensive alternative that was known to O'Neil is a scheme he wrote about, a "crystal palace" (after the minimalist British Exposition building), described in the NASA studies O'Neil supervised (They used to be available in PDFs at the NSS document server). These are less expensive per square meter, because they are composites of small habitats. The small habitats have smaller hoop stresses and and therefore thinner skins, because they have a much smaller pressurized cross section (5m vs 2Km). The calculations are merely my poor attempt to estimate such a structure. The general form I was calculating is an island-3-sized cylindrical net supporting habitat "beads." Inside the ~5m habitat cylinders, floors are supported by trusses that attach directly to the exterior net, so the thin skin is not involved. The skin only holds the air in, so it's sized for a 5x safety factor for the hoop stress of a 5m-diameter cylinder at 40% of STP (using O'Neil's special habitat mix). It's not 3mm; I seem to recall it being thinner.

Well, having truss to support the structures helps but I can foresee multiple issues of this design, including fast air loss(as compared to an Island 3 2m thickness wall), HVI, radiation and such. Anyway, no source is the biggest problem here, so... —Preceding signed comment added by MythSearcher^talk 18:03, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Tuyau

Hi Ray; Tuyau sounds really cool, and I want it to exist, but after a lot of searching, I can't find any references to reliable sources to back it up, so sadly it looks like it fails to meet the verifiability policy. Accordingly, but somwhat reluctantly, I've started a deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tuyau: if you can add references to reliable sources, that would be great, and would save the article from deletion. -- The Anome (talk) 19:20, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

The article is definitely a mistake. The correct term is trompe. I added my vote for deletion. Ray Van De Walker 07:38, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I've speedy-closed the AfD discussion and deleted the article. And thank you for introducing me to the trompe -- it's such a beautiful example of a simple but sophisticated machine with no moving parts apart from air and water. -- The Anome (talk) 10:08, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Discuss RapidIO Contribution?

Hi Ray,

Thanks for your interest in RapidIO. I've posted a comment in the talk section of that page about your addition. Please take a look - I'd like your feedback and opinion.

Cheers, Barry Wood Chair, RapidIO Technical Working Group --Barrywood568 (talk) 04:29, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

A page move (?) that you made a while ago

Hi Ray, in July 2002 you changed the page Printed Circuits from an article into a redirect to a new page you created at Printed circuit board. I know it was a long time ago, but do you remember if your new page was based on the article at the "Printed circuits" title? Here are the changes you made. It's just that I recently history-merged the "Printed circuit board" and "Printed Circuits" pages, and Spinningspark queried this action, noting the significant differences in the link above. See the discussion at my talk page and at Spinningspark's. Do you have any thoughts on whether the history merge was a good idea? If so, please reply at my talk page. Graham87 11:11, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I generally approve of history merges so that past texts of a merged article are fully available to naive editors such as myself. The article about PCBs seems adequate on first reading, and leaving it alone is a respectable option. The sections are not balanced. It spends a lot of time on construction techniques and very little on design, but this may be OK because a consumer view of the process is pretty mysterious. I vaguely remember some historical information about design that has apparently been removed (I didn't look for it, and it might be entirely in my head). The article ought to have links to competing methods of electronic assembly (e.g. terminal construction and wire-wrap), so that people don't think it is the end-all. Ray Van De Walker 23:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll leave it then. However, there's a problem with your signature; it doesn't contain any links to either your user or talk page, as required by the guideline. To fix this, go into your preferences and uncheck the box that says "Treat the above as wiki markup ...". Thanks! Graham87 04:39, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Your edits to Nautical Almanac

Your edits to Nautical Almanac are promotional in nature and unsupported by reliable sources. Who says the Nautical Almanac is the most widely used, or most authoritative? I do not believe your claim that there are any legal restrictions on printing almanacs. I have reverted your edits. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:53, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

• Kind of you to tell me. I do hope you restore it. "Most widely used" does lack citations. However, my navigational training books do not mention anything other than almanacs from this source (I admit that some recommend using the Air Almanac, but it's from the same offices). Also, I don't think any practical navigator would use anything other than the AA and NA. (reasoning follows in a bit) About the restriction: In fact Her Majesty's almanac office maintains a copyright, in part because the information is indeed safety-critical, and the US Almanac authorities of the naval observatory are prevented from claiming a copyright by US law. When you read the copyright, please note that it carefully covers the tabulations of actual astronomical data, but not prefaces, etc. This copyright is not secret; It's in every authorized copy. Google books can easily show it to you, though not the reason for it, which is obvious to every navigator: An unauthorized copy's tabulation could have a transcription error during typesetting, and that could cause a preventable navigation error and accident at sea with loss of life or property. The authorized commercial publisher (there is one in the US) has that right due to an agreement to publish only photographically reproduced pages. Also, their editions carefully document that their edition is both authorized and photographically reproduced. Only a fool would use an unauthorized almanac to navigate at sea. Also, I have read that some persons mistrust the commercial edition and only purchase the GPO's edition. (I remember words something like "false economy") That issue, the care with which it is produced, is exactly why knowledgable people trust it. Would you buy a ticket from someone navigating by an unauthorized NA? Best wishes. Ray Van De Walker (talk) 11:32, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

• I used the contact feature at the Government Printing Office website and received the following information from T. Brooks:

          Here are the figures you requested for distribution of Publications.

            Astronomical Almanac, D 213.8:, item number 0394
          o Selected by 554 Federal depository libraries
          o Last shipped out in February of 2016

          • Nautical Almanac, D 213. 11:, item number 0395
          o Selected by 429 Federal depository libraries
          o Last shipped out in May of 2016

Not as good as knowing how many copies were sold, but this is a hint that the Astronomical Almanac might be more popular than the Nautical Almanac. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:14, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Facts always trump theory. Great research! Please include it! Ray Van De Walker (talk) 22:06, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

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