Thursday 25 July 2013

Fire Engines. Part-Two.

Tenders and Engines today.

Our world today is very advanced since the days of 1900. The fire services have developed to many other areas than just dealing with fire. Chemical, biological and Nuclear units now exist, along with specialist cutting equipment used in accidents and similar crash incidents.

The fire service has not to just deal with the cat up the tree, but also work on water, deal with aviation fuel, foam spray and underground concealment. ''Fire man Sam', will even fly into douse the flames of the forest fire with water and chemicals. Have to be the nurse and Doctor in some situations and also be on hand in riot situations too and this is world wide.

Specialist tenders such as the Panther have been built for London's Heathrow airport. Basically they have a wide roles of use all in one vehicle and similar units operate in other countries.

Thursday 18 July 2013

Fire Engines. Part-One.

Water Carriers.

Humanity has developed because it has been able to harness fire, to make it and to use it in daily survival. But at times fire can attack us, with devastating consequences. The construction of large villages, towns and cities has lead to the development of mobile water carriers.

The river and bucket system will not work in a large city, so the concept of the first fire carts came with the invention of the pump. London, New York, Paris all developed their take on this horse drawn water tank. Each vehicle had place for water, ropes, ladders and sand. The crew sat on an open cab or hung on to the sides.

Even with the development of the engine this outlay continued, right up to the 1940's era.

Thursday 11 July 2013

From ISS to Moon Base?

Living on another world.

Many people have envisaged that in the space race humanity would eventually build a moon base to something akin to the British 1999 sci-fi take.

But it looks like that it will be Mars who gets the credit for the first other world base. This will probably happen for reality in the next fifty years. Maybe the first Martians will be human colonists, this will of course start an interesting ethical debate.

Any base that is eventually built will be modeled on those that are being constructed in Antarctica now. They will have to be small and easy to transport there in one piece, solar panels or a small nuclear reactor will probably be used as already on the International Space Station.

The last question is who will be the first to do such an venture, traditionally we would assume it to be the U.S. and Russia, with the ESA in support. But it may be China and a host of smaller developing nations such as Brazil, India and Iran that achieve this dream goal?

Thursday 4 July 2013

Bulk Carrier.

Large Cargo Vessels.

As long as humans can go to sea and there will be trade between nations, there will always be a need for large cargo vessels. Super tankers for crude oil and gas, bulk carriers for all dried goods.

These are the best means of moving 70-80,000 tonnes of coal, mineral ores, wheat, other grains and man made goods. Ships seem to be getting bigger and crews to service them lower, yet more vessels are being built every year. South-Korea and Japan seem to be the places to get the latest vessels, with their state of the art computer control systems.