NASA going back to tubes?

[STURMJ]

I saw this yesterday, thought you guys would find it interesting.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/05/return-of-the-vacuum-tube.html

[Mr. Davis]

Very interesting news story.  Thanks for sharing. 

I would like to see nano vacuum tubes in my gaming machine!   A hard drive that is 10x faster.. 

[Grainger49]

The terminology fits FETs.  Still, interesting read.

Thanks!

[John Roman]

Yet another bookmark, interesting site.
Regards,
John

[Chris]

Not sure i would be inclined to believe the soviet tube/EMP explanation.. it sounds great yes, like they were really on top of things, however, from subs sinking to chernobyl, to the ripped off plans and inferior execution of the concordsky as well as most sukhoi and migs, post 1965, looking quite similar to our designs from years before and last but not least , their VAST , VAST missile arsenal that i was told as a kid, they had, (which was just not true at all) all adds up to the fact they had no money and IMO, lacked the capacity to develop state of the art, like the free enterprise west was able to.... good example, broken down "poor" east germany versus the thriving west germany... ONLY  my observation, i dont want to cause an argument....i think the emp resistance , which is true, is just an accidental bonus for their continued use of what technology they had that still seemed to work for them and didnt cost additional funds for a whole bunch of new R&D that they were not capable of acheiving given their "closed doors"...... my totally uneducated 2 cents...

[Grainger49]

I throw in with Chris.  I had always heard that the USSR semiconductors were not up to snuff and therefore they stayed with rugged tubes.  I also heard that they didn't know about the advantage of tubes over the P-N junction in the event of an EMP.

[Doc B.]

I was in a room about 30 years ago where there was a cruise missile hanging from a crane with a bunch of equipment attached. The room was lined with microwave absorbent material. out of one side of the room was a waveguide, that went back to a chamber with a 1cm^2 piece of foil. It was hit with the discharge from a cap the size of a couple of phone booths. I was told that when it vaporized it sent a s**t ton of EMP into the room. So it appears that at least from our end there was a serious concern about EMP resistance.

[Grainger49]

Hmmm, I like that.  And now a new engineering unit, s**t ton!  I'd like to use that with permission.

[2wo]

Its metric for S**t Load   ...John

[Jim R.]

I used to work for a watchdog/thinktank agency for the US electric utility grid and we had one of the country's foremost EMP experts on staff... it is very real and if somebody could make a pure EMP bomb that did not do any physical destruction, it would bring any modern country to it's knees in seconds -- meaning those who depend on electricity and electronic communications.  I was doing frequency coordination for the communications system that was supposed to work after that EMP thing happened, but that was a military program that has long since been scrubbed.

--Jim

[Doc B.]

There was a local tube audio friend who, IIRC, was in charge of the Army's supply of tube transmitters and receivers in Iraq back during Desert Storm.

[Chris]

Right, and the President's E4 "doomsday" planes are "purposely" old fashioned (if you will) fitted with alot of analog technology for the emp resistance as well... we know it is real....